Review: 'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon' wraps up with the best of the franchise

Let's start with this:  for the first time since "Avatar," I am going to recommend that you find the biggest and best 3D theater you can find and buy yourself a ticket, because "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon," especially seen in IMAX 3D, is an overwhelming sensory experience.  The sound mix alone is more exciting than anything in the billion-dollar-bore of "Pirates 4."  This is gigantic action we've never seen before, and Bay's reaction to shooting and cutting his film for 3D is to get better at what he does.  It raised his game, and as a result, I feel like we just saw a dare thrown down by one of Hollywood's biggest action specialists:  "Top this."

Just for reference, here are links to my reviews of "Transformers" and "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen."  That should give you an idea of what I carried into the theater with me when I sat down to see the new film.  And if you don't feel like reading both of those pieces, I'll sum it up quickly:  I think the first film is a lot of fun, and I think the second film is a big mess with some remarkable visuals.  They've both got their problems, with the second film basically serving to magnify all the first film's issues to a disturbing degree.

"Transformers: Dark Of The Moon" is easily the best film in the series, and there's a solid hour-long action sequence in Chicago that uses everything Bay's ever done before, but all blended into one exhausting push to save one girl in the midst of a war involving two planets.  It's the personal story on an apocalyptic scale that Bay loves to try to tell, and that other guys like Emmerich and Cameron and even Spielberg love to do.  And this is the best version of it that Bay's made so far.

It is also the best job the series has done so far of turning the robots themselves into lead characters, something the first two films avoided for the most part.  In the first film, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee had their moments, but they were still secondary to the human characters in every way, and the second film didn't really give anyone, human or animated, anything to play.  This time out, I actually felt like the robots made a strong impression, and if there are more of these films after Bay leaves the series, then he's laid out a pretty strong template here for others to imitate moving forward. Finally, it feels like the war makes sense, and the stakes make sense, and it all matters.  Sentinel Prime is a great addition to the series, and Nimoy plays him perfectly.  It's a real performance, and as a result, it makes the rest of the Transformers feel more real.  Cullen is very good in this one, and the rest of the robot cast manages to impress as well.  Even the weird little robots, and there are two of them living with Sam (Shia LaBeouf) grew on me over the course of the film, especially when you see where they wind up.  The Decepticons are way nastier in this one, and so when Optimus Prime and the Autobots unleash hell... AND THEY DO... it is so deserved and so worthy of one cheer after another that it almost becomes audience participation.

The film opens with a rapid-fire look back into an alternate history, something that worked well for "X-Men: First Class" this summer as well, and we see the space race of the 1960's from a different perspective.  I like how Bay uses the "Forrest Gump" technique so we get cameos from the real JFK and the real Richard Nixon, and as soon as the opening is over, we get the main title and BAM, we're into the story of Sam Witwicky, the human lead of the franchise.  One of the things I liked about the first film was the way it took a very natural milestone in the life of a young man, the purchase of his first car, and turned that into the backbone of the movie.  The second film never figured out what human story to hang all the action on, but it looks like they were trying to use the transition from high school to college.  This time, we're looking at the moment where a young man is out of school and ready to start his life, and the frustrations that come from wanting to find a way to make a mark on the world right away.  LaBeouf has gone from gawky kid to young man over the course of the series, and in this film, Sam finally steps up and becomes a hero by choice, not by circumstance.  He is determined to contribute something to this ongoing conflict, and his choice to be involved is very different than the way he gets roped into things in the first two films.  He could walk away and let the military handle things in this one, but that's not who he is now.  He's invested in this fight, and he feels like he has a role to play.

Part of what motivates Sam in this movie is the need to impress his new girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), and while I think Megan Fox takes an unfair beating from people when they write about her, I'll be the first to admit the series does not miss her at all now that she's gone.  Huntington-Whiteley turns out to be a very winning on-screen personality, charming and sweet, and she seems well aware that Michael Bay is shooting her like a car in a car commercial.  She definitely plays up the physical side of things, but I think she's going to appeal to women in a way that Fox never did.  She reminds me of Cameron Diaz in "The Mask," an actress who doesn't really show off any range, but who gives a natural, winning performance and who is up to the challenge of this particular picture.  There's a famous quote about Fred Astaire's most famous dance partner, "Don't forget, Ginger Rogers did everything Astaire did, but backwards and in heels," and I kept thinking of that during the Chicago sequence, when Rosie has to keep up with the boys in some of the craziest action scenes of the year, and she manages to do so wearing the biggest high heels I can imagine.  She makes it all seem easy, and I predict she's going to be cast in more films immediately once people get a look at how she handles herself here.

I mentioned Sentinel Prime above, and he's a major part of this film, the former leader of the Autobots, long trapped in the crashed Ark on the moon.  Casting Leonard Nimoy was smart, and he gives the character some gravitas.  It's interesting… you haven't seen much of Sentinel Prime in the ads, and that's by design.  This is that rare Hollywood blockbuster where you really haven't seen anything yet.  There are so many money shots that haven't been in the trailers so far that Scrooge McDuck could go swimming in them.  The most eye-popping moments in the movie are still under lock and key, and there's a whole lot of story that they haven't even hinted at in what you've seen so far.  I'm sure some critics will spoil the story's twists and turns out of a general irritation with the series, or out of a disdain for the fans, but I'd rather let you see it as fresh as possible.