What to Expect When You’re Expecting Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Production on a third Transformers movie began pretty much as soon as the second one made $100 million, which was about four hours after it opened. That means they’ve had two years to fine-tune and perfect the final chapter in the trilogy, to make every detail conform to Michael Bay’s overarching vision. Given how much money has been spent on it, one assumes the new film has been painstakingly crafted by dedicated artisans, but of course we won’t know for sure until July 1. In the meantime, we can make some educated guesses based on the facts available.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Transformers: Dark of the Moon

It was made by people who realize the last one wasn’t very good. The director, the writers, the star, and the now-fired co-star of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen have all publicly admitted that it was kind of crappy. On the one hand, this is encouraging, because it suggests, at least theoretically, that these people are capable of learning from their errors and doing better next time. But on the other hand, you wouldn’t buy a car from a salesman whose sales pitch included an apology for the last car he sold you. You would thank him for finally coming clean about the lemon, then buy a car somewhere else.

Mr. Spock is the voice of an elderly alien-robot-monster thing! Is there a more revered figure in all of geekdom than Leonard Nimoy? He gave his seal of approval to the Star Trek reboot a couple years ago, and now he gazes favorably upon Transformers: Dark of the Moon. His presence in the film means it’s a respectable piece of entertainment and/or they paid him.

Megan Fox is being played by someone else. You will recall that the main character, Sam Witwicky, used to have a busty girlfriend named Megan Fox. But in Dark of the Moon, the role of Megan Fox is played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Hardcore fans of the series are disappointed, as they’d grown fond of the way Megan Fox inhabited the character (i.e., the way she shimmied in slow motion). How will Rosie Huntington-Whiteley do in the role of Megan Fox? Her name sounds very fancy, what with the hyphen and all, as if she were a classically trained Shakespearean actor, but she’s actually just a Victoria’s Secret model. Which gives you an idea of how much acting Michael Bay thought the role required.

It’s going to be in 3D, heaven help us all. Not that you need us to tell you it’s going to be in 3D. It’s a movie being released in 2011, right? Then it’s going to be in 3D. What’s noteworthy is that according to people who have seen some of the footage, Bay realizes that his patented shaky-camera Confuse-O-Vision® technique would be completely incomprehensible in 3D, and he seems to have slowed things down a bit. As in, the camera holds still for a second, and you can actually see the giant robots as they perform their hilarious shenanigans.

Frances McDormand is in it, and she won an Oscar, and so is John Malkovich, and he’s been nominated twice. So it’s probably going to be a pretty classy affair, is what we’re saying.

Source: film.com

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