Transformers 3

Saw Transformers 3, and it was really good. Not quite as good as the first one, but almost. The last Transformers movie sucked because there was all this stuff going on but somehow none of it felt like it mattered, it was just a bunch of robots beating each other up. The new film illustrates the number-one rule on how to make the audience care: Always Keep Humans In The Frame. In Transformers 3, whenever the Autobots are fighting the Decepticons, there are human characters running around them, and the fragility of the tiny humans under the massive steel crunching robots keeps you constantly on edge. Reminds the audience that the humans and the planet Earth are what the Transformers are fighting over. That’s that makes it matter: not how impressive the fight is, but what are they fighting for. And when you see US Marines fighting alongside the Autobots, it’s freakin AWESOME because of the reality of it – you see them use the classic mechanized armor + infantry tactics we’ve seen in movies forever, except here the tanks are Transformers. The Autobots rely on the human soldiers almost as much as the soldiers need the Autobots, for much the same reason tanks always need infantry support. Seeing a platoon of Marines work together to harass a Decepticon so an Autobot can make the kill, that is a thing of beauty. The battle scenes really are wonderfully choreographed, the freeway chase is Michael Bay at his badass best, almost equal to his amazing work on Bad Boys 2. They’ve expanded the Transformers capabilities a bit, here they can partially transform and maneuver while mostly in car form, I don’t think they did that in the previous films. And I like the slightly expanded roster of Transformers – there’s a Ferrari Italia! And its name is Dino! Hah!

The characters in Transformers 3 are much better and funnier than Transformers 2. John Malkovich! Wash/Alpha from Firefly/Dollhouse! The Chinese dude from Hangover! Motherfucking Leonard Nimoy.
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