Superhero Media: Transformers - Dark of the Moon

I've never been too sure about why the Transformers film series is so maligned; as I've written previously, I actually enjoyed Transformers. After seeing Dark of the Moon, I finally understand just how bad this series is. Essentially every defense I could muster for Transformers and Revenge of the Fallen melts away in the glare of this cinematic symphony of error, I have to liken it to the "Dark Age" of comics, in which publishers marketed to exactly the wrong aspect of something that worked once, and the audience lapped it up. I will still maintain that Transformers is a reasonably decent film, though one with a great many flaws, Revenge of the Fallen was about as good a sequel as the same team could have put out, but Dark of the Moon goes full Terminator 3 on this franchise. Mikaela, the only character with any agency thus far, is gone, Michael Bay having sexually harassed Megan Fox into breaking her contract, leaving the audience following Sam's continuing refusal to move past adolescence, now trying to land his first real job and dating Carly, another impossibly-attractive woman framed as an object. 

The Autobots, now working for the US Military, discover a crashed ship on the moon, recovering and awakening Sentinel Prime, Optimus' former mentor, starting a game of keepaway between Autobots and Decepticons. Soon, it is revealed that Sentinel has been working with Megatron the entire time, with a diabolical plan of using a space bridge to bring Cybertron to Earth's solar system and enslave the human race to rebuild their war devastated planet. So wait, the entire first two films were a ruse? The Decepticons were just biding their time, accepting considerable losses, until the American Government made an agreement with the Autobots, a conspiracy theorist leaks information to Optimus Prime and Sentinel is awoken to complete his space bridge after thousand of years? I don't think I can actually list all of the major problems with this plan in the length of this article, even if I were given over to that kind of nit-picking. The film builds to a big battle in Chicago where Lennox and the Marines from Transformers help Sam and Carly get to Sentinel before time runs out. The battle is nifty in parts, but is far too long and over the top to be interesting after the first fifteen minutes. 

That's not to say that everything in this film is terrible, merely that the overall film isn't worth watching unless you're of the kind of mindset as I am. As mentioned above, the Chicago Battle is interesting in parts, and would make a good scenario/campaign/roleplaying session, even if, when watching, you will get bored of Sam and Carly falling out of buildings and screaming. At the start of the film, the Decepticons are hiding in the desert, barely functioning, with tiny drones clambering all over them, it's actually a really engaging tableau, which I could see working well in Sci-Fi or Post Apoc gaming, if you had the conversion skills. Dark of the Moon, even outside of the space bridge, has plenty of references to Transformers cartoons, including The Wreckers, but like Punisher War Zone, the references only highlight the flaws in comparison to the original material. Also there's Shockwave, who is pretty cool and probably my favourite Transformer, but he's not even purple so why bother? I know it gets better after this, but I'm really sick of this franchise right now.