"Oooh, check it out the Transfromers are doing something awes...oh, we're back to Sam again, hooray"

As the Transformers movies went on, they got better and better each time for one reason, the humans got pushed to the background and we got to see more Transformers, more action and more excitement.  The first movie took it's damn time getting the Transformers out there with only glimpses of them here and there before a great action finale.  The second one, while maligned by many for many good reasons of too much comic relief, creaky story telling and broad racial stereotypes at least upped the action and had it's stars the Transformers throughout and this third one finally puts the Transformers in the spotlight for more screen time and what does amount to a real epic cap on the series, if this is in fact the final one.

Heres something that I noticed right away in the movie and I alluded to it in the title.  Any time-ANY time in the movie when you see the Autobots or Decepticons in the film, doing ANYTHING and just as things get interesting be it a battle, a discovery or anything...it ALWAYS cuts away to Sam and his dorky little adventures.  Sam needs a job, Sam needs to matter, Sam wants this, Sam wants that, SAM has a smoking hot girlfriend in this after Michael Bay deep-sixed fish thumbs. Sam got a medal from the President for his bravery, Sam got an Ivy League Education that the government paid for, but he needs a job and doesn't his life suck and OH MY GOD!  NO ONE CARES ABOUT SAM!!!  Michael Bay thinks we care!  We don't!  Whats worse is that Shia this time as Sam has enough wangst and whine to out-preen Hayden Christensen from the Star Wars prequels.  Don't say Shia doesn't have talent, well not really he doesn't so.........don't say he doesn't have effort.

What really surprised me is how the movie OPENED.  We see the story interwoven with real life events with a discovery on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission leading to security and secrecy involving what was found. 

What was found was a derelict Cybertron spaceship housing Sentinel Prime and his creations for making a new tommorrow for the Transformers, now lost until the Transformers, now working with the US to help with world problems learn of the accident and retrieve Sentinel Prime and his creation, a teraforming device of sorts to build a new Cybertron on another planet, kinda like the Genesis Device from Star Trek II.  Sentinel Prime is even voiced by Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek references don't stop there.  It's almost as if Leonard Nimoy being in this movie was a selling point, hey it helped get me to see it. 

Sentinel Prime however is a pragmatic type and says that his plans were to involve the Decepticons in creating a new Cybertron for all the Transformers to live and has no problems pushing the insulting and bossy humans aside in building a new world and after obliterating Chicago, sets up a defense with Megatron and a new ally in Shockwave to start they're plans.  The Autobots after coming together when they were double crossed set out to save the world with Optimus Prime leading the way once again.

The humans?  Oh yeah.  They still take up space and eat up Transformers time.  Sure a 2 and a half hour Transformer movie with nothing but Transformers would get even more expensive but you could always make it a 90 minute movie and cut down on, what else?  THE HUMANS.  I'll grant you that with John Turturro, and now Frances McDormand and John Malkovich are at least on board and help class up the movie.  On the other hand, Shia is back and so is Ken Jeong to louse it up.  Speaking of louses, Sams Parents are back AGAIN and serve even less a purpose then Sam in this movie, and considering there is no longer a reason for Sam to be in the movie, that says something.  I can almost guarantee you that if Spielberg didn't make this, Shia wouldn't be in it.  That being said though, the pointless scenes are at least shorter and there are fewer of them then in the other movies.

This is an epic movie.  A lot is going on, blood (or oil) gets spilled and things are going to happen to finish this movie.  The devastation in Chicago is pretty brutal with dead bodies and SKULLS in the streets and main characters even get offed left and right.  Sadly some of these characters meet deaths which would be a little more dramatic if the characters had some more personalities to them.  One gets offed execution style out of the blue and turns to rust before our eyes cause of his injuries  We would care more if we knew more about the character and were in touch with him.  Another ends up meeting an end in a humiliating way (more likely the character who is involved also) and on top of that wacky antics involved really undermine what should have been far more epic.  The most tension in the movie is ruined where Sam is coerced into working with the Decepticons but WACKY hijinks kill the tension.  Ehren Kruger has penned this movie along with Revenge of the Fallen and really should know when something serious is going on and NOT involve the sillyness.  If he does write another, I hope he remembers this and also leaves out Shia.