In Which We're Really Down On Optimus Prime

Falling From A Great Height

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
dir. Michael Bay
684 minutes

Are you constitutionally unable to tell Josh Duhamel and Johnny Knoxville apart? If Chris Evans were also put in that room and had not shaved for a week or more, would he blend in as seamlessly as the wallpaper? Is Frances McDormand's agent suffering a foreclosure on her home?

Does anyone else get the sense that if Shia LaBoeuf were four inches taller, he would have made a great Boromir?

this happened to barbara hershey a lot in those days

I'm working on a John Malkovich oral history. (It will be done after I give Agatha Christie the Roald Dahl treatment.) Don't you want to go back to those halcyon days? Let's all find out what it was really like to be on the set with Liam Neeson during The Man in the Iron Mask. Whoever greenlit A Portrait of a Lady deserves something; perhaps a nice home in the suburbs?

For the better part of a half hour, LaBeouf slides down the side of a Chicago skyscraper while it is coming down, in a cutting edge satire of 9/11. Not a single piece of glass is embedded into anyone's body, in fact it seems to have given them a glossy sheen. You can light a match from the glare off the pearly countenance of the actress who replaced Megan Fox. You don't want to do something after Megan Fox has done it, you want to do it well before or not at all.

it's easy to confuse megatron and ellen pompeo because they have the same wrinkle lines

Optimus Prime gets all of ten lines in this movie, and it has a running time roughly equivalent to The Sorrow and the Pity. I used to watch Transformers, it was my second favorite after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was very into Raphael, I thought he was like a straight Dagny Taggart. I read The Fountainhead when I worked at an aquarium one summer and now whenever I smell penguin feces I feel a stirring call to achievement.

If you openly admit your last movie sucked, why not maybe change it up a little? I want to know what Major William Lennox does when he's off duty. Just hang out? Get his Lexapro prescription from CVS? Duhamel never takes the earpiece off once during the entire running time of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which probably beats the record set by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible. The fucking microphone was almost in his mouth at points.

putting michael bay in charge of the space program might be the right move for all concerned

Frances McDormand begins to attain a growing confidence in Sam Witwicky (25-year old Shia LaBoeuf). She praises him constantly, especially when he uncovers a plan that the Decepticons have to transport the planet Cybertron into our solar system. They develop a mother-son esque relationship, because Sam's real mother is something of comedic joke. He dreads his parents' visits and feels discouraged when they mock him for not being employed after his graduation from college.

this exact pose is in every adaptation of a john irving novel

His girlfriend Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) surprises him at his new job, telling everyone she sees "I'm Sam's girlfriend." She wants him to be happy in his work. When, unexpectedly, he shows up at her job, she's thrown off. Carly's close relationship with her boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) is a major red flag for Sam, and he overreacts. Looking to mediate the situation, Dylan gives them both cars. It's a nice gesture, but ill timed. Every five to ten minutes, Carly gets in or out of a car that's transforming into a larger car.

The last sequence in Transformers: Dark of Moon depicts the destruction of Chicago at great length, working in the disintegration of several prominent landmarks. The "heroes" destroy a teleportation machine crafted by the Einstein of autobots that is worth more than their lives. For some reason, the Decepticons spare the entire rest of earth, giving every indication they are not huge fans of Rahm Emanuel (Sacha Baron Cohen).

When one machine touches another machine, there's still two machines.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about Super 8. He tumbls here and twitters here.

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