So, my awesome wife let me see Transformers: Dark of the Moon last night/this morning (mostly this morning), and I’ve got to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Revenge of the Fallen set a pretty low bar, and by golly this movie exceeded that very low bar!

So, let’s start with the highlights. Probably my favourite part was Starscream. He’s probably one of the most consistently characterized characters in the film, and certainly the best Decepticon (with only ‘Screamer and Megatron having any significant dialogue, this isn’t exactly a challenge). He’s a suck up when it suits him, but a sadist whenever he’s around anyone weaker. Pretty much bang on for what I want from a Starscream. The action sequences, as many have said, were much more coherent than in the past, likely due to the use of 3D forcing Bay to keep the damn camera relatively still. The 3D was used to good effect, and at the theatre I went to I noticed no dimness and my headache didn’t get any worse, so I’d say it’s a win. Leonard Nimoy’s performance as Sentinel was excellent, Peter Cullen’s Optimus was exactly what you’d expect, and even most of the human actors pulled off some very nice performances (I’m hesitant to include Rosie Huntington-Whitley in the “actors” category, since this didn’t seem to require a whole lot more acting than she normally puts in as a model).

As for the lowlights, I’d have loved to see a Transformers film done by someone aware of the distinction between “characterization” and “broad stereotypes”. Damn near every character seems flat (and in the case of the robots, mostly down to “car with an accent”), and most of the Decepticons are nameless mutes. This is a handy way to rack up high body counts in the fight scenes, but it makes for a bit of a dull story when most of the “bad guys” have no visible motivation. There are plenty of interesting Decepticon characters out there, but instead we get an army of grey mooks getting demolished (something that sadly seems to have spilled over into Transformers Prime, but at least they mix it up with significant ‘Cons). Would it have killed them to at least give them some colour? Especially egregious with the scenes on the Ark, where Sentinel Prime is the only character that isn’t grey. Or were the rest of his crew just hanging around the bridge naked? And yeah, the complaints about pacing especially towards the end are valid. But maybe I’m just inclined to agree because I was watching it tired.

Man, why are the newest, coolest trailers being released in Japan first?

Check it out, it’s a trailer for Spider-Man 3 from SonyPictures.jp. Very cool. And YouTube has one for Transformers, again with more material than the thus released English trailers. This is turning out to be a productive night.

Or, of course, there’s the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer trailer too. How could I forget?

This video makes me want to buy the original movie’s soundtrack. Or a Weird Al CD. Whichever.

Also, I don’t like YouTube’s little script for directly posting videos. It doesn’t do titles right.