Transformers 3: The Destruction of my Childhood

    On July 1st, Michael Bay's new movie, Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon premieres in American theaters and I am dreading its arrival. Anyone that knows me knows that I love the Transformers. I grew up with the Transformers. I remember waking up early every Saturday morning (whatever happened to Saturday morning cartoons?) just so that I could watch the next adventure Optimus Prime and his group of rag tag autobots battle with Megatron. The Transformers were simply put just a large part of my childhood and to see Michael Bay take something so dear to me and destroy it is really quite sad. Still, lets run through the many, many flaws of the movies and see if we could possibly find a way to fix them.

1) Robot Design
    I remember watching the first Transformers movie and not being able to tell who was who. The only Autobot that looked remotely like their toy and cartoon counterparts was Optimus Prime. Everyone else looked like a horrible, jumbled mess of metal and joints. Sure, some of the robots were a little color coded, but once these generic pieces of metal started fighting with each other it was extremely difficult to tell who was an Autobot and who was a Decipticon. I understand the need to update the character appearances for modern day viewers, but they could have at least tried a little harder in their character design. On a truely personal note, Soundwave....... why does it look like you're trying to get a little too personal with that satalite?

2) Juvenile Humor
    One of the biggest problems with the Transformer movies is Michael Bay's insistance that it be filled with juvenile behavior. Everywhere you look in the movie, especially in the second one, a character is doing or saying something extremely stupid that only a middle school boy would enjoy. Why would Wheelie be a pervert and hump Megan Fox's boot when it is a robot? Why have Bumblebee pee on people in the first movie? Why would they put a pair of tesicules on Devastator (thanks for ruining that character)? Then there is, of course, Skids and Mudflap.... I will talk about these guys another time. All of these things are not funny and do not add anything to the plot or character development! All the do is detract from a movie that is already suffering in so many other areas. Hopefully Michael Bay delivers on his promise and cuts back on the humor in Dark of the Moon, but wouldn't hold my breath.

3) Sam Whitwicky
    Now don't get me wrong, I like Shia LaBeouf and I don't think the character should be eliminated completely, but the movie is supposed to be about giant robots fighting each other to the death, not a horny teenager. Yes, it is nice to have a human in the movie so that you can have someone to relate to, but that human should not be driving the entire story. Every Transformers movie is nothing but two hours of Sam trying to get with girls and deal with growing up and about thirty minutes of actual robot on robot action. This should be the other way around. Sam could still have a major role in the plot, but he just doesn't need to be the driving force of the plot. That should be a Transformer. ence the movie is called Transformers.

4)Plot Holes Galore
   I am not expecting a masterpiece when I go see a movie about giant robots, but some common sense would be nice. For example, in the second movie, Megatron is brought back to life by a piece of the Allspark that was in the first film. Why, then, when Optimus Prime died in the same movie did they not bring him back to life with a piece of the Allspark also? Why was the Fallen hiding in space for thousands of years and decided to attack earth when a bunch of Autobots arrived and not when there was no one capable of stopping him? These complete jumps in logic are just staggering! Again, I don"t need an amazing, deep story, but I would still like the story to actually make sense.

    I doubt any of these problems have been fixed in Dark of the Moon. If these changes were to take place, then they would take place in a reboot (because everything is rebooted). Still, it was nice just to get this off my chest.