So...Ryan and I saw DOTM on Wednesday. Gotta say, you want perspective, see Bay's TF movies with an actual kid. That said, even he asked me if the movie accidentally skipped the ending (it's called denouement, look it up). Still, all-in-all, it was leagues better than ROTF (which, all told, STILL isn't as bad as people say...not GOOD by any stretch, but not "worst film EVAH" level, but that's another rant), which I suppose would put it around "Armageddon" level.

It still looks like a bad car commercial half the time, still way too much time with the puny fleshlings (even if they actually HAD a purpose in this one and filled it nicely), still so many gaps in logic you expected the movie itself to implode like Cybertron did at the end. The beginning totally dragged on, but once Sentinel pulled his face-heel turn things picked up big time. Kudos for not TOTALLY spoiling that twist, BTW...at least I wasn't aware of it before I saw it, but then, I was avoiding all previous advertisement for that very reason.

Part of the problem is that there were SO MANY lapses in logic that listing them all would take forever; they just sort of collectively dragged the movie down, but, fortunately, "Rule of Cool" was straining its muscles to hold the sagging narrative aloft. Even more irritating was the reams of unanswered questions and occasional outright contradictions withing the story, from little things like why Ironhide crumbled into dust when Sentinel killed him when NONE of the other killed Cybertronians ever have (and don't bother pointing out stuff like "Maybe Sentinel invented Cosmic Rust?" because if he had, why was it never called out as such, why did nobody react any differently to I-hide's crumbling than they did to the other deaths, why did he never use it against any of the other Autobots he fought, etc.) to big stuff like, oh, a FRIGGIN' GIANT PLANET MADE OF METAL appearing in the Earth's vicinity yet having no effect on the planet even when it TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT (even the G1 cartoon knew that Cybertron being even partially in Earth's orbit would cause massive environmental upheavals...Megatron was counting on it to harvest Energon, remember?), that made it difficult to "turn off my brain and just enjoy the spectacle" like the Bay-philes say. I'm even willing to give the plot MacGuffin of the "war-ending weapon" being a space bridge, something which was shown in ROTF to be technology even an elderly barely-functioning Decepticon (the faction OPPOSING Sentinel back the thousands of years between their arrival on earth and him first striking the bargain with the 'cons in the 60s) had, a pass.

Basically, the impression I get is that the very thing holding the movie back is the very premise of the series: the Transformers themselves. If Bay had been making yet another "alien invasion repelled by AMURR'CANS" movie like we've been getting shoved down our throats the past couple of years, it would have been spot-on, but trying to divert time from his beloved military set-pieces and quirky stereotypes to the giant shape-shifting robots everybody came to see in the first place was throwing off his game.

Still, at the risk of damning with faint praise, DOTM is worth seeing, even in 3D (I didn't get the "best 3D since Cameron" vibe from it, but then that might BE the hallmark of really GOOD 3D, it DOESN'T get in the way of the movie). It's a fun if disappointing end to the Bayformer Trilogy, and a nice capper on that storyline to boot, much like finally seeing a bad fanfic come to an end. Now, we just wait to see who handles the (...suppress the rage...) franchise reboot in a couple of years.