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Whilst I agree that a film about robots fighting each other shouldn't be taken seriously, I don't think that argument applies to the Transformers films because, for films about giant robots fighting, there are hardly any scenes in which giant robots fight. Dark of the Moon is two and a half fucking hours long, of which maybe 20 to 30 minutes consists of robots fighting each other, which makes for two long hours in which almost nothing of interest happens.

Hell, the first hour of the film only has one big space battle, which barely counts as an action scene because a) it is set in the past so doesn't have any real stakes to it and b) lasts all of two minutes, and one scene in which the Autobots are shown attacking a checkpoint in the Middle East as part of an escort mission, because their new role involves preventing conflicts on Earth by...attacking things. Y'know, just like how firemen prevent attempts at arson by burning buildings down first. The rest of the hour alternates between scenes of Sam struggling to get a job, getting jealous about how friendly his girlfriend is with her sleazy boss (Patrick Dempsey) and assorted Transformers talking to each other about The Ark. Oh, there's also terrible comedy, a load of scenes in which people talk at length about the film's superfluous and uninteresting mythology, and a distressing number of gay panic jokes for a film made in 2011. When a Transformers film consists more of them talking to each other than it does them punching each other in the face, things have gone terribly awry, unless that version has been directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Not only are there not enough fighting robots in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the scenes of them fighting are so rushed and inexpertly handled that they can't help but disappoint, even in comparison to the barren stretches of the film in which dull, unlikeable characters talk about things no one cares about. Much of the last half hour of the film consists of the Autobots and the Decepticons duking it out through the streets of Chicago, which gets such a thorough thrashing in the process that it makes you wonder if it touched Michael Bay inappropriately when he was a child. Each time they come within spitting distance of each other, a hurried fight happens which, rather than building tension and suspense through the use of time and space, ends in roughly 10 to 15 seconds. Even the final fight between Optimus and Megatron gets short shrift, consisting as it does of Optimus driving an axe into his enemy's head literally five seconds after they start fighting. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is like a spectacularly bad date that consists mostly of a long, awkward dinner and ends with premature ejaculation.

So, there you have it. The reason that Dark of the Moon is terrible, and why pretty much the whole Transformers trilogy is godawful, is not that they are crass, boorish pieces of trash with no wit, invention or charm to them (though they are); it's not that they are sexist, morally empty and borderline racist (though they are); it's because they are long, boring films about robots engaged in a millennia long Civil War that feature hardly any scenes in which the robots actually fight each other, and those that do occur are so haphazardly handled that they might as well not happen at all.

Well done, Michael Bay: you made the spectacle of giant robots hitting each other boring, and it only took you seven hours and over $400 million dollars to do it. Now, please continue to only make Transformers films, because you've already fucked that up and I dread to think what other subjects you could ruin if you turned your hands to them.

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