Transformers 3: Beyond Thunderdome

The most recent installment of Sequelitis this summer features robots that turn into cars getting angry at other robots that turn into planes, all while Shia LeBeouf hunts for jobs.

I wish there was a simpler way to spell out the premise of Transformers 3: The Search for Spock. But this Hasbro-Michael Bay franchise has gotten so swept up in its own internal logic that the closer you look, the less sense it makes.

Among the many revelations in Transformers 3: Electric Boogaloo is the discovery that Autobots and Decepticons have been behind everything from the Moon landing to Chernobyl.

These events have led to the discovery of an ancient Autobot invention, a network of cylinders that can transport matter across space once one special Autobot makes them glow.

Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky is a recent college grad thrown into the post-recession job market with little luck in his montage of interviews.

Not to worry though; he’s saved from a mail room job by a Transformer attack and plunged yet again into the role of scrambling around the feet of giant fighting robots in order to remind us all just how big they are.

All the fighting leads up to the Decepticon’s master plan to bring their home planet of Cybertron into Earth’s orbit, never mind what gravity would do to two planets so close together.

The Autobots leave Earth because humans made them, but then they come back.
Characters change minds as often as shapes in Transformers 3 and the Last Crusade.
The action-packed finale of base-jumping across the tumbling Chicago skyline is fun and well made, more so than the robot fights.

It’s what Transformers are all about; loud volumes, hugeness, and never pausing to think.