When I first heard that Michael Bay would be directing the film adaptation of one of my all-time favorite toy lines, my anticipation was high and my expectations were low. To my surprise and slight delight, 2007’s Transformers was not a total disappointment. In fact, it stayed true enough to the various continuities from the original comics and cartoons to please longtime fans, had a plot that was engaging enough to not be insulting and offered enough of Bay’s mindless action and T&A to work on a few levels.

While the first film was a bit more than met the eye, its 2009 followup Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was, unfortunately, everything I expected the first one to be (a big, dumb assortment of Michael Bay explosions and inanity). With the bar once again lowered, I went into Transformers: Dark of the Moon with much the same mindset that I had with the first film. And just as the first one was surprisingly good, Dark of the Moon is truly the best of the trilogy (and, though it isn’t really saying much, probably Bay’s best effort to date).

With few mentions of the events of the second film (including the omission of the bumbling duo of Skids and Mudflap), Dark of the Moon revolves around the idea that the Space Race of the 1960s was prompted by a Transformers spacecraft that crash landed on the dark side of the moon. The film rewrites history by attributing the 1986 Chernobyl disaster to a fuel cell from the ship and by having a cameo by the real Buzz Aldrin, who gives his moral support to the Autobots before they head to the moon to investigate.

As the Autobots find and revive Optimus Prime’s predecessor Sentinel Prime (voiced by Leonard Nimoy, who voiced Galvatron in the 1986 animated The Transformers: The Movie), a down-on-his-luck Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is living with his new girlfriend Carly (Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in D.C. while struggling to find work in a world he has helped save on two occasions. Once again, Sam unwittingly uncovers a Decepticon plot, this time to build a teleportation device that will allow them to not only take over our planet, but revive their own using human slave labor. And with multiple Star Trek references, the irony of having a character voiced by the  most famous Vulcan who is also key to the building the teleportation device can only be intentional.

As has been the case with the previous two films, the human element is just as important in Dark of the Moon as the big fighting robots (with parallels drawn between the bigger bot plot and the personal lives of the main human characters). In addition to the returning John Turturro, the ensemble cast includes Frances McDormand as the United States Secretary of Defense, Ken Jeong as Sam’s conspiracy theorist coworker, Patrick Dempsey as Carly’s wealthy and sleazy boss  and John Malkovich as the neurotic businessman who finally gives Sam a job. While these respected actors definitely enrich the overall story, Dark of the Moon also borrows from various other films ranging from Mission: Impossible to Independence Day to Mad Max, giving it a depth that the previous two films didn’t quite achieve. And this Transformers definitely lives up to the Dark part of its moniker with multiple betrayals and gruesome fatalities for bots and humans alike.

Sure, it’s a big budget Michael Bay alien invasion movie. But there’s more to it than that for those paying attention. And it’s clearly Bay’s attempt to meld a summer action flick with something a little more respectable in much the same way The Dark Knight did a few years ago.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Rated PG-13. www.transformersmovie.com.

Review by Jonathan Williams