Best of the three by far. Now just as a heads up, I attended the midnight launch for this movie in the best theater in the state and braced myself for the mind numbing awesomeness that awaited. Waiting in line for three hours, I could only stew in my own ultra hyped state of anticipation while the line behind me slowly grew and stretched out the front doors and down the side walk. At 11:45 pm we started our way into the theater room which quickly began to turn into one large testosterone heated locker room, filled with only 3 children under the age of 16, which I was extremely happy about. When the movie started, I quickly lost myself in the immersive 3D that made its transformers premier this year. All phones disappeared and all eyes glued to the 50ft ultra high definition projector screen. The Story in this movie was great, filled with reunions, betrayals, and retribution. It was easy to follow save the first little bit regarding Human-Decepticon cooperations, and did not feel to rushed due to the length of the movie(2:48). I felt like a kid again, oohing and awwing at the beautiful action sequences that dominated the last third of the movie, and likewise at the much needed character development and interaction added in this edition to the series as well. With returning stars such as Shia Lebouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, and new stars like Patrick Dempsey, Alan Tudyk, and Ken Jeong, this movie had the best acting of the three by far. Jeong was hilarious as the uptight ex-NASA worker, and Tudyk was my favorite character, playing a crazy Dutch mercenary who wears outrageous suits and when pushed too far can find himself capable of killing everyone in a bar. Megan Fox's replacement Rosie Huntington-Whitely who plays Sam's new girlfriend Carly, is a much better actress than Fox. That does not mean she is great, but she is at least a large step up from Megan fox, who couldn't even act her way out of Sam's bimbo gal pal and into a more intelligent role. With cameos by Buzz Aldrid and Bill O'Reily and Insainly good voice acting performances from Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, and the great Leonard Nimoy, this movie truly has it all. It even came complete with a final epic battle in Chicago, The Decepticons attempting to form a space-bridge to teleport Cybertron to Earth and the Autobots fighting for the freedom of the human race. The tone of this movie near the end was sad and ominous and even included another Linkin Park song(Iridescent), and brought a real human aspect to the cold soulless body's of the Transformers. My friends and I all got choked up watching a desperate, sad faced, defenseless Bumbelbee with a gun to the back of his head, saying "We gave it a hell of a run". I also actually felt empathy for the first time when watching Iron Hide die, loosing a great character which felt like I just lost a dear friend. The 3D utilized in this movie was amazing. It was 100% completely throughout the movie, and really stood out in certain parts of the movie. As expected from any Michael Bay movie, the special effects were AMAZING. The final battle was the most epic part of any movie I have ever seen. Watching Sentinal Prime fight off four Autobots at once, and Shockwave riding his giant burrowing worm throughout the city were some of the highlights of this special effects bonanza. The Autobots nutted up and turned into completely badass fighting machines when they realized that the humans were truly lost without them, and Optimus said the one line that almost made me jump out of my seat with excitement.. "We'll kill them all!". He really brought the series full circle when he killed the ex-leader of the Autobots Sentinel Prime, saying "No, you betrayed yourself.." and De-Spined Megatron, destroying the chain of Decepticon command. The Movie ended leaving me completely fulfilled and happy with the trilogy..
Or is it the end?? Have we all forgotten about the planet sized Unicron, and him bring back Megatron as Galvetron??? A fan can dream can't he?