DOTM Press Sneak Peak Reports

It seems yesterday was a good day to be part of the entertainment press as Michael Bay provided a preview screening of select clips and interview as run up to the news that the trailer is coming in two weeks. The result of this mini-press conference is a bunch of articles from various websites. Hit links below for full articles, I posted choice segments. Thanks to Chris, DJ.BigtymeBeats and Sahara for the links.

The Latino Review focused on describing some of the scenes they were able to watch.

John Malkovich pops up in one scene in all of his spray-tanned glory giving Sam the verbal one-two about the workforce. We even got to check out an awesome scene with a very suspicious man (Ken Jeong) who thinks he may know about Sam's Autobot-filled past leading to a very uncomfortable confrontation in the bathroom.

Then the comedy is pushed aside when we finally get our first glimpse of a war-torn downtown Chicago, completely ripped to shreds by a whole army of Decepticons. Sam's trying to charge into town with Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson) and company but is stopped when a Decepticon starts blasting away at them. Thankfully Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) comes in, shoots the evil robot to kingdom come and utters a couple of fanboy-squealing awesome lines.

There's even a cool part where some military wingmen leap out of a burning helicopter and soar through the city trying to dodge the Decepticons in their neat-looking spaceships that try to shoot them out of the sky which looks really cool in 3D.

ComingSoon focuses on the interview with Bay as he once again promises this movie will be better than last.

"You don't make that much money on a movie - it doesn't become the number one movie in America that year if people hated it," Bay says honestly. "Yes, it might have gone south on the direction, but we were under the gun. There was a terrible writers strike and it was a sh*t position to be in. We were under a tremendous amount of pressure. We had to write it real quick. A lot of people [on a third film] will check out and get a paycheck. I've been working every day for two years because I want to make up for the second one and I want to leave this franchise the best I can."

"This one is a more mature storyline, definitely darker, more emotional in the end. You feel the stakes are higher because it takes place in an American city. You're not disconnected with Egypt and the pyramids. I'm very happy with the movie," he says, touching lightly on the story we can expect to see. "It's a small group and you follow them. There's no cavalry coming. I've said this with Ehren, we were talking about concept, we used the term 'Black Hawk Down.' We try to make the cavalry unable to come. And it's more fun to watch our heroes in this epic ending with just a small group. It makes it more intimate."

Robot-wise, he promises to delve deeper into their personalities. "This is a very involved robot story. I hate letting the cat out of the bag, but you just learn more about the hierarchy, what goes on a Cybertron. Leonard Nimoy plays a great role. I was scared to ask him, but he said, 'Sure, I'd be glad to be back.'" Bay accredits Kruger for pulling Sentinel Prime (Nimoy's role) into the story, but pushed for more details on the other Transformers fans can expect to see, the director clams up. "You notice we're not putting a lot of stuff out there." Don't expect the "twins" from "Revenge of the Fallen," that's for certain. "There are two small characters. They start off a bit goofy, but they have a huge comeback. One of them is a new character."

HitFlix also focuses on the reel:

And "scale" seems to be a big word for this film. We saw battle sequences set on the home planet of the Transformers. We saw a crazy accident on the moon, and we saw what happens when all the robots scattered there by that accident finally wake up. We saw a jaw-dropping sequence involving soldiers jumping out of a transport over the city and using cutting-edge flight suits to glide down to the ground, racing between buildings as they do. We saw a piece of a scene involving an attack on a skyscraper where the Decepticons appear to saw an entire building in half using a giant sandworm-looking robot that burrows deep into the building while the human heroes struggle to find a way to ride it out in the upper half of the building.

Entertainment Weekly focuses on how "Craaaazy" the film looks (in a good way):

Spaceship crashes on the moon. Squads of American fighter jets casually shot down in the sky over Chicago like flies sprayed with bug spray. LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky brawling, man against machine, in a back alley with the Decepticon jet Starscream. (Hint: When fist-fighting a giant robot, it helps to have a grappling hook. And aim for the eyeball.) Wounded V-22 Ospreys slamming into each other as soldiers skydive between the colliding tiltrotor planes, then swooping through the city’s canyons on wingsuits, like flying squirrels, dodging Decepticon fire …

Will he gratuitously kill the jive-talking robot twins, two of the most hated cinematic characters since Jar Jar Bi– ? Bay answers before the question is finished. “They’re not even in it. Not. Even. In. It,” he says.

MTV's take:

Bay also went into his reasoning and reservations behind the decision to shoot in 3-D, and what (actually, who) convinced him to go ahead with the new technology.

"[James Cameron], at the last minute, goes, 'Mike, come on,'" Bay recalled, imitating the "Avatar" director's enthusiasm with a slightly deep and gravelly inflection in his voice. "This is like my idol. He goes, 'Mike come on, we've done everything.' I'm thinking, 'I haven't done everything.' "

Cameron pushed him to try out this "new toy," and that despite all the headaches that are added to the filmmaking process with shooting in 3-D, he's glad he did it. "3-D, it's pretty great when you see these robots interact in the space," he said.

/Film:

Transformers: Dark of the Moon seems like more of a disaster movie than the previous films. We saw massive destruction, buildings destroyed, derailed crashed trains, post apocalyptic car destruction sprinkling the highways. The Decepticons have taken over Earth in a grand scale — this is Bay’s alien invasion movie, something like Battle: Los Angeles meets Independence Day on an epic scale. But at the same time, Bay has made a huge effort to have contained the story a bit this time around.