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Shia LaBeouf stars as Sam Witwicky in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, director Michael Bay's third movie based on Hasbro's alien robots.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is filled with dazzling CGI robots and plenty of shots of miniskirted Megan Fox replacement Rosie Huntington-Whitely. But the most startling sight in the movie might be when Buzz Aldrin cranes his neck upward and pretends to converse with a 40-foot mechanical alien from the planet Cybertron.

The astronaut-meets-Autobot moment anchors a back story that lends Michael Bay’s third Transformers film a certain measure of historic heft lacking in its two predecessors. The PG-13 Dark of the Moon, which opens Wednesday, kicks off with Bay’s 3-D re-creation of 1969’s Apollo 11 lunar landing, interspersed with archival television footage of Walter Cronkite and Richard Nixon and grainy faux-footage of NASA headquarters.

After the “one small step for man” declaration, actors playing Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stumble into alternate-history terrain as they lose contact with their handlers and stumble onto a discovery that leads, 42 years later, to an alien invasion of Chicago.

Grafting slices of iconic American history into sci-fi scenarios has become an instant thickener for filmmakers.

Grafting slices of iconic American history into sci-fi scenarios has become an instant thickener for filmmakers who want to quickly establish high stakes or add a little substance to their heroes. X-Men: First Class uses 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis to inject the young mutants’ mission with a sense of urgency. Weaving grainy television footage from the period, director Matthew Vaughn’s movie taps into one of those rare occasions when the world, as a matter of historical fact, actually hovered on the brink of mass self-destruction.

Similarly, Apollo 18, opening Sept. 2, milks emotional mileage from a faux-tangential chapter of American history by presenting supposedly “lost footage” from a NASA mission previously kept hidden from the public. Next month’s Captain America: The First Avenger takes place during World War II. Everybody knows about Nazis and everybody hates them.

Exposition accomplished.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

In Dark of the Moon, writer Ehren Kruger’s script contains enough intriguing nuggets to send you squirreling through Google search results for confirmation. Did Russia really exile 200 cosmonauts to the United States, as stated in the film?

Using history like a hand puppet to voice themes and advance plot points might be seen as a cheapening of the historical record for the sake of Hollywood box office. However, Dark of the Moon treats NASA with sufficient respect, saving the clown antics for John Malkovich’s entirely fictitious neat-freak boss character, Bruce Brazos.

Clocking in at 154 minutes, by the time Dark of the Moon kicks into its third act, which involves an alien invasion of Chicago, history lessons hardly matter.

Likeable star Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky saves his girlfriend (Huntington-Whiteley), aids his buddy Bumblebee, punches out rival heir (Patrick Dempsey), hurls a grappling hook into the eye of a golden-spittle-spewing Decepticon as wingsuited soldiers sail past skyscrapers to do battle with Megatron and, ultimately, saves the world. (We would expect nothing less.)

What hypothetically happened on the moon in 1969, as recounted by complicated old warrior Sentinel Prime, becomes a moot point after the extended battle.

For more than an hour, director Bay orchestrates a succession of near-seamless CGI ‘bot-on-’bot action sequences. Even if the lengthy third act veers into cartoony action dialog and threatens to pummel audiences into a punch-drunk state of overstimulation, Transformers: Dark of the Moon ends up being much better than Revenge of the Fallen, its goofy 2009 predecessor.

That piece of Transformers history can, thankfully, now be forgotten.

WIRED Likable star Shia LaBeouf keeps it human; enormous special effects and mostly shrewd 3-D camera work create huge popcorn-movie moments.

TIRED Bombastic music; too much noise; too many “endings.”

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