We were among the select few media outlets who visited the Santa Monica offices of Platinum Dunes yesterday, where director Michael Bay screened for us the new 3D teaser trailer -- as well as about 20 minutes of very rough footage -- for next summer's Transformers: The Dark of the Moon

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For the first minute or so of the TF3 trailer, you might think you're watching a period space race drama along the lines of Apollo 13. The trailer recreates Apollo 11's historic moon landing on July 20, 1969, intercutting between archival footage of news anchor Walter Cronkite and a dramatization of what was going on behind the scenes at NASA that day.Cronkite then ominously tells his viewers they've lost the feed from Apollo 11. Back at NASA, the ground control crew inform astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin they can now undertake their real reason for getting to the moon before the Russians: a giant alien spacecraft has crashed on the dark of the moon. And what they find inside it ... will be revealed when you see the trailer online or in theaters this weekend (it will be attached to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader).Bay reminded us that the special effects and 3D in the trailer still wasn't 100%, but they were certainly passable enough for casual filmgoers. (He just began editing the movie three weeks ago, so to invite press in this early to see footage is unprecedented.) Following a lunchtime chat, the director took us over to his editing bay and showed us -- without any studio reps present -- a good chunk of (again unfinished) footage from the last act of the film.While Transformers 3 boasts a number of locations around the world (including some additional days of location shooting abroad scheduled to take place in January), a great deal of the movie takes place in Chicago. Bay was very adamant that we be respectful of the film's unfinished state and of the plot secrets we were made privy to, so we're going to honor that wish. But we're also not going to leave you hanging.Much as Egypt was the setting of the last 40 minutes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen , the Windy City will serve a similar function in The Dark of the Moon. The first thing that was immediately apparent from the footage was the tone of the movie, a far darker, hostile and scarier film than its critically savaged predecessor. Indeed, Bay himself made his disdain for the 2009 film well known to us, bemoaning the Writers Strike that left them tethered to a weak screenplay and the overall "dorkiness" (his phrase) of its humor. Bay vows that in the third film, death is final and the Decepticons mean effin' business. And no dorky humor.Bay said that the footage he showed us wasn't necessarily representative of the film as a whole, in that he wanted more character moments and more peppering of action sequences throughout with a build-up to a hell's bells, balls-to the-walls finale unlike the incessant shoot 'em-up of the last film. Without giving away too many spoilers, we can say that the homestretch of the film sees Sam Witwicky ( Shia LaBeouf ) venturing into the devastated Windy City on a rescue mission alongside Epps ( Tyrese Gibson ) and a small team of handpicked men. The Decepticons have utterly devastated Chicago. Bay sees this portion of the film, with its small band of desperate protagonists up against overwhelming enemy odds, as being along the lines of Black Hawk Down.We can't get into specifics of the sequence, but we can reveal that one of the action highlights of the movie will most certainly be Josh Duhamel's Lennox and his squad using wingsuits to fly through the canyon of downtown Chicago buildings, a sequence rendered largely practically using the best wingsuit flyers in the world. (One of them even did the stunts with a heavy "neck-breaker" 3D camera rigged to his helmet!) Everything action-wise felt much more hands-on here, grimy and nasty like real combat would be. Another standout bit was when Optimus Prime went Oldboy on a few Decepticons. And that's all we're gonna say about that!We also saw footage of ex-Agent Simmons ( John Turturro ), the Secretary of Defense ( Frances McDormand ), Sam's new British girlfriend Carly ( Rosie Huntington-Whiteley , whose ass Bay knows how to frame just right in every shot), her douchebag boss ( Patrick Dempsey ), and comic relief Ken Jeong Nobody seems more aware of the penance that needs to be made for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen than Michael Bay, who seemed legitimately and deeply disappointed in the film and did everything but flagellate himself in front of us. He repeatedly said that this film is meant to set things right with the franchise, and judging from the sweet teaser trailer and the kick-ass (2D) footage we saw, it certainly seems like Transformers 3 is on that path. You can decide for yourself whether Bay has atoned for the last film when Transformers: The Dark of the Moon opens July 1, 2011.