Dark of the Moon Review - Part 4: A Whole World of Pain!
The Bad
- Carly. Oh, sweet Primus, Carly. Because what you really want in a cinematic love interest is someone it physically hurts to watch. Rose Huntington-Whiteley’s acting is roughly on par with Megan Fox’s (Fox played Mikaela Banes, Sam’s love interest for the first two movies) - it’s plasticky, monotone sex-doll pouting, as if they’ve been directed not to emote, because it might muss their hair. However, Carly as a character is far, far worse. Say what you like about Mikaela, but she had a real sense of adventure, useful knowledge (she worked in her carjacker dad’s autobody shop), and genuine badass credentials. Hell, she attacked Frenzy with a hacksaw. She tortured Wheelie for information back in his Decepticon days, then kept him on a leash (and Wheelie, little slut that he is, loved it so much he changed factions for her - I’m not even kidding). And at the battle of Mission City in the first film, Mikaela was driving a pickup truck with Bumblebee in the back right into the heaviest of the fighting - “I’ll drive, you shoot.” Carly, by contrast, spends almost the entire final battle of Dark of the Moon cowering under rubble and screaming for Sam to abandon his Autobot friends in order to protect her. But it’s not just that she’s useless in an action scene. More significantly, Carly is a thoroughly unlikeable character: a spoilt rich girl who clearly wants to flirt with her wealthy older boss, while keeping her puppydog-like younger boyfriend dangling on a string. And the second that shit gets real, she runs. Sure, there’s a reference dropped in towards the end to a dead soldier brother in order to explain why Carly turns on Sam when he decides to risk his life for a cause, but not only does it come out of nowhere, Carly’s reaction is still completely out of proportion. On the other hand, by that point, I was craving any excuse for Sam and Carly to break up. The aching absence of chemistry between those two not only makes their relationship irritating to watch, it presents a real problem when the movie tries to convince us that Sam is plunging into the nightmare world of Decepticon-controlled Chicago purely out of a burning desire to save Carly. It’s straight-up impossible to buy it.
Whatever happened, Mikaela was glad she’d gotten in the car. Carly just seems put out that the entire apocalyptic battle has inconvenienced her.
What really chafes, though, is that, while Mikaela was a new character created specifically for the movieverse, Carly isn’t. She was an actual character in the original 80s cartoon. And she was badass. Okay, yeah, she dressed like Alice in Wonderland, and there was at least one depressingly stupid subplot where she pretended to sprain her ankle so that Spike (the cartoon version of Sam, back when “Spike” was a plausibly cool name) would carry her around. But consider that it was 1985, and that Carly was, at the time, the only recurring female character on Transformers, and then think about this: She went off adventuring right alongside Spike, and even though the two of them would eventually get together, she wasn’t there because of him. Carly was there because the Autobots valued her and took her ideas seriously. She was an MIT student with a better mechanical understanding than Spike had, and she frequently outdid him in battle, too. She was even awarded a medal by Optimus Prime for saving the world. And that bit with the twisted ankle? Yeah - that was after Carly led Spike in a raid on Cybertron and rescued his ass from Shockwave.
So I can’t help but feel insulted on the original Carly’s behalf. I’m also a bit insulted on the audience’s behalf, at the implication (and this goes for all three movies) that we won’t watch a good movie about giant alien robots if it doesn’t have a little human romance on the side, or (and this is the more likely reasoning) that male audience members won’t watch unless there’s a former model running around. Seriously, writers, have a little faith in us, and in your story.
- Starscream. Okay, full disclosure: There is no way that this part is going to be unbiased. I got into Transformers entirely because of Starscream, and he remains my favourite character. And, to be fair, I’ve really been enjoying movieverse!Screamer overall. I’m not even that put out that he dies in Dark of the Moon. It’s kind of inevitable: you can’t have any sense of closure if Starscream’s still running around at the end of the movie. He’s too big a threat. No, my actual problem with Starscream in Dark of the Moon is twofold: his whole plot arc gets shafted, and his death isn’t worthy of the character.
Starscream was AWESOME in the first film. Sure, he was onscreen for maybe five minutes, but he spent them mostly playing aerial hopscotch with a squadron of F-22s.
Now THAT is how you establish Starscream as a character.
After Megatron’s (first) death, Starscream ruled the Decepticons for a while (a period covered by the brilliant Reign of Starscream comic miniseries, as well as the duller-but-still-decent novel The Veiled Threat). Revenge of the Fallen gave him more to do, as he first had to scramble to save his hide when Megatron returned, and later took up his familiar post as the resented-but-heeded voice in Megatron’s ear. By the end of the second movie, Starscream is obviously chafing under Megatron’s renewed leadership; Starscream has already tried to seize control once; everything’s clearly leading up to a grand climax…
… aaaand nothing happens. There’s no attempt to depose Megatron, there isn’t even that much politicking going on, even though the situation is ripe for it. We get a few moments of Starscream’s deliciously double-edged toadying, a beautifully shot moment where he dives down through space to blow up the Autobots’ escape ship, and… then he’s dead.
And let’s talk about that death, shall we? He doesn’t even get a fight scene with another Transformer. Okay, both Megatron and Shockwave get finished off a little precipitously, but at least there’s some glory in their deaths, as they both perish at the hands of Prime at his most badass. Starscream is killed in an alleyway, by a human; his last words are panicked screams that Sam has blinded him. And I freely admit that a human hero killing a much bigger and more dangerous creature can be an epic moment, but this isn’t. You never actually believe Starscream is a threat in this scene, his delightful taunts aside. It feels petty, and slightly sordid. Considering the interesting noble-warrior route they went with movieverse!Screamer, this is a disappointment.
*sniff*
What kills me is that I can easily see a way to give Starscream a fitting role in this film, plug a plothole, and cut down on Carly’s physically painful screentime, all without complicating the plot any further. At one point, out of the blue, Carly approaches Megatron and tells him that Sentinel is clearly going to take over once their plan is complete. Megatron, inexplicably, a) doesn’t step on her, b) has apparently never thought of this before, despite the fact that HE must have been planning to do the same, and c) instantly believes her, because he goes, “Oh, shit,” and rushes off to kill Sentinel. (Although, hands up, anyone else who thinks it would in fact be pretty funny if he killed Carly, and then went, “Crap, she actually had a point there.” J) Now, it’s implied that Sam puts her up to this, so it’s not as though Carly suddenly has a genius moment, but it’s still clearly shoehorned in to give her something to do other than scream a lot, and it feels extremely random. But, but, but… don’t we already have a character who knows the situation, who’s an expert at playing on Megatron’s feelings and paranoia, and who’s best-placed to get Megatron to listen? Have Starscream whispering in Megatron’s ear that Sentinel is going to betray them (the implication being that Starscream wants them to fight, so that he can take over in the chaos), and you’ve suddenly got a more interesting and plausible story.
· The abrupt ending. After a well-paced, heart-pounding final battle that actually leaves the audience terrified for Our Heroes, Optimus, gravely wounded, is facing down the twin threats of Megatron and Sentinel Prime… at which point he kills Megatron with a single sword-blow and shoots Sentinel in the head. Whaaaa? Okay, I realise that both of Optimus’s opponents are wounded here (Megatron from the events of the last movie, and Sentinel by Megatron), but seriously? Optimus, was there a reason you didn’t do that about three movies ago?
· Cybertron-sized plothole. Soooo… what happens to Cybertron? I bring this up because it’s a plothole either way, but it’s a much BIGGER plothole (and kind of horrifying) if the planet is actually destroyed, and no one mentions that fact. Because as of the last comic issue I read, there are still Transformers on Cybertron. It’s a wasteland, but it’s not abandoned! If turning off the pillar means nuking the planet, you’d expect someone (I’m looking at YOU, Sentinel) to throw that fact in Optimus’s face. And certainly, it would kind of dent my sympathy for Our Heroes if they can commit genocide without blinking. If, on the other hand, the planet is simply sent back to its old location, it’s still a plothole. Are the Autobots just going to forget about it? Are they going to evacuate everyone to Earth? The Decepticons, too? In fact, here’s a wild thought - with Sentinel and Megatron dead and the Decepticon forces destroyed, would having Cybertron in Earth orbit be a bad thing? Prime and the others could buy Earth resources (with labour or technology) and hire or request human aid to rebuild the planet! Wouldn’t that be worthwhile, or is Cybertron really too far gone to even try and restore it?
· MIA Autobots. Okay, yes, if I never see the Twins (that’s the Jar-Jar2 duo) again, I can die happy, but - um, what happened to Arcee? According to TFWiki, she didn’t die in any of the tie-in books, so what gives? I’M EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE ONLY FEMALE TRANSFORMER, DAMMIT!