Dark of the Moon Review - Part 5: One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall
The Ambiguous
· Megatron. For the most part, I dug Megatron in this movie. I loved his plotting with Sentinel behind Optimus’s - and the Decepticons’ - backs. The broken-down disguise (which manifests itself as a shredded scarf and some seriously badass chains when he’s in robot mode) is fantastic. His evicting Lincoln from his throne in the Lincoln Memorial and taking it for himself (another shout-out to the original cartoon!) is a wonderful moment, and his first appearance made me LOL. (I grabbed Liz’s arm and whispered, “He really DID run off to raise babies with Starscream!”) But… does he get an action sequence in the entire movie? At all? Which is not to say that a villain can’t be intimidating and interesting without taking to the battlefield personally, but this version of Megatron is, first and foremost, a soldier. Up until this point, he’s been depicted as the Avon Barksdale to Starscream’s Stringer Bell. Sure, Megatron’s a good strategist, and the plot of this movie shows that off beautifully. But he’s also a warrior, AND Optimus’s equally-matched, forever-and-always archnemesis, and both of those things are kind of undercut when he finally emerges (after disappearing for half the battle) just to shoot Sentinel in the back and get his face chopped in half by Optimus. So, to sum up: great appearance, weak ending.
· “Dino”. Okay, this is going to require a little backstory. “Dino” is Mirage. Well, he isn’t - not in any meaningful way - but the creators introduced a character called Mirage, named after a character from the old cartoon, in one of the prequel comics to this movie. That’s because Hasbro has to produce a toy with a name to which they have the copyright, or risk losing the copyright if another company wants to come out with a toy with that name. (And if they make the toy, they’ll want to include that character in the current fiction, in order to promote it.) Since names like “Mirage” and “Shockwave” are probably in more demand than more unusual handles like “Grimlock” or “Perceptor”, Hasbro tries to shoehorn a Mirage into just about every series (and even then, they lost the copyright for a while, which is why the toys from a certain era are called “Autobot Mirage”). BUT, when the film rolled around, Ferrari refused to have Hasbro’s toy promotion printed on the Ferrari depicted in the movie, since a different company has the license to make Ferrari toys, so the Ferrari character couldn’t be named after a current Hasbro toy. So, out goes the name Mirage, and in comes “Dino” (after Alfredo Dino Ferrari, if you’re curious).
Original Flavour Mirage: With That Classic Taste of Torment You Know and Love!
Now, the original Mirage is, hands down, my favourite Autobot: a clever, cultured spy who had been conflicted about joining the Autobots in the first place, and had always kind of harboured the hope that they can reconcile with the Decepticons - an attitude that caused his fellow Autobots to distrust him. He had a cool exterior that masked a certain inner turmoil, and he loved to pretend he didn’t need his comrades, but a rare few of the other Autobots were able to get under his skin.
That’s Mirage as he appears in the original cartoon and the comics. However, because of the name thing, there have been whole fleets of Mirages in later Transformers series, and most of them have borne little resemblance to the original. So I’m used to that, and okay with it. I understand why they decided to use the name “Mirage” for a completely different character (a reckless showoff with an Italian accent).
Not that I’m not digging the blades.
It’s just that a teeny part of my brain was hoping that the Mirage I know and love was actually going to make a big-screen appearance. And so, under the circumstances, I’m kind of glad that Ferrari put its foot down. It means that I can take Dino on his own merits as a character, and not feel that touch of resentment at him for not being Mirage.
“But what troubles me most, is that in the dream… I’m some loudmouthed Italian dude with ice-skating blades on my arms.”
· Sam’s parents. The scenes with them are certainly funnier, and less cringeworthy, than in the first two films, and I actually enjoyed their appearance early on in the movie. (Sam’s mother demanding to know where his boyfr- erm, car - was is a definite highlight.) However, the bit with them in the middle, while it got a chuckle or two, brings the action to a screeching halt just when things are starting to pick up. It’s fundamentally unnecessary, and also feels bizarrely displaced: Sam is worried enough about his parents to warn them away from the city and say that he loves them, and yet they spend the whole scene talking up his relationship with Carly? Why, it’s almost as if the writers knew the romance doesn’t stand on its own! Eesh.
· Continuity. Okay, so continuity gets a little bit shafted in this movie; it was when Liz and I were actually trying to piece together the sequence of events afterwards that we realised how much. (For example, Sentinel Prime and Megatron supposedly arranged a rendezvous on Earth, but Sentinel Prime must have left Cybertron years and years before Megatron, who only left to pursue the AllSpark... so, how the hell was that supposed to work?) It’s kind of an inevitable consequence of having three movies that - as far as I’m aware - were never envisioned as a continuous arc, so each movie ends up retconning large swathes of the last one. But I’m not that fussed, to be honest. In continuity, as in romance, it’s better to be screwed by excellence than left intact by mediocrity. J (Don’t think that metaphor through too thoroughly.) And I was more relieved than anything that there’s no mention in Dark of the Moon of the Fallen, or the dynasty of Primes, or any of the other poorly-considered elements that Revenge of the Fallen dumped into the story. If the writers are happy to pretend the second film didn’t happen, then so am I.
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark.
- Pink Floyd, “Eclipse” from The Dark Side of the Moon
(Apologies for the delay between the original post and the rest of the review, btw - Livejournal was hacked!)