Dark of the Moon Feedback and Reviews: Spoilers Ahoy.

[Warcry]

Everyone else? During the first watching of the first movie, Devastabrawl and Bonecrusher and even Starscream all blur together. Certainly in the second movie all the non-combining Constructicons and Protoforms, and other Decepticons like Grindor, the Dreads, Sideways will likewise blur together like all the thugs Jack Bauer or Batman or Bruce Willis has to kill.

I have to disagree there. In the first movie I thought each Decepticon was treated pretty well and got a fair bit of attention, if not character development. Blackout, Brawl, Bonecrusher and Starscream each got the spotlight in a major action scene, along with Megatron obviously. Barricade and Frenzy were the only ones who approached having a personality, but the other Decepticons weren't just generic thugs. They were epic, gigantic movie monsters.

The later movies don't have the same feeling for me, though. In trying to up the stakes with huge armies, combiners and giant metal sand worms, they actually made the Decepticon threat seem less epic. I mean, sure, an army of generic Decepticons wrecking Chicago is scary...but Blackout completely dismantling an entire military base on his own is much more impressive. Or at least, it is to me.

I think that's part of the reason why Shockwave disappointed me so much. Because if he'd shown up in the first movie he wouldn't have needed a giant destructive pet -- he would have done all the damage we saw on his own.

The Military Patrol were just made for live-action, surely - Bombshock, Dropshot, Treadbolt and Growl for the win.

[pedantry]Tracer, not Treadbolt. Treadbolt was an Autobot. You lose your Micromaster Nerd Street Cred. [/pedantry]

But I agree with the general sentiment that seems to be going around. Other than Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave and maybe Shockwave I doubt any Decepticon leaders have any name recognition outside the fandom. There are a whole lot of nice villain names floating around the franchise, and depending on what the writer wants to do I'm sure they could either pick a few cool-sounding ones at random or maybe even find a second-tier baddy who's existing personality gels with whatever story they want to tell and just go with that.

I just hope they don't fall into the superhero movie trap of building the sequels around an increasingly bigger and bigger list of B- C- and D-list bad guys in a vain attempt to stoke ticket sales now that the recognizable names are all gone.

[Blackjack]

I have to disagree there. In the first movie I thought each Decepticon was treated pretty well and got a fair bit of attention, if not character development. Blackout, Brawl, Bonecrusher and Starscream each got the spotlight in a major action scene, along with Megatron obviously. Barricade and Frenzy were the only ones who approached having a personality, but the other Decepticons weren't just generic thugs. They were epic, gigantic movie monsters.

Well, for me, it was my first experience to Transformers. While I recognize the different alternate modes and their showpiece moments (Brawl vs everybody, Starscream's stepping stones, Blackout's opening scene of awesome) during the Mission City showdown the three of them kind of blur together, in that they are all destructive monsters.

The later movies don't have the same feeling for me, though. In trying to up the stakes with huge armies, combiners and giant metal sand worms, they actually made the Decepticon threat seem less epic. I mean, sure, an army of generic Decepticons wrecking Chicago is scary...but Blackout completely dismantling an entire military base on his own is much more impressive. Or at least, it is to me.

What I hated is that in the second movie all the Decepticons suffer from villain decay. In the first movie someone like, say, Brawl had to take so much hits from Autobots and humans alike to be killed. Scorponok, a car-sized Decepticon, could shrug off airstrikes.

Come ROTF, and tanks and shotguns take down protoforms with ease, and Constructicons are killed by airstrikes. Devastator, for all his scariness and epic scale, is taken out by a deus ex machina human weapon. Even Megatron is given trouble by tanks and airstrikes.

The third movie is slightly better at this than ROTF, but humans still can take down Decepticon protoforms (albeit with Q-given gimmicks and practicing on Bumblebee), which should've been much more realistic in the second movie than 'airstrike kill all'.

maybe even find a second-tier baddy who's existing personality gels with whatever story they want to tell and just go with that.

I WANT MY LIVE ACTION RATBAT

... the two Green Goblins. Though, having still not seen Spidey 3, I've no idea how well that worked out)

IIRC Harry never calls himself the Green Goblin in Spider-Man 3. He's always called 'Harry' or 'New Goblin' or the 'Second Goblin' or something thereabouts. I can't really remember, though... the whole movie was a mess.

[Cliffjumper]

What I hated is that in the second movie all the Decepticons suffer from villain decay. In the first movie someone like, say, Brawl had to take so much hits from Autobots and humans alike to be killed. Scorponok, a car-sized Decepticon, could shrug off airstrikes.

By RotF, NEST are a specialised unit with tactics and weaponry designed for taking down Transformers. In the first film, Lennox's unit are a handful of Rangers arming themselves with whatever Sector 7 have lying around, and the F-22s that get past Starscream do a respectable amount of damage. And by DotM, you've got the ultra-specialised skill seen when taking down the ultimate Transformers big bad, Barricade.

The damage humans can do to the things is a little inconsistent, but overall fits into a fairly logical pattern of the more experience the humans have, the better they fare. My only real problem with the airstrike in RotF isn't in it being unrealistic (seriously, there's very little reason to think TFs would survive the sort of firepower that could take out, say, a warship) but that it was a little anticlimactic in terms of drama when Jolt and Sideswipe slicing them up would have been a lot more fun. We're not given much to suggest most of the Constructicons are much cop, after all.

[Thunderwave]

[quote="Cliffjumper"]
+1

I'd of loved to seen Jolt actually do SOMETHING, kinda like Dino (I refuse to call him Mirage) in DOTM.

Also, this is a niggling point on the part of myself, but I was very slightly annoyed at the tanks in RotF. Not in that they where doing damage to Transformers, but in that they should of been firing faster. >.< It does not take a full 20 seconds to load, aim, and fire one of those damned things especially if Megatron is RIGHT THERE.

As for humans messing up Transformers? In the fist movie it was a scramble to find anything that works, so of course they are doing less damage then in the latter movies. After that the humans where working with the Autobots to hunt the Decepticons. Makes sense that not only are the humans more skilled at fighting them, knowing where to shoot and so on, but that the weapons tech would of gotten a lot better as well.

The thing that bothers me most about the last two movies is how the human government reacts to everything. They treat Sam like shit and basically say "No, you can't see your friends. We don't care if you are the reason we're all still alive. You can't see them and you can't help". While I know that the Autobots are benevolent, would YOU take the risk of pissing off giant intergalactic robots that could, in theory, make a very very big mess of things if they wanted to? Or how about their habit of trying to kick the Autobots off world at every slight excuse? What about the Decepticons strikes them as trustworthy over the Autobots? It's like the Bayverse US Government is controlled by brain damaged chimps.

[Cliffjumper]

Yeh, with Sam it's a bit strange he's not given some sort of clearance - if nothing else, if he gets pissed off enough he could spill all sorts of thing. And while Mearnings chills the **** out (random aside - was I the only one who thought her assistant was brilliant?) once the crisis is in full swing, you'd think they'd appoint someone a little bit less like the failure Galloway after he nearly screwed the pooch last time.

With Jolt in RotF, and to a lesser extent Sideswipe and Ratchet (though they got to show off a bit more elsewhere) it was a shame that they were basically used as artillery by NEST instead of getting to wade into the Decepticons (and it was also a shame we didn't get to see more of Ironhide and Arcee mixing it up too), but I'm guessing the budget was creaking by then, hence the generic soldiers v protoforms being the main focus of the action. Much as I found Devastator to be an awesome spectacle, you have to wonder if the money would have been better spent elsewhere, such as on an Autobot cars v Constructicons battle.

I personally felt it was a real shame that the Twins and Jolt didn't get into DotM, even if it was hanging around not really saying anything and either getting killed by Sentinel or executed in Chicago or even just making it though with minimal impact a la Ratchet... While I liked all three, closure of some sort or another would have been nice. Sure, the only obvious logical answer is they were killed off-screen in the previous two years, and we know from Jazz and Ironhide that these Autobots aren't particularly given towards "Oh, woe is me, my comrade died" speeches, but it would have been nice to have something solid, y'know? Or even just something fairly obvious like what happened to Arcee.

Random thing, though - Simmons explicictly says they're exiling nine Autobots before the launch, when there are 11 of them (Optimus, Bumblebee, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Dino, Que, Leadfoot, Roadbuster, Topspin, Wheelie and Brains)... Now I'd always got the vague gist that Wheelie and Brains were sort-of unofficial - most people didn't know about them, hence why they're living with Sam and NEST don't seem to recognise them (only Team Sam met Wheelie in ROTF, remember, and it's pretty easy to believe Simmons and Bumblebee kept quiet about him, what with him being no threat and serving no military purpose). So why exactly are they exiled along with the others?

EDIT: And regarding the Ferrari, he's referred to as Dino onscreen, and for me that means the film character's called Dino. He's no more called Mirage than Hot Rod is called Rodimus Major... It isn't even like there's anything about him that screams "Mirage"...

[Clogs]

The thing that bothers me most about the last two movies is how the human government reacts to everything. They treat Sam like shit and basically say "No, you can't see your friends. We don't care if you are the reason we're all still alive. You can't see them and you can't help". While I know that the Autobots are benevolent, would YOU take the risk of pissing off giant intergalactic robots that could, in theory, make a very very big mess of things if they wanted to? Or how about their habit of trying to kick the Autobots off world at every slight excuse? What about the Decepticons strikes them as trustworthy over the Autobots? It's like the Bayverse US Government is controlled by brain damaged chimps.

Not at all like the premise in the comics, then

[Rack 'n Ruin]

EDIT: And regarding the Ferrari, he's referred to as Dino onscreen, and for me that means the film character's called Dino. He's no more called Mirage than Hot Rod is called Rodimus Major... It isn't even like there's anything about him that screams "Mirage"...

Well, he did disappear for large parts of the film...

Boom boom tish! (I'm here all week...)

[Cliffjumper]

Mirage never even appeared in a film before, I think you will find. Your jokes are no match for my formatting skills.

*pushes up comically thick nerd glasses*

[Rack 'n Ruin]

Still waiting on that £10...

[Cliffjumper]

The day I pay you £10 is the day I stop viewing The Ultimate Guide as the true bible.

[Cliffjumper]

Thinking about Dalek mentioning Onslaught, the Military Patrol and me wibbling about Combaticons being in Prime, how ****ing awesome would they be as the villains for TF4?

Think about it - a tight, coordinated military team who could successfully gather intelligence on and counter NEST. Onslaught has a cool name, and could be pragmatic enough to out-pragmatise Optimus Prime. Kit them all out in the latest military hardware (Hell, I've got a pretty good idea for a concept for Brawl). Give them all distinct roles and maybe personality, recreating the hints at the Decepticon team in the first film. Have them combine into a smart Bruticus for your big city-levelling moments. And have them sent by some big bad with the simple mission of wiping out the Autobots.

[inflatable dalek]

Thinking about Dalek mentioning Onslaught, the Military Patrol and me wibbling about Combaticons being in Prime, how ****ing awesome would they be as the villains for TF4?

Sounds good, plus having Brawl in it would confuse the issue over who the tank guy in the first one was even more.

And yeah, it's Dino and Que as far as I'm concerned, it's a lot simpler to just use the names they're actually called than going Mirage/Dino and so on all the time.

And of course the Ultimate Guide is the Bible. Full of inaccuracies and stuff made up by someone who's brought into their own cult.

EDIT: Actually, lets have a Mirage and Wheeljack in the next film as well. Just for shits and giggles.

Is anyone else expecting it to turn out Bay's misinformation campaign actually extended to the last two films and he'll be wheeling out the real sequel any second?

[Cliffjumper]

Sounds good, plus having Brawl in it would confuse the issue over who the tank guy in the first one was even more.

Exactly! Fun observation: there's nothing to say the two Devastators aren't somehow one and the same.

EDIT: Actually, lets have a Mirage and Wheeljack in the next film as well. Just for shits and giggles.

Yes! Have them appear alongside Dino at a memorial for Que, with a role-call explicitly naming them. It would be worth it for the sound of the meltdowns.

Is anyone else expecting it to turn out Bay's misinformation campaign actually extended to the last two films and he'll be wheeling out the real sequel any second?

I like the way the latest one extended to dicking Hasbro over by changing the names of two characters without apparently telling them - there's no subtitles error get-out here; Dino's named at least twice (coming into the NEST base and called by name by Sideswipe), Que introduces himself as such and is likewise referred to by someone else (Ratchet?) at least once.

Though I will acknowledge here and now that in general conversation I always refer to the tank from the first film as 'Brawl' for simple simplicity; the trick is I know it's wrong. Had there not been a Devastator in ROTF I wouldn't bother.

[Cliffjumper]

Watching it back again, there's something really, really weird about Megatron's truce line... He seems to start off talking to Sentinel and switch to talking to Optimus mid-line...

"No... [stops knocking the shit out of Sentinel, and seemingly looking at Sentinel] We need a truce [throws Sentinel away]. All I want is to be back in charge [doesn't seem to be addressing either specifically]. Besides, who would you be without me, Prime? [definitely addressed at Optimus, despite there being two Primes right in front of him]."

It's weird, as if he's proposing a truce to Optimus, who spends up to about "Besides..." crawling around on all threes, why does he stop killing Sentinel for no apparent reason? His brain damage would perhaps give a bit of an explanation, but it's a very ambiguous scene as filmed.

It doesn't really come close to the hippy ending in the comics as the gist of Megatron's line is "let me off for now", which didn't work out well for the population of Chicago when no-one bothered stopping Megatron after RotF, rather than any sort of detailed proposal... I mean, Megatron doesn't even necessarily mean "in charge of the Decepticons".

[Vin Ghostal]

Watching it back again, there's something really, really weird about Megatron's truce line... He seems to start off talking to Sentinel and switch to talking to Optimus mid-line...

"No... [stops knocking the shit out of Sentinel, and seemingly looking at Sentinel] We need a truce [throws Sentinel away]. All I want is to be back in charge [doesn't seem to be addressing either specifically]. Besides, who would you be without me, Prime? [definitely addressed at Optimus, despite there being two Primes right in front of him]."

It's weird, as if he's proposing a truce to Optimus, who spends up to about "Besides..." crawling around on all threes, why does he stop killing Sentinel for no apparent reason? His brain damage would perhaps give a bit of an explanation, but it's a very ambiguous scene as filmed.

It doesn't really come close to the hippy ending in the comics as the gist of Megatron's line is "let me off for now", which didn't work out well for the population of Chicago when no-one bothered stopping Megatron after RotF, rather than any sort of detailed proposal... I mean, Megatron doesn't even necessarily mean "in charge of the Decepticons".

I agree wholeheartedly...it's a very confusing scene.

At this point, I almost feel as though Megatron's addressing Optimus when he says "we need a truce." Really, other than Sentinel being intimidating and condescending for about 15 seconds, Sentinel and Megatron haven't really had any conflict, and certainly not enough to warrant a "truce". Besides, what sense does it make to knock someone goofy, then immediately call for a truce? On the other hand, if Megatron's looking for a truce with Optimus, presumably to take out Sentinel...why even bother? Just put a few in Sentinel's dome while you have him down. I've seen the scene twice now, and I can't be sure what they were going for.

[Cliffjumper]

Yeh... Megatron seems to have a real problem with timing - if he'd given Sentinel five seconds, Optimus would be dead... Then he stops battering Sentinel in order to propose a half-baked truce with Optimus (as in this Movie Optimus, the one who doesn't do truces), when it's possible killing them both would have been an option (Optimus seems to get himself together in the time Megatron stops and talks)?

The more I think about it the more my head hurts... The only possible explanation is that Sentinel really shook something loose when he wrestles Megatron around, and, well if that's a case some sort of indication than just very bizarre behaviour would be helpful (in addition, while Carly made a fairly good point, there's no reason Megatron shouldn't smear her into pate and then go and blow a hole in Sentinel).

EDIT: Could he mean a general truce between all three of them? Which'd be even stupider - no way Optimus would agree to that, and like you say there's no real indication that Megatron and Sentinel have overtly fallen out; it could have done with a scene of Sentinel telling Megatron to piss off or he'd kill him and he was the leader now...

[Vin Ghostal]

Mmm hmm...it's almost as if there was a brief scene involving Sentinel verbally and/or physically hammering Megatron that didn't make the final cut. I guess they hoped the one scene atop the building would get the point across, but it wasn't sufficient IMO. It seemed to speak only of friction between the two, but Megatron never seemed pissed off enough (even in the Carly scene) that he'd actually attack Sentinel, let alone interrupt him when he was mere moments from decapitating Megatron's greatest foe.

The first two movies would further suggest that Megatron knows Optimus well enough to know that he wouldn't accept a truce, particularly under those circumstances. And, like you said, the idea that Megatron's proposing a truce to both seems even MORE farfetched.

EDIT: Although, a three-way truce might be the only scenario that explains Megatron's actions. He hurts Sentinel badly enough to save Optimus, then doesn't finish Sentinel off, then seems to be speaking to both Primes, then makes a sentimental comment that would suggest that Optimus is at least PART of the truce, and then doesn't actively engage Optimus in battle (it's Opitimus that delivers the first blow, if I remember correctly). Is that a possible explanation, however irrational?

SECOND EDIT: If that IS the case, it only contributes to the awesome insanity of Movie Prime. Megatron saves his life and proposes a truce, Optimus immediately rips his head off, then puts a few slugs in Sentinel's head. God, he might be my favorite character ever.

[Cliffjumper]

Yeh, it feels like we're missing something with Megatron going from being on the skyscraper to being in the alley - he seems to be fully in the swing of things beforehand, posing alongside Sentinel and sneering down at everything, and hen suddenly he reverts to being the shambling figure we saw in Africa. The problem with DotM and Megatron is they build him back up a bit in between, whereas if there had been a few more hints that he was in a real mess and Sentinel was using him as a puppet to keep the Decepticons in line it might all have made a bit more sense.

I think the three-way truce is the closest thing to making sense based on the dialogue and movements - I mean, is it a plot hole if Megatron just does something incredibly stupid? But he choses about the only option that would actually leave both Primes pissed off - Optimus and Sentinel would gladly see each other dead by that point, and it'd make a lot more sense if Megatron killed one or the other and proposed a truce then.

The basic problem is that from roughly Shockwave's death onwards, the film suddenly starts sprinting towards the credits and a few things happen for no better reason other than to speed things along...

[Vin Ghostal]

But do they really build Megatron back up? I don't recall him engaging in any combat or really doing much of anything - Soundwave and Laserbeak do all the heavy lifting, Sentinel steals the pillars and controls everything, and even Starscream chips in - Megatron's entire role seems to be ordering Soundwave around, then shooting Abraham Lincoln, then being Sentinel's bitch. Is there anything in between?

I question whether "All I want is to be back in charge" was directed at Sentinel or Optimus, or both. Sentinel would make the most sense in the plot, but could they actually also be referencing the fact that Megatron and Optimus were in charge on Cybertron? Can we give the writers that much credit? Probably not, which means Megatron's still talking only to Sentinel at that point. Augh, my head hurts.

[inflatable dalek]

Exactly! Fun observation: there's nothing to say the two Devastators aren't somehow one and the same.

There's a six issue mini-series from IDW in that idea surely? After all, they did a comic explaining how the Energon repaint Arcee toy from the first film filler sub line becaue the three bike version.

Yes! Have them appear alongside Dino at a memorial for Que, with a role-call explicitly naming them. It would be worth it for the sound of the meltdowns.

And as we've already had a spin off violating Ark they should fit the Nemesis in there as well.

Though I will acknowledge here and now that in general conversation I always refer to the tank from the first film as 'Brawl' for simple simplicity; the trick is I know it's wrong. Had there not been a Devastator in ROTF I wouldn't bother.

Yep, he's the only one where it isn't just easiest to call him by his onscreen name. But even then I only tend to do it when it isn't completely clear I'm talking about the first film.

As for Megatron's odd behaviour... He does have a big hole in his head with bits of brain falling out of it.