Nimoy Rules in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Caution *Spoilers Ahead*)

Starring Role: Leonard Nimoy voices Sentinel Prime

I saw Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon Wednesday and felt it was a decided improvement over its predecessor, Revenge of the Fallen. From the story line to the characters, Dark Side of the Moon had a lot more coherence than Revenge of the Fallen. Of course adding Leonard Nimoy to the cast as Sentinel Prime, mentor to Optimus, couldn’t hurt either, in fact it was the one element that actually gave the film a bit of gravitas, strange as that may seem coming from a film about giant space robots.

Sam and the New Girl
The first thing we notice in the film is that Sam Witwicky has a new main squeeze in Carly (Victoria’s Secret Model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). Together they make as much of an unlikely couple as Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox did, and I thought Michael Bay missed an opportunity to create the same tension of the dorky guy seeking the hot girl that existed in the first film. Instead, she’s already his, lounging around his apartment in Washington (which she pays for) in what I presume to be a Victoria’s Secret outfit under one of his white button-down shirts. We get that Sam is a different guy now from the dorky high schooler in the first film, but it would have been nice to see a better use of LeBeouf’s comedic talents.

At any rate, Sam is a newly minted college graduate who is seeking a job like millions of others. Of course unlike everyone else, he stumbles across a plot by the Decepticons to take control of what are known as pillars from The Ark, an Autobot spaceship that crash landed on the moon millennia ago, and whose discovery became the catalyst for the Space Race of the 1960s.

Soundwave is lethal underground

Optimus, Sentinel, Primes and the Leadership Matrix
Optimus discovers a piece of The Ark during a special ops mission at Chernobyl and confronts American intelligence about their withholding of this information from the Autobots during the time of the first film. He undertakes a mission to the moon and discovers Sentinel Prime (Nimoy) the former leader of the Autobots who was embarking on a mission to Earth when his ship was damaged in transit from the planet Cybertron, inside a hidden compartment of the ship. The relationship between Optimus and Sentinel, both Primes, one a pupil and the other a mentor, is the spine of the film and voiced with great dramatic power by both Peter Cullen and Leonard Nimoy. The scene in the desert, where Optimus offers Sentinel Prime the Leadership Matrix that would make him the leader of the Autobots once more, is a very touching one and Sentinel’s decline of it, saying that he has nothing more to teach Optimus, is equally affecting. Of course it only foreshadows a gut-wrenching betrayal that powers the film through to a climactic (and seemingly endless) battle over Chicago.

Carly and Epps at the Premiere

Final Battle, Final Thoughts
The final battle of the film was far more coherent than the franchise’s last outing at the Egyptian Pyramids. While you still couldn’t figure out where exactly the special ops soldiers were in relation to the Optimus and the Autobots, it didn’t really matter. One thing that was priceless was the way the writer Ehren Krugen had Sentinel Prime spouting lines that were a reversal of one of Spock’s most famous lines with “The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many,” it was a nice touch that brought a little life to the final conflict in a tongue-in-cheek way that brought a smile to any fan of Star Trek.  If you’re wondering how Michael Bay convinced Nimoy to redo those lines with a twist, especially since they’re some of the most sacred words in the Star Trek franchise, it turns out that Nimoy is married to Susan Bay, Michael’s cousin, meaning he had a bit of family pull there in his favor. There was also Bumblebee’s use of Spock’s final words from The Wrath of Khan as he and the Autobots are being exiled from Earth, “I am and always shall be, your friend” that was also very nicely done.

All in all, the film was a good two and a half hours of fun. Even Carly was able to play a pivotal role in the film’s climax, playing upon the egos of the big boys as only a pretty girl can that turned out to be the one move that would turn the tide in favor of the good guys once and for all.  I give it a grade of A- since it was a lot better than I had any right to expect, especially with all of the Spock references.