Dark Of The Moon Rewrite part 2: The Small Changes

(SPOILER WARNING!!)

Welcome back to the rewrite. With this, I wish to communicate how I think the plan I am creating for the rewrite will help to create a better story than what was given in the final product. But before we get into that, I want to go over the smaller changes to the narrative that Shockwave's plan would naturally result in.

For those who haven't read the first part; link here. But to summarise:

• Sentinel Prime's plan made no sense and his character was thus weakened as a result.
• The plan itself supplanted Megatron and the Decepticons from their roles as the villains once again, thus taking away the overall menace that they're meant to represent.
• Instead of Sentinel, Shockwave will take his place as the main villain and will have his voice be provided by David Warner, the inspiration for the voice in the original cartoon.

So now that all of this is out of the way, let's go over the three smaller changes to Transformers: Dark Of The Moon if Shockwave was the main antagonist as he was supposedly originally intended.

1. The Moon.

For the most part, the narrative use of the moon in this film will remain largely unchanged; it will still be used as a hiding spot for a Decepticon invasion force, and a ship will still crash land on the moon carrying an important cargo that could've turned the tide of the war. However, it is the primary use of these ideas that will be altered.

First of all, the moon will be the Decepticons main base of operations instead of leaving them scattered around the planet for 50 years; as a reference to the original comics, I'll be naming it the Darkmount. They were building this fortress over the course of the canonical 4-5 years that the Cybertronian war has been exposed to humanity. Personally, I never understood why the Decepticons chose to remain on Earth when the military has begun implementing Energon detectors across the entire globe. Thus, having the majority of them on the moon and only a few agents be planet-side makes more sense. If they want to keep their plans a secret, then they need to be hidden on the dark side of the moon. It's in the title of the film, for Primus' sake!

Secondly, the ship that crashes on the moon won't be the Ark, which is traditionally shown to be the retrofitted cargo ship used to transport the Autobots away from Cybertron. Instead, it will be the battle-cruiser that carried the Decepticons off-planet in pursuit of the Autobots; the Nemesis. In the opening, instead of having several small Decepticon cruisers shoot the Ark down as it's leaving the plant, the Nemesis can open up a space bridge portal that collapses and leaves the ship ruined, thus leading to the crash and the passenger being forced into stasis. Said passenger, of course, would be Shockwave.

Also, I'm excising the subplot with NASA launching a mission to the moon in the 60's to investigate the Ark. That part of the narrative was stupid; plain and simple. It was needlessly convoluted, set up a false mystery and is otherwise never addressed for the rest of the film. We can simply have it so that the Nemesis crash landed on the moon before mankind was capable of keeping track of what happened outside of Earth's orbit, so roughly during the late 1800's or early 1900's.

2. The Human Involvement.

This will probably be as big of a change as swapping Sentinel for Shockwave. In the film, people at NASA or associated with it have been masking the Decepticons presence on the moon ever since the moon landing, thus leading to the involvement of human villain Dylan Gould. Much like the rest of the NASA subplot, this inclusion to the film makes the rest of the narrative collapse on itself, as it makes both the heroes and the villains look stupid. The heroes are dumb, because they somehow couldn't see the obvious staring them in the face. The villains are dumb, because they need the help of a lesser life form in order to fulfil their bare bones scheme.

It is because of this that I've decided to cut the human villains out of the movie entirely. As such, Sam and Mikaela (using her instead of Carly, as there is virtually no discernible difference between them other than one is blonde and British) will have their role reduced significantly. They'll appear every once in a while to show support to the Autobots, but that's it. Their story was finished in "Revenge Of The Fallen" and we could DEFINITELY do with less Shia LaBeouf in these films, so this balances it out.

Humans will be a factor in Shockwave's plans, but I think it'll be best to address that properly during the plan as opposed to right now.

3. Shockwave's Deal.

Starting right away, Shockwave will be the one responsible for creating the Space Bridge Pillars. It simply makes more narrative sense for the actual scientist in the story to create one of the most important pieces of Cybertronian technology in their history. With this in mind, and upon discovering that both Megatron and the Allspark are on Earth, Shockwave quickly puts together the Nemesis and launches for Earth. The Pillars are still in the prototype stage, so Shockwave also sees this as a logical opportunity to test it out and see if it works. Naturally, with every initial testing, it backfires, leading to the Nemesis being torn apart. The back half is left floating in space as random junk while the front half, containing Shockwave and the Pillars, ends up crashing on the moon. Before entering a stasis pod with the control Pillar, Shockwave sends out an emergency beacon on any and all Decepticon frequencies, noting specifically how he is near Earth and that, in the off-chance that he is found, his Pillars should only be used when and if all available plans have been tested and failed, namely retrieving the Allspark and reactivating the Star Harvester.

This introduction to the character is meant to encapsulate his entire deal; not only is Shockwave a bot who follows logic on an almost fanatical level, but as a scientist it makes sense that he would plan for multiple eventualities. He would more than likely be aware of both Megatron's plans for the Allspark and the Fallen searching for the Star Harvester, and thus would hypothesise the different ways that either of those plans could fail should the Autobots get involved. Thus, the Pillars are essentially the main contingency plan should the other ones fail. This could even allow for Shockwave to use the motto from his original character bio; "Clarity of thought, before rashness of action", which thus could also finally allow the audience to be intimidated by a smart Decepticon for the first time in these movies. Gone is the growling monster with only one eye as his main distinguishing point; now we can actually have a Shockwave that lives up to the character from the original series.

But that will have to come next time. Until then, I hope you are enjoying what I have done with the rewrite thus far. I would greatly appreciate it if you leave a comment letting me know what you think, as well as if you could take the time to share this on social media; Facebook, Twitter, etc. And of course, if you want to speak to me about the rewrite and what ideas you may have, please contact and follow me on Twitter; I'm @MediaHood23. And if you are so inclined, check out my YouTube channel; Media Hood Reviews.

So until next time; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Hood, signing off!

Dark Of The Moon Rewrite part 1: The Logical Choice

(SPOILER WARNING!!)



I've made it no secret in the past that my thoughts on the live action Transformers movies has changed drastically after watching "Bumblebee" in theatres (review here, incidentally). After going back and rewatching them, they have just become a cacophony of noise and irritation, an assault on the audiences intelligence and patience as a means of pandering to the lowest common denominator demographic. I may hold the first film close to my heart as my introductory point to the franchise, but that still doesn't excuse the lazy writing, the shoddy direction, the blatant sexism and racism on display, the lack of focus on the title characters, and the ever present aura of cynicism and contempt for a franchise that has changed and evolved since it's inception in the 1980's. In short, the movies are bad and Michael Bay should feel bad.

With that said, one could make the case for the third film, "Dark Of The Moon", as the one that could be salvaged amidst the myriad of awful dialogue and concussion inducing narrative if they make a simple change that could fix most of the issues with the story. And that change revolves around the main villain; not Megatron or any of his Decepticons, but Sentinel Prime.



As revealed by the mid-point of the film, Sentinel had made a deal with Megatron to get their hands on the Space Bridge pillars to summon an army of Decepticons to Earth and enslave the human race, eventually culminating in their main goal of bringing Cybertron to Earth's orbit and using the human populace to rebuild their planet.

Straight away, let's ignore the stupidity of using humans to rebuild Cybertron and not the energy sources that Earth has at it's disposal, as well as how this is basically a less coherent version of "The Ultimate Doom" from the original cartoon that Bay claims is the dumber version of the story. Rather, I want to address Sentinel Prime himself; specifically his characterisation and why it doesn't work within the framework of the film.

Essentially, by assuming the control of most of the Decepticon forces and overthrowing the Earth with his Space Bridge technology, Sentinel had no real reason to betray the Autobots. The deal that he had made with Megatron essentially means that ol' Buckethead surrendered his forces to the Autobots, which Sentinel could've told the other Autobots about so that they had the advantage. Would they've been on board with Sentinel enslaving mankind? No, but that's where the conflict should lie. They should be rebelling against Sentinel for this disregard of the morals that the Autobots supposedly uphold and trying to undermine his plan. Questions can then be raised about how much of what Sentinel taught Optimus was genuine or was all a ploy on Sentinel's behalf to have the younger Prime carry on his legacy. Automatically, Optimus has a much more interesting character conflict than "We take the battle to them".

But ultimately, that's not the change that I want to propose with DOTM and the character of Sentinel Prime. To properly set this up, let's actually break down his characterisation and what we could do with that.

As shown in the film, Sentinel Prime is callous towards other forms of life, with his goal revolving around returning Cybertron to it's Golden Age and fixing the planet. He is also seemingly a scientist and an inventor, having created the Space Bridge pillars and is the sole Transformer who can control them. He is ruthless, cunning (or would be if it weren't for this stupid plan), emotionally detached from everyone around him, and uses the methods that he believes is the most logical to achieve his end goal.

Now, with that characterisation in mind, remove the name "Sentinel Prime" from the equation. Try to think of someone; another character within the the 36 year long history of the Transformers franchise who fits the description I just presented. Who else do we know, from every story in the Transformers universe, is ruthless, cunning, emotionally detached, is a scientist and inventor, achieves his objectives via logic driven action and whose main goal is the preservation of Cybertron and its inhabitants above all else? On top of that, who do we know from that description who also happens to be in the movie and was pushed as a major part of it despite the end result?

Right away, you should already know the answer, and it's the character that I feel got a shorter end of the stick than Optimus and Megatron in terms of big screen representation. And thus, we finally arrive to the change. The main villain of the movie should not have been Sentinel Prime, but instead, my personal favourite Decepticon of all-time;

The main villain of DOTM should have been Shockwave.



Now, this really shouldn't be surprising to anybody who has even a bare bones understanding of the character, but it would be pretty presumptuous of me to assume that everyone automatically knows Shockwave's deal within the various pieces of Transformers media. Thus, for those who aren't overly familiar with the character, Shockwave is typically depicted as the Decepticons head scientist and was given the duty to safeguard Cybertron in Megatron's absence. From there, the depiction of character often varies between a Megatron loyalist and a cruel schemer seeking leadership of the Decepticons. One common trait remains through most of his appearances in media, however; his unwavering devotion to pure, ruthless logic.

Ergo, when it was originally announced that Shockwave was in line to be the main villain of DOTM, I was excited to see how it would be done. And with rumours arising that actor David Warner was in line for the role, it was all the better, as Warner's portrayal of Sark in the film "Tron" was Corey Burton's inspiration for when he was cast as Shockwave in the original cartoon. Heck, I'm one of the few people who'll defend the final design he had in the film.



Granted, the only elements we had to tell this was Shockwave was the singular eye and the arm cannon, but it was still an awesome design nonetheless. Just throw in some purple and remove the mandibles, and you have a perfect live action Shockwave design.

Unfortunately, what we got was little more than something that looked like the character, but barely resembled him in any meaningful way. He was simply a snarling, constantly angry sounding monster who did next to nothing and only had a single WORD of dialogue. And with how much he was pushed in the marketing and the way that they kept proclaiming that he was the central antagonist, it thus made it all the more irritating when he got killed off after roughly 5 minutes worth of screen time. In short, the studio had lied just to bank on the people who loved Shockwave just so they could make more money. It was shameless.

Therefore, I am doing this not only as someone who appreciates clever writing and storytelling, but as someone who feels that there was a grave missed opportunity with this character. Starting off right away, Shockwave will replace Sentinel Prime as the main villain. This not only removes the need for another character who looks identical to Optimus, but also allows for an opportunity to create a story focused around a plan that only someone as cruel and efficient as Shockwave can think of.

Having Shockwave be the one who creates the Space Bridge technology not only fits his common role as the head Decepticon scientist, but also acts as a callback to how he used Space Bridges in the original cartoon to transport Energon to Cybertron as well as allow Megatron to cross over easily if the need ever came up. It will also showcase how Shockwave, in this iteration of the character, is a balance of raw strength and unrivalled intellect, which is apparently how his character bio describes him. This personality is otherwise never present in the final film, nor is any semblance of independent thought or characterisation beyond another scary looking robot for the soldiers to attack.

On another note, I think audiences would also be receptive to a simpler design than what was shown on screen, one that was a good blend of realistic looking machinery and the original animation model. Thus, something along the lines of his design from his brief cameo in "Bumblebee" would be better suited for the character.



As for casting, it would be pretty obvious to cast Leonard Nimoy as Shockwave, namely due to the obvious connection that Shockwave has with Spock from "Star Trek" and the fact that the latter was the main inspiration for the latter. That said, however, I think it would be cooler of we had David Warner in for the voice instead because of how his performance influenced Corey Burton. Their voices are similar enough so that fans wouldn't be annoyed that it wasn't Burton in the role.

With all of that said, however, it still leaves the question; how would substituting Sentinel Prime with Shockwave change the overall story? What plan would Shockwave come up with that will make sense for the character and still fit within the Transformers movieverse without contradicting that has come before?

That is a discussion for another time.

But until then, what other ideas do you guys have for what Shockwave's plan could be? Be sure to leave a comment letting me know what you think, as well as what you think of the idea for the rewrite. Otherwise, I'd greatly appreciate it if you would share this on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as following me on Twitter; I'm @MediaHood23. Also be sure to check out my YouTube page; Media Hood Reviews. I know it's been a while since I uploaded on there, but I'm trying to get back into the groove of things and I've been meaning to make more videos for a while.

So until next time; this is Callum Lewis, the Media Hood, asking you to wash your hands and keep safe!