Scene Analysis #14: Autobots Exiled—Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Scene Rating Scale:

9/9: Flawless! Outstanding scene!
8/9: Great scene! Totally Rewatchable!
7/9: Pretty good. Not as perfect as I expected though.
6/9: Decent. Doesn’t ruin the movie/episode.
5/9: Mid.
4/9: Pretty bad. One of the weakest scenes of the movie/episode.
3/9: You hear that? It’s the wind of lameness.
2/9: One of the worst scenes of the film/episode.
1/9: Horrible, unwatchable, and unacceptable.

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Hello, hello, hello, my wonderful friends! Mr. J is in the house once more with another scene analysis for you all today! This afternoon, I will be reviewing one of my favorite scenes from “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”. This scene was quite emotional as the Autobots are now being exiled per the demands of the traitorous Sentinel Prime when he falsely promised the U.S. government that he and all Decepticons will peacefully leave Earth with its resources on the condition the Autobots be removed from the planet.

At this point in the franchise, it was heartbreaking to see this scene happen because that meant all humanity will be at the mercy of the Decepticons—knowing that they never keep their word. When I first watched this scene in the theaters back in 2011, I was kinda shocked that the Autobots were actually being exiled. I mean, without them, how will the humans fight back? How is the military gonna handle over 200+ Decepticons taking over every city?

But what’s even more important is the conversation between Sam and Optimus. It was actually nice to see the latter actually display emotion and express guilt over the fact that he told his human allies to trust Sentinel, not knowing he was planning to betray them. This shows that Optimus isn’t perfect and has flaws just like we humans do. This is something I want to see more of…Optimus Prime showing flaws of character and emotion, not a stone-faced, humorless stick-in-the-mud.

As for Sam, you can tell he was holding back tears as he didn’t want to see his friends go away, especially Bumblebee. But because he had a Decepticon watch forcefully strapped on his arm, he couldn’t warn them of their plot. So instead, he gives a hint that the ‘Cons were listening:

You can tell me no other human will ever know.

He says this right after he looked back at the other humans behind him.

Optimus clearly understood what he was getting at as there were obviously other humans who could easily hear their entire conversation. Plus, I’m sure his audio receptors picked up a Decepticon signal on Sam’s arm. Thus, he said,

There is no plan.

This scene left some questions in my head such as “Will the humans fight the bad guys all on their own now?” Because when Starscream blew up that ship in the air, I was left dumbfounded. But somewhere in the back of my head, I doubted its legitimacy because there’s no way they are taken out just like that. But because I’ve already seen the trailers that feature the Autobots fighting in Chicago, I figured that it was a fake-out.

Anyway, this was heartbreaking to watch, and it has terrific acting from Shia LaBeouf and excellent voice acting from Peter Cullen. These films truly needed more Transformer-human interactions to flesh out both their characters and their dynamic relationships. But you know Michael Bay—he loves his explosions every now and then. But still, this is truly a remarkable, flawless scene! I’ll give it a sold 9/9!

Peace!