So I watched part of Transformers: Dark of the Moon yesterday. I didn't watch it all the way through yet, and it is obviously terrible... but maybe somebody can explain something to me, because it's such an obvious and terrible plot hole that I just can't get over it. Spoilers below, but uh, don't really worry; the movie is awful, i.e. it comes pre-spoiled. Its only redeeming qualities are the sound design (which is excellent, actually) and the special effects (which are good, if frenetic... very much in the style of the day, if you know what I mean).
So Sentinel Prime betrays the Autobots so that he can get the Pillars back and lead a Decepticon invasion of Earth, so now the Transformers will have a new place to live after Cybertron. Okay, so far so good. He's going to use a wormhole to transport a Decepticon army directly from their secret base into the mall at Washington, D.C. Good plan!
But where are the Decepticons hiding? On the moon. Okay, um, in real life, yeah, the moon is actually pretty far away, and a wormhole to the moon would be pretty useful. But earlier in the movie, the Autobots find out that the Ark is on the moon, and they're just like, "Okay, let's go check it out," and they hop in their ship and it's like taking a spin down the the 7/11 for them. I guess the Decepticons don't have that technology or something? I guess? It just seems... I dunno... inexplicable... The Decepticon army got all the way from Cybertron to the moon, but then they ran out of gas or something? Wouldn't the movie have made more sense if they were using the Pillars to transport the secret Decepticon army from some barren planet near Cybertron or something, i.e. somewhere that is ACTUALLY FAR AWAY for an interstellar spacefaring race?
This is not the only bizarre plot hole in this turd of a script... For instance, when they revive Sentinel Prime, they are in a secret base in Washington, DC, and the rest of the Autobots who brought him back to life are just hanging out with a bunch of human government types. So Sentinel Prime is all like, "oh hai, we iz frendz i gess but i dun taek orderz n stuf from meatbags, kthxbye" -- even though he's been in some kind of suspended animation since the conflict at Cybertron, i.e. before the Transformers even made contact with Earth. Shouldn't his reaction be more like, "GAH! What the fuck is up with these weird squishy d00dz?"
There also seem to be some plot points in the movie which, if I heard them right (admittedly I was kind of ignoring most of the dialog by that point) seemed to hinge on the so-called "dark side of the moon" being literally dark all the time, rather than simply facing away from Earth. Which, um, it's not. Not dark, I mean. You know how the moon has phases because there's always a different side of it facing the sun? That's because THERE'S ALWAYS A DIFFERENT SIDE OF IT FACING THE SUN, YOU IDIOT.
This is all not to mention that any part of the movie that involved humans interacting with each other was poorly written, poorly acted, very poorly directed... Really, they should have just called the movie "Robots Fighting with Cool Noises", kicked Shia LaBeouf in the nuts and made him sit out the rest of the movie, and just had it be a bunch of Transformers duking it out. It would have been much improved -- and the plot would have been more engaging and made more sense!
