At the beginning of Darkside, Sam/Shia has recently graduated from Harvard, is dating his second consecutive super-model girlfriend, and can’t get a job to save his life/pay the billz (how one lands a girlfriend, let alone ones second consecutive super-model girlfriend, without a job is beyond me). Sam’s been going to job-interviews for weeks if not months without any proverbial dice. He’s getting more and more flack from his U.S.-trotting, green jump-suit cladded parents, and getting more and more piney’n’winey to do something “important” with his life, something that “matters.”
A great deal of Sam’s frustration with his circumstances comes from the fact that he’s the same guy--or so he tells us/others all the fricking time--who saved the world from the Evil Forces of... The Decepticons, twice! And even got some awesome medal in honor of his services, from Obama (can’t tell if Bay and Co. were being ironic with Sam's apparent excitement with his having had received a medal from Obama...). And yet, wtf, nobodoy cares enough about the fact that Sam not only graduated from Harvard but also saved the world, twice, to give Sam a job, ergo, Sam’s frustration:
Finally, after a series of horribly awkward interviews with people whom Sam seems to have just as hard a time respecting as convincing to hire him, he winds up in front of John Malkovich, the apparent megalo-head of some tech company, who tells Sam, “Impress me”. Sam somehow manages to do this by spouting off crap like, “I’m a killer, blah blah blah”, which, it turns out, was totally unnecessary for Sam to do because the reason Malkovich actually wanted to hire him in the first place is because Sam has a letter of recommendation from Sam’s (super-model) girlfriend’s boss, Patrick Dempsey (whose motivation for trying to help Sam find a job makes, by the end of the film, absolutely no sense--that is, unless Dempsey just knew, deep down that if Sam got a job at Malkovich’s company he’d uncover the whole moon-mystery thing and somehow get the Autobots to go to said moon and bring Sentinel back to earth and back to life, which, COME-THE-F*CK ON!!!).
Anyways, Malkovich tells Sam he can have a job in the literal mail-room, and that he reminds Malkovich of a younger version of himself (?!?), in response to which Sam scoffs and feigns leaving, telling Malkovich that he’s saved the world (twice!) and shouldn’t be working in no stinking mail room! Malkovich responds to Sam’s disrespectful impudence by saying something pretty damn interesting and good for somebody of Sam’s/my generation to hear. He says, “Sam, the only thing standing between you and the job you want is your unwillingness to start with the job you can actually get” (I paraphrase, of course, but that’s basically what Malkovich said). Sam hears what Malkovich is laying down and takes the job in the mail-room, which necessitates that Bay and Co. give us a, like, five minute Sam-Working-Hard Montage. And then the Evil Forces of... The Decepticons attack.
The message of the most recent Transformers' movie is thus almost, “Quit being so f’ing entitled, all you recent college graduates (even/especially you ivy-leaguers!), and do some real f’ing work to get what you want out of your lives, whether that be meaningfulness or money”, but becomes, after the Evil Forces of... The Decepticons attack and Sam abandons his hard-work montage and takes it upon himself to help defeat them and save the world for what I’m sure he’ll tell us is the third time, “Don’t worry, all you recent college graduates (even/esp. you ivy-league punks), you won’t have to spend a very long time toiling away in the kind of tedium that real-f’ing people have to toil in to earn the kind of lives they want to live, the impending equivalent of a Decepticon attack is on the horizon!”
Now, I know what you’re probably saying, “But Max, it's a fricking Transformers movie! The Evil Forces of... The Decepticons had to return at some point, and Sam had to save the world yet again!!! And you’re reading way too much into all of Sam’s job woes and the significance of the Decepticons showing up right after Sam finally gets a job...” I know, I know, I know. However, this doesn’t mean I can’t bemoan the lost possibility of a Transformers' movie in which Bay and Co. lure us in with the promise of epic robot battles only to trick us into watching a meditation on the importance of not living an entitled existence and learning to do the often hard work necessary to make our lives what we want them to be. And this coming from a guy who wants almost nothing more in his life than epic robot battles...
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