10 More Awesome Sci-Fi Villains Wasted In Terrible Movies

8. Sentinel Prime - Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

Flash gordon Ming
Paramount

One thing nobody expected to receive from the Transformers movie is a good villain. Don't get me wrong, Megatron is iconic but his motivation boils down to "I'll kill you all".

But for the third entry, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the creative team devised a really interesting enemy called Sentinel Prime. Instead of making him a stock villain like Megatron or The Fallen, he is the former Autobot leader who turned against his comrades after becoming disillusioned with his quest for peace. You don't expect an evil moustached robotic truck to have any depth so you have to commend the writers for making him such an intriguing character.

Even when Sentinel Prime doles out the usual dire-logue you expect from a brainless blockbuster, you believe what he's saying thanks to the incredible talent of his voice actor, Leonard Nimoy.

Watching him talking to Optimus Prime about how he's proud to watch his pupil succeed him is truly touching, especially when Sentinel Prime inevitably betrays the Autobots. Sadly, moments like this are undercut with cringe-worthy scenes of a wacky butler wrestling Bumblebee or John Malkovich's character showing off his karate memorabilia. (I promise you those scenes are actually in the movie.)

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Contributor

James Egan has written 80 books including 1000 Facts about Superheroes Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about Horror Movies Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about The Greatest Films Ever Made Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about Video Games Vol. 1-3 1000 Facts about TV Shows Vol. 1-3 Twitter - @jameswzegan85