You’ve probably heard about it by now: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen isn’t exactly receiving raving reviews, as painfully punctuated by a pathetic aggregate score of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes which I suppose puts the movie well on the way to becoming the highest grossing piece of polished turd since Titanic.
But I wouldn’t go that far on the nerd rage scale for this one. After all, Transformers as envisaged by Michael Bay is a movie that cannot be judged using traditional benchmarks. Earning half a star out of five from the resident Straits Times critic may even be seen as a badge of honour. However, what really disappointed me was the fact that the movie failed to excel even within its own narrowly-defined spectrum of awesomehood.
I shall try to keep this post short as I do not have the nice pictures I usually use to pad the content.
1. Megan Fox
I realize that she is about 50% of the reason why many people watch the movie, but I found her role disappointing. Instead of the hot girl-next-door supporting character she portrayed in the first movie, Megan Fox now plays the role of a decorative overly-perfected supermodel being carried around like a piece of dead weight attached to a pair of mammae. I have the feeling that even those annoying twin robots Skids and Mudflap had more dialogues than she did. Also, slutty is not a synonym of hot.
2. “Awesome” animation
Everytime anyone mentions the word “plot” to a diehard Transformers apologist, the immediate comeback is predictable: “But the CG animations are so awesome!” This meme is but an urban legend. Transformers 2 had worse animation than many other brain-dead blockbuster Hollywood hits of recent times, including its own predecessor.
Whereas the original movie paid great attention to details and fully exploited the camera angles to make the CGI Autobots and Decepticons blend in naturally with their surroundings, the second movie clearly saw no need to put in any such effort. The robots generally float around the scenes looking like they are lit by a magical invisible light source from another direction. The twin robots look extremely cartoony and unrealistic, the exploding aircraft carrier looks so completely CG and fails to project the intended sense of grandeur and scale, Devastator looks about as awe-inspiring as its collectible-toy counterpart, fight scenes are often jerky and poorly choreographed, and the list goes on.
3. “Awesome” action
Another urban legend. The amount of explosions in the movie is pathetic. Fight scenes all play out in exactly the same manner. Michael Bay’s idea of fighting is basically robots crashing into one another linearly repeated about fifty times. And oh sure, some French and Chinese buildings received a few light scratches and maybe a few thousand people died in the movie, but at the end of the day not even a single city was annihilated! The Decepticons are a bunch of wimps who fail epicly at this villainous alien stint. There were probably grander action scenes in Harry Potter than this. I do not understand how people can honestly say that they watched the movie for the explosions because there weren’t really any.
4. Story
No one expected great insights into the human condition from Michael Bay. However, a movie has to possess some form of basic story-telling to link one explosion to the next. Transformers 2 has a story so terrible that it actually distracts the audience from the giant explosions and fight scenes. I walked into the cinema with the full intention of giving the movie free pass on its story but I realized that my capacity for bullshit reached its limit somewhere between the Terminator rip-off and the leg-humping Decepticon.
5. Lack of focus
There are so many things happening that the main characters become extremely diluted. Tons of new Autobots and Decepticons are thrown into the story to do nothing but sell toys. For a show that is supposed to provide excellent action, there is too much unnecessary distraction breaking the flow. The movie spends so much time showing off US military hardware that the Transformers pale in comparison. Who the heck is the Fallen again?
Conclusion
I guess the coolest part of the movie was actually the US military hardware showcase. Watching the cartoony Devastator climb a pyramid of poorly-animated CGI bricks is just not as cool as a realistic B-1B Lancer dropping a JDAM or a squadron of F-22s banking in formation before emptying their payloads.
I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of fine cinema and Citizen Kane is definitely far from my favourite flick. I wanted to enjoy Transformers for the awesome graphics and explosions, but ended up being disappointed by this awful hodgepodge of Michael Bay’s adolescent attention deficit disorder and a corporate-sponsored toy advertisement.
Imagine an awesome martial arts fight scene painstakingly choreographed to perfection. Now imagine that the actors are realistic-looking giant transforming robots. Now add explosions to that. Transformers 2 is not that movie and that is the real reason, typical cinematic criticisms aside, why it is a huge disappointment.
Woah, now I’m not so excited to see the show on Saturday already. o.O I expected it to be a good movie, with all the hype and all..
there are nice explosions leh….but all at the end, and very few :( and I absolutely agree with u on the storyline ( Michael Bay = all ‘action’, almost zero-human-touch approach) and that US military showcase. Seeing those Raptors and Lancer (and that Blackbird in the museum, even though it’s not flying) was more satisfying. I still enjoyed the whole movie though, coz I decided not to impose any expectations beforehand.
yep, story definitely could be done much much better…
Ignoring the story, I still enjoyed the show! :3
I saw the movie at a midnight showing and it was definitely not worth the huge line and lost sleep. Everything felt jumbled together and incoherent and HOMG so many sex jokes. And the comic relief via the twins and Sam’s roommate, whose name escapes me, proved more irritating than funny.
All hail Megan Fox stripping out of her biker suit, mmmmm. Best part of the movie.
Also, I think the plot got very cheesy and cliched when they threw in bullshit about Sam and his “destiny.” Ugh.
Sigh, Michael Bay. Why anyone still funds his projects is beyond me. The only talent he has is spinning the camera around and around his lead actors endlessly.
Nicely written. I just watched it last night, and now I’m trying to figure out why Michael Bay can’t get the second one right, ever. Transformers 2 was pure garbage, that will make tons of money, no doubt, but it looks like that is what they were going for-the money. And Megan Fox is also part of the failure, the girl is 100% trash; skimpy actress (well, she can’t act at all).
I really want to go back to last night and watch some other film, instead of Transformers…Nicely written review.
I wouldn’t call Isabel Lucas’ character a Terminator rip off because in the original G1 line of toys there was a line of Transformers called Pretenders. The Pretender’s could disguise themselves as humans. http://www.unicron.us/tf1989/toypix/grimlock.htm
Well for all the supposedly shown off military hardware, the army is about as effective as in the first movie and it’s all up to Optimus Prime to save the day. Otherwise it would’ve been what I’d thought Transformers would have been after seeing the first teaser: Independance Day with giant robots.
I’m watching it again tomorrow.
I doubt most of us watched Transformers 2 for the plot/storyline. Really though, seeing that most people are complaining about the lack of story in this movie, you have to realize that you only have two hours to fill an entire plotline into a movie.
Also, the twins and the sex jokes were funny as shit, but I guess it depends on your taste in humor.
OMG the number of sex jokes in that movie was ridiculous! did they REALLY need to throw in the dogs humping and the little leg humping decpticon. i saw a lot of little kids in the line while i was waiting and so i could not belive how many sex jokes they threw in! what are those kids gonna think!?
Whew, I’m glad I passed on watching that movie. Guess I won’t have to waste money for the ticket and popcorn for this one. Thanks for the heads up. o_O;
There was all that hype. So much hype as I’ve never seen for any other movie before. And of course, I never believed it.
Still, I watched it twice, just cos I could for free. :D
The JarJar twins were irritating indeed, but I’ll have to disagree with you on the quality of animation in the film – its definitely as good as, if not better than the first film. I cannot even imagine the insane amount of high quality work the compositors at ILM had to churn out with so many effects shots.
WTF was the go with the Decepticons ?? the movie was way to one sided !! i realise the autobots have to win in the end, but geez, atleast create Decepticons that put up a fight and give fans of them something to enjoy !! And what the fuck is optius prime doing flying around with decepticon defectors parts ??? disappointing character creation !!
I just watched it yesterday, and I didn’t think the flaws you listed above were strikingly glaring except for the girlfriend doing absolutely exactly nothing. But what I did take issue with was that Hollywood still hasn’t grown up. Optimus Prime died, Optimus was resurrected. Sam Redneck died, Sam Redneck was resurrected. What the hell.
I’m going back to my arty French flicks.
Great read Darkmirage! I really enjoyed this walkthrough to the movie’s shortcomings, without having to regret actually paying for a ticket. Well, I had a hunch it might turn out bad, but still hoped for some decent entertainment.
“Tons of new Autobots and Decepticons ” makes me think of the very first Transformers movie in the 80s (just because throwing in a bunch of new Autobots and Decepticons makes the toy-department happy). So that is also part of the legacy of Transformers, i.e. selling toys, so maybe there is little reason to be surprised. What is surprising is the logic of selling toys (to kids preferably) + sex jokes. What’s up with that?
Yeah, I watched Transformers 2 on opening night with a couple of friends. To be honest, I’m a dick when it comes to having a proper storyline, so I could hardly keep myself from walking out on the movie. Still, as a man, giant exploding robots (that can transform!) and hot chicks can still keep me interested.
I agree with the 21% Rottentomatoes gave the movie, and I doubt that I’d ever bother to waste 144 minutes of my time to watch it again. Too bad…I actually liked the first one. I have to say, killing Optimus was a shock to me, but I like it when people die in movies (if a giant robot was a person), and I started preparing various insults to the movie that I could loudly declare to everyone I met that wanted to see it when Sam brought him back (I was suppressing a cheer when the Matrix crumbled, too bad though) I died a little inside.
P.S. Did that giant two wheeled Decepticon that Optimus pwned in the beginning keep getting bigger with every camera change? First it was a larger than normal truck that threw a couple of pipes, then by the end of the fight (which I thought was rather drawn out) it was a ridiculously gargantuan rolling piece of poorly planned metal and rubber that was tearing apart highways! Gawd…
The last time I felt this dizzy while watching a movie was when I watched speed racer on the big screens.
“Tons of new Autobots and Decepticons are thrown into the story to do nothing but sell toys”
I like those word..
the story is controlled by Hasbro to push toys as much as possible to movie
same thing done by bandai to Gundam 00, Code Geass and Kamen Rider Decade.
Well I did end up watching it. I agree that new robots were thrown in without any proper ‘development’ and are just there to be pretty-looking cannon fodder.
The main problem with the movie was that it ended up on a worse note than it started.
The cool combat effects (Prime’s intro, Prime’s 3 vs 1 fight) were all well done, but the final battle was just utterly rushed.
Almost no slow downs, crappy camera angles, and as stated, 4 flying robots just crashing into each other rather than flying around and going ‘pewpew’.
If they put more effort into the ending fight scene it would’ve been cooler.
Can someone please explain to me why (most of) the soldiers are using rifle rounds against a mass of steel? .___.
Another thing: Near the end of the show, when StarScream was trying to kill the main character via aerial bombardment(lol), why couldn’t StarScream just directly bombard the humans defending Optimus Prime’s body? Or the body itself?
I saw the first one for free and still felt cheated. I think most TF fans would be better served rewatching G1, the 1986 movie, and Beast Wars.
Transformers movie rocks. i am a fan of Transformers ever since childhood. Now i have three kids and they all like the Transformers cartoon series and the Movie.
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