Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Grading & Discussion

I actually liked this film ... moreso than the first TF film. Feel free to check out my full review, but on the whole, I thought this was a much better crafted film than the original. While no one will mistake TF2 for a really good film, it's nowhere near as bad as the critics make it out to be. It's not as good as Star Trek, but it's easily a better flick than Terminator: Salvation and Wolverine.

 

Here's some figures so far (est.) from Box Office Mojo:

Domestic: $16,000,000 39.4%
+ Foreign: $24,600,999 60.6%
= Worldwide: $40,600,999

4,234 theaters

 

This movie is going to make a *lot* of money. The 4pm show I went to was PACKED. You don't get that unless there is a heckuva lot of demand to see the film. Longevity might be a concern, but opening numbers should be close to breaking records.

 

It was a clusterfuck in the beginning although I actually enjoyed most of it. But God was it long. It was two-and-a-half hours and it felt like three-and-a-half. LEARN HOW TO EDIT A FUCKING MOVIE, MICHAEL BAY! You're not making Lord of the Rings here.

Optimus Prime is still one of the all-time great good guys.

 

Yeah, after Prime the Autobots have no strong personalities at all. They're completely leaderless. They really needed Hot Rod to show up or something.

Jetfire was great and the Megatron/Starscream interaction was perfect. Nice to see some 24 alum. Glenn Morshower and Tony Todd's voice.

 

I thought Transformers was a much better movie, but I enjoyed its sequel, and I plan to watch it at least once more in first-run.

 

how can anyone claim there was no story? The Fallen wants the Matrix to destroy the sun, get more energon and create more Decepticons to ravage the galaxy and the Autobots try to stop him.

it's not fucking war and peace!

 

I noticed:

The shot of three "asteroids" approaching Earth was reused from film one, as was the Predator's flight. I noticed another reused shot as well. I'll catch it on my next viewing

 

International special forces teaming up...can I smell a possible Transformers/GI Joe movie?

I gave it an above average. Lots of action and stuff, maybe a bit too much humour but in the session I saw most of it was well received.

It was a long movie but I didn't really notice until I stepped out and saw the time so the movie kept my interest for its run.

I didn't understand why Jetfire needed to be restarted by the All Spark shard. The transformers crashing into the carrier seemed pointless, other then to have a cool scene.

It is an amazing coincidence that the All Spark found its way onto the planet that Matrix was hidden on. It would have been a nice little connection to the first film if they said something like the All Spark was drawn to Earth due to the Matrix.

When Sam is going off to college and he has his moment with Megan Fox the spinning camera made me feel a bit ill...it was just too much spinning camera action at once for me.

 

It's telling, then, that there's a Bad Boys II poster prominently displayed on Shia's dorm wall at one point.

I enjoyed the parts of the film where I didn't get the uncomfortable feeling that I was watching something Bay masturbated himself to in the editing room while everyone else had gone home for the night.

 

I just remembered - Soundwave was in this film and he was awesome.

 

Optimus was too powerful and defeated the Fallen too easily.

 

I'll agree with this. A lot of people are saying there was "no story". That's simply not true. There is a very interesting, potentially powerful story in there that deepens the mythos of the Transformers movie universe.

But then all the ball dangling, leg humping, liquid spewing jokes come out and the next thing you know the story gets muddled. People focus on those bad points and then forget the good points and voila - horrid reviews.

 

AND he was voiced by his original voice actor, the great Frank Welker himself.

 

To be fair, it wasn't Optimus that was powerful. It was his "enhancements" that made him powerful enough to take on The Fallen and the 'cons. This plays on a concept that has its roots in G1 where Ginrai (the Japanese version of Powermaster Optimus Prime) combined with another Transformer called Godbomber to make himself more powerful.

That said, I really wish that fight scene had been longer. What was there was spectacular however!

 

So... how come people are allowed to express whatever views they happen to have on this film without incident, when anyone seen to be disliking Star Trek on here was ceremoniously whinged at?

 

Hey, that's not fair, I whinged at ya for not liking it.

 

Excellent for all the shots of Megan Fox looking hot and all the scenes of robots beating the shit out of each other.

The script was bland and predictable as expected. Honestly though I think a good script would ruin a Transformers movie anyways.

Overall I'll gave it a very generous average score. It was fun and I'll probably see it again in IMAX.

 

I was not really impressed, actually. Here's my review:

First off, the marketing campaign seems to have worked. The crowds coming to see the movie required not one but two separate theatres to house them in. I don't think I've seen that before. Of course, the vast majority of the audience where men between 20 and 35 :P Although there were some women.

As for the movie itself, I was quite underwhelmed. At the start it provided a logical progression from the first movie: the Transformers are on Earth, and the Autobots and the miltary of the US and UK have teamed up to hunt down the remaining Decepticons, hiding in various locations. They operate from a military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and have been joined by a number of Autobots who answered Optimus Prime's call at the end of the last movie. Among them the impressively cool warrior Sideswipe, the three Arcee motorbikes and the twins, Mudflap and Skids.

The opening scene is set in Shanghai where the massive Decepticon Demolishor is hunted down and killed. Cool action sequences, most notably of Sideswipe slicing the Decepticon car Sideways in two. Sadly, that is all we'll see of both these new characters.

From that scene things get worse. Whereas the humour in the first film bordered on slapstick, it was fresh enough to be entertaining. I would not be surprised if some of the scenes with Sam and his parents where the result of the actors' improvisations. In ROTF, though, all the humour is scripted and falls horribly flat. Some is just gross. Think dogs humping each other, Sam's mom high on spacecake and the tiny Decepticon-turned-Autobot Wheelie humping Michaela's leg... Cringe-worthy.

Surprisingly, the comic relief in the form of Skids and Mudflap was not too bad. They are characters in the mold of Jar Jar Binks but their banter amongst each other and against Sam's sidekick Leo was short enough to not be too bothersome.

Despite the film's running length of 147 minutes, things felt rushed. Optimus Prime's death at the hands of Megatron, his subsequent resurrection, Jetfire's sacrifice and the destruction of The Fallen and his machine. It all happened so fast that it felt it was just all in a day's work. For Michael Bay, I think, it actually is

Despite the popularity of the sport, I won't be participating in a round of Bay-bashing. As director, he does his thing and he does so well enough. No, here the writing was the problem. Too much crammed into it (most of the interesting new Transformers are not named, killed off in the first minutes or merely seen from a distance) and failed attempts at humour seriously hurt the film.

Most striking disappointment: Devastator. He is not the combination of seven Contructicons, but seemingly an independent mind which happens to have a robot form made out of seven contruction vehicles. While Devastator was climbing the pyramid, the Constructicons themselves were in the fight in the village. I call that a major screw-up.

 

I had the opposite reaction to the first movie and thought that they made Prime too weak when he fought Megatron. In the cartoons and comics Prime is often shown to be more powerful then Megatron, despite what Megatron might believe.