Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Grading & Discussion

To those who've seen the movie, how does Welker's Soundwave sound? Anything like the original? And does he do anything in the film?

 

Sadly, you're right. The shit was lingering in my bowels for around 2 days, but, surprisingly, it didn't smell as bad as you'd think.

Thank you for your service.
-Jamman

 

Like those two or three instances in G1 where his voice wasn't modulated over a vocoder. In other words, Dr. Claw.

 

good. yes. he spends most of the movie in orbit raping a US military satellite and telling the other 'cons where to go to try to kick ass.

 

I gave it a 'poor', with appropriate pain in my nostalgic Transformer loving childhood heart. Yes, I went in expecting a summer block buster action flick and yes, we got action, but some action movies work and others don't. For me, this one didn't.

Let's start with the action, it all looked great, but every action scene was very chaotic and confusing. If that's the effect Bay was going for, he succeeded, but I'm not sure I like it very much, because it makes it so hard to care about what's going on if you can't follow what's going on. Distinguishing Autobots and Decepticons was still okay in most scenes (but not all, for example in the opening scene I was quite confused at time), but actually distinguishing separate characters, especially among the gray Decepticons and the underused Autobots, was often very hard.

That brings me from the best part of the movie (the looks), to the worst: the characters. The ones that actually got a decent amount of screen time, as opposed to just a one-second throw away scene or line, were very bland and thoroughly unlikeable for a variety of reasons. Bad bland dialogue, many failed attempts at humour (if you liked the joke attempts, good for you, but I found all the dog and leg humping, annoying parents, Turturro in string, Devastator balls, cowardly room mate, the Twins and what have you cringeworthy) and in general just no time spend to really get to know any of the Transformer characters. Jetfire and Prime got a fair amount of screen time outside of the action scens, but their dialogue was mostly plot exposition. And don't give me that "it's Transformers, so it should be about big robots fighting each other" line. It's Transformers, so it should be about Transformers, and if we would have gottten to know these Transformers so that we identify with their cause then when they start beating the crap out of each other, we actually care. Now, not so much. These weren't Transformers fighting each other, they were CGI on a screen accompanied by a lot of noise.

And then there was the plot. Yes, those who claim that there was a plot are absolutely right, of course there was. I don't think anybody will deny that. Actually there were multiple plot lines, none if which made a whole lot of sense and some of the more promising ones were just forgotten or played out like seen so many times before in other films (or stories in general). We had the 'aliens on earth in the past', 'conspiracy theory', 'hard headed politicians threaten good guys's plan', 'alien invasion', 'teen relationship angst', 'chosen person follows destiny to save world' all mixed and mashed together to such a degree that I got the impression that the writers were unable to take any of these and turn it into something interesting and so they decided to run with one plot line for some time and then just drop it in favour of another one.

I was really disappointed at this film, since I do think there is a lot of interesting story material and many interesting characters in the Transformer franchise, if only the film would just dare to stop and slow down and actually focus on their main (robot) characters for a few scenes, instead of doing non-comedy with secondary characters.

Some of you were wondering why many of the reviews on the internet are so negative. Well, I can understand why and I suppose I would probably agree with many of their points. It has nothing to do with 'hating' Michael Bay (which btw is a very cheap way of dismissing differing opinions), at least not for me. Why would I have any invested interest in 'hating' a director? And if for some reason I did, why on earth would I pay money to see his film? Actually, as I wrote, I think the direction and visual style was one of the best aspects of the film, although it is a style that might not be to everyone's liking. Personally, though I do appreciate what he's trying to do in creating this chaotic and kinetic feel, I could do with a little less confusion.

I have to add that I did like some of the G1 feel of the movie (since G1 is basically the only pre-movie incarnation of the franchise I'm familiar with). The voices of Prime and Soundwave, the all spark transferring its information into Sam (like the matrix being transferred to Buster in the G1 Marvel US comics), Prime dying and being resurrected, the matrix turning up (be it in a quite different role than in G1). All of these things were nice, but these small touches are not enough for me to save a 2.5 hour movie. Alas.

 

I missed the entire Jetfire conversation as my kid had to run to the bathroom. What did they say to each other? He was tagged decepticon but he didn't act like it.

Also, did they cover how new machines choose a side?

 

Which Jetfire conversation? He had a few backstory speeches.

It seems all you have to do is choose who you want to side with, but some robots are not aware they can.

I wish they would explain why when the All Spark creates new transformers that they are immediately hostile. It almost seems like the reserve from the cartoon and comics with Decepticons are the norm and the Autobots are the off-shoot.

On Wheelie, was he created by the All Spark when Sam dropped it or was he always there spying on Sam?

 

Wheelie might possibly have been around for a while - he recognised the 'old' Transformers in Simmons' photos, and I suppose it would explain why he talked like a 1930s mook. Not sure what he would have disguised himself as, though. A Radio Flyer wagon?

 

Jetfire (AKA Skyfire) being a Decepticon is actually a sort of a reference to the old comics and TV series, both of which had him be a Decepticon before switching sides to Autobots.


Interestingly, the original Jetfire toy is actually a Macross/Robotech Valkyrie/Veritech, although the design was altered to make it less Valkyrieish in the show and comics (Recent comics have homaged it's roots, though).

 

It's ambiguous, although Bay said (perhaps jokingly, hard to say) that he meant to kill her, she gets blasted and falls, but there's no dramatic "darkening of the eyes" or anything. With as much damage as the 'bots take in this film, it wouldn't surprise me if she popped up in the next movie whole again.

 

I was assuming the SR-71 was Jetfire. I missed the entire plot point where he explained the purpose of the fallen or what that contraption in teh pyramid was

 

The Fallen hates Earth because he wanted to destroy our sun to convert it into energon until he encountered humans, in which the Primes forbid him from using the sun harvester machine. A battle ensued and the Primes gave their life to hide the matrix of leadership, which powers the sun harvester. The Fallen has been searching and hating ever since. One of the pyramids at Giza was used to hide the machine.

 

I guess I'm the dissenting opinion but I saw it last night and thought it was dreadful.

Here's the problem-- the Transformers franchise has gone the way of the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, IMHO. With Pirates the first movie had a moderate-sized cast, a solid plot, and a good mix of humor and action. There were a few flaws but the movie was overall pretty fun.

Enter Pirates 2 and "sequel-itis". In others, let's make this movie full of "MORE".

More characters. More action. More exaggerated humor. More locations. However, let's put all of this "MORE" into a running time of under 3 hours. So, we've got a lot more elements to cram into a movie of "relatively" the same length. The end result? Nobody wins.

The problem that I had with TF2 is that there were so many characters that were shown that I became attached to NONE of them. The titular character of "The Fallen" barely gets 12 minutes TOTAL of screen time. Recurring characters like Ironhide and Rachet are reduced to set props who contribute nothing but background firepower to the plot. Bumblebee is reduced to a trained dog-- "Take my parents here", "go fetch this", etc. We're introduced to a bunch of new Autobots-- none of which have as much screentime as the ones from the first movie save for the UTTERLY USELESS "TWINS". (Honestly, they contributed NOTHING to the film. Chuck 'em and just give the screen time to Bumblebee.) The same goes for the much-hyped appearance of Devastator. In reality, he was just a bot who sucked-- literally!

Worse yet was the "humor" in this movie. From Sam's mother having the mental capacity of a lobotomized tuna to the barely functional Twins to Devastator's "assets" this movie delves even further into crude bathroom humor. The result is that I just didn't care. Much like in Dark Knight I bought Prime's "demise" as much as I bought Gordon's. As a result there was NO dramatic tension. I missed seeing the personalities of Epps and the other military soldiers. I missed choking up when Bumblebee was captured in the first film. I missed the sense of chills running down my spine as the Autobots arrived on Earth. I missed the elation of watching Lennox snag the motorcycle and take down the Decepticon tank in the first film. I missed the moment where Sam grew up when Lennox handed him the All-Spark and said "You're a soldier now". I missed watching Mikaela and Bumblebee use a tow truck to help toppel a seemingly invincible foe.

A friend described this movie as watching someone else play a video game. I agree-- there were so many characters introduced that either were never developed (the Autobot Corvette, the Arcee triplets) that I found myself reduced to trying to figure how who just got blown up or damaged in a shot rather than being caught up in the film.

There were a few things I liked. Ravage was pretty slick and I liked hearing Frank Welker back as Soundwave. However, the rest of the film-- right down to Prime's awful dialogue ("Give me your face!") was as flat as the Dr. Pepper I left on my computer desk yesterday.

I'm going to go back and watch the first film again over this weekend and try to rinse the bad taste of sequelitis out of my mouth. Wow-- that was just awful.

 

Wow, what a long, drawn out mess THAT was.

I'm a huge fan of the first movie, and I know a lot of people liked to accuse it of being mindless and incomprehensible, but underneath all that movie's crazy action was actually a pretty well structured, tightly plotted storyline to keep it all grounded. In fact it felt very much like a Classic Spielberg story.

This movie doesn't have any structure whatsoever. It's just a bunch of random scenes and characters jumbled together for the most part. Yeah there's a plot hidden in the background, but it's laid out so incredibly poorly that it almost doesn't matter. And the second half of the movie seems to drag on FOREVER.

Of course I could live with a shitty plot if there was some awesome action to watch. But where the first movie had TONS of great sequences that I never tire of watching, this one only has ONE as far as I'm concerned-- the forest battle. The rest was completely forgettable, or involved characters or robots I didn't care about to begin with.

Ugh. I realize Bay was probably under the gun to rush this out, and the writer's strike didn't help, but there's just no excuse for a movie THIS sloppy and poorly made.

 

Well said, you managed to word my opinion better than I did (though I didn't see any of the Pirates movies, so I can't judge how accurate that comparison is).

 

The only things I liked were: How they reinvented Soundwave, everything involving Ravage, and Jetfire (even though having a robot mimic the personality and physical traits of an aging human being is beyond stupid, it was still entertaining to watch and I loved his overall personality and desire to become an Autobot). And all of that was just so-so at best.

Tragic waste of a potentially great action-adventure franchise.

 

The mystical nature of the matrix, the space bridge and the sun destroyer were also explored in the cartoon series, rather than any toys.

 

Been twice (my wife to IMAX last night, my son to a morning show). Didn't like it.

Let me say that I thought the first ninety minutes were okay. But the 45 minute special effects extravaganza just left me bored to tears.

Did we really need forty-five minutes straight of robots punching on each other?

 

One question...

Is the silver corvette suppose to be Hot Rod aka Rodimus Prime?

Been a couple of decades since I watched the cartoon.

 

You know.. even with the Michael Bay factor added the movie was still bad.

I was pleasantly surprised by Transformers for the most part.. it was a Bay movie allright but some scenes were just too cool and the overall story worked (hated the closeup action scenes though because you couldn't tell what's happening until one Bot was standing and the other was down).

This movie was just too crammed.. to many Bots, a paperthin story (even for Bay) and somehow it never clicked.

The action for the most part was cleaner this time and i loved the last 30 minutes or so with all the military porn but that was it. A weak sequel i'm afraid but it will still bring in big bucks an be profitable so ready yourself for Transformer 3.

However Bay has stated he doesn't want to do TF anymore so i'm curious how a non-Bay version might look.