Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Grading & Discussion

[Daneel]

Friday: TF2 again beats Ice Age 3 by a smidge with $17.8 million. It's now made Domestic $268,737,000 + Foreign $240,178,819 = $508,915,819. Anybody know how much Dark Knight made 10 days in? Could TF2 top Dark Knight?!?!?!

Not sure about the foreign totals, but The Dark Knight had made $313,781,677 domestically after 10 days, so ROTF hasn't beat its record there. TDK eventually topped out at just over a billion dollars worldwide -- could Transformers: ROTF do the same? I'm not sure, but TDK certainly had better buzz in its favour. Clearly, the negative word of mouth from critics and (some) moviegoers hasn't hurt the film at the box office yet, but it's possible we'll see a fairly steep falloff soon.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Okay, the morning after there's still some things I'm unclear about.

When Megatron launched himself out of the ocean and into space, where did he fly to? I was busy messing with my popcorn and missed something. Did he fly/teleport all the way to Cybertron, or was that the Nemesis where he met with the Fallen and Starscream?

Who was the big guy rolling on the big wheel at the beginning of the film? Seeing his image online and in the trailers, I had thought he was a Constructicon, but he's killed early on. What was his name?

Who was the guy the Constructicons killed so the Doctor could use his parts to revive Megatron? Orci did an interview where he made it sound like this was going to be a G1 reference, but if it was it went over my head.

Surely the one thing no one can complain about was the FX, right? Actually, maybe I'll be the only one. Don't get me wrong, the FX on the whole were incredible, the detail just astounding. Many Transformers look even more photo-realistic this time. However... many scenes I thought looked cartoonish. It's still eye-candy, but not as convincing somehow as it was in the first movie.

On the whole, however, it was a movie I know my inner 10 year old Transformers geek would have died to have seen back in the day. And that's really, I think, the way to enjoy this film. Bonus points to the filmmakers for working Pretenders and insecticons into the movie. The movie Pretender made a lot more sense than the original G1 pretenders did.

You know, though, I really wish when Soundwave had launched Ravage, he said, "Ravage, eject. Operation: retrieval."

My initial complaint about the movie is why do you side-line Megatron AGAIN to introduce his never-before-referred-to-master-who-he-is-all-loyal-to?

To be fair, the Fallen is a character who actually has appeared before in the Transformers mythos. So he wasn't invented out of whole cloth by the filmmakers.

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah, I know. I just mean in regards to the first movie. There's no mention of someone being above Megatron in the chain of command.

 

[L_E_E]

Who was the big guy rolling on the big wheel at the beginning of the film? Seeing his image online and in the trailers, I had thought he was a Constructicon, but he's killed early on. What was his name?

DEMOLISHER, I think.

Who was the guy the Constructicons killed so the Doctor could use his parts to revive Megatron? Orci did an interview where he made it sound like this was going to be a G1 reference, but if it was it went over my head.

Some say it's HIGHTOWER.

I watched the movie in IMAX 3D. It cost some moolah since I had to pay for 5 people. But it was worth it. I wanna watch it again because I felt like I missed a lot of things. I'll just ignore the toilet humor. I just wanna see giant effing robots fighting!

Can't wait for the DVD.

 

[Finnegan]

This movie was total crap.

 

[captcalhoun]

When Megatron launched himself out of the ocean and into space, where did he fly to? I was busy messing with my popcorn and missed something. Did he fly/teleport all the way to Cybertron, or was that the Nemesis where he met with the Fallen and Starscream?

it's a Decepticon ship. said by some sources to be on Titan. the comic adap names it as the Nemesis.

Who was the big guy rolling on the big wheel at the beginning of the film? Seeing his image online and in the trailers, I had thought he was a Constructicon, but he's killed early on. What was his name?

as noted above, Demolishor. technically, he is a constructicon in that he's a contruction vehicle decepticon, but since Long Haul and Rampage are clearly seperate to Devastator, the g1 constructicons and these are not the same.

Who was the guy the Constructicons killed so the Doctor could use his parts to revive Megatron? Orci did an interview where he made it sound like this was going to be a G1 reference, but if it was it went over my head.

High Tower, as said above. i'm not aware of any G1 references there, since High Tower was never a G1 Constructicon. the G1 Constructicons were Hook, Mixmaster, Long Haul, Bonecrusher, Scrapper and Scavenger. High Tower was a 'Build Team' in Robots in Disguise, a group of Autobot contruction vehicles who became 'Build King'. the Constructicon High Towers are from Universe and Classics.

 

[Trekker4747]

So, basically, just chucking Megatron into the ocean wasn't a good idea, eh?

Really that was incredibly stupid. Wouldn't have made more sense to destroy him? Chuck him to a volcano, or something like that? But, nope, we're just going to toss him into the ocean. Out of sight, out of mind.

 

[Ethros]

^ Well they say at the end of the first film the pressures down there will crush him like an egg

... I guess that didn't happen then

 

[Blue_Trek]

It was pretty obvious Megatron would be back, the leaders of each faction are always getting resurrected

 

[Trekker4747]

^ Well they say at the end of the first film the pressures down there will crush him like an egg

... I guess that didn't happen then

Yeah and extreme cold was supposed to render the robots inert.

Eitherway, still wasn't a bright idea. I mean you can either chuck him in the coean and hope that pressures/cold make him inert or you can be sure he is gone and destroy him with a bomb, or chucking him into a lava flow or something.

What they did at the end of the first movie was pretty much:

"No, I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death and I'm not going to actualy watch him die I'm just going to close the door and leave him with one inept gaurd and assume everything went to plan."

 

[Crusher Disciple]

It was only one review I've read, but boy, it was a really bad one. And it was from a site that really liked the first film.

150 mins is far too long in my opinion. The first one dragged in sections and that was about 2 hours 15.

We had no idea it was going to be that long. I mean, it wasn't torture by any means, but I kept looking at my watch with this shocked expression on my face as it kept going and going and going.

To be honest, I went in there only expecting to point and laugh at it for hokey dialogue and bad characterization, so I was pleasantly surprised.

 

[Timby]

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
This poem doesn't rhyme,
GIVE ME YOUR FACE

 

[Jono]

Dropping Megatron to the bottom of the ocean is a fine plan as long as the All Spark was destroyed, but it wasn't. The Autobot made a silly mistake of letting the humans keep a shard. They should have taken it and used it to revive Jazz and it would be gone. Letting a shard remain where someone could take it was a stupid risk given Earth seems to be infested with Transformers, particularly Decepticons. The shard really should have had a constant Autobot guard and not left for the humans to defend. Plus when they do steal it back we could see an Autobot get killed. That was one of my issues with the movie, Decepticons died left right and centre but only Jetfire dies and he ripped himself apart to save prime. That twin Devastator ate should have died...no wonder the Decepticons can't win if they have a death:kill ratio of 20:2.

 

[Hermiod]

^I though Arcee died too ? (Here come the Women... erm Female Robots in Refrigerators types...)

 

[Dinosauricon]

BTW was anybody else confused a bit by Glenn Morshower's character (The NEST commander)? He played a similar character at the beginning of Transformers who I thought was killed by Blackout. According to IMDB they are two seperate characters....


I suppose it's kind of like the Legend Of Zorro (Interestingly another Orci/Kurtzman) where they brought back practically every supporting actor from the first (with a few exceptions)...but in completely different roles.

 

[Jono]

^I though Arcee died too ? (Here come the Women... erm Female Robots in Refrigerators types...)

She was two or three motorcycles and I only remember seeing one of them get hit when they found the kids.

 

[Bishbot]

^I though Arcee died too ? (Here come the Women... erm Female Robots in Refrigerators types...)

She was two or three motorcycles and I only remember seeing one of them get hit when they found the kids.

I believe two went down, although I can't be sure. One definitely survived though - whatever that means for Arcee as a whole - modular Transformers are a new thing - at least in this form.

 

[captcalhoun]

Arcee is supposed to have a hive-mind between her, Chromia (blue bike) and Elita One/Moonracer (purple bike, no one seems sure which name is right). IIRC, it's the purple bike that takes the hit.

Colonel Sharp did die in Transformers. The NEST commander is General Morshower. (seriously, that's his name, they named him after the actor)

 

[Peter the Younger]

This is rife with spoilers and is absolutely brutal, but it did make me laugh:

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/06/bonus_robs_transformers_2_faqs.php?page=1

 

[Aragorn]

For a loud, mindless movie about robots beating the crap out of each other, they sure dropped the ball on Devastator actually, you know, beating the crap out of other robots!