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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Grading & Discussion

Grade the movie...


  • Total voters
    176
Wow, seeing that size scale makes me wonder what will happen if they ever bring Metroplex or Trypticon into this.

Or Omega Supreme. I really hope he is in the next movie (if there is one). One of the best moments in the recent IDW comics was when Omega Supreme turns up to help the Autobots and then later takes on Devastator.
 
I saw it last night for the advanced screening, and I have to say - do not watch this film if you love the first one. Honestly, Bay hasn't improved the film in the slightest and this is annoying to say because the first Transformers film is in my top 3 films, but this one doesn't make the cut.

It's just another Michael Bay movie now. "We'll put an explosion here... and another one here!!! Oh, I got an idea, a really loud explosion!!!". The storyline isn't really good, it's another "oh no, Earth will blow up" crap. The only good fight in the film is between Optimus vs Megatron, Starscream and I think 2 other Decepticons, and Optimus kicks ass for a while. But everything is so fucking confusing, especially the end battle where most of the time you're sat there saying "is that a Decepticon or an Autobot?"

Not to mention the fact Bay has crammed in so much shit that the original characters hardly do anything. Bumblebee is seen in about 15 minutes of the film (and does have a good fight if I'm honest). I think Rachet and Ironhide have all of 2-3 lines, the 2 new Autobots don't say anything, and there's still no explination as to why there's a female Autobot, which is why Bay left Archee out in the first film.

My main problem with this film though, is there is too much fucking comedy. The twins characters, honestly, they're talking everytime they're on screen (which is almost all the fucking time) and they're always trying to crack jokes and make the audience laugh. It worked, but after a good hour of it, you start to get bored. Then all the other characters who were in there for comic relief. Simmons, Sams doomroom buddy, and just ugh. Even the last battle was seemingly IN THE SAME PLACE THE FILMED THE FIRST BATTLE IN THE FIRST FILM. You even get the "bring the rain" line from the same character. Along with like 20 Decepticons who've come out of no-where.

I'll give a better review later, just wanted to jot my thoughts down before I go to work.

A modest 7/10 for me.
 
Devin from CHUD is calling it a "woeful disaster".

How am I not surprised...
On Twitter he posted "TRANSFORMERS is a disaster. A tedious, grueling disaster." He states that he enjoyed the first movie a lot but went on to ask of the second film "why is it so BORING? why is there so little action? Why so much slooooow bullshit?"
 
Cky has this bang on the money. I just got back from the cinema and thought the same things on every point. Yes, it had some funny lines but it went way overboard with it. And those twins? First, who the hell are they, and second, why weren't they destroyed? Awful.

The best bits for me were:
Every exchange between Megatron and Starscream
The opening chases/fights
Optimus vs Megatron, Starscream and whoever the other Deception was ("I'll take you all on!!!")
Constructicon (I assume that's who the multi-bot was)
Ravage
Jetfire (the only one with a personality)
Megan Fox
The prologue in the past, solely because it made me think about Beast Wars

I switched off a lot during this film, which is a ridiculous thing to happen in a film about giant fighting robots who can transform into stuff. Well, allegedly. Not a lot of transforming actually happened. Too much human waffle again.

I'd give it 7/10 as well.
 
i loved the first one and i FUCKING LOVE THIS ONE!

FUCK ALL YOU HATERS!

Jetfire and the Twins got a lot of laughs in my showing! Okay, I'm kinda disappointed Sideswipe and Arcee didn't get to do a lot, but what they did do was cool.

I absolutely loved Prime kicking Megs, Screamer and Blackout's asses. Even better was Primefire kicking Megatron and The Fallen's butts. Sideswipe's disposal of Sideways was cool.

The other thing that also irritated me a bit was the fact that Demolishor, Sideways and so many of the Decepticons never even got names.

Devastator is not the combiner we all know from G1. He's the combined form of six or seven construction vehicles, true, but Long Haul, Rampage et al are seperate from him, literally. He's after Simmonds whilst the others are scrapping with the 'bots.
 
i loved the first one and i FUCKING LOVE THIS ONE!

FUCK ALL YOU HATERS!

Jetfire and the Twins got a lot of laughs in my showing! Okay, I'm kinda disappointed Sideswipe and Arcee didn't get to do a lot, but what they did do was cool.

I absolutely loved Prime kicking Megs, Screamer and Blackout's asses. Even better was Primefire kicking Megatron and The Fallen's butts. Sideswipe's disposal of Sideways was cool.

The other thing that also irritated me a bit was the fact that Demolishor, Sideways and so many of the Decepticons never even got names.

Devastator is not the combiner we all know from G1. He's the combined form of six or seven construction vehicles, true, but Long Haul, Rampage et al are seperate from him, literally. He's after Simmonds whilst the others are scrapping with the 'bots.

Please don't get me wrong, I did like the film. Just in this one Bay has tried to force feed us so much pointless, unneeded shit that it's made the film (in my opinion) not as good as it could have been.

Going back quickly to what HappyDayRiot said about the things he liked, one thing did niggle at me slightly which is the exchanges between Megatron and Starscream. But the problem was, did anyone else feel that Starscream was just a complete pussy during the whole film? I loved the Starscream from the first film, and as far as I know, Starscream always secretly hated Megatron and Optimus because he thought their personal battle wasn't for the best of his race, and he wants to overthrow Megatron and take control of the Decepticons. I got non of that from him in this film.

But again, Bay went too overboard on this movie. I would have been happier with, a couple more Decepticons and Autobots, but not so many so we loose all character development, and end up having Sam shouting "OPTIMUS" every 10 minutes. Other than Optimus, there was no character development from any Autobot.

Sorry editing! I want to clearly point out once again, that I still thought this was a good movie. I'm not saying it wasn't good, just Bay crammed too much in to it. This is the Spider-man 3 of the Transformers series in my opinion.
 
But the problem was, did anyone else feel that Starscream was just a complete pussy during the whole film? I loved the Starscream from the first film, and as far as I know, Starscream always secretly hated Megatron and Optimus because he thought their personal battle wasn't for the best of his race, and he wants to overthrow Megatron and take control of the Decepticons.

Um Cky Starscream has always been a self serving slightly cowardly prick who only wants Megatron dead so he can be top dog and he hates Optimus just because Prime is the leader of the Autobots, so it sounds like Bay is being true to the source material in this case.
 
But the problem was, did anyone else feel that Starscream was just a complete pussy during the whole film? I loved the Starscream from the first film, and as far as I know, Starscream always secretly hated Megatron and Optimus because he thought their personal battle wasn't for the best of his race, and he wants to overthrow Megatron and take control of the Decepticons.

Um Cky Starscream has always been a self serving slightly cowardly prick who only wants Megatron dead so he can be top dog and he hates Optimus just because Prime is the leader of the Autobots, so it sounds like Bay is being true to the source material in this case.
Yep, it's got a strong G1 vibe in this.
 
Yeah I know he's been a self serving coward, but in this he just sounded like a complete pussy. Made his voice higher and never really fights.
 
But he is a self serving coward who never challenges Megatron directly. He just wants power. Check out the first episode of G1 series and the dynamic is the same.

Love Megatrons line, even in death he is still a leader. Then he says hello to his master...
 
The good points:
• More robots. No complaints about a lack of giant alien transforming robots in a movie about giant alien transforming robots, this time.
• The comedy was much better (and less forced) than the first movie, with almost no 'wacky' racial stereotypes. Sam's parents and Simmons had some genuinely funny moments, to my surprise.
• Jetfire. Best character in the entire film.
• Megatron and Starscream's abusive master/slimy servant double-act.

The bad points:
• Way, way, waaaaay too long, with whole sections that just plodded. Nothing as blatantly time-wasting as the hacker subplot from the first movie, but they could easily have dumped the 'asshole National Security Advisor' stuff.
• Even at this ridiculous length, it still felt disjointed, as though they'd chopped out various bridging scenes and replaced them with...
• EXPOSITION. Jetfire may have been by far the most entertaining character, but he still got lumbered with the colossal monologues explaining the backstory. Memo to Michael Bay: spinning the camera round and round while a character is delivering a lecture is not a substitute for writing that exposition in a more interesting manner. God damn, Orci and Kurtzman are hacks.
• The Autobots are actually less developed than in the first movie. Optimus delivers a couple of blandly noble speeches, Bumblebee mopes like a child then shoots stuff, Ironhide and Ratchet get maybe ten lines between them. The others barely register, apart from Master Shake and Meatwad - er, the Twins.
• Other than Megatron, Starscream and Wheelie, the Decepticons are pretty much nameless cannon fodder. At least the bad guys in the first movie introduced themselves - and got to show off their cool transformations before being killed. This lot just growled and then were randomly shot by the US military.
• Nobody involved in the movie seemed to be aware that Egypt and Jordan are two completely different countries that don't even share a border (they're separated by, y'know, Israel) and that the Pyramids and Petra are over 250 miles apart.
• Again, it's a movie that I suspect will be easier to follow on DVD - the action in the robot battle scenes is just too close in to follow on a big screen. All I saw in the forest battle was: blur, blur, blur - hey, some blue, that must be Optimus! - blur, blur, I think that was Starscream, blur, blur, something blue hit something dark grey, so I guess Optimus hit Megatron, blur, blur - woo, not-Blackout just got fucked up! Somehow - blur, blur... oh, crap!
• The Fallen was a rather boring villain, just another growly Evil Overlord - and if he'd been chilling on his base on one of Saturn's moons for all this time, why were the Decepticons in the first film so bothered about finding and kowtowing to Megatron?
• Nitpicking: the Predator that we see taking off is a real one with a pusher propeller, but the one that arrives at the battle a few minutes later is the same fictional one from the first movie (probably the exact same shot, cheapasses :p ) with a jet engine.
• There were no smarts involved in taking out any of the bad guys, no tricking them into making mistakes, no playing on their personality flaws. Just shooting them with increasingly bigger guns.
• And the biggie... at least in the first movie, one Autobot and a couple of soldiers we vaguely knew died amongst all the mayhem. This time? Even bigger mayhem, but...

The first movie had many, many faults, but I think I preferred it to this because it (scarily) felt more coherent and didn't fall back on ALIEN MAGIC™ to get the main characters out of terminal scrapes.
 
Devin from CHUD is calling it a "woeful disaster".

How am I not surprised...
On Twitter he posted "TRANSFORMERS is a disaster. A tedious, grueling disaster." He states that he enjoyed the first movie a lot but went on to ask of the second film "why is it so BORING? why is there so little action? Why so much slooooow bullshit?"

I dont know who he is, but: "Why is there so little action"? The guy clearly didnt watch the film, it's full of action.

An awesome movie. A better plot than the last one in my opinion, more Transformers, action ,explosions, some comedic moments, Megan Fox and many, many occasions where she is either running in full chest bouncing slow motion or slipping around in positions designed, (purely coincidentally I am sure), to show off as much a glimpse of her wonderous rack as can be. What more can a film require?
 
The first movie had many, many faults, but I think I preferred it to this because it (scarily) felt more coherent and didn't fall back on ALIEN MAGIC™ to get the main characters out of terminal scrapes.

Least it had the right name this time
 
I saw it last night for the advanced screening, and I have to say - do not watch this film if you love the first one. Honestly, Bay hasn't improved the film in the slightest and this is annoying to say because the first Transformers film is in my top 3 films, but this one doesn't make the cut.

A modest 7/10 for me.
You trash the film and then give it a 7/10?

A bad movie should get 2/10 or3/10.

A 7/10 implies the movie was good.
 
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