[MOVIE] Transformers 2

[Zashara]

I believe this comes out today.

 

I know Emp will be lining up to see it and all that jazz.

 

So, thoughts?

 

I'll be seeing it on Friday night (and hopefully between now and then FINALLY watching Transformers)

[Haxorsist]

I went to the world premiere last night, and I thought it was pretty lame. Megan Fox was hot as hell like I expected, but she was never naked and the movie kinda sucked. It was long and I was just waiting to leave the cinema the last half hour.

[Emperor]

I have actually comments but they are not PG13... so look away...

 

First my thoughts.

 

I do not plan to see it until it comes out on netflix.  I was suckered in last time and wont be this time.  I love movies.  All kinds of movies.  But I am growing more and more tired of the junk that is coming out to appease the masses.  Mass produced turds that deliver no plot and some pretty CGI to blow away the ignorant audiences.  I do not begrudge people for liking this movie... if you come back and tell me.. "Empy this movie had some great special effects and I liked it for that".. I will pat your head and give you a treat.  If you come back and tell me how good the plot is and how great the dialogue was... I am going to lose respect for what you like in a movie.  Don't get me wrong, I like movies with little substance at times.  But not with a subject I love.  I loved the Transformers as a kid.  I had high hopes for this film when it came out.  Michael Bay F-ed me and laughed as he went to the bank.  From what I am reading from those sane people that disliked the first movie as I did, this one is much worse.  I mean... again... I was there opening day. I had bought my tickets early.  I hyped it to the wife.  I was/am embarressed I ever talked up the first movie.

 

If these reviews just lower your expectations a little I take it as a win.  Again, I am not going to edit them so look away if you can't handle language... or some spoilers.

 

My favorite excerpt:

 

None of them pushed the story along and each one felt like the choreography was based on a 10 year old holding up two Transformer toys and mashing them together over and over while making crash sounds with his mouth.

 

I don’t know if I’m turning into an old man or not because the things I have to say about Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS 2 are the same shit I used to hear old people say about the movies I grew up loving. “It’s all noise!” and “I couldn’t tell what’s going on” and “There’s nothing but action and it gets boring.”

 

So, am I now that old dude with his nose in the air, not getting why the damn kids would like this trash?

 

Maybe. But probably not because I can understand why a kid would like this movie. It’s made for 8-12 year old boys. It’s got an edge of danger, with some really, really off-color humor and language, but not too much… it’s got two extremely hot girls essentially fucked by Michael Bay’s camera (Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas) every moment they’re on the screen… it has visual orgasms for 85% of its screentime and doesn’t really give a shit about the rest of it.

 

But you know what? There came a point where the movie went so ridiculous, so absolutely outer limits, that I couldn’t help but just turn myself over to it.

 

There’ll be some spoilers in this review, which shouldn’t be a big deal as by the time it’s posted most of you who were dying to see it will have either already done so at the midnight or still be in the theater. I don’t have long to spend on the review as I’m about to leave the country for a few days and still have a lot of work to do before I do, but I’ll hit some spoilery stuff here.

 

This movie reaches a point about halfway in, shortly after we’re reintroduced to John Turturro, that I just kinda decided that if I was sitting there waiting for a plot thread that made any sort of sense, any real character motivation or any subtlety whatsoever then I was fighting a losing battle and not taking the movie for what it is. It’s a big, loud, wet fart, but it’s a spectacular one. Unlike TERMINATOR: SALVATION which was such a disappointing, limp film you can see Michael Bay flexing nuts in every frame, millions upon millions of dollars parading in front of your eyes for the entire overlong 2 ½ hours of the movie.

 

It’s an interesting comparison. T:S never gets as bad as TRANSFORMERS 2 does, but the former film doesn’t have a solid vision. It’s like McG’s heart was in the right place (I’ve talked to many people who worked with him on the movie and they assure me he was striving every day to make a good movie, something that would work and I believe them) but he lost sight of what was important as cool, shiny new toys and ideas were presented.

 

With TRANSFORMERS this is what Bay wanted to make. No question about it. He never lost sight of what his main goal was, show the money up on the screen. At all costs. At all times. Everything screams big budget. The cinematography, the effects, the editing, the length of the film, the pacing… for good and bad it’s all to show summer movie-going audiences that a shit-ton of money was spent on this movie.

 

I suppose I should go over the plot, but why bother? Shia LaBeouf is at it again, off to college where he meets a fembot who you know is a human Decepticon immediately. She, for some reason, tries to seduce Sam in the first 30 minutes of the movie, which is the only quiet moment you get before the next 2 hour chase scene.

 

And no one seems all that surprised that a Decepticon looked like a human being and no more human impersonators pop up. The pacing of the movie is such that you get the impression that Bay doesn’t want you dwelling on anything that has happened. Don’t ask where the fembot came from, now it’s time to find the mysterious webmaster of a conspiracy theorist website… Don’t think about why he has just the right bit of info for our group, now it’s time to go to the Smithsonian to find an ancient transformer! Etc, etc, etc.

 

But at least Bay gives Shia and his family a little bit of non-action time. The poor soldiers… Tyrese and Josh Duhamel… don’t have one character building moment. Josh’s job is to answer the phone over and over again and shout orders in the desert. That’s it. After all the time spent developing him in the first movie I guess Bay just thought that was enough. He’s muscle now.

 

I do like the opening of the film and the set-up, which I wish they had followed up on. Basically you have a secret task force headed by Aaron from 24 (and also the first TRANSFORMERS movie) that is there to put a stop to rogue Decepticons that pop up around the world. Josh and Tyrese work with the Autobots to stamp them out as they appear. Pretty cool.

 

But then it’s all about Sam getting an eyeful of Cybertron history as a shard from the cube falls out of his sweater from the first movie.

 

There’s some overly complicated backstory about Transformers that were here back in the olden days and how a war between the two factions started when The Fallen, a Prime who turned evil, wanted to blot out our sun, the energy of which is needed for their race to survive.

 

Blah Blah Blah… Megatron’s back to kill Optimus because The Fallen won’t come back to Earth until the last Prime is gone because somehow The Fallen can only be killed by a Prime. We know this because he says it.

 

It’s a whole lot of exposition that takes place when all Bay wants to do is smash more robots together, the bigger the better.

 

I said at the start of the review that I didn’t like the action. Say what you will about Bay, but his action photography has never, ever been his weak point. The dude knows how to shoot it, how to edit it and how give us landmarks. He doesn’t often overcut his stuff, you usually have a sense of geography with his action.

 

The end of the first movie was confusing, but I never felt lost. It was just the different robots that were hard to keep track of.

 

Here the action is fast and furious, but ultimately didn’t feel like they had any real sense of drama to them. None of them pushed the story along and each one felt like the choreography was based on a 10 year old holding up two Transformer toys and mashing them together over and over while making crash sounds with his mouth.

 

There are a couple of really cool moments in the movie… Optimus’ hooks being one of them, but overall I was a little let down by the action. There was plenty of it, but none of it was focused or carried any real weight, even when (Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler) big Red and Blue is taken out. I guess since it happens so early in the movie I figured it wasn’t permanent (and I was right), but even with that particular fight being the best of the movie I felt no connection to the screen. I was never involved, just a passive observer.

 

I think a lot of that has to do with one of the key problems of the movie, the fact that it didn’t learn one damn thing from the first stab at the material. What did everyone say? More moments with the Autobots and the Decepticons. We want to know these guys. I want to see that bickering between Starscream and Megatron for more than just one scene per movie. I want to get to know the family dynamic of the Autobots. We never get any quiet time with any of them, except for Bumblebee who somehow still can’t talk and has to talk through fucking pop songs (and somehow movie quotes… by the way, Tom Hanks should get a cameo credit for as many times as his voice is used) over the radio again.

 

In short, Bay still hasn’t figured out that the robots are the stars of his movie. I defend Shia a lot. I think he’s getting a bit of a shit deal from the fan community and that he’s a real, competent and talented actor. His work is what saved the first movie from being a horrible experience for me. But he’s not the star of this series. Optimus Prime is. We hardly ever get to see any of the robots when they’re not fighting, with the exception of the new ‘bot named Jetfire (voiced by Turturro, according to IMDB) who should be called the Expositionicon. He’s an old timer that walks with a transformer cane and randomly shits a parachute due to incontinence.

 

But you know what? Fuck it. That kind of stuff is what I liked about the movie. Yes, Mudflap and Skids are every bit the horrible stereotype you’ve heard they are and god bless ‘em for it. I think it’s funny that the filmmakers either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t give a flying shit.

 

There’s also a moment where Turturro randomly shows his ass, wearing a Sector 7 cup and I could have sworn he said that’s what he wears when he wants to fuck. I was told afterward he said that’s what he wears when he’s in a funk. If it’s the latter then I like the movie a little less.

 

But to me the only thing I can take away from the movie is just how over the top retarded it gets. It’s the only thing that kept me from falling asleep. Without a dog in the fight or a reason to care for any of the human or robot characters the action gets really boring really quickly.

 

And I have to mention… seing it IMAX is impressive, but I wish they planned the IMAX specific scenes better. THE DARK KNIGHT caught some shit for the effect of widening out to IMAX size, then shrinking back down to widescreen, but Nolan had whole sections of the movie in IMAX and used 70mm for the flyovers of cities. The change in aspect ratio felt motivated in a strange way. Here, Bay shoots so much of the coverage in regular 35mm that in 5 or 6 seconds of screentime we can jump from IMAX to regular and back about 2 or 3 times. The effect is like that of a lightbulb that's about to go out, subtly flickering.

 

And then the ending… Okay, more spoilers here… Two of our leads die in the film, both of them come back (one of them visiting Robot heaven… and it’s not the character you think would naturally be going there) and when Optimus has his big face-off with both Megatron and The Fallen he goes in wearing a horror show cannibal suit.

 

Jetfire, the most interesting and developed character of the story… an ex-decepticon who changes sides, has a great heroic moment, but is still a geezerbot, so he’s damaged badly. When Optimus is revitalized he’s all beat up so Jetfire literally pulls his own heart out and says to use his parts.

 

So Optimus takes the energy and then the rest of the Autobots quickly assemble the dead robot pieces onto him. Gross! Just imagine the human version of this scenario… Suddenly our hero would turn into Jame Gumb… and I’m sure Bumblebee could have played a bit of Goodbye Horses to really hammer home the connection.

 

Yes, the movie is bad. Sometimes it’s so crazy I couldn’t help but just give myself over to it and it’s pretty. So there’s that. And there’s giant robot balls, dogs fucking and a 30 minute finale that is ridiculous, but impressive… especially since it’s so fucked up to think of Optimus getting power by wearing the dead body of a fallen comrade.

 

I don’t think I’d recommend this, really, but I don’t think anybody who is at all interested in seeing this is going to decide based on what I have to say anyway. See it or don’t. You know where I stand.

 

This review ended up being much longer than I anticipated and probably as random and wandering as the movie I’m trying to discuss. Oh well. Off to do some laundry and prepare for my trip to the great white north tomorrow. I’ll let you know more when I can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Emperor]

Another bad review... I think it is about this movie :P

 

Love the Cake metaphor...

 

I know that food metaphors are the province of lazy movie reviewers. Check the archives of every critic you’ve ever read, and start in their nascent period, before they achieved full-fledged professional asshole status – you’ll see at least 1 or 2 reviews built around the substitution of cinema for eating. It’s where clichés like “Eye Candy” or “Comfort Food” come from, from tired people numbed by pretty, mindless crap being poured into their eyeballs.

 

With that being said:

 

I used to be the kind of person who believed there was no such thing as “too much cake.” The concept was silly to a slovenly, melty person like myself. Tell Ron Jeremy there’s something like “too much sex.” Tell Stephen Hawking there’s something like “too much breakdancing.” “Preposterous!” they’ll say. “Ludacris Bridges!” Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is 151 minutes of truth to that lie.

 

Around hour one, I was pretty satisfied with this sugary cinematic confection. But then another cake was placed in front of me. And another. And another. And Another. And I couldn’t scrape off the frosting, or pick off the roses made of icing. I had to eat every last cake. Not piece of cake; Whole Cake. There was no milk to wash it down, no moisture of any kind to help ease the cake into my tummy. It was shoved down my throat like a rifle butt was behind it. It was fast, angry cake, stacked up, undigested in my stomach like Donkey Kong girders. At some point, I actually forgot what cake tasted like as I gagged on yet another mouthful of icing and sugar. Then the movie ended.

 

Criterion controversially added both The Rock and Armageddon to their collection in the 90’s. They explained by saying something like “These films perfectly capture a style of filmmaking that deserves to be represented and examined by those who appreciate film.” I want to say that Criterion can go ahead and replace those two with this, because Revenge is a movie that perfectly encapsulates everything that is Michael Bay. In a filmography that includes Bad Boys II and Pearl Harbor, this is Bay at his most masturbationally indulgent.

 

And yet, I won’t say that, partially because Criterion doesn’t give a shit what I have to say (neither did the Rep working the lobby once he found out I was in radio,) but mostly because this isn’t really a Michael Bay movie. This is Michael Bay making a cinematic mixtape out of James Cameron’s filmography. Roger Ebert wrote that The Rock was a movie built out of other movies. Revenge of the Fallen is built out of the earnest grandiosity and sci-fi goofiness of The Abyss, the mean-spirited, often degrading sitcom vibe of True Lies, the posing, preening evil of Terminator 2 married to the technical brilliance and horribly shitty pacing of Titanic. And those are just tonal and plot similarities. The shots themselves are often direct lifts that make you think Bay’s DVD/Blu-Ray shelf begins with C and ends with Ameron.

 

Shia LeBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky, an everyday doof with a girl (Megan Fox) way out of his league, on his way to college after spending a couple years hanging out with his alien robot car, (Bumblebee) with whom he saved the world from alien robot jets. (Megatron and Starscream)

 

The film opens with a beautifully disorienting action sequence featuring the Army working in tandem with The Autobots, (good bots) climaxing in an alien robot truck (Optimus Prime) parachuting out of a bomber and onto the face of wheeled alien robot thing blowing up Singapore for the Decepticons (Bad bots.)

 

An alien robot devil (The Fallen) wants to suck all the energy out of the sun , and so he sends alien robots to find a shard of the all-spark, last seen being shoved into an alien robot jet (Megatron) to kill him. They then shove their shard back into Megatron, which (logically) resurrects him.

 

Sam, aided by his pet Alien Robot car, enlists alien robots Stepin and Fetchit, aka Car Car Binks, to pick up John Turturro and his hairy bananahammocked ass (rethink your IMAX ticket now) to find an Alien Robot Jet (Jetfire) who will teleport them to Egypt where Sam can decipher the alien symbols infesting his mind after touching his All-Spark Shard. From there, he will find The Matrix of Leadership, which will help Optimus Prime defeat The Fallen, ensuring Sam survives to hump his girl on the hood of his pet car yet another day.

 

Other things that happen include everything.

 

Gay dogs dominating each other. An RC truck doing a Buscemi impersonation humps Megan Fox’s leg. John Turturro escapes being peed on but spends a considerable amount of time being dwarfed by Robotesticles. There’s mousetrap sight-gags. A camaro crying. A jet farting a parachute. A boy goes to robot heaven. A woman eats a bag of weed cookies and tackles ultimate Frisbee players. Green Day.

 

Some will read this and agree: This is simply a case of too much cake. If I want to see the everyman ascend beyond death to be visited by alien angels with the answer to life, the universe and everything, I’ll watch Ed Harris do it. If I want to see a stone killer slowly stroll at the camera as clouds of destruction billow, Robert Patrick is waiting on DVD. Revenge of the Fallen is a shortsighted pastiche of all Cameron’s worst clichés with pacing as smooth as the Transformers “Bionicle-crapped-a-box-of-razors-and-brillo-pads” designs.

 

Some will read this and think: There’s no such thing as too much cake, and this pussy is basically telling me that Michael Bay just made the best movie ever. The only thing better would be if the old British Jet-Robot with a walking stick sighs and says “I’m too old for this crap,” after totally kicking some Decepti-butt. Wait, that happens? Really? Well then, more cake, please.

[Emperor]

And another... wait... bad review...

 

Sigh. I can’t believe my eyes. I don’t want to believe them. TRANSFORMERS REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is one of the most unrepentantly juvenile, gleefully offensive, mind bogglingly inane films I have ever seen with a real budget behind it. And that’s saying a lot. There are things here I never would have believed had I read about them – things I would have found to be exaggeration and hyperbole on the part of oversensitive, agenda driven people looking for a fight. But I saw them, plain as day. And I’m still having a hard time believing what I saw.

 

By now most of you know me pretty well. I’m a Bay fan. I love his over saturated, testosterone dripping romps of wanton destruction for what they are. Michael Bay isn’t the guy you get to tell a great story – I’ll never defend his storytelling ability for a minute.

 

No, Mike is the guy you get when you want to orchestrate and compose a nine movement symphony of carnage and mayhem - a popcorn chomping festival of mindless abandon. He is the reigning king of spectacle – a guy who makes films with their own laws of physics. Every bystander is beautiful. Every car is souped up, turbo charged and throbbing with power. And he can even suspend night so he can show every capitol of every country in the world bathed in daylight all at once so we get a sense of just how important this mission is to every other person on the fucking planet. Hoo-ah! He is one of the most blatantly ripped off, visually visceral guys out there, having influenced an entire generation of action movies...whether you like it or not.

 

But left unchecked he can apparently make a seriously mind numbing piece of shit.

 

This is a film as epic in scope as it is in its failure. As much as I loved the first film, even I (in my review - HERE) admitted a number of its glaring flaws. Fortunately, everything that was right about the movie overshadowed the robot pissing, the goofy as fuck Turturro and the sneaking giant robots. When it worked, it REALLY worked. The storyline introducing us to the Transformers through the eyes of humans slowly over the course of the film was fine for a first film. It was okay because we, as an audience, needed to buy these things as characters over time. And ultimately we did. But everything that was simply wrong or just underdeveloped was excused because, well, we wanted to see what fifty foot robots beating the shit out of each other looked like…and that’s exactly what Michael Bay gave us: fifty foot robots beating the shit out of each other.

 

But now we’ve seen that. We’ve watched fifty foot robots beating the shit out of one another and now we’re ready for what’s next. Unfortunately, what’s next is more of everything that was wrong the first time. Here Bay magnifies EVERYTHING bad about the first. You thought robot pissing was weak? Check out robot farting, robot crying and giant, clanging robo-testicles. Oh yeah. Michael Bay wanted his big cast iron balls in the film and there they are, dangling off of Devastator in one of the film’s defining dramatic moments. I guess he couldn’t get away with a giant, limp swinging cyber-phallus, so he went with the next best thing.

 

But if that weren’t enough, he had to add even more comic relief than the first time around. Remember Turturro? Yeah. Well apparently he had it in his contract that there needed to be a character even more obnoxious than him to say all the REALLY shitty lines. It’s Turturro squared.

 

Then there’s the Joepecicon – a terrible GOODFELLAS joke gone awry in the form of a small Decepticon who cracks wise…incessantly. And worst of all, the frightening sidekicks of the film and the mistake this film will most likely be forever known for: Mudflap and Skids, the Stepin Fetchbots of the film. It’s as if Michael Bay looked at Jar Jar Binks and said “Oh, fuck no. Really? People find THAT offensive? Fuck that, I’ll show them a fucking stereotype they’ll never fucking forget!” And he does.

 

Oh. My. God.

 

They speak in clichéd urban slang, tossing around phrases like “I’m gonna pop a cap in your ass” while fist bumping and mumbling unintelligently in a voice that sounds like a bad Chappelle Show sketch. Then you get a close up. And they each have bug eyes and a gold tooth. Then there’s this jackass comment about them not being able to read. My jaw was on the floor. I mean, if you’re gonna toss out a bad stereotype, at least have the courtesy to make that stereotype a complete badass so as to deflect complaints that this is a deliberately negative portrayal. These mother fuckers are incompetent, bumbling and never, EVER, cool.

 

And all this leads to the worst sin of the film. It’s called TRANSFORMERS. And yet, 90% of the film is spent entirely with the above collection of tools and occasionally Bumblebee who has mysteriously lost his voice again. Sure, the film OPENS with Optimus Prime and all the badasses from the previous film. But they’re barely in this film at all. It’s more about Shia and Megan running around, collecting incompetent sidekicks while half-assing their way through an Indiana Jones plot. Ironhide? Ratchet? They’re all back at the base. They could only spare a pair of sambot jackasses for THE MOST IMPORTANT MISSION, LIKE, EVER!

 

Which leads to the next issue – the plot. There isn’t one. As one reviewer pointed out, this film is roughly a few minutes longer than 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - and yet it can’t scrape together enough of a story to be, you know, somewhat comprehensible. I mean there are a few story elements here that get strung together into something resembling a MOVIE, but there’s zero through line that anyone can explain.

 

Shia gets zapped by an energy that turns him into an unwitting memory storage device and he becomes the kid from FLIGHT OF THE NAVAGATOR, so the Decepticons want him because of a piece of info he has on a lost artifact, so he has to find the artifact first. Throw in a revenge subplot that makes zero sense (They sacrificed their lives to betray me! But I’m okay and they’re dead, so now I’m super pissed…wait) and a race against time because only a Prime can defeat The Fallen (um, why exactly?) and you get something that you can follow, but never, ever care about. And before you try to point out “isn’t that every Michael Bay movie,” let me say: no, it isn’t. He’s never been this completely incomprehensible. It’s like the script was written in one sitting on a Morphine bender, with the writer nodding in and out of consciousness, thinking that he’d already written what happened in his dreams and simply picking back up where the dream left off.

 

But the action…the action has to be pretty awesome, right? Um. No, actually. This time around it is even harder to discern than before. Bay puts all the focus on the humans whenever possible, with the giant robots doing all their fighting in the background. Most of the time the fighting is so fast and furious that it is a series of digital blurs – the audience left unable to discern which is the Autobot and which is the Decepticon. The audience broke into applause no less than 5 times during the film, but this only further punctuated the problems as it was always during a slo-mo scene of violence. You see, when you can actually tell what is going on, the fighting is AWESOME. There are some truly spectacular moments of robot on robot assbeating - all of them in slow motion. But the rest of the time you won’t know and probably won’t care what’s going on.

 

This film is a total and complete waste; a soggy, half baked dessert of a film that you can’t even say “Well, at least the action was cool.” It is an embarrassment, a pathetic misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars that only serves as the new model for excess run amok. Hopefully ten years from now I can put this in and laugh about it the way I laugh about BATMAN AND ROBIN, giggling furiously at the idea that they spent that much money of robot balls and a cybernetic minstrel show. But right now I’m too disappointed, too bitter and just too appalled to find any of this funny. You know, now that I think about it, maybe Bay got his giant, limp, swinging cyber-phallus after all. It’s called TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN.

 

 

[Emperor]

I am done, but I have more of em if you still think this is a good movie.

[Emperor]

Every time I see this thread I get angry at the film again!!! 

 

 

[Emperor]

I hate Zash for opening the bottle...

 

Here is another one.

 

Oh I am not TRYING to find these... they are being posted in the order I posted them. 

 

So far I am reading.

 

1. Prepare to be offended by the racially stereotyped robots that make fun of African Americans.

 

2. Prepare for lots of noise... and so many special effects you come out of the movie dumber than you went in.

 

3.  This movie is more of a trainwreck than the first one.  People that liked the first movie are panning this one.

 

Empy's advice.  Save your money.  But if you see it reply to this thread.  I will have questions for you.

 

I got home after watching the new TRANSFORMERS film a little dazed, with a mild headache, ears ringing, slight vertigo, and a low-level depression, knowing that a generation of moviegoers (perhaps even two generations) would watch Michael Bay's latest offering and consider it…impressive, groundbreaking? Who knows? But the film's complete and utter dismissal of anything resembling a cohesive story or even two-dimensional characters (three dimensions would clearly be asking too much) is what disturbed me most. And while I could be like many, and simply sit here and type a succession of expletive-punctuated statements about Bay's abilities as a filmmaker or the utter contempt he has for his audience's ability to appreciate a well-conceived plot, that's not what I'm going to do here. I'm simply going to walk through what I liked and what I did not, and hope that I don't let my emotions or my throbbing headache get the best of me.

 

I did something last weekend that I rarely do before going into a sequel--I went back and watched the original. I did this because I literally could not remember a single thing about the first TRANSFORMERS movie. I also went back to reread my review of the original film, and I was surprised by how accepting I was of large portions of what I saw two years ago. But I realized while watching REVENGE OF THE FALLEN that many of the elements I appreciated about the first film still hold true. The one thing I will always give Bay credit for is showing us something we have never seen before, and this film has about 5,000 such moments. Seriously, if I'd had the ability to turn off the audio on this film, I might have done just that, because the special effects are often mind-blowing. From the tiniest insect-size robot to the enormous, pyramid-destroying Decepticon made up of about a dozen different construction vehicles, Bay literally hurls new robot after new robot at us to the point where we barely have time to notice the Transformer characters from the previous film.

 

Bay stages battle sequences the way a three-year old plays with Lego’s. He dumps everything out at once in one loud crash, and just starts snapping pieces together and tossing them into each other. I’ll admit, there is something mildly awe-inspiring about watching that much money get hurled around the screen. And much like a child at play, things get loud, there’s a lot of screaming, and shit gets destroyed. I could go through all of the terrible plot decisions and confusing story elements that never really get cleared up, but there just isn’t the time and I don’t have the inclination. Okay, maybe one thing--if the Decepticons can make themselves look human (as one robot who visits Sam at college does), then why don’t they all just do that all the time? Wouldn’t that make their job of infiltrating and destroying humans so much easier? Here’s another question, Do any of the women in Michael Bay’s universe own skirts that go below the upper thigh other than Sam Witwicky’s mom (which doesn’t stop Bay from being the butt of some pretty overt sexual humor)?

 

As much fun as it is driving a semi through the plot holes of a Michael Bay movie, that’s not really reviewing the film. But it is part of the movie-going experience of seeing REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. So much of the film and the decisions the characters make seem counterintuitive. For example, why would there be dumb robots? For all of the discussion and sensitivity displayed on this and other sites about the home-bots, Mudflap and Skids (both voiced by a white voice actor named Tom Kenny, best known as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants), nothing will quite prepare you for just how patently offensive these characters are. And I understand that the good-guy Autobots pick up human characteristics and voices from watching our media, but what the hell were these bug-eyed, gold-toothed, illiterate robots observing? Al Jolson movies? The filmmakers also decided to bring back John Turturro for this second go-round as the former Sector 7 agent from the first film, so we don’t really need additional comic relief from slap-happy ‘bots.

 

What else do you really need to know? Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox are back as now-established couple Sam and Mikaela. Sam is off to college, leaving Mikaela to work in her auto-body shop with her dad (now released from prison, in a wheelchair, and largely dialogue free). The AutoBots have incorporated themselves nicely with a special branch of the military that seeks out Decepticons and kills them. So all is right in the world until an ancient race of Transformers who visited earth thousands of years ago and are frozen under deep in the ice are set free. Then there’s some crap about Decepticons who still exist on the rapidly crumbling home planet of the Transformers. Then it turns out that some of the exhibits at the Air and Space Museum in D.C. are actually Transformers, but having just seen the NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM sequel (and having grown up in the D.C. area), it’s very clearly not the real museum. Then there’s the old British Decepticon who it turns out has switched sides; then there’s the Decepticon named The Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd) who’s even more evil than Megatron (still voiced by Hugo Weaving). Then Sam gets a secret robot language imprinted on his brain. Then they end up destroying pyramids in Egypt. Got all that? Now explain it to me, please.

 

Look, I don’t need a film to make 100 percent sense for me to enjoy watching it. But when a film like REVENGE OF THE FALLEN does everything in its power to create as much noise and chaos as it can to push you away from the screen, how am I supposed to get engaged in a film like that? The truth is, I’ve always appreciated Michael Bay’s ability to direct large-scale, complicated action sequences, but this is the film that finally defeated him. The sequences just don’t make any goddamned sense a lot of the time. There are too many characters, and, yes, I’ll say it, a lot of these robots look alike, so sometimes I can’t even tell who I’m supposed to be rooting for. As I mentioned earlier, the special effects in this film are seamless, while being almost impossible to appreciate fully. This was the absolutely most frustrating part of watching this movie. I could tell something cool was going on behind all the dust and spare parts, but I’ll be damned if I could pass a test on what I was seeing or hearing.

 

Look, I’m neither a Michael Bay apologist nor a knee-jerk hater. I’ve admired some of what he accomplished in the first TRANSFORMERS effort, and was utterly turned off by most of what was going on in REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. The entire experience watching this film was like witnessing a filmmaker dare his audience to try to make sense of, or even like, his movie. I’m not the sort of person who can turn off my brain entirely or lower my expectations in advance of any movie, but TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN really made me wish I could have done either. This isn’t the worst film I’ve seen this year, or even this summer, but it’s the one that tries the hardest and still manages to fail so completely.

[Zashara]

HAAHAHAHAHAHHA. YES I WIN.

 

I made this thread just to piss you off Emp and seriously, you could not have made me more happy than by posting all of that bile and frustration and anger and the negative reviews.

 

I think when I watch this movie I will just be laughing at the horribleness the whole time!

 

Oh you posted while I was typing this - your welcome for opening the bottle!

[Emperor]

Don't go see it Z.  If you know it sucks why are you going?

 

Oh and I am looking forward to how you like the first one....

[Zashara]

Because I got free tickets?

 

I don't know why I'm going to see it, but i don't have anything better to do. Maybe then I'll know what you are whining about.

[Emperor]

Well if it is a date, I wouldn't put out afterwards to make him suffer as you suffered.

[Vemynal]

that movie was horrible

 

I saw it cuz a hot girl told me to go see it with her, I've never even seen the first one

 

 

but *seriously* that movie was absolutely a disaster

 

and the "twins" were unapologetically racist!

[Zashara]

Well if it is a date, I wouldn't put out afterwards to make him suffer as you suffered.

 

You know I don't date!

[Haxorsist]

I'll post a link that will make you wanna see the movie, because misery loves company.

 

 

FML

[Emperor]

I am not a Fox hater.  I am not a Fox lover.  She has not acted in a movie I can point to and go.. now there is a talented acress.  So far she has been in two movies I hate... and that makes her unattractive to me.  She would not be in my top 5 list nor come to mind in any list I would make...

[reyler]

I had intended to write out this big diatribe, but I felt I should pare it down to this statement:

 

Buyer's remorse, anyone? Isn't this what you gave your approval for the first time around? Is anyone really surprised that, given free rein, Bay laid a giant steaming pig turd on your heads?

[Emperor]

http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie?skyline=true&s=i

 

Above is a review claiming that T2 is one of the greatest art house movies of our time... in a way...

[Zashara]

http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie?skyline=true&s=i

 

Above is a review claiming that T2 is one of the greatest art house movies of our time... in a way...

 

Best. review. ever.

[reyler]

The best part:

 

LaBoeuf projects a pathetic, wall-eyed dorkhood, when he's not babbling like a tumor removed from Woody Allen's prostate that somehow achieved sentience.

 

Although the fact that this crime against humanity has a user rating of A- at Yahoo Movies is a depressing sign.

[Nynaeve]

*shrugs* I've seen bad reviews about films I've loved before. I'll decide when I see it.

 

 

 

 

Nyn

[DPR]

 

It's just like the first one - which is to say, if you enjoy big budget action with tons of special effects, you'll like it. It's a bit busy, but the audience went crazy for it.

 

Trying to give a movie like this a "bad review" is like grading your dog on its spelling. What's the point?  Honestly, this was a toy that sold enough units to be made into a cartoon. Next thing you know, the chefs of the world will start giving the gum insde the trading card packs bad reviews. heh 

 

 

[reyler]

You know, Wes, that kind of logic is exactly why the people behind this thing thought it was okay to make a terrible movie. The original cartoon was created twenty-five years ago to push the toys, yes, but that doesn't mean the franchise didn't take on a life of it's own and produce some legitimately good sci-fi over the years in its many incarnations. Some really stupid stuff was done over the years with the X-Men franchise (especially during the 90's), but Bryan Singer didn't decide that made it okay to make a 2.5 hour Linkin Park video.

[Az]

It wasn't really that bad. :\  I'm not saying it was the greatest movie, but it did have pretty good special effects and transformers I wanted to see.  There were a few parts I didn't care for.  A few of the cruder scenes.  I mean robot testicles is kinda lame.  The Twins were...yeah that was pretty bad.  I think Muir wanted to rip my face off for making her go to see it. :( 

[SinisterDeath]

Anyone who thought Transformers 1 was a good movie needs a reality check. It wasn't good, the acting sucked. Thats a fact.

Transformers 2, actually looks better imo then Transformers 1. For one reason.

Less Acting, more boom boom.