Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (spoilers)

[cloudcity]

I have spent the last two days preparing myself to write this review, but it has not been easy.

It has been difficult to not take personally the assault I received at the hands of Michael Bay. I think because of how surprised I and everyone was that the first movie was sooo good that expectation coupled with a forgiveness for Bay's previous efforts have blinded us all.

Transformers (2007) was such a beautifully crafted piece that it stands as a great example of how to make a really good movie out of a summer blockbuster. Perhaps bay and the studio execs (Spielberg included) sat down and concocted the perfect recipe:

Take just the right amount of Action
Take just the right amount of Romance
Take just the right amount of CGI
Take just the right amount of Story
Take just the right amount of Giant Robots
Take just the right amount of Comedy

and you are left with Transformers (2007)

It was so popular with such a wide spectrum of movie-goers that a sequel was hurried onto the boilers:

Take the original formula and multiply every ingredient by a factor of ten

. . . and you are left with the complete mash up that is Transformers Revenge of the Fallen.

I was worried very early on when the narration went on for ten minutes too long. Optimus Prime explaining what has passed in the previous two years and continued to explain what we were seeing. Not needed!

Bang smash wallop crash boom Bang smash wallop crash boom Bang smash wallop crash boom.

Imagine that for over two hours. 90% of the characters and dialogue was worthless - absolutely no point to them being there. But nearly every word drowned out by giant robots knocking seven bells out of each other. And I even surprised myself at how quickly I grew tired of that.

I'm sory if you were expecting to read an informative and constructive review here but I simply cannot be kind to this one. Bay seems to have gone backwards in terms of development and McG appears to have made a decent movie (Terminator Salvation). Who'd of thought that 12 months ago?

RIP Transformers

[Commandergree]

I saw this with my kids yesterday evening - mixed feelings about it myself. I think because the first one was so good, I had not dared to expect the sequel to up to the same standards.

I think as cloud rightly says, the formula for this one seems to be based on "big robots fighting and smashing up things good" so we'll just have two hours of that and it will be a great movie! The nice thing about the first film was that there were fewer Transformers, so as an audience we had a little more introduction and story for each one. In this film there are all sorts of new Transformers, some whose names are shouted out in the middle of a battle scene and many who were not introduced at all before being smashed apart never to be seen again.

The background story of alien races being present on earth before the dawn of time etc etc has been done to death in numerous sci-fi films of the past (Stargate, AVP etc etc) so it is a little tedious to see this sort of storyline churned out again. And when did Decepticons get to disguise themselves as humans??? Come on - surely Transformers has enough history behind it not to need to pinch ideas from Terminator? In fact, all of the usual sci-fi film cliches are present - covert government team and media cover up, annoying government official who doesn't approve and has the president's backing to shut it down, hidden base storing valuable object which gets infiltrated, aliens and pyramids etc. etc. I know that these things do tend to form the basic plot for many films but in this one it just seems as though they have been churned out as a formula to pad out the many action scenes. As for the action scenes they are well done in terms of explosions and CGI effects but there just seemed to be too much going on and often it was difficult to see just was happening. For example, in the first film the highway chase where Optimus Prime takes out a couple of Decepticons was excellently done but too many times in this film it was difficult to appreciate just what had happened as a mass of metal and bullets spewed across the screen.

As a fan of the original cartoon series, I am pretty disappointed with the massive underuse of classic characters such as Starscream and Soundwave - Starscream has none of his cartoon menace and Soundwave was reduced to being a speaking satellite! I don't really feel that there was any need for the new baddie "The Fallen" either. The Sam/Michaela romance angle was also pretty lame and always felt like a forced inclusion to maintain the film's "eye-candy" content and the Leon character was a totally unnecessary (and annoying) inclusion.

Having said that, my kids seemed to be entertained for over(!!) two hours with all the fighting and noise and the twin autobots did provide a few humorous moments. I actually quite liked the appearance of the crotchety old Jetfire and strangely I got to like the Agent Simmonds character.

This could have been a pretty good sequel even with the basic cliched plot intact, if only Bay hadn't gone for OTT gunfights and explosions and added a little more plot and character introduction - don't get me wrong, I love seeing giant robots kicking the crud out of each other - but not when I can't actually appreciate just who kicked the crud out of who and how. Unfortunately, I suspect that I'll still probably buy it on Blu Ray when it comes out to see if I can slow down the action to see what I missed in the cinema.

[Kat]

I saw Transformers 2 on Saturday and although I didn't quite enjoy it as much as the first film (I'm never going to get over the magic of seeing them transform on the big screen for the first time) I did really enjoy it.

There were possibly a few too many robot-on-robot based rumbles for my liking, although the kids in the audience seemed to be loving every second so I guess it hit the right buttons for them! I liked the characterisation as much in this film as the previous film - and actually ended up liking Sam alot more in this film than before. I thought his mum and dad were comedy gold as well

I loved the design of The Fallen and of The Primes, and fell in love with Jetfire and thought his reference to his father was genius

Also - I have to say that at first I wasn't too keen on the idea of transformers disguised as humans but realised it was a reference to The Pretenders line of transformers, who have been around since the late 80s - although they never looked that pretty - here's the pretender Bublebee http://www.tfu.info/1989/Autobot/Bumblebee/bumblebee.htm

I do agree that there could have been a few less fights and a bit more characterisation (in places the script was amazing and I would like to have seen more of this), but can't help but think that this might partly have been due to the insane level of complaining amongst some Transformers fans after the first film because they thought there was too much time spent on the characters and not enough on the robots.

So yeah..long story short, I enjoyed it And I'm totally buying Skids and Mudflap in their Ice-cream Van form

[David]

I watched this over the weekend and thought it was OK but not as good as the last one.

I wouldn't class myself as a hard core TF fan. I loved the 1980's cartoon (and still do as I've just bought the Chines boxset with all 98 episodes and animated movie), had some of the toys (though I didn't have too many as I never thought they looked as good as they did in the cartoon), and don't really care for any of the more recent cartoons.

I didn't have any real expectations of the 1st film as was pleasantly surprised. I was looked forward to the sequal but it just didn't hit the mark. The story was fine and it had plenty of action. Oh and plenty of Megan, which is always a good thing. I found some of the humour fine but those two autobots with all the Hip Hop talk really, really irritated me - and that's from someone who doesn't mind Jar Jar.

I didn't buy Megatron playing second fiddle to the Fallen. There is no way he would be a lacky unless he was manipulating the situiation for his benefit.

I don't really care for the design of any of the robots. By all means update the vehicles to more modern versions of the 1980's version, but the robot versions look awful IMO. I found it difficult to tell who was who, especially during the fights.

Is there a reason why they used the same voice for Optimus Prime as they did in the cartoon, but not for Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave? Evertytime I heard Soundwave he sounded like Dr Claw from Inspector Gadget! No no no!

[Mara Jade Skywalker]

better late than never but i loved this as much as the first. i guess that could just be the big kid in me

[Ace Antilles]

Got the Hmv Exclusive transforming Bumblebee box for Xmas