TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
By: Joey Magidson & Myles Hughes
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It's everything you would expect from a sequel....not good
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MAGIDSON
I never thought I’d be able to say this, considering my distaste for the first installment of Michael Bay’s Transformers, but
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a much worse film than the original Transformers. All of the issues that I had with
Transformers (and there were many) are back, bigger, and louder than ever. Compared to this, the first movie was solid piece of
filmmaking. This movie is an utter mess, without rhyme, reason, or competency. I find it hard to believe that I will see a worse movie
this year than this one. They say for a movie like this one you need to turn off your brain, I suggest turning off the projector instead.
The movie picks up a bit after the events of the first one. The humans have teamed with the Autobots to hunt down Decepticons, and
all seems right. Our hero Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college, his girlfriend Sweaty Car Chick, I mean Mikaela (Megan Fox) is ready
for a long distance relationship, and the world is perfect. Then, he begins seeing visions due to a piece of the Allspark, and bad
robots start arriving everywhere. Chaos ensues, without a bit of logic or intelligence.
The one thing I liked about the first film was the relationship between Sam and Mikaela. Here, that’s all down the drain. I liked the bits
of humanity in the first one, but none are to be found here. There is no humanity, no logic, and no plot (which is numbing considering
the film is 2 and a half hours long. It could lose 45 minutes and not be any worse for it). It is just a shallow excuse for special effects,
which is all well and good, except that you can never tell what is going on during any action sequence. The film is so annoying it
almost put me into an anger coma.
The humans in the film are all back from the first one, and here they are even more useless. The surviving Transformers are back,
with plenty of new friends (including two incredibly racially insensitive Autobots, but the less said about them, the better, though they
made me long for the days of Jar Jar Binks), but you can barely tell them apart. The film is just a mess.
This isn’t the right film to discuss logic, but there are so many holes in this movie that I can’t resist. Characters drop in and out of the
film, appearing suddenly in places they can’t possibly be at. A Transformers god appears at one point, but has no explanation (think
the second Matrix film), an infinitely powerful character (two even) are dispatched with surprising ease, the robots still can only
transform into GM automobiles for some reason, and above all else, I must ask this question: If the Decepticons can transform into
humans, why do they bother becoming machines?
I wanted to like Transformers 2 a little bit, if only since it’s the summer and it fits the mindless entertainment of the season. I ended up
hating it more than any movie I’ve seen in a while. It’s inept at every level, and fails to provide even the tiniest grain of redemption for
itself or its makers. Michael Bay has made a movie that makes Pearl Harbor look like Titanic, and he will have to work hard to not
make me think of him from now on as Uwe Boll with a bigger budget. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is assured of making my
year end list of the worst movies of the year.
*/****
HUGHES
While it has its moments of silly, distracting humor and epic-scale robot fights, this doomsday-by-way-of-Hasbro-toys sequel is
ultimately unable to stack up to the sheer dumb fun of the first film. Running about 30 minutes too long, featuring many pointless
asides, a senseless plot, and a weak central villain, it's a movie to be enjoyed for the spectacle, and is good at what it does, even
though the fun has diminished after the original. Shia LaBeouf continues to impress, especially in the first half where he appears to be
channeling John Nash by way of Paul Giamatti. Megan Fox makes for great eye candy as ever, and John Turturro ruthlessly steals his
scenes as one of perhaps too many sources of comic relief. Overall, it's a fun movie, but if you didn't like the first one then you'll
probably hate it.
**/****
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