Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie review

Here's what you need to know; two years after the destruction of the Allspark, the Autobots have fully adjusted to life on Earth, now co-operating with the US Government to hunt down and exterminate the remaining Decepticons, meanwhile Sam plans to leave his life of planet saving behind and get back to a normal life, starting with a college education. Their fates will once again be entwined however as the Decepticons return, along with an ancient Cybertronian evil which seeks revenge on the last of the Primes and the eradication of the human race.
It's 2009, Transformers came out 2 years ago and was a major financial success, sucking up a massive $700 million internationally, so of course there's a sequel coming out to capitalise on Paramount's new billion-dollar franchise. But more important than all of that, there was a young lad who was ecstatic that after the badassness that was Transformers, they were actually making another one, that lad was me, I went to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in cinemas in 2009, and surprisingly, given how many times I watched the first one back then, I only saw this one once, that one time that I saw it in cinemas, so once again I was in the mood to be honest about this film, especially since this is pretty much unanimously considered to be the worst in the series, if not one of the worst films ever made, so let's get cracking.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen starts off in a way that immediately has me conflicted; as Optimus Prime once again pontificates over a prologue that establishes that humans and Cybertronians have already encountered one another. This is just the start of this series throwing continuity to the wind, given that in the prologue of the first film Optimus called Earth an "unknown planet," but retconing like that is something I can forgive if the film then A, doesn't retcon itself to death and B, gives us something good, so does it, well, sort of yes, but mostly no. Like the first film, we are then treated to an action sequence, one that introduces the human-Autobot alliance, as well as Mudflap and Skids, but that comes later. Admittedly, there is fun to be had in this opening scene, with a really, really big Decepticon causing chaos in Shanghai, there's also a little car chase that's alright on the side. Then, just like the first one, the film grinds to a halt as we are reintroduced to Sam. This is where the film really starts to suffer, as we once again have, in this even longer film, tones of screen time dedicated to Sam, his girlfriend, who thankfully is more tolerable this time, and his parents, oh god his parents. Let's just get the good out of the way shall we, I like that the parents are now aware that Sam's car is a Transformer, that's actually some good streamlining there, and later in the film, when the Decepticons kidnap them to use against Sam, that's an interesting idea, one that other Transformers stories over the years have also used, and used well. The problem with the parents really sums up a great deal, in that every single problem that the first film had has been brought back, and some of them, like the parents, have been made worse; they are even more intolerable in this film, and there's even more screen time with them, they're still annoying and awkward, but just more. John Turturro's back, and he is off the chain this time, making his performance in the first film look reserved. New additions include Sam's college roommate, who should never have been in the film, since he's completely useless and teeth grindingly annoying, maybe even the most annoying part of the film, but that might be a stretch. The only thing that could be considered a saving grace in the film is Josh Duhamel and company, who now form NEST, the human-Autobot alliance, but that's because it's the only subplot in the film that isn't morosely obnoxious and nonsensical, in fact it's kind of neat.

In my review of the first film I commented that the film seemed to think that it was a comedy, and that most of the humour was weak and awkward, but compered to Revenge of the Fallen, the first film is comedic genius. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen cranks the comedy up to eleven, and while it was semi successful before, this time it's pretty much a train wreck. What with the parents getting more screen time, and with his mum being an emotional wreck to gets high in one scene, the downright predatory lecturer, the annoying roommate who literally doesn't shut up, John Turturro, who's essentially playing a cartoon version of his character from the first film, gay dog sex, yes, gay dog sex, a robot humping Megan Fox's leg, and Devastator having testicles, I could go on. None of that even considers the comedy derived from the film's obnoxious stereotypes; Mudflap and Skids get a lot of racism accusations for this, but that's just the tip. This film deploys stereotypes of black people in Mudflap and Skids, old people in Jetfire, college students in Sam's roommate, parents in the parents, the working class in John Turturro's post Sector Seven career, the government in, well, the government, it's a shitshow, and none of it is funny, it's actually kind of painful. what's worse is that most of these comedic elements have no bearing on plot progression, but sadly this film doesn't have a serviceable sci fi thriller plot like the first one to save it, this film's plot is a total failure. It starts out intriguing enough, with tension between the Autobots and the government, Megatron coming back from the dead, and Sam starting to go crazy and seeing Cybertronian symbols in his head. But then the film loses the plot when it starts going on about astronomy, Egyptian history and destiny, culminating in the Fallen having Force and teleport powers for some reason and Sam having a death vision, it's ridiculous, and it makes no sense, as in literally no sense, but I'll get to the plot holes later. And that's not even considering that this film treats Transformers lore like toilet paper.

First up, the good, and an area where I think that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made improvements over its predecessor. The film's representation of the Transformers, for the most part, is better here than in the first; Megatron does things and says things, and he does them with the cunning and villainy that was lacking in the first film, save for one detail, I like this film's version of Megatron more. The one detail kind of ruins it though, as the film gives Megatron a master; that master is the Fallen, a weak as hell villain who does literally nothing until the film's finale, and rectons the history of the Transformers in a way that I cannot stand. Plus, him being Megatron's master is just bad, in concept and in execution; Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons, he even says it himself, "Even in death, there is no command but mine." A great line for sure, but one that comes not even 10 seconds before Megatron kneeling in subservience to the Fallen, what sense does that make. Something the film did nail, and I do genuinely like, is the relationship between Megatron and Starscream; they did Starscream far better in this film, with a portrayal that is slimy, cowardly and sadistic, and Megatron's distrust and hatred of Starscream is also well done. Unfortunately however that's it for Decepticons with personality, it's an improvement for sure, but of the 20+ Decepticons in this film, I only cared to remember the names of 5, and some of them aren't given names, which is stupid, evidently Michael Bay went for quantity in the sequel, and it doesn't work. Then there's the Autobots; again, you have Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and Ironhide, then a bunch of others who do little, say little, and have little personality. Ironhide's probably the most harmless of all of them, being the same ill-tempered arm-cannon wielding badass as before, Bumblebee is also pretty much the same, and that's not a problem, then we get to Optimus, and like Megatron, we start to have problems. This portrayal is as flawed as the first, just in different ways; while the unbefitting attempts at comedy like "sorry, my bad" are now gone, they've been replaced with equally unbefitting lines like "give me your face," one that the tfwifi had a field day with. They seemed to 'fix' Prime in this film by making him uncharacteristically violent, and like before, there are slithers of wisdom of compassion in there, and he has some really good lines like "You'll never stop at one," in response to Megatron's "Is the future of our race not worth a single human life," but then Optimus Prime disfigures and mutilates the Fallen before ripping out his Spark and crushing it, and proclaiming victory over his mangled corpse, which makes him no better than the Decepticons, and makes this paragon of wisdom and compassion into a blood thirsty warlord, they really couldn't have missed the mark any more.

My biggest problem however, ahead of their perversion of Optimus and their demoting of Megatron is what they did to the Matrix of Leadership. As I said, this film treats Transformers lore like toilet paper, and the stupidest aspect of this is them taking the Matrix of Leadership, perhaps the most important relic in Transformers, and turning it into a McGuffin. Over the years the Matrix has been and meant many things; but what has never changed is its significance, it has always meant something to wield the Matrix, it's never simply been a spiky key. Probably what annoys me the most about this is that it's just another Allspark; in the first film the good guys were looking for it, they found it, and then had to keep it out of the hands of the bad guys who want to use it for evil, the Matrix in this film is exactly the same, good guys look for it, find it, keep it out of hands of bad guys, it's lazy writing, and the name Matrix was no doubt chosen precisely because of its significance, it's a relic that Transformers fans will recognise, which is ironic given how unrecognisable it is as a spiky key. There is one scene where they try, where someone says that the Matrix is earned instead of found, but as I'll get into later, this film's about as consistent as Social Justice, and it renders the Matrix completely wasted, swapping it out with, for example something comparable to an Omega key, would make more sense, have the same impact on the plot, and not completely waste the Matrix of Leadership. In fact, how's this for an idea, after the destruction of the Allspark, Megatron is revived and still wants to build an army, he goes looking for a key that will turn on a sun harvester that his Decepticon minions found off world in his absence, killing earth but giving him the energon he needs to build his army, with the added motivation of killing humanity after a human (Sam) killed him in the first film, then you'd have a revenge plot that makes sense, as well as something resembling motivation for the villain, which the Fallen doesn't have, and you'd cut out all the Egypt and astronomy and ancient Transformers nonsense that retcons the shit out of the first film. Right there I think I also put more thought into a plot than the writers of this film did. On a slightly less know-it-all note, the aforementioned quantity of Transformers is also a problem, though that's simply a matter of large ensembles and good character development being effectively mutually exclusive, a problem compounded by this film's character development being utter shite, I don't even remember catching most of their names in this film, more doesn't inherently mean better, though the people who made this film clearly disagree.

Now for something that would be good if the film knew how to not overdo things, the action. There's one good action sequence in this film; the fight in the forest with Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream and Blacko- I mean Grindor. Unlike the film's finale, this fight is not completely over the top and ridiculous, being a very small fight in comparison, and, it being 3v1 with Optimus taking on Megatron and his second in command, has a good amount of tension to it, and it also doesn't outstay it's welcome, it's duration is pretty much perfect. Revenge of the Fallen makes the legitimate improvement of mostly ditching the shakycam, the hand-held cam is still here, and it's a bit more controlled this time, and the excellent mounted and panning shots are still excellent, benefited by visual effects that are about on par with the first, so still really good looking, but they really should calm down with the tracking, evidently Michael Bay doesn't know how to keep a camera still, and it actually annoys me in some scenes. There's one scene that's particularly annoying, with Starscream and Megatron on a roof, there are six shots in this scene, and all of them are tracking wide shots with either left to right or right to left camera movement, there are no close ups, no mounted, minimal angling, every shot in this sequence is the same, it's dull to look at. But here's where we get to the real problems; the film's climax, this time taking place in Egypt for some reason, is about 45 minutes long, now I wouldn't have as much of a problem with this were it not for a few things. For starters, the Transformers aren't the focus of this climax, the focus of the climax is Sam getting to Optimus Prime, and essentially having to go through a warzone to get there, this could work if the battle wasn't stupidly long, but it is, and if the human characters were decent, which they're not, in this climax I wanted Devastator to step on John Turtorro and the roommate, and while it kind of makes sense that Sam's parents are there, subbing them out for Megan Fox and having less of all 3 of them would have made it more watchable, even if Megan Fox does drop a solid(ish) F bomb. Easily the biggest flaw with this entire sequence is how excessive it all is; it goes on for far too long, and there's no substance to it at all, and the explosions get repetitive. And for some stupid reason Michael Bay seems to like explosions that explode like fireworks, but it makes them look less like explosions and more like pyrotechnics, they look too controlled, which is weird given how out of control everything else is. It goes on for so long, and there are so many things going on, so many useless characters, so many Autobots and Decepticons, so many explosions, it gets really numbing at a point. And what I find both most bizarre and most inexcusable is the laziness of this film's editing; the first film reused footage a few times, which was lazy, but not like this, they not only reuse shots from this film, they reuse footage from the first Transformers movie, multiple times, and they mirrored and reversed at least one shot, which makes me think that it isn't just one, I'm honestly surprised that with a budget of $200 million, they still couldn't be arsed, and just recycled footage.

So this film's got problems, lots of problems, but maybe there's at least a bit of hope if the film was consistent and made sense, well, assuming you haven't noticed yet, the film is not consistent, in fact it makes absolutely no sense. One of the biggest WTF's of the film is Alice; a 'sexy' student at Sam's college that turns out to be a Decepticon spy, which in and of itself isn't the problem, the problem is that she's a Transformer, she is a Cybertronian robot that transforms into a human. Ignoring for a second the fact that it makes literally no sense that a non-biological organism (NBE as they were designated by Sector Seven in the first film,) can transform into a perfect imitation of a biological organism, it's one of the stupidest sights the film has to offer, it looks completely absurd when a metal tentacle fires out of her mouth, and even worse in a dreadful close up of her face as she 'transforms,' an effect that looks more like a person's face being slagged by molten metal. But the biggest problem is also, ironically, the smallest, as this film is full of so many tiny little inconsistencies, like Alice being a robot, or the fact that apparently no one kept a record of Cybertronian history, or the fact Sam didn't think to use a shard of the Allspark to revive Optimus after the Decepticons used one to revive Megatron, or the fact that apparently "raw power" can kill a Transformer and then bring it back to life. How is it that touching a shard of the Allspark can send Sam insane after he held the entire Allspark for most of the first film's climax, how come 5 Decepticons went to the ocean floor and six came back up even though they killed one of their own for parts, from where did Sam get that big arse Knife and from where did Megan Fox get that very professional looking bandage in the middle of a desert. I'm still going, how about Sam now having a destiny, one tied to literally tens of thousands of years of Human and Cybertronian history, even though the only reason anyone wanted him in the first film was the glasses, how about why didn't the Fallen swoop in and snatch the Allspark instead of sitting around doing nothing on Saturn for a few dozen millennia, or how can the Primes can bring Sam back from the dead, and how do they think he's worthy of wielding the Matrix, even though the Fallen, who is clearly not worthy, can also wield it, and not have it turn to dust in his hands like it did for Sam, or how Jetfire defected from the Decepticons because he didn't want to live a life of hate, when the leader of the Autobots is going around ripping off faces and ripping out Sparks like a psychopath. Are you getting the point, plot holes can be forgiven if minor or few in number, but this film is so sloppy and full of plot holes that it completely collapses, it destroys itself with how loosely and messily it all comes together as a whole, if you can even call what's on offer here a whole.

Is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen terrible, at this point I'm sure you know my answer to that. The film does make improvements in a couple of aspects, the film's presentation has seen minor improvements, with less shakycam and more tracking shots, though even they start to get annoying, and they Got Starscream right, Megatron about half right, and Optimus Prime about a quarter right, so that's something. Other than that though, there's very little to like in this film, as all of the first film's biggest failings have remained unfixed. Even the action, which is as entertaining here as it was in the first, outstays it's welcome something absurd, and ends up being boring. But without a shadow of a doubt, this film's biggest failures are its story, characters, and comedy; the plot is so riddled with holes and so prone to nonsensical logic and retconing that it falls apart, the characters vary from serviceable to face punch worthy, with the majority leaning towards the latter, the film tries so desperately to be funny, with results ranging from dull and humourless to offensively un-funny, and the film's constant use of obnoxious stereotypes does nothing but hurt it more. Add on to that the fact that it doesn't give a shit about the story it's trying to tell with the material that it's pulling from, and you piss me off both as a fan of movies and a fan of Transformers. I don't think Revenge of the Fallen is unwatchable like some people claim, but it's most certainly terrible, and it's a film I'd recommend avoiding, but bring round some friends and break out the alcohol and maybe then this film can be enjoyed, just not for the reasons the people behind it intended.