Reviews of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review

Posted : 2 weeks, 1 day ago on 9 December 2009 02:38 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

When I saw the trailer of the sequel of Transformers, I was excited about seeing it. When I saw it at the cinema for the first time, I enjoyed it a lot but after a second viewing of the film I realised that it wasn't that good, really. I think that this film had quite a lot of flaws. The biggest flaw in my opinion was that The Fallen didn't exactly have his revenge as it states in the title of the film. Other flaws were that it lost the tone of the story, there was way too much action within it. There was explosion after explosion after explosion. The desert scene around the end of the film must've been at least 30-40 minutes long and no matter what film it is, an action scene that long ruins a film every time! Also, the film was too funny. I didn't want to laugh but I couldn't help it. That sort of ruined it a bit like it slightly did with Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. Another thing: Transformers 2 ended almost precisely the same as the first film did.


Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky! His performance in the first one was really good but his acting in this sequel was really bad because I don't think he made the character as realistic, serious or as heroic as he was in the first film. Shia is a good actor to choose in an action film but he failed in this one unfortunately. Megan Fox shows in this film once again that she obviously does have a very sexy body and a beautiful face but she has no acting talent in any way whatsoever. One of the reasons why I am against Megan Fox being in Transformers and Transformers 2 is because particularly men would only watch it for her body not for her character if not for the film at all. She is someone to enjoy looking at and to drool at nothing more.


Michael Bay is a director that always makes action films but tries different ideas for action films which is why I think he isn't a very good director. I haven't seen all of his films yet but of what I have heard and what I've seen in some of his films. The script was awful! I don't even think it felt like a Transformers film even though there were the Transformer alien-robots in the film.


Overall, Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is a bad film that I was very disappointed with and deeply hope that Michael Bay doesn't do the third Transformers film.

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The quality has certainly Fallen...

Posted : 5 months, 1 week ago on 13 July 2009 10:47 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

"Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."

Bigger and more overblown in every aspect (except where it's needed), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen represents Michael Bay at his most unrestrained and confident. Bay and his trio of screenwriters (Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) have slathered this sequel with unrelenting excess, particularly dumb humour and an overwhelming amount of CGI. There's no coherent story here - just an arbitrary collection of explosions, robot battles and machismo posturing that's tagged with an awkward conclusion. The endless excitement is downright boring: there's no sense of anticipation, no tension, and no downtime...it's on all the time, like being stuck on a bus with a screaming baby. The movie, all 150 goddamn minutes of it, is just an audio-visual assault on all senses (including common) that mimics storytelling without understanding it. With the keen urge to bypass all traces of logic, reason, character development and depth, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an utter mess of an action opus.

Now...the story? Yep, that's horrible as well. Sam Witwicky (LeBeouf) is departing for college, and the Autobots are busily hunting the remaining Decepticons. When Sam conveniently finds a shard of the Allspark in his jumper, his brain is flash-loaded with ancient symbols pertaining to the location of a deadly machine that will let the bad guys destroy our sun (for reasons too stupid to explain here). Megatron (Weaving) is hauled out of his deep sea tomb (where the government dumped him as part of their military strategy to set up the sequel) and revived before being placed in the service of the Fallen - i.e. "The First Decepticon": a being so important that nobody bothered mentioning him in the first film. The plot more or less just has Sam becoming all spastic as the symbols overwhelm his brain while the robots engage in fight sequences. Sam and his pals also meet Agent Simmons (Turturro), and they all travel to Egypt where the pyramids are...because that's what happens when you give $200 million to a bunch of idiots who failed geography, and allow them to make a blockbuster.

The straightforward plot is padded out to an unholy two-and-a-half hours, which means the whole thing is packed with dreadful filler. For instance there's a subplot in which Sam and his girlfriend are too nervous to say "I love you" to each other...until, of course, the finale, because that's how it's done in Screenwriting 101. By the time the all-in rumble between the Autobots, Decepticons, Otherbots (?) and the US Army finally arrives, one will be too numbed and fatigued to actually give a damn about how it all ends.

The blunders of the first film have been accentuated rather than expunged, while the very limited charms of the predecessor are gone, leaving nothing to recommend. For Revenge of the Fallen, Bay indulges in so much excess that he delivers the cinematic equivalent of snorting cocaine off a hooker's arse. The "money shots all the time" approach robs the action of weight and coherency.

For reasons that escape this reviewer's mental perimeter, Bay and his writers place greater emphasis on comedy for this sequel. The dead space between the action is therefore reserved for rear nudity from Turturro, jive-talkin' Autobots (triggering uncomfortable memories of Jar Jar Binks), extended time with Sam's stridently unfunny parents, and a Decepticon spy with leg-humping tendencies. Does the concept of a robot humping a woman's leg seem funny to you at all? Bay seemed to think it was so hilarious that he also threw in two scenes of dogs humping each other as well. Transformer testicles also make an appearance, and there's an exceedingly long gag involving Sam's mother tripping out on pot brownies. And slutty chicks can transform into robots too, because the film patently refuses to make sense. If Bay had another ten million to spend, he probably would've tossed in a musical number as well.

When the characters aren't engaging in embarrassingly witless dialogue or doling out tiresome exposition, they're running away from explosions in slow motion (although outrunning an explosion is physically impossible). Meanwhile the "action" is relentless in its monotony. Robots pound on robots, humans launch rockets and missiles at robots (though never in the history of the sci-fi genre has artillery ever actually harmed aliens), robots wipe out humans, etc. This stuff goes on and on - far beyond what's necessary for a brain-dead, CGI-laden motion picture. Worse still, there are over forty Transformers in this film (most are interchangeable cannon fodder). Unfortunately the Transformers are all similar in design, not to mention they're poorly defined and make absolutely no visual sense whatsoever (a car can transform into a robot a few storeys tall?!). Combined with the director's typical hyper editing and close-ups, it's impossible to tell who's who during the battles. Bay is unable to keep his camera still for a second to allow a viewer to actually watch the combat, instead opting for dizzying camera patterns. In the long run the action becomes a nauseating, incomprehensible blur of confusion. It's frustrating and burdensome, and one will struggle to figure out what's happening instead of relaxing and enjoying. Revenge of the Fallen is just sensory white noise that beats its audience into either submission or boredom. It's like watching paint dry while being whacked over the head with a frying pan!

Naturally, Bay has less luck with the humans - his characters range from obnoxious to pointless. Every character is a bland cipher who either yells at the top of their lungs or runs away from explosions in slo-mo. Megan Fox's character is particularly superfluous - she serves no purpose in the story, and is there just because she's hot. The camera spends so much time ogling her torso that one will wonder if Bay allowed a 13-year-old boy to operate the camera. At the end of the day, the characters are all just stereotyped caricatures and there's no anchor among them - there are so many characters but no-one is in the centre to root for.

The CGI work courtesy of ILM is strangely mixed. On the one hand the facial expressions of the Transformers have more range, but on the other hand the integration with the live-action footage is less smooth and more cartoonish. There's also no sense of physics or gravity to these creations - the giant robots are just tossed around without any weight or inertia.

No Bay movie would be complete without the director's disturbing sense of reality. The women are all supermodel hot, and they love to spread their legs for geeks. Minorities are best used as comic relief, and conform to every stereotype imaginable. Oh, and a scene set in a foreign country must depict the country's clichés (just in case the under-titles don't make it clear which country we're in) - snails & mimes in France, and camels in Egypt. And of course, the American Armed Forces are fetishised - the final act more or less serves as an army recruitment commercial.

Perhaps more than anything else, Revenge of the Fallen is about Michael Bay's love for Michael Bay. He accomplishes this in countless ways; most overtly by placing a large poster for Bad Boys II in Sam's dorm room, and more subtly (but not really subtle) through visual homages (including a shower of fiery objects destroying buildings in Paris which causes a tower to collapse that's taken directly from Armageddon, as well as the destruction of an aircraft carrier which is an obvious nod to Pearl Harbor).

Fans of this woeful picture can only say a couple of things in the film's defence: it's entertaining and the special effects are amazing. But the latter is arguable, and the former is merely a subjective opinion. Every summer blockbuster has big special effects and action...Revenge of the Fallen is just a tired rehash of summer action movie conventions. Why bother?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen perfectly embodies every negative aspect of summer blockbusters. It's a big lumbering idiot of a movie that substitutes noise and movement for any type of emotional connection. Bay simply trudges through his hoary, heavily rehearsed motions of explosions upon explosions, and reduces the globetrotting plotting to a repetitive yawn. It's an unforgivably long, obnoxiously unrewarding and brutally tiring experience. Look, I understand the original Transformers was a colossal box office hit, and this sequel is doing just as well. I also understand there's a market for this sort of brain-dead blockbuster. The Transformers films may be popular, but so is junk food - and they both poison your insides and rot your brain.

At one stage John Turturro asks of a Transformer in relation to the current crisis "Beginning. Middle. End. Facts. Details. Condense. Plot. Tell it." - I'd like to ask the screenwriters the same thing.

Oh, and you know what? Michael Jackson saw this movie on opening night. Next day, he was dead. Coincidence?

1.2/10

Check out this video - it pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with this flick...in words funnier than mine.

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Transforms revenge into confusion, with laughs.

Posted : 5 months, 3 weeks ago on 5 July 2009 06:59 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

''You know what my father was? A wheel! The first wheel! And do you know what he transformed into? Nothing! But he did it with honor!''

Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to protect humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle.

Shia LaBeouf: Sam Witwicky

Micheal Bay in 2007 gave us an incredible CGI drenched offering called Transformers, which was fun and funny if what something of a mindless venture depth wise. So 2009, Bay graces us with the sequel, the so called Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and as soon as it starts you know this is going to be nothing new from it's predecessor.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen throws you into the action immediately after it gives us a brief history lesson on humans and transformers, so many new characters and locations that I couldn't even register what was going on. I mean an ice cream van suddenly appears in a rampant chase, and I'm pondering, asking even, where these new guys popped up from. Thankfully, Bay does explain where these ones came from, but later on this is revealed. So we have the little stabs at military promotion, we have the American way of life blazoned sickly by bay, we have more effects and CGI than a Star Wars prequel, and a new villain who looks like he just stepped off the xbox from Halo.

The cast should be mentioned. There is no John Voigt this time sadly, but we have most of the original cast gracing the screen. Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky returns, this time with a mindful problem at a new college, Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes shows us her mechanic side and also that she looks great but shes not a great actress, Josh Duhamel as Major Lennox replicates his performance from the first, Tyrese Gibson provides some good one liners and John Turturro gives us abit of a laugh too amongst proceedings.
Isabel Lucas pops up for a surprise I should mention, as Alice, who turns out to be a machine. This was surely a stab at Terminator for copying or vice versa, but definitely a nice twist on how a transformer can actually transform, and not merely restricted to vehicles or machines but organic lifeforms too. Opens up a number of possibilities.

''I shall rise, you will fall.''

The action, CGI, and chases are obviously top notch. However they are moving so fast sometimes, or there is so much going on when two robots are fighting it is hard to tell what is actually happening. I was at a loss at numerous intervals thanks to randoms running around aimlessly or transformers fighting each other in a confusing blur. The whole desert scene also made me scoff in a sardonic way. Was Bay saving money by filming in Egypt? It's obvious he was...and all the haters obviously will zoom into this little snag.

Overall, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen isn't as diabolical as most critics were saying, and it isn't as great as a number of fans have been boasting. Granted it has the dog humour, Sam's mother at college trying some marijuana cake, and some transformer laughs, this really is a clone and repeat performance of the first film with added effects, battles and new transformers, who ironically are not given enough screen time or personality. Again the only Transformers who we connect to would be Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and possibly Megatron and Starscream.
I can see Micheal Bay doing another Transformers film but before he does maybe he should make sure he ''transforms'' said script into an exquisite piece of story rather than just an eye candy rollercoaster toaster ride.

''I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message so that our past will always be remembered. For in those memories, we live on.''



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Watch the movie online

Posted : 5 months, 3 weeks ago on 1 July 2009 04:12 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

You can watch online here http://watch-movie-online-free.com/

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Hollywood 101

Posted : 6 months ago on 22 June 2009 12:50 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

Michael Bay laughs in the face of global recession with his 2009 summer blockbuster. It must be quite fulfilling to know that you can splash 200 million dollars on a film and guarantee that it's going to claim it all back at the box office. If you ever watched the first Transformers film then you'll know exactly what to expect from the second:

1. An unchallenging plot
2. Megan Fox in skimpy clothes
3. Sixty foot robots kicking the hell out of each other
4. US Army recruitment drive

All of these are present in abundance in the sequel. The action starts immediately as the Autobots continue to hunt down and eradicate rogue Decepticon enemies in the name of a free Earth. As always, some nerdy pen-pushing chucklefuck decides that the indispensable job carried out by the Autobots is a bad thing and tries to get them to leave the planet. Luckily, the Decepticons manage to kick up a fuss before they leave and Man and Machine must unite again to fight the alien threat.

In the middle of all this, Shia tries to go to college (with hilarious results) his parents try to go on holiday (with destructive results) and Megan tries to fix cars (with skimpy results). The Autobots take a bit of a back seat until the end of the film, which culminates in another mother of all battles between woefully ill-equipped humans, monstrous machines and a hapless Egyptian landscape.

There's not much left to say other than the fact that the dialogue is ultra cheesy, there are gratuitous slow-motion running shots of Megan Fox, the robots sometimes fight too quickly for you to figure out what's going on and the damage to public property is relentless. And so in all, it's a mildly entertaining mind-number with plenty of (but some how not enough) explosions.

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WoW

Posted : 8 months ago on 22 April 2009 05:08 (A review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)

THIS MOVIE I REALLY WANT TO WATCH. SOMEPEOPLE ARE TELLING ME THAT IT IS A GOOD MOVIE. I WANT TO SEE 4 MYSELF. =)

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