[Movie Review] Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

BouncingSoul

Stranger Than Fiction
Political Access
Joined
30 Jan 2004
Messages
1,303
In short, the worst movie I've see since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

You remember the South Park Imaginationland mini series where they had Michael Bay talking about how to make a movie? All he says is AND THAN A METEOR COMES IN AND ITS LIKE BLAM AND RAWR AND THAN A MOTORCYCLE JUMPS A FLAMING HELICOPTER AND ITS LIKE KRAPLAAAAAAA. That's this movie.

Things happen for no reason other than to get us on to the next explosion. The characters are all poorly done. The humans exist only to die. For example the "elite" task force, NEST, they roll into a hot spot and immedieatly call for backup from the autobots. Why are they there at all? If you're a human and you're not in the military or under 30 than you're either the typical bureaucrat that exists to only to hamper the good guys and then disappear entirely or you're there for pointless comic relief. The movie is filled with these throwaway jokes that serve no purpose. They might as well just had some guy in the background get hit with a pie. It would have been easier and less painful to watch.

The Transformers themselves are even weak. Well the main guys (Optimus and such) are fine, but there are tons of new ones. And they all act like rejects from a Spike Lee film. Back in the day, Transformers had names, and did certain things. Now they just conjure up a transforming robot out of the blue cause they need someone to do something. Sort of like what Brett Ratner did with X3, creating mutants out of thin air cause they needed that ability to advance the plot. And there are tons of little things that are needless mistakes. Like stepping out of the backdoor of the Smithsonian, only to find an airplane grave yard and a mountain range in the distance. Or how Bumblebee and his crew of ganstas (if you've seen this POS you know who I mean) just appear whenever needed. No explanation given to how they got there or why they weren't actively involved earlier on. Clearly they didn't pay any attention to these details. Why? Cause nothing was blowing up at this point.

The whole movie is a long, loud and dizzying example of inept film making. Michael Bay should be ashamed of himself.

1 out of 5 OSNN stars. That 1 is for the last good childhood memory I have of my huge Transformers collection.
 
Ooooh..... I haven't seen it yet. I hope you're wrong. :)
 
Don't read on if you don't want some minor spoilers :)

*** SPOILER ALERT***


The movie starts off with some really gratuitous CGI violence in a supposed "adrenaline" moment but all it does is add noise and introduce the psuedo-antagonist (think Simmons, but about 1% as endearing).

From there, the "plot" meanders all over the place. The CGI is great but my goodness, what the hell is up with the RIDICULOUS circular "camera" action during the transforms? It made watching it in the IMAX theater a very painful experience. The first movie had a lot better definition of what was going on.

There is a token (considering the importance) introduction of my favorite Decepticon in Soundwave, but he is absolutely wasted. In fact all the Decepticons are wasted, as are the majority of Autobots outside of Prime and Bumblebee.

Michael Bay basically took the huge budget, through in some pretty CGI, blew up a whole bunch of stuff and, unlike many of his other movies which have a semblance of a plot, segues from one needless battle to another while introducing some basic plot elements and dialogue lines.

The best actor by far is once again "Simmons". They got rid of the hot Aussie chick from the first movie and replaced her with another, equally hot though far less memorable chick in this movie. Also, Anthony is not present as the nerdy tech guy who breaks codes. Instead we have... an annoying sidekick who lends NOTHING to the movie.

I'll admit I had a fair few moments where I laughed, because there are some genuinely funny moments. But the movie itself is just lots of noise and certainly way too long for what it is. Iron Man and Transformers raised the bar, Terminator Salvation was a relatively cerebral movie without as many explosions but it had realism (they actually made most of the robots).

Transformers 2 goes the way of Spiderman 3 and X-Men 3 where they added a whole bunch of extra fluff and added nothing to the franchise, instead diluting it.

It is definitely popcorn entertainment, but far from a classic. The first one was WAY better.

3/5 OSNN Stars, average at best, bonus point because I definitely did love the fact that Jet Fire and Sound Wave made an appearance, regardless of how minimal it was.
 
In short, the worst movie I've see since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

You remember the South Park Imaginationland mini series where they had Michael Bay talking about how to make a movie? All he says is AND THAN A METEOR COMES IN AND ITS LIKE BLAM AND RAWR AND THAN A MOTORCYCLE JUMPS A FLAMING HELICOPTER AND ITS LIKE KRAPLAAAAAAA. That's this movie.

Things happen for no reason other than to get us on to the next explosion. The characters are all poorly done. The humans exist only to die. For example the "elite" task force, NEST, they roll into a hot spot and immedieatly call for backup from the autobots. Why are they there at all? If you're a human and you're not in the military or under 30 than you're either the typical bureaucrat that exists to only to hamper the good guys and then disappear entirely or you're there for pointless comic relief. The movie is filled with these throwaway jokes that serve no purpose. They might as well just had some guy in the background get hit with a pie. It would have been easier and less painful to watch.

The Transformers themselves are even weak. Well the main guys (Optimus and such) are fine, but there are tons of new ones. And they all act like rejects from a Spike Lee film. Back in the day, Transformers had names, and did certain things. Now they just conjure up a transforming robot out of the blue cause they need someone to do something. Sort of like what Brett Ratner did with X3, creating mutants out of thin air cause they needed that ability to advance the plot. And there are tons of little things that are needless mistakes. Like stepping out of the backdoor of the Smithsonian, only to find an airplane grave yard and a mountain range in the distance. Or how Bumblebee and his crew of ganstas (if you've seen this POS you know who I mean) just appear whenever needed. No explanation given to how they got there or why they weren't actively involved earlier on. Clearly they didn't pay any attention to these details. Why? Cause nothing was blowing up at this point.

The whole movie is a long, loud and dizzying example of inept film making. Michael Bay should be ashamed of himself.

1 out of 5 OSNN stars. That 1 is for the last good childhood memory I have of my huge Transformers collection.

You think that's bad?

Apparently the Autobots can -sniff out- the Decepticons. And yet, Bumblebee gives a ride to "Alice", apparently a Pretender, without any issues? What gives?
 
Sadly this is a fairly common problem that the sequel for whatever reason falls short of the original.

I found it to be enjoyable for what it is, entertainment. Yes I found a couple things to really fishy major one already mentioned and the second one I doubt a lot folks would notice.

Hopefully the third will be better, since I believe Paramount already said there will be a third
 
a third? hehe.. reminds me of entourage
 
My Review: Awful! 1st was better believe it or not. If it were not for the megan fox eye candy, this film would be on my list of all time flops.

Mike bay has no idea what the hell he's doing.

save your $$$ and wait for the DVD/blu-ray to rent or find it online
 
Sadly this is a fairly common problem that the sequel for whatever reason falls short of the original.

I found it to be enjoyable for what it is, entertainment. Yes I found a couple things to really fishy major one already mentioned and the second one I doubt a lot folks would notice.

Hopefully the third will be better, since I believe Paramount already said there will be a third

I dunno about that.

X Men 2 was pretty good. Spiderman 2 had it's moments as well.

This movie was just, big bangs. I was entertained for bits but from a critical perspective, too long, too little and too dull.

Btw, I found nothing racist about the twins.
 
two and a half hours...ill sit through it, i got some free movie passes.. : )
 
To each their own. Some hate it, some love it. Myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Transformers 2, and can't wait for the disc release and the third movie.
 
Frankly, if you looking for a quality movie from Michael Bay, you're always going to be disappointed. If you're looking for a good story from Bay, you're going to be disappointed. If you looking character development or any good dialog from Michael Bay.. you will be disappointed.

All I expect from a Michael Bay film is gratuitous skin, lots of explosions and action, and decent eye candy.. and in that regard, the film doesn't disappoint too much.
 
Saw this last night and was really let down. First thing I noticed is they changed the "transform" noise! How the hell do you do that and live with yourself.
Sazar said:
... what the hell is up with the RIDICULOUS circular "camera" action during the transforms?
I agree with this. The 1st movie did it so smooth and looked great. I guess they felt they needed to do something new with the camera work but it really just made the transformations confusing and blurry.
tdinc said:
If it were not for the megan fox eye candy, this film would be on my list of all time flops.
I actually think she looked hotter in the 1st one. She just looked like she knew she was hot and thats just not as hot. That and every damn scene seemed to zoom in on her. She's also really not a great actor, some hot girls are, she's not and clearly only in 2nd because she was such a hit in the 1st.

Also did anyone else notice that the language got turned up a couple notches? I'm not easily offended (and wasn't with this movie), but I'm sure several parents that had brought kids to the 1st movie, and then to this one were rather upset when scrotums and the robots calling people a p*ssy were repeated. Seemed they tried to hard to make it adult but it came off as trying to hard.

Overall I'd give it a 2/5 for it at least being a movie to watch and wasn't overly offensive (horrible wise).
 
This movie is an absolute piece of ****. I really wish I had not paid $7 to get into this.

Megan Fox is not all that good looking, she is attempting to be too much like Angelina Jolie and she does not have the acting skills. The camera crew should be shot, and the director of photography apparently had no idea what he was doing. The entire story line was disjointed, hard to follow and the various "plots" throughout the movie were horrible.

The entire love story could be dropped and the movie would still have worked (I have seen Transformers 1, with just the main plot/story line in it, cut by a different director, so no love story, and the movie was 1 hour), the whole humans fighting along side the Auto-bots were weak, and just there for comic relief and or to be killed.

The movie was really poor, and I found myself wondering how Michael Bay was able to release this to the public.

0/5 OSNN stars.
 
This just about sums up my views.. from: http://www.firstshowing.net/2009/07/01/michael-bay-is-a-drug-and-its-time-to-quit/

Then it ended, two and a half bloated, bombastic hours later. And I felt… dirty. Used up. Spent. And most of all, conflicted. Now, I've seen every Michael Bay film. I'm a self-proclaimed Michael Bay apologist. I own both The Rock and Armageddon as Criterion Collection DVDs. I know exactly what the man is. I know exactly what I'm going to get when I come across Bad Boys II or The Island on HBO. And there's something about that that I really love. The man can direct action. Every one of his films are just beautiful. Visually dynamic (sometimes - ahem, Pearl Harbor - to a fault) and always packed with adrenaline. Sure, his sense of story may as well not exist. His sense of pacing (as of late) may as well be a belt sander, cranked up to 11, grinding away at my eye balls. But Michael Bay is a drug with predictable side effects. Well, at least he was.

It's with ROTF that I think I may have OD'ed. No, I know I OD'ed. Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical says "this must be the most movie I have ever experienced." I'll take that a step further - ROTF is the most movie I ever want to experience. It's completely, utterly, unapologetically Michael Bay. It's everything that I expected (and my expectations were subterranean). The film hit every beat, showed every explosion, panned around every inch of Megan Fox, but it just did it too much. And that's why I just can't wrap my head around this damned movie.

edit:
and dont' forget these wonderful quotes from this satirical review

Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

......

ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane.

........

This movie starts out with a coherent storyline, for the first half hour or so, and then it just starts to spin faster and faster until the centrifuge of random events slams you into the walls. It doesn't help that there are 500 robots in the movie and they all look kind of the same.
 
I liked the continuous stream of explosions and bullets. A good movie needs 3 things: Explosions, Helicopters and Boobs. So this scored a solid 3 out of 3 :D
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back