The “Transformers” sequel may be the worst-reviewed movie ever to make the $400 million club – but it looks pretty good doing it. However it is the lack of plot, heart and over-all character progressions needed to bring up the ante’ to a level of respect amongst even the most ardent Transformers Fan – this is pretty much where I go fuck the critics in so many words; but since I missed the ‘TF: Revenge of the Fallen’ hate machine. I’ll just slip into bring you up to speed on the differences between the first movie and help explain a couple things with this new one.
Previously . . . in the first Transformers two extraterrestrial clans finds its way to Earth in a race to find a mystical MacGuffin called the ‘All Spark’ that would grant unlimited power to whosoever possessed it. The hero aliens called ‘Autobots’, wanted to keep the ‘All Spark’ artifact away from the not so good and plenty evil bad aliens called ‘Decepticons’; both possessed on some level clues of the whereabouts to this ‘ultimate power’ – of course all this with no idea where to begin their searches except that it’s the planet called ‘Earth’ is where the last known communication regarding the location of this All spark was transmitted from. It’s about at this point the gears shift to tell the tale of a boy and his car – and the robot civil war that would forever change the lives of the people involved and later entrusted to uphold the peace … until one day.
Okay, more like two years later. This is where the main story that makes up ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ begins – although this time around (for some reason) it is never really clear what kind of story this is going to be or where and when it begins – if at all. It kicks off with a flashback type of sub-explanation about the origins of when the robot race from Cybertron had an encounter with humans; based on the lack of details provided in the beginning it is explained later in the movie that the events that took place pre-dates even the current generation of Cybertronian factions; although the Decepticons seem to have a better record of the events as they have direct contact with one of the Cybertronians that were there; referred to as the titular ‘Fallen’ – a name designation put on him considering the events that took place that ended with him getting kicked out of the caveman robot club he was a part of.
After the brief half-explanation of events past we flash forward to the present; the time the story takes place is referred to as “Today†– which happens to be about two years later from the events that went down in the first movie. The Autobots have remained on Earth and have formed an alliance with the humans, with the express intention to defend against the remaining hidden army of Decepticons that have posted up on Earth for, quote-end-quote, “reasons†unknown. During what can only be one of several missions the Autobot team and the International collaborative efforts of the human military forces – they arrive to the industrial section of Shanghai en pursuit of Decepticon cells that are operating around the world for reasons unknown.
The term ‘unknown’ and indicators like ‘unexplained’ are going to come up A LOT in regards to this movie as so much goes unchecked and unexplained story wise – Things like the showdown in Shanghai for example; the action takes place but there is no real closure to any of it. Since this was the start of the movie you can only assume that later they explain better about what is going on . . but alas this doesn’t ever really happen except that during the whole Shanghai thing they manage to pinch off the whole “the fallen shall return†revenge type speech by a downed and beaten Decepticon. It’s about this time that the story shifts gears to play catch up with the Witwicky family and as all things they’re living life a day at a time and Sam is on his way out of his folks’ house for college.
So even with the big spectacular Michael Bay style start the story pretty much plateaus from there – there are some action beats and funny bits tossed in; but any of the character development that motivated the actions of the first movie were totally void in this film. Even if those elements were in place they were totally overshadowed by the amount of action it’s hard to find where what begins and ends until the credits pop up – by this time your butt is so numb you just kind of spill out of your chair and roll down the theater steps like a broken slinky. So the negatives in this film are lack of heart and passion and a sense of purpose or urgency to anything – all bets were off when the throw down in the woods came about. Pretty incredible scene by the way but when you really assess the film up to this point – the one character that was pretty much holding this nonsense together and giving it any kind of gravitas was single handedly handed his ass despite his best effort in vain – then unceremoniously dumped off like the victim of a drive-by drop off at the hospital doors while the guiltless freaks that took him down run away.
This is about the point where details kind of seem to blend into a kind of quest for the new MacGuffen in the form of the ‘Matrix of Leadership’. What is the Matrix? In the context of this movie it is a battery that powers a mechanical pyramid. It has the capacity (apparently) to suck the energy out of the sun and convert it into ‘Energon’. Much like the movie itself can suck all the enthusiasm for a resolution; you just want it to end.
The whole Energon thing and a great number of other things in this movie never seemed to be a problem before. Like the Fallen – I was actually kind of looking forward to him mostly because I wanted to see a really pissed off robot tank that was on fire and kicking some serious ass; it was also (potentially) a direct lead into Unicron – the Transformer so fucking huge he was a planet. Things like time and space doesn’t seem to make a difference or grounds for concern to the robots in this film – or the humans in some aspects. Rules applied to the first film seem to kind of be forgotten in this film as well. For example in the first film there was a little fight between Sam and Frenzy (a radio) with the end result being Mikaela giving Frenzy the business with a power saw with Sam kicking Frenzy’s head up and over a hill – in where the damaged Frenzy is able to adapt a new form based on the relative mass of his head into a cell phone out of Mikaela’s purse. In this movie they hit one with a car and that’s the end of that – not even an obligatory boo scare revenge scene or nothing; this character just drops the fuck off. Buts it’s okay .. the story shifts to Egypt (somehow). That thing I mentioned about time and space; did you know that there is an airplane graveyard situated directly behind the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum? Well it IS – a full blown desert in the middle of Washington DC!
WHICH, by the way, not many people realize that on screen history is unfolding. No film studio, especially a foreign film studio has ever been permitted to film the Egyptian Pyramids let alone be within X amount of feet of them or allowed anyone to climb the Pyramids and let it be filmed. John Turturro got to climb one.
Back to the movie – since this was the second one I know I was looking for more depth and not so much filler. I was totally unimpressed with the direction of the story and the way many of the characters were represented this time out – characters that drove the story in the first one and you actually cared about were regulated to bit players. The new characters introduced into the mix brought not a good got damn thing to the experience or where over hyped and under delivered – and in some cases played out like school on a Sunday (no class).
Would I recommend the movie? Yeah – with the express understanding that this movie advances nothing set out from the first one. It is by no means a movie you can take a little kid to – the Autobots (the heroes mind you) are some of the most aggressive foul-mouthed characters in the whole lot. Sam and Mikaela – most of which the first movie seemed to revolve around; they get rung through the Michael Bay style romance trip that NEVER worked in his movies before – why even try for it now?
So back to now .. this movie is in a pretty interesting place in that it is not by any means the best example for an argument for the title of greatest sequels since Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Superman II, Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn or even Spider-Man 2 – but it’s going to make a lot of fucking money.
