Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I'm not particularly sure what I expected to get out of this film. It's not like Michael Bay has produced groundbreaking films before. He's good at making things go boom, and I'm not about to disparage the man for it. Let's get this out of the way right off the bat. Fallen is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. I have to agree with what I heard in one of the TV spots for the film, "The most fun you'll have in theaters this summer!" Indeed it is. Unfortunately, that's all it really has going for it. It's an exciting, fun movie that is very bad. It's not bad in that charming Bruce Campbell sort of way though. It's bad in the Bad Boys 2 "this shit just got real" way of being bad. The movie is poorly written, but anyone who's going to see this movie is not doing so because Michael Bay can tell a story. Everyone who is going to see this movie is going for one of two reasons:

1. Either you're going to see it for giant robots fighting other giant robots, and believe me, this film delivers in spades. Almost to a fault, but more on that later.

2. You're going to see it for the eye candy (read: Megan Fox) Again, more on that later.

Michael Bay could not tell a story if his life depended on it, but he knows how to blow things up. This films strongest attribute, the giant robot fights, is also it's biggest flaw. The robots themselves are modeled in such a way that unless it's a relatively close shot, they all look the same, which can make the fights where there are two or more robots tumbling around (and mind you, there are several) a bit confusing to follow. There were a few moments in the film that I thought a key character had been killed, only to see them alive and kicking a few moments later. The film also introduces a large amount of Deceptacons who serve no purpose other than moving targets. They're the redshirts of the Transformers world. The audience needs to see some robots torn apart but you can't kill off the big players just yet. It's not something that I'm complaining about, just something that bugged me a bit.

There was one Deceptacon who's existance confused me a bit. You might have seen it in the trailers. It's the one that looks like a cheetah. Cheetor I suppose. What bugged me about him, and Scorpinox was that they look like animals. But they're silver. And, particularly in Scorpinox's case, much larger than the animal they're disguised as. They're redeeming skills though are that they're fast, and can bury themselves underground, respectively, which throws the concept of 'Robots in Disguise' out the window in favor of the much less interesting 'Robots that Aren't Here Right Now'.

Another complaint that I had about the movie is that one of statements made by Bay to hype the movie was that they had a robot in their movie that was the biggest one ever made, Which the internet soon found out was Devastator, who is only as massive as he is because he's made up of several other Deceptacons, known as the Constructicons. They're construction machinery that turns into that giant robot that you see in the trailers that's sucking up all the sand. To be fair, he is massive. To be honest, he absolutely sucked in the movie. He fights two robots, the walking black sterotypes, twin robots Mudflap and Skidz, who are proven throughout the film to be bumbling idiots who exist solely for comic relief. He promply beats them down and proceeds to move toward his target, where he is defeated by humans with a really big gun. Seriously. He's onscreen for a grand total of maybe 10 minutes, he is by far the most impressive robot in the movie, and he didn't even get to fight any of the good Autobots. I can only hope there is a directors cut floating around that is two and a half hours of a film which can only be described as 'Devastator Beats the Shit out of Everyone'.

Now, onto the subject of eye candy. Megan Fox, and just about every other female character, with the lone exception being the mother of John Tuturro's character. Even Sam Witwicky's mother is sexualized, which is an interesting decision to say the least. I'm not going to stay on this topic for long, but just thought that it was worth mentioning. Megan Fox is not a good actress. What she is though, is an attractive actress, and that will take her far in the movie business. It's not like the average viewer of these films is giving much of their attention to the words coming out of her mouth. Their focus tends to be a bit lower.

Overall, I'd say that it was a fun, albeit poorly written film. At some points it feels overly long, but action beats keep a good pace. My best advice for enjoying Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is leave your brain at the door and you'll have the time of your life.

Sidenote: My only problem with the inevitable third Transformers film is that it guarantees that Linkin Park will continue to make music.