Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Spoiler ahoy!)

[TheLostVikings]

I thought IMAX (which I'm seeing in Sydney on Thursday at 9.00pm, anyone else going to be there?) added one minute of extra footage, not fifteen. The latter seems excessive, and really expensive.

Ops, my bad. Seems I had a brainfart there for some reason and misremembered what Bay said when he talked about the difference between the IMAX and regular cuts of the movie. The difference is only eight minutes, and not fifteen. (still a lot longer than just one minute)

And it's the perfect movie for imax, gotta love an 1:1 scale Optimus

[JLTucker]

Roger Ebert gave the film one star.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Deceptibots and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.

The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed "The Rock" in 1996. Now he has made "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Faust made a better deal. This isn't a film so much as a toy tie-in. Children holding a Transformer toy in their hand can invest it with wonder and magic, imagining it doing brave deeds and remaining always their friend. I knew a little boy once who lost his blue toy truck at the movies, and cried as if his heart would break. Such a child might regard "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with fear and dismay.

The human actors are in a witless sitcom part of the time, and lot of the rest of their time is spent running in slo-mo away from explosions, although--hello!--you can't outrun an explosion. They also make speeches like this one by John Turturro: "Oh, no! The machine is buried in the pyramid! If they turn it on, it will destroy the sun! Not on my watch!" The humans, including lots of U.S. troops, shoot at the Transformers a lot, although never in the history of science fiction has an alien been harmed by gunfire.

There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines. The two most inexplicable characters are Ron and Judy Witwicky (Kevin Dunn and Julie White), who are the parents of Shia LaBeouf, who Mephistopheles threw in to sweeten the deal. They take their son away to Princeton, apparently a party school, where Judy eats some pot and goes berserk. Later they swoop down out of the sky on Egypt, for reasons the movie doesn't make crystal clear, so they also can run in slo-mo from explosions.

The battle scenes are bewildering. A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with...fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, except for Starscream®, who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard.

Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" (Tookey, Daily Mail); "A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!" (Edwards, Daily Mirror). The first American review, however, reported that it "feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time" (Todd Gilchrist, Cinematical). It’s certainly the biggest something of all time.

[Shroom Man 777]

I just cannot wait to see it - it's gonna be so awesome!

[Rahvin]

They have tiny little heads, except for Starscream®, who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard.

Doesn't he mean Jetfire?

Bah. I'm not looking for masterful cinema. I'm looking for a Transformers movie. I fully expect my brain to regress to that of an 8-year-old who just got Optimus Prime for his birthday. As long as RotF works on that level, I'll consider the ticket price to be money well spent.

[Solauren]

It's giant robots beating the hell out of each other while being shot at by soldiers. Expecting anything but that is plain stupid.

Anything more is, after all, a bonus.

[VF5SS]

It's giant robots beating the hell out of each other while being shot at by soldiers. Expecting anything but that is plain stupid.

That's like a fourth of the whole movie. The rest of this movie is hilariously bad dialog and weird scenes stolen from stuff like Alien and Gremlins. Even tender moments between Sam and Megan Fox are ruined by Michael Bay's signature spinning camera. Oddly enough there's less shakey cam with the robot fights and it makes them seem pretty dull. And I love how they put all that CGI technology to use making Wheelie hump Megan Fox's leg. Oh and the twin robots (Mudflap and Skids) are made out to be the worst stereotypical "ghetto" black people. One of them even has a gold tooth. I don't even get why they're in the movie. The only redeeming robot character is Jetfire but he's only in the last third of the film. I have to wonder if the lightning will strike twice. Probably since it is a Michael Bay movie and they are critic proof.

[Darth Yan]

I didn't notice any of that

[wautd]

Just came back. The group I went seeing it loved it/preferred it the the first one, but I found it overall mediocre. It had some good parts, but sadly there were more parts that I found downright annoying.

Loved the first one 8.5 - 9/10
this one 6-6.5

I don't even get why they're in the movie

Marketing. Small, American city cars are cool Yo!
Spoiler

(I cheered when Devastator killed one - or so I thought )

[Kamakazie Sith]

CNN

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" -- the most terrible revenge since Montezuma's -- is louder, longer and lamer than the 2007 hit it succeeds.

Both Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox run away a lot in new "Transformers" -- she in slow motion, says Tom Charity.

1 of 2 Which is saying a lot.

Long story short: The Decepticons are back, fixed on destroying Sam (Shia LaBeouf), Optimus Prime and the Earth, in that order.

Produced by Hasbro -- the accompanying trailer for "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" suggests that the company's not-exactly-subtle strategy is to mass market war toys for boys -- "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a grotesque exercise in hyperinflation. At 149 minutes, it's longer than "2001," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" or "Star Wars." In fact, this may be the emptiest epic ever made.

Director Michael Bay is famous for blowing things up, but you could invade a small country with less firepower than he expends on this extended-length commercial.

For all his sound and fury, Bay isn't much of an action director. There's no rhythm in his slam-bang cutting, no discipline in his orientation, and there's so little to distinguish an Autobot (the good Transformers) from a Decepticon (the bad) that at any given moment, it's a toss-up who is pulverizing who. A guide to the Transformers »

Combat scenes are a bewildering blur of crunching metal. On top of that, the humans are essentially bystanders and onlookers here, so that LaBeouf's primary contribution to the fighting is to run away, duck and cover. It's the same deal for Megan Fox, only in lingering slow motion.

The Defense Department does get the opportunity to show off its hardware, even if most of the missile strikes fall wide of the mark -- probably because there aren't enough Decepticons to sustain heavy losses. If he ever needs another job, Bay should consider a move into arms procurement.

At least the nonstop carnage is on a scale to satisfy the demolition derby crowd, down to destroying one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The effects work is mostly rock-solid, and the Transformers themselves have a chromatic showroom gleam. As a kind of 21st-century Mechano movie, it could have hit the right buttons.

It's not the extravagant fireworks display that rankles, it's everything else: the dull and pompous exposition, the trite characterizations, the tacky love story, the dismal comic relief and incongruous pretensions to the status of a popcorn epic.

Here's a sample of what Bay throws at the wall in the hope of generating some stray laughs: small dogs humping. Hysterical middle-aged women. Autobots with effeminate voices. A miniature Decepticon dry-humping Fox's leg. John Turturro improvising. Tasers. A cowardly Latino. A short Arab. Snails.

None of these things is funny. Not in this movie, anyway.

The truth is, Bay is a rotten fit for this assignment; he's much too self-important to recalibrate his approach for the younger audience this material demands.

Memo to Michael: It's a toy movie. Your audience is predominantly teen and pre-teen. My kids don't need to see your salivating soft-porn fantasies or your reactionary militaristic politics.

Most of all, none of us needs to sit through 2½ hours of this inane and mind-numbing movie. Better it should be melted down for scrap.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is rated PG-13 and runs 149 minutes. For Entertainment Weekly's take, click here.

Strange. I thought Transformers was made for those who were fans of the cartoon. They'd be around my age by now...regardless this review stinks of "family values" nonsense. I mean a dog humping a girls leg...I'm sure beastiality or true softcore porn is next on the agenda for Michael Bay films.

[Vympel]

What a shock, it's getting a critical beating.

C'mon guys critics? Give me a break. Do you all have short term memory? They killed the first one, and it still became a world-wide smash. I made this for the you, the audience!

All indications are that TF2, like virtually all Bay movies, will make gazillions of dollars and be virtually critic-proof. The fact that I'm watching it with three friends (two female) tommorow night in IMAX should be an anecdotal testament. Ticket sales in the US are already through the roof.

I do find the "it's too long" complaint a bit odd, since the original Transformers was only 4 minutes shorter. I guess it just goes down to the experience.

As for Ebert's review, I'm disappointed. It's not the sort of review style I like to read.

[Lord_Xerxes]

Just got back from it, and I loved it. As others have said, the action seemed much better paced with the general flow of the film. It certainly felt like there was much more fighting then there was stupid human moments. Although there were plenty of those.This installment fixed alot of my major gripes with the first film: robot combat being too hard to see what the hell was going on, not enough robot combat, too much human dialogue/not enough robot dialogue, too much military wanking, and far too much time wasted on the sector seven bs. What it did get wrong: pointless dog humping (although wheelie on Megan Fox was slightly amusing), stupid college scenes (not the least of which was Sam's mom running around for a good 5-10 mins high that could have and should have definitely been cut out, pointless man thong scene, and the entire impact of Sam earning the key was squandered by it being immediately stolen by the Fallen (it just completely undid the Prime's speech in mere seconds), they made Simmons far less annoying then the first movie and instead replaced him with an even more annoying and pointless bureaucrat, certain robots having huge gaps of screen time. The last one is more or less the fault of them catering to the fans and giving us ALOT more robots and robot on robot action. There was just so much crammed in, that I couldn't help but wonder what the hell Starscream or Bumblebee were doing at certain points. This was slightly redeemed by Bumblebee getting a kick ass, if not brief, fight scene.

All in all, I think this was a huge improvement. Jetfire was awesome. Fight scenes were awesome. And those moments when things were focusing on the humans in ridiculous situations were nullified by the great pacing of the action sequences. And Megan Fox being hot.
Spoiler

I found it both kinda weird and amusing that after so much build up the doomsday device was owned by Optimus rolling a natural twenty

[Havok]

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots, Deceptibots and Otherbots is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.

The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed "The Rock" in 1996. Now he has made "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Faust made a better deal. This isn't a film so much as a toy tie-in. Children holding a Transformer toy in their hand can invest it with wonder and magic, imagining it doing brave deeds and remaining always their friend. I knew a little boy once who lost his blue toy truck at the movies, and cried as if his heart would break. Such a child might regard "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" with fear and dismay.

The human actors are in a witless sitcom part of the time, and lot of the rest of their time is spent running in slo-mo away from explosions, although--hello!--you can't outrun an explosion. They also make speeches like this one by John Turturro: "Oh, no! The machine is buried in the pyramid! If they turn it on, it will destroy the sun! Not on my watch!" The humans, including lots of U.S. troops, shoot at the Transformers a lot, although never in the history of science fiction has an alien been harmed by gunfire.

There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines. The two most inexplicable characters are Ron and Judy Witwicky (Kevin Dunn and Julie White), who are the parents of Shia LaBeouf, who Mephistopheles threw in to sweeten the deal. They take their son away to Princeton, apparently a party school, where Judy eats some pot and goes berserk. Later they swoop down out of the sky on Egypt, for reasons the movie doesn't make crystal clear, so they also can run in slo-mo from explosions.

The battle scenes are bewildering. A Bot makes no visual sense anyway, but two or three tangled up together create an incomprehensible confusion. I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with...fists. Like I say, dumber than a box of staples. They have tiny little heads, except for Starscream®, who is so ancient he has an aluminum beard.

Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" (Tookey, Daily Mail); "A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!" (Edwards, Daily Mirror). The first American review, however, reported that it "feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time" (Todd Gilchrist, Cinematical). It’s certainly the biggest something of all time.

Hmm... Is it me or are his reviews getting... meaner? And this is like the third or fourth time that he has reviewed a movie and missed rather important information.
Starscream=Jetfire? I mean, he took the time to add his little sarcastic R, you think he could take the time to get the name right. Also, and this is minor since it was in the first movie, but they explain the accents and speech patterns REALLY clearly in the first movie. I didn't even like it all that much, but I at least remember it.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Hmm... Is it me or are his reviews getting... meaner? And this is like the third or fourth time that he has reviewed a movie and missed rather important information.

Meaner? I think you're being to gracious. His reviews are getting dumber. Surely there is plenty of stuff wrong with this movie to critizes instead of making shit up or demonstrating that you simply weren't paying attention.

I hated his review of Terminator Salvation...here's a rather amusing gem from that review. The reviews here at SD.net were far better...and they weren't nice to the movie either.

Yes, Skynet is self-aware and determines to wipe out humankind for reasons it doesn't explain.

Starscream=Jetfire? I mean, he took the time to add his little sarcastic R, you think he could take the time to get the name right. Also, and this is minor since it was in the first movie, but they explain the accents and speech patterns REALLY clearly in the first movie. I didn't even like it all that much, but I at least remember it.

Maybe it's because he's getting old...?

[Havok]

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of his T:S review either and I also wasn't a big fan of that movie. There was another one though that bugged me that was posted here too, but now I can't remember the damned.... OH! His Star Trek review. There were parts of his review where I thought, like, he just wasn't watching the movie.

Maybe it's because he's getting old...?

Possible. He is getting up there. And I mean, is he really getting on a Summer Action Flick for having it's main characters out run an explosion? C'mon.

[Darth Yan]

The fallen taking the key didn't undo it all; Sam had used the Key for it's required purpose (resseructing Optimus). If the Fallen had taken it before the deed was done then I would agree with you, but Sam technically did what he needed to. (besides, they needed that machine activated so they could have that big final battle between Optimus and the Fallen.)

[wautd]

As for Ebert's review, I'm disappointed. It's not the sort of review style I like to read.

He hits the nail on its head though.

Pretty much the only thing I liked in TF2 were the action scenes. Granted, there were plenty of those but in a way I found them less tense than the first one simply because I found the TF2 Decepticons were a lot less menacing than in TF1. TF1 set the pace with near-indestructable Blackout and Scorponoc destroying a military base. TF2 started with a huge Decepticon running away from a retarted icecream-van and bike chicks.

Things I liked Spoiler

Soundwave. Here we have a Decepticon that's still menacing and competent. And he survived.

Spoiler

Blackout got resurrected as well appearantly. Pity he died again after little screentime, he was by far my favorite

Spoiler

Optimus Prime getting killed halfway the movie after a brutal knuckle fight. Didn't expected that one coming

Spoiler

Simmons. I liked Simmons

Spoiler

Jetfire was allright (despite his accent). Though I was hoping for Astrotrain when I saw the spaceshuttle

Spoiler

Megathron still kicking ass

Things I didn't liked & moments Spoiler

The Audi R8 Decepticon getting punked. Comon, such a great car deserved more screen time

Spoiler

Little screentime of TF1 autobots replaced by screentime with lame new Autobots.

Spoiler

The twins. My god I hated them. Why wouldn't they die?!?

Spoiler

Autobot bike chicks

Spoiler

Devastator was a huge let down. Didn't liked the design (I was hoping for a humanoid version who was standing up to capture the huge size of him and he went down like a bitch. The incompetent bastard couldn't even kill that stupid twin motherfucker

Spoiler

Near vacuum of funny moments (the many lame jokes don't count)

Spoiler

Appearantly the female population in a university are also photo models

Spoiler

The Fallen One. Overshadowed by Megathron in the menacing department for all I care

Spoiler

The over obvious advertising at times (the beach landing in particular may just have well been from a Marine ad stock fotoage

Spoiler

Just what exactly was the point/added value of the annoying room mate?

Spoiler

The T-X Decepticon. If you want to get Sam alive, stop shooting at him.

Spoiler

speaking of unnessesary shooting, if you find a tomb with a very important artifact in it protected by an ancient paperstrong wall you:
a) shoot trough the wall
b) carefully open the wall with your autobot strenght

Spoiler

Little screen time for the major and his team. At least them got rid of the bureacrat in an amusing way

[Silver Jedi]

Meaner? I think you're being to gracious. His reviews are getting dumber. Surely there is plenty of stuff wrong with this movie to critizes instead of making shit up or demonstrating that you simply weren't paying attention.

I hated his review of Terminator Salvation...

Indeed, of the last 5 movies I've seen (this, Terminator, The Hangover, Star Trek, and Wolverine) the only one of his reviews that didn't have (usually multiple) factual errors about the movie in question was The Hangover, and that one doesn't mantion anything of the plot that isn't in the trailers but a few minor details. I have to wonder if the man's age or health are seriously affecting his work, or if he's simply realised that he can literally write reviews of movies he slept through and still sell them.

[Lord_Xerxes]

The fallen taking the key didn't undo it all; Sam had used the Key for it's required purpose (resseructing Optimus). If the Fallen had taken it before the deed was done then I would agree with you, but Sam technically did what he needed to. (besides, they needed that machine activated so they could have that big final battle between Optimus and the Fallen.)

Yes it did because
Spoiler

the key's purpose was to activate the device. It was stated that using it to resurrect Optimus was not how it was designed, but may work. Furthermore, the spirits of the Primes say "The key cannot be taken. It must be earned. Then about 3 seconds after he uses it on Optimus, it gets yoinked. Ress'ing Optimus was an important goal, but the primary one should have been keeping it from the Decepticons because they want to destroy the world for Energon.

[Karza]

Well, it was pretty much an improved version of TF1. Both movies had me rolling my eyes at the Komedy, but once the robots started kicking shit up, all was forgiven. And since "robots kicking shit up" happened more in TF2 and it was of better quality, it's a better movie .

It was nice to see Optimus properly kick ass and take names, and the shortness of his final fight with the Fallen didn't bother me at all. Probably because it had an awesome feel of speed and brutality, and avoided the standard Hollywood way of doing the final hero vs villain fight (ie. hero gets the shit beaten out of him for 10 minutes, then makes some bullshit heroic comeback).

Also, I really like Bumblebee. He's not the biggest or flashiest, but he's still a really fucking skilled and fierce fighter. As Rampage and Ravage found out to their detriment .

[Balrog]

If you're going to use spoiler tags in a thread already marked as having spoilers, at least do it all in one go rather than giving each sentence its own tag.

TF2 started with a huge Decepticon running away from a retarted icecream-van and bike chicks.

And Ironhide

Anyways, it seems like a lot of the movie was unnecessary filler and one-off appearances, which I think is what made it seem longer than the first one despite being of similar length. Devastator getting "pwned" by the super-secret destroyer-mounted railgun was cool to see, but where the hell was that gun for the rest of the movie? Hell, if all one has to do is uncover the top of the pyramid to get the sun-killer working, why was Devastator even necessary to uncover it with his vacuum sucker of doom? A few Decepticons with some explosives would surely have done the trick just as well.

[Old Plympto]

The humans, including lots of U.S. troops, shoot at the Transformers a lot, although never in the history of science fiction has an alien been harmed by gunfire.

Did Ebert not see at least two Decepticons killed by headshots from the NEST soldiers onscreen during the final battle?

Just got back from it. Expected the worst after reading about Skids and Mudflap. Came away pretty entertained. Still could have done without Skids and Mudflap.

They also utilized John Turturro much better in this movie.

[VF5SS]

Michael Bay: auteur?

[Darth Servo]

OK, a couple of my thoughts:

Needed more Sideswipe, less Skids and Mudflap. They had ONE likable line in the film Spoiler

Mudflap: Hey that hurts!
Skids: Its an ass kicking. It's supposed to hurt.

The Fallen needed more back story. Spoiler

Him just deciding "fuck humans" thousands of years ago just didn't do it justice.

Prime question:
Spoiler

Why the hell didn't the ancient Primes just kill The Fallen right then and there instead of burying the Matrix in their own tomb?

Maybe I missed something?

[Bounty]

It's funny how Ebeert is the last great honest reviewer for some people, and a "mean" hack for others... depending on what movie he's reviewing. I say "funny" but of course I mean "almost charmingly predictable".

From the reviews and reactions it sounds like TF2 is exactly what I thought it would be: all the faults of TF1, but LOUDER and messier. Bay was given a very simple and straightforward job here (take toys, add action, keep interesting) and failed the most important part of it. For fuck's sake, two and a half hours just to tell a three-line story about alien robots punching other alien robots? Just how much padding does Bay think an audience wants?

[Raptor]

Got back from seeing it. With more and better fights good, but even less plot not so good. Ratchet and Ironhide weren't really much in the movie. The battle with Optimus with the Decpeticons in the forest was great. Quite a lot of new transformers were brought in and except for Mudflap and Skid were never introduced. Anyone else think Devastor was wasted. A massive transformer never given any real fight.
Most of the comedy was miss or irritating. The best joke though was when Sam's room mate goes 'Sorry I kind of freaked out back there' and Mudflap or Skid says 'Yeah cause your a pussy'. Simmons was better in this, but cancelled out by Sams roommate, who had no point.
If you liked the first you'll like this.