Boy, it's been a while, hasn't it? A quick glance through the old blog says the last review I wrote was for Watchmen, but that was more a collection of thoughts than an actual critique of the movie (which I have learned to love). Before that, my last review came all the way back in July of last year, when I gushed about The Dark Knight.
Well, despite their being quite a few pretty fantastic movies released between then and now, the first movie I've felt the need to write about is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Yes, an excessive barrage on the senses that sheds any sense of a coherent plot has brought the first piece of film criticism in nearly a year.
I wrote pretty extensively about the first Transformers when it was released two years ago. I described how, for quite possibly the first time, I knew absolutely nothing about the "universe" of a genre film. I wasn't a Transformers kid growing up, so going into the movie all I really wanted was to see giant robots fighting. And Transformers certainly delivered, which made me more forgiving of the film's glaring problems.
Well, with Transformers 2, everything you loved and hated about the first movie has been cranked up about 10 notches. You're going to get more and better robot fights, but you also get not one, but TWO humping jokes, not one, but TWO racist stereotype robots, and not one, but TWO giant dangling robot testicles. Does this sound appealing?
I'm not quite sure if the good outweighs or even equals out the bad about this movie, because there is a lot of bad. Now, everything mentioned in the previous paragraph, other than the two Jar-Jar-Bots, are only brief moments in the movie. You only see giant robot balls for a second, and it isn't quite as bad as the internet is making it out to be. I mean, to compare it to something from the first movie, I'd say it is less repulsive than the one Transformer pissing on John Torturro.
The film's biggest problem is the utter lack of anything resembling a coherent plot. The first thirty minutes or so of the movie make a fair amount of sense. We're re-introduced to the Transformers we know and love from the first film, now working side by side with the military in a covert organization seeking out the remaining Decepticons. All the cool action you've seen from the trailers occurs in the first ten minutes of the movie, so they haven't spoiled all the good stuff.
Then we get reacquainted with Sam Witwicky, who is leaving his smoking hot Megan Fox of a girlfriend and his robotic car behind to go off to college, to be "normal" or something. Of course, Sam's parents are back, and have a much bigger role this time around, although it isn't as bad as say, the talking pug's role in Men in Black 2.
Once Sam finally gets carted off to college is when the movie starts making no sense. Sam is roommates with this greasy fellow who just so happens to run a conspiracy theory website that is digging up dirt on the Transformers. A scene takes place that is so inane, fast-paced, and just downright confusing that I was never able to pick up the pieces after that. Seriously, by 30 minutes into the movie, your brain will still be trying to process what happened two scenes ago. You don't stand a chance.
Through extensive research, I think I've figured out what the movie is actually about. You see, there was an ancient race of Transformers called The Fallen, and nearly 20,000 years ago, they built a giant sun-sucking ray gun on Earth. In-fighting led to the eventual obliteration of The Fallen, and their sun gun eventual became (spoiler alert) The Great Pyramids.
Well now, The Fallen, along with a revived Megatron and the remaining Decepticons, have built a base on one of the moons of Saturn, where they are harvesting new Decepticons. But see, they need power, in the form of something called Energon, to build the new race of evil Transformers.
Which leads us back to the pyramid gun. You see, long ago, The Fallen (or maybe it was the Primes, more on that later) were sent out to find suns to harvest for Energon. The one rule was they could not harvest from a life-bearing planet. Well, this one Fallen, who is kind of the main bad guy in the movie but only really shows up for a second, disobeyed this rule and was going to harvest Earth anyway. This is what led to the in-fighting and the death of The Fallen on Earth.
Back on Earth, Sam has found a tiny shard of the Cube from the first flick. Once he touches it, his brain is implanted with visions which lead him to his "destiny", which is to allow Optimus, the last of the Primes, to destroy The Fallen and save Earth.
Oh right, I forgot, we were supposed to talk about Primes. You see, there were seven Primes, who were the leaders back on Cybertron. They are all dead now, except for Optimus. HIs special Prime powers make him the only one capable of defeating The Fallen. I'm not really sure why, but whatever.
Does any of this make any sense to you? These last five paragraphs are pretty much explained in a two minute scene about an hour into the movie. One scene. And then we're just supposed to go from there. The only problem is the people explaining this to the audience are robots, with robot voices. I have no idea what any of them were saying.
So the rest of the movie is pretty much just one big chase scene or dumb joke after another. Michael Bay does what he does best and throws more explosions on screen than you can possibly imagine. If you see something on screen, there's a fairly good chance that it will get blown up at some point.
So that's the negative, let's talk about the positive. The action scenes in this movie are really spectacular. I mean, there's some jaw-dropping stuff here. Unlike the first movie, where we'd maybe hear a really awesome robot fight going on, but we're stuck watching Sam run around and hide or kick a tiny robot in the face, here we got full on giant robot action. There is one fight in a forest that is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. The climactic battle in this movie breaks the previous record for "Most Shit Going On At Once" set by the first movie. There's too much cool stuff to keep up with.
A lot of people seem to have problems with the sheer amount of action in the movie, but I'm not going to complain. The one thing I wanted from this sequel was more robots fighting, and they certainly delivered.
Some people have called this the worst movie of the decade. Considering some of the terrible movies I've seen in the last nine years, I'd say that's more than harsh. It is not good, by any means of the word, but it is also based on a series of toys. What did you expect, Citizen Kane? What this amounts to is a two and a half hour commercial for toys. The fanboys are attacking anyone who says anything positive about this movie, which is ignorant and completely misguided.
So you know what? I've decided to love this movie just to piss them off! Sure, its terrible, but I don't care. It is a movie about giant robots that turn into cars and fight other robots. The movie has laughs (more unintentional than intentional). It also has Megan Fox running in slow motion. So yeah, Transformers 2 kicked my ass into next week. It raped my senses. I felt like I was walking away from an explosion in slow-motion, only to find myself having to run from an even bigger, more awesome explosion. It's that kind of movie.
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