Review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Okay, so I finally got around to seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I haven’t been that interested since I didn’t like the first movie, but everyone I know wants to talk about it and insisted I see it ASAP. So here goes…
First off, I did like this movie a little better than the first movie, but I believe both are terrible films. For “Revenge”, the storytelling felt like I was watching a 5-part miniseries merged into a 2 1/2 hour feature. Characters and plot devices are introduced, but then just inexplicably go away. As a result, we never really have a solid feel for what the heroes’ main goal is. It’s all just a series of events sewn together by explosions and giant robot fights.
As part of this, most of the characters are useless. They even bring back useless characters from the last movie, though they have just a little more to offer than before. Megan Fox’s character is still completely useless, bringing nothing to the table except for bending over and slo-mo booby-bounce shots.
In fact, my biggest complaint about the movie involve two of the most useless characters: The twins. Mudflap and Skids are the two most racist characters I’ve ever seen EVAR. When Jazz appeared in the first movie and was made into the token ethnically “black” character, I was a little bothered. It didn’t make sense that an alien robot would have a passion for hip-hop from the get-go, but then I can’t begrudge that without forsaking Scatman Crothers.
However, I cannot let the twins in “Revenge” slide. So, first we have two characters who speak like caricatures of Chris Tucker (who is himself a human caricature). The voice of Skids coming from Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob Squarepants and a man who couldn’t be whiter. Then their faces are designed with the most stereotypically black features: dumbo ears, fat lips, and buck teeth–one of which is gold. Oh yeah, and they’re also illiterate.
Really? Is that what we’re going to put in our kids movie? We are? This is a good idea? Well, bravo, Michael Bay. Bravo.
But here’s what I don’t get… The designs for those characters had to have passed by the eyes of a lot of people before making it onto film. Did Michael Bay really approve this? Did no one working with him point it out? Steven freakin’ Speilberg was the executive producer of this movie and he gave the thumbs up on these designs? Really?? Fail.
Another gripe of mine, comes from the character Alice. When she first appeared on the scene, begging to ride Sam’s jock, I thought that this was the easiest slut ever. If this is an accurate depiction of a sorostitute, I should have stayed in college! Once I saw how she took Bumblebee’s slam into the dashboard like it was nothing, I suspected she may not be human and at the very lease had sinister intentions.
Decepticon...?
When it was revealed that my suspicions were correct, I was confused–When did I start watching Terminator? Alice mounted Sam and “Revenge” quickly got tossed in under the blanket title that I give all shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Chobits, that being “Homeboy Gon’ Fuck The Robot”.
Supposedly, Alice is the movie version of the lame Pretenders from the 1980s, near the end of Transformers’ original hey-day. But here’s my thing: If a character has too much power, it fails to be interesting (see Peter Patrelli). Characters like the Transformers are interesting because while they are powerful robots with fantastic abilities of transformation, they also have limits and vulnerabilities. In the first movie, I was worried about this since they seemed to be able to transform into anything and construct any tool/weapon they needed through that ability.
“Revenge” has further disrupted that balance by having Transformers that can turn into people. What kept the Transformers in check in the past was that they could transform into anything, as long as it was mechanical. As soon as I saw that they could now take the form of organic things, I’m out. Now I have to ask, if they can turn into anything, why is it so damn hard to conquer Earth? They could just wipe us out by sending Ravage to barf up a cloud of hungry Insecticons, à la the ending of The Day The Earth Stood Still.
But I guess watching how these robots transform is pretty cool. The point of seeing this movie was to watch robots transform into stuff and fight each other, right? What little there was of that in the first movie was hard to see because of all the tiny metal parts and lack of distinguishing colors in the robot designs. Well, they fixed that in “Revenge” and we were treated with much more footage of robots; most of which we could make out.
Except for one thing: Shit kept obscuring the camera! Whenever a Transformer transformed, the camera would either zoom in tight on one section, pan around so large objects in the foreground could block the special effect as it passed by, or just position something directly in the way. For example, in the climactic scene where Optimus Prime comes back to life, I wanted to cheer as he woke up and got to his feet… But some stupid parachute dropped into the shot so we couldn’t see anything until he was finally standing. So I got more scenes with robots than the first movie, yet I still feel ripped off.
Remember the pee joke from the first movie? Not funny.
The balls joke in this movie? Also not funny.
Then there’s the climactic battle where the Decepticons get their asses kicked by the military. No, not the Autobots…the military. Michael Bay has a gigantic boner for the military, so they get way more coverage and credit for fighting the Decepticons than the Autobots. I’d say about 3/4 Decepticons that are killed in the movie’s climax were taken out by military weapons.
One of those Decepticons being Devastator. Motherfucking Devestator. The navy just aims a rail gun at him and BOOM. No more Devestator. Okay, fine, but let’s take this one step further… If rail guns can take out Devestator, why don’t we just always use those?? Hook some rail guns up to some tanks and the Decepticon problem is over. You can take your boys home now, Optimus Prime…we got this. Oh, you don’t want to leave Earth? I’m sorry, did I mention we have rail guns?
There are 105 other nit-picks to be had over this movie, but these are the points that bothered me the most. The one thing I will give this movie props for is bringing in Frank Welker to reprise his role of Soundwave. Though I kinda wish they added the same echoing effect that they had for the 1980s cartoon. Otherwise, he just sounds like Dr. Claw.
