Previously I spoke regarding the characters of this movie prior but I went the night of the premier to see what the audience thought of the movie. It was a not a charm, not the script not the acting and definitely not the body of work. I enjoy rude, sarcastic and sometime racist movie jokes when the plot calls for it, but this Michael Bay movie was all of the above plus more when there was not absolutely point for it. Let's review this movie reel by reel or scene by scene whatever you prefer.
The action revolves around a long-buried machine capable of destroying all life on Earth, and an ancient Transformer known as The Fallen (in case anyone misses the good vs. bad angels Identity) who returns to set those old whirring and take vengeance on the humans he so inexplicably hates, why no ones knows. The Fallen orchestrates the resurrection of mega-bad-robot Megatron to help him find the hidden 'Matrix'(Where's Neo) ignition key for the machine – You can tell which are the good robots -- they have blue eyes and are nice and round and shiny and look like Japanese motorcycles or gas-guzzling, all-American pickup trucks-- and you can tell which are the bad robots: they’re very pointy and have red eyes. Beyond that, there’s a lot of high-falutin’ about wrongs done eons ago and such:and so Sam finds himself once again drawn into helping the Christ-like Autobot leader Optimus Prime to save humankind.
Both Prime and Sam must make some messianic sacrifices (again) in order to beat the Decepticons to the Matrix and then beat The Fallen to kingdom come – but since their martyrdoms are not permanent (there's the franchise's future to consider), they lack all substance. Here, as in a video game, all the players can call on more than one life, which serves to reduce considerably any sense of real peril.
First of all the plot doesn't make sense, I thought the "Allspark" was their origin of life and the reason for the war between the Decepticons and Autobots, obviously Michael Bay (Director) missed the continuity of that plot in the first installment of Transformers. Now, the Fallen has something to do with an ancient blood feud between the good robots (the Autobots) and the bad robots (the Decepticons)blah, blah blah. it’s impossible to understand 90 percent of the Transformers’ dialogue, which is probably a blessing, because the other 10 percent sounds like Gandalf explaining to Frodo about the Ring, or Darth Vader grumbling about the damn Jedi Knights.
Still, as much fun as you want the film to deliver, its successes are usually sabotaged by Michael Bay's baby-brained sense of humour. He seems to find the idea of throwing inappropriate sexual references into the mix endlessly hilarious. If it's not a mini transformer humping Megan Fox's leg, it's a shot of a pair of wrecking balls suggestively attached to the mega-sized Devastator to give the impression it has titanium testes. Let's not forget the "Amos and Andy" robots who supposedly resemble what blacks are to Michael Bay, gold-toothed wearing, non-intelligent, loud, and illiterate. Honestly, If this isn't Hollywood racism at it's best then we are all in trouble. While this been a year of change in politics, racism and anything and everything positive, Michael Bay took it upon himself, Hollywood and someone I'm shock was part of degrading black people--Steven Spielberg to make a ridiculously movie which portrait a certain race in that form. I never saw Spielberg name attached to a movie that was degrading Jewish people and he shouldn't be at all which make you wonder why did he approve of this project showing how black people are supposed to act in robots standards by watching the world wide web.
If you ever wondered what a movie would look like geared toward the underdeveloped brain of a gestating zygote, if you think elements like plot, characterization, and logic just get in the way of your mandatory (over)dose of eye candy, then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the insipid illustration you’ve been waiting for. This is junk as justification, the mandatory sequel that feels less like a follow-up and more like a purposeful attempt to wipe the previous film off the face of the Earth. Within its incessantly long running time (as another critic pointed out, just 10 minutes under 2001) and overreliance on special effects is a philosophy so wrongheaded, so antithetical to what we believe is decent popcorn entertainment, that it practically asks to be smacked around. While it’s doubtful, here’s hoping the general public wises up to this waste of time and opens up a can of flopsweat whoop-ass on this atrocious turd.
There are so many things wrong with this movie that to discuss them at length would be pointless. Instead, a Hall of Shame checklist is probably more effective. In no particular order, we get: humping dogs; crying robots; pot brownies; robot slobber; tired tech geeks; female Terminator-lite; American Chopper, Megan Fox style; machine scrotums; John Turturro as a tortured mama’s boy; Prime gods; yet another ineffectual DC bureaucrat; Borscht Belt level jokes; indistinguishable desert mayhem; wussed out BMOC; and the most racially insensitive sidekick characters ever in the history of cinematic spectacle (take that, Jar-Jar George). That’s right, someone decided to invite Leroy and Skillet to the 2009 PC party, and these despicable little examples of big budget bigotry make the famed Dolemite comedy team look like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by comparison. It’s not just the jive-talk and cultural clichés (gold teeth? On a machine?). Buried within the ebonics is a litany of inflammatory ethnic fallacies that do nothing but denigrate and defile.
Even the action scenes, Bay’s purported strong point, are (rare) hit and miss. The movie starts out strapping, a city crushing cruise through Shanghai establishing the entire Autobots/Army connection. But things go rapidly downhill as we spend way too much time with Shia LaBeouf’s sitcom slapstick family. They make Jerry Lewis look subtle. Another stellar sequence set in a surrounding forest pays off in some edge of the seat thrills. But toward the middle, when Bay and his scriptwriting rejects have to basically tie in twenty differing narrative threads, the life is literally sucked out of the film. It’s at this point where the director starts channeling his previous canon, lifting moments from Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys, as if dealing with giant battling robots was just not enough. Indeed, what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen needs is more Robot Jox like stand-offs. We come to a film like this to actually SEE the machine on machine spectacle, not try and interpret it from inside a blur of editing and extreme close-up conniptions.
This is not to say that this seemingly unnecessary sequel won’t placate the faithful. Anyone with an actual jones for bigger and badder Transformer travails will feel their wavering attention spans rewarded. This is all polish and presentation, plasticized cheese painted in the grandest of studio supported patinas. It’s all go, Go, GO!!! There is never a moment to catch one’s breath, to drink in the proposed grandeur of man and massive shapeshifting alien machine co-existing and artfully interacting. There is no sense of scope, no awe-inspiring concept of the epic or the magical. Instead, we are stuck inside Bay’s adolescent fantasies, a place where all women are willing, all guys are dork champions, and all evil is vanquished by that most simplistic of moves - the convoluted script rewrite. Nothing makes sense here, but that’s not important for true fans of this material. They just want Bay to blow shit up - and blow it he does.
For some, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen remains critic proof. It’s the kind of hotwired celluloid crack that keeps the mainstream mesmerized by its pre-natal tendencies for colorful shapes and shiny objects. It’s like a rotten carrot covered in glitter being dangled in front of a dead mule - somehow, it makes sense, but on closer inspection, it’s kind of cruel…and definitely insane. With the amount of money waiting overseas for an easy to translate slice of hackwork Americana, we will most likely be seeing another alien gearhead grudge match a few summers from now. If the Go-Bots are indeed the K-Mart of Transformers, then this film translation of the toy is its Dollar Store sales pitch. Michael Bay may never make that minor character study, but one thing is clear. In the history of half-baked blockbusters, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is raw and runny.
I give it "TWO EYES CLOSED & SHUT"
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