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Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner Exclusive Interview in Brazil - THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOONTRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN Review
by Matt Goldberg Posted:June 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is the film I dreaded back in 2007. Before the first “Transformers” hit theatres, I had negative expectations. A big-budget blockbuster from Michael Bay based on the non-existent premise of cheap toys fighting each other didn’t seem like the most exciting time at the movies but I was happily proven wrong by the first film. There were characters, jokes, and the movie wisely paced out the action so that when it did throw to a set piece, you were ready to really enjoy the spectacle.
And then the “fans” started bitching. “Where were the robots?” they cried. “Why wasn’t “Favorite Transformer X” not in the movie?” “Who comes to a “Transformers” movie to see the people?*” As writer Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw so eloquently put it, “Fans are clingy, complaining dipshits who will never, ever be grateful for any concession you make. The moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices, the happier you’ll be for it.” But Bay has not only embraced their empty-headed pleas, he has also indulged his worst impulses while encumbered by a PG-13 rating that allows him to go right up to the line of good taste and then pee over it.
Since it takes “Revenge” over an hour to move the plot forward (mere shred of silliness that it is), I’ll just say that instead of story, almost the entire film is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), and his annoying dipshit of a college roommate (Ramon Rodriguez) running from Decepticons and then the Decepticons fight with the Autobots. The film is interspersed with juvenile humor like Sam’s mom eating pot brownies and Sam attending a college that only admits female porn stars.**
But of all the “humor”, the most non-spectacle element that would garner the most controversy (I say “would” because I imagine there are those people who are patting themselves on the back for shutting off their brains) are “The Twins”. Autobots Skids and Mudflap are two of the most racist caricatures to come along in mainstream cinema in quite some time and nothing can really prepare you for how they embrace the stereotype of young, under-educated, superficial African-American males. I almost wanted to call the NAACP in the middle of the movie to let them know. And I’m not a PC-guy. But when you see characters that are more racist than the crows from “Dumbo”, a film that came out before desegregation, then you have to take note. Oh, and just to make it even better, their voice actor is a white guy. You’re welcome, Race Relations.
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Yet if my audience is any indication, folks will eat this shit up. Most of the first film’s humor relied on Shia LaBeouf’s tremendous charm and comic timing. That’s now been replaced with the hilarity of “comic relief” characters like The Twins and the irritating roommate along with dogs humping each other and a Decepticon humping Megan Fox’s leg. If you are twelve years old, you are going to love this movie.
The film’s best humor tends to be unintentional and comes from moments of jaw-dropping stupidity although I have to say that I’m disappointed it wasn’t as mind-bendingly dumb as I’d been led to believe. I’m not expecting the world’s most tightly-crafted yarn with a “Transformers” movie, but when your characters walk into the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and exit out the back into Arizona, the mind boggles***.
In the end, “Transformers” is about spectacle, right? Who cares if the characters are weak and the actors have nothing to do and the geography is glaringly inconsistent and the robots have no personalities? Let’s see robots punching each other! I hate to break this to everyone, but that gets old fast. It gets old even faster when you don’t care about the robots doing the punching. It’s just pixels smashing against pixels with a very loud sound mix and just because it clearly cost a lot of money, that’s not enough reason for me to care. Without a worthwhile story or characters, it’s just the world’s most expensive videogame that no one can play.
As much invective as I’m hurling towards the film, I don’t hate “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. If anything, as a fan of the first film, I’m deeply disappointed by the sequel. What I enjoyed was removed and replaced with weak humor and meaningless spectacle. Near the end, when the film cuts to a close-up of a Decepticon’s testicles as two giant wrecking balls, a shot that should offend and sum up every critique of Michael Bay and his filmmaking, I was too exhausted to care.
Rating —– C minus
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*Answer: Folks who want to see a real movie and not just nostalgia porn for the emotionally-stunted audience of a crappy TV Saturday morning TV show designed to sell action figures made in China for two cents an hour.
**Yes, I know the film notes that the dumb hacker roommates made it so that the hot freshman are all in Sam’s dorm. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about all the other scenes. I dare you to find one female on that campus who doesn’t look like she could appear on BangBros.
***And no, they didn’t go through a “space bridge”. They go through a space bridge later when they go from the Arizona behind the Museum to Egypt. You know they go through a space bridge because they get flung about three hundred feet in the air and then land on the ground because people can do that. The film ignores geography again when they’re driving through the desert with clearly nothing around for miles and in the next shot they’re in the middle of a village driving along a paved road.
Dead on, so fucking boring.
Pros- On a technical level its outstanding, the first hour went fine, “some” of the action is great (forrest sequence) and Shia is still good.
Cons- bloated, overlong, incoherent, bad editing, laughably stupid, unintentionally funny with slow motion, all the jokes were mostly bad, no character development, a lot of annoying characters (Sam’s roommate), and the last 30 minutes had no sense of geography. I would give it a 3.5 or 4 out of 10.
It kind of angers me that this movie will do so good since it is all that is wrong with popcorn movies today. A kick ass action movie CAN have a good story and developed characters- Raiders and Star Wars weren’t also trying to be oscar movies but they delivered on all that stuff. Also just because its based on a toy line doesn’t excuse it for being so stupid, just because something is based on a weak source material doesn’t mean that the film has to be weak too.
Ok, that is about the most accurate review I have seen of the total failure of a film ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’.
Michael Bay is one of the most over-rated, boom happy directors in the industry.
BTW, the fact that BangBros gets a shout from you is far funnier then anything in the movie
I just saw TF2, and you have some great points in your review. However, I think you’re missing some as well.
(Yes, I’m an old school fan, just to get that out of the way)
“Fans” just want more robots on screen. Period. And when the screen doesn’t have ‘bots on it, they (rightfully) want to be looking at Megan Fox.
People are still reeling over the fact that they didn’t bomb with the effects. Since the late 80’s people have been discussing how much they’d love something live action, but cringed when they discussed the (then) state of effects. So, yeah, robots. That’s what people were most worried about them doing poorly.
So, now they’ve proven that they can pull off the robots. Flash-forward 2 years, and what do fan-kids (27-40 years old) still want? Robots and Megan Fox. The order doesn’t really matter.
So, we’ve seen ROTF, gotten the robots, the Megan, the explosions, and a nearly ‘correct’ Starscream. What’s next?
A well written, well paced and thought-out, intelligent, grown-up, finale.
Seriously. Not kidding. NOW the fan-kids will want the total package. The fan-kids were the loudest group screaming what they wanted. The studio would be insane not to follow what their core audience is literally screaming for…dollarwise.
I think we’ll be seeing a lot of “what NOT to include” in the next film instead of “we want to see….” - The only real exception to that might be Dinobots or Unicron. And why couldn’t they include both?
Anyhow, the WHOLE point I am trying to lead up too is this: If you want a more grown-up film, it’ll require a more grown-up director. Someone capable of…directing actors…not just explosions. And LOTS of actors. there are over 35 characters in TF2, and making them all fit into the story isn’t easy. Making them all ‘deserve’ screen time AND handle the effects is even harder.
Of the top-shelf talent there are only a handful that could really pull this off for TF3: Peter Jackson, Michael Mann, John McTiernan, Bryan Singer (my vote), Luc Besson (wouldn’t THAT be interesting?), Quentin Tarantino (wouldn’t THAT be even more interesting?), J.J. Abrams, James Cameron…
You’d have to jettison all of the popcorn directors like Bay, Steven Sommers, Paul W.S. Anderson…etc.
So, the next time around, “the fans” and the “general audience” will probably demand the kind of film that you talked about here…the one with the holes filled.
I certainly will be.
Shia LaBeouf can only play one role… that of a hysterical male always in a state of panic and confusion.
This is probably due to watching his parents having sex when he was a child.
Oh yeah the Jar Jar Binks twins were bit much.
Best review I’ve read on this film yet. And I really like that you gave it a C minus. As much as I felt this movie was crap for all the reasons you already stated, it is now at 20 percent on RottenTomatoes. I think that’s a bit unfair. The film is ridiculous, but the parts that are well done are pretty entertaining. I don’t think it was the worst film of the summer.
This review was tough but fair. C minus is exactly what it deserves.
Wow, you hit the nail on the head. I didn’t really mind the sexual sense of humor, or the mother that acted like she was on meth, more than a bunch of pot brownies. Like you said the plot was all over the place. Did Steven Spielberg even review this movie?
I couldn’t make sense of the movie at all. The talk of the all spark, the language that Wittwicky learns, the stopping of a sun sapping creation. It just rambled on and on. I was soo confused by it all. It just seemed like the movie jumped from one event to another.
Irregardless the action was well drawn out. For the fans out there the action does save alot of the movie. I’d see it on the big screen, just to see the killer CGI. You’ll be depressed if you expect to follow any form of a storyline though.
Spielberg you are becoming like M. Knight Shymalan, and that isn’t high praise. Please make the next movie more plot driven.
Michael Bay deserves to be held down and have his balls naired… nuff said.
I have to disagree,
I read as many reviews as I could before seeing it last night and I expected the movie to be an epic failure. I was suprised to find myself actually having fun with the movie. Everyone that complains about the movies story has a valid point but being a fam of the cartoon I have to say Transformers really never had one in the first place. If you guys ever remember watching these shows back in the 80’s I think you will recall that all the characters were stereotypes and no one got offended then. Sure the twins were a little much but alot of the campiness in this movie is what made the cartoon so much fun. I would say that this is a carbon copy of what the cartoon would have looked like in the 80’s if they could have done it live action. Everything doesn’t need to be the Dark Knight, we dont have to reinvent everything to have oscar winning performances or award winning scripts or make this darker and more reality based. The movie falls in line with movies like Independence Day and the first Transformers, they are fun and other than the added languge are faithful to to the source material they came from.
Worst movie I have seen in a long time. I rate it a D+. John Turturro was the only saving grace in the pic, also the only one who can act. The second best actors were the 2 dogs who simulated pooch sex. I was really torn between either walking out of the theatre about 1/2 way thru the movie but I decided to keep watching to see if the movie would get better. No such luck. Megan Fox is cute but I think the other young girl is prettier. The general public has been oversaturated with her. I have to disagree with the “racism” of the twin robots. I watched TF2 in a theatre which was 90% black and no one made any bad comments anytime the Twins were one screen. In fact, they laughed at those robots.
I am a child of the 80’s which makes me one of those crazy critical fans. I love the 1st one & 2 was alright. I thought the twins added nothing to the movie and yes they were racist along with the other racist parts of the movie that people have mentioned on the internet. I am a black male and all I could say was “WOW”. Everything else in the movie was tolerable. Why did it not need to be so long though because the plot was all over the place. Bring on a better plot, Dinobots, and Unicron!!!
What went wrong:
- Small idiotic mini robots like the humping decepticon monstertruck…
- A decepticon that transforms into a pornstar (wtf? was this a terminator T1000 or T-X?)
- Megatron serving “The Fallen” - Megatron serves nobody!
- The Twins and “Jar Jar Binks syndrome”
- Bad humor
I have to state, that I myself was a child in the 80’s - I grew up with The Inhumanoids, Transformers, G.I.Joe, He-man, She-ra, M.A.S.K., Dino-Riders, Thundercats, Jayce and The Wheeled Warriors, Bravestarr, (Filmation) Ghostbusters… mention a cartoon of the 80’s, and I believe I was on the bandwagon.
It’s just so disappointing to watch your childhood be flushed down the toilet with this movie - and I am already consuming tons of chlorpromazine and olanzapine to overcome the possible disaster that is G.I.Joe The Rise of Cobra…. My head hurts