review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
6 / 10
SYNOPSIS
Sam Witwicky goes to college. While going through his old clothes, he finds a leftover shard of the Allspark which implants Cybertronian symbols in his head and gives him odd seizures every now and then. The Decepticons (new ones) in the meantime are hunting leftover Allspark bits in an attempt to revive Megatron. They also have a base set up on a moon near Saturn or Jupiter where the Fallen is hiding like a big wuss. Who is the Fallen? He has nothing to do with the first movie, if you were confused, and nor does the revenge have anything to do with the first movie either. He's an ancient Transformer who came to Earth with his pals in 17,000 BC -- that's right, 17,000 BC -- to build a machine that would harvest the sun's energy and make energon (fuel for Transformers). Except this didn't go ahead because they discovered pesky humans who would obviously die if the sun died, and that would violate their ethical code. The Fallen, of course, objected to such liberal-minded nonsense, and was consequently outcasted for his troubles. So he sulked.
In the present day, Decepticons are gunning for Sam because he's "the chosen one" with valuable information, and Optimus Prime has to protect Sam because he's Prime. Around the world they go, because they're also on a treasure hunt! for this sun harvester machine and have to stop the Fallen from getting to it. There are over 40 robots in this instalment so don't bother trying to distinguish them, and almost all robot characters are reduced to background props except for Prime, Megs, Starscream, Bumblebee, and the new "twins", a pair of Bay-ist creations designed for comic relief and bringing back strong, nauseous recollections of Jar Jar Binks.
REVIEW
I had very, very, incredibly low expectations going into this movie, ever since I heard about some spoilers including what happens to Soundwave. As things turned out, I'm still not terribly impressed and it didn't amount to a good movie, but it was OK. I've given it the same rating as the 2007 movie, which also was rather disappointing, because I feel that ROTF is like an amplification of its predecessor: better in some parts, worse in other parts. They could have cut out an hour of useless crap and it would have been a lot better.
The good:
Optimus Prime is god-like. (Or maybe Christ-like would be a more fitting term...) He has the best action scenes. He's made out to be a lot more powerful than the last movie, probably from fan complaints, and while I wouldn't say he is supposed to be "badass" or "hardcore" in character ("noble" comes primarily to mind), I'm fine with him kicking a bit of ass. The other thing about Prime, is that he looks so much better with his faceplate on. You only see it briefly, for about half a second on two occasions, but it just reminds you of his full potential. Which genius decided to give him a retarded mouth? It's horrid. You decide:
or
Megatron and Starscream bickering like an old married (abusive) couple. I'm glad they've shown more interaction between the Decepticons, it's almost like old times. Starscream's voice has become more akin to that of Chris Latta's from G1 which is also a nice bonus.
I like the action and explosions and special effects. Some reviews would call it an "assault on the senses" and whatnot, but I say more is more. It's stunning and overwhelming, when done right. The opening battle scene in Shanghai, the forest scene, and the latter half of the Egypt scene, are great examples of this. Optimus taking on three Decepticons. Optimus merging with Jetfire to become super-powered. Bumblebee ripping out Ravage's spine (poor Ravage!).
It could do without the slow-mo, though. I don't mean slow-mo on a fight scene, I mean slow-mo of an "emotional" moment with Sam or Mikaela screaming, combined with tragic orchestral music. See, I don't think it works. Slow-mo and sad music is not an automatic formula to get a "sad scene"; it just feels like a drag. And this leads on to...
The bad:
I didn't actually have a problem with the runtime. The problem was that I couldn't care about the characters, and some points just got rather boring. Aside from the fact that I support both Autobots and Decepticons (and the humans can DIAF for all I care), I think the problem stems down to tone and characterisation.
ROTF strikes me as being completely indecisive about its tone. It is very heavy on the comedy. Crude, blunt, unfunny comedy, and in large, frequent doses, which makes it very hard to switch into a serious mood. ROTF absolutely fails on the serious front. Any attempt at seriousness or drama, with the abovementioned orchestral music and slow screaming/crying, just gets me thinking: whatever, move on.
The other reason why I had no investment in the characters was because I never got the feeling they were in any real danger. The Fallen was really, really weak. He's the main villain, painted out to be Big Bad, higher ranking than Megatron, and yet we don't see him displaying fearsome power. He talks big, sure, but he hides on his Decepticon base until the right moment to come, he doesn't do much damage, and Optimus defeats him very easily. He doesn't even look big -- he's regular sized and doesn't conjure up the same sense of awe as Devastator does. For the title character, and setting the premise of the whole story, he was a really poorly constructed character. It's like the writers failed the most basic principle of creative writing -- show, don't tell. They've told us this story of how badass the Fallen was supposed to be... and he really wasn't.
I wasn't fond of Sam being "the chosen one" and all that destiny crap. It's a common ploy, I'll admit, but I still really don't like it.
Useless, throwaway characters crawl all over this movie. It's just clutter. And I'm not sure why Bay wanted to put in all this filler when (a) there's no set runtime he had to stick to, and (b) they're always saying how much it costs to make complex CGI frames, so why not save money elsewhere by reducing the filler? The college scenes were a caricature and incredibly cliched. Alice the Pretender had a role that didn't make sense, because she was just hanging out at college for no reason because the Decepticons didn't know Sam was "the chosen one" when she started stalking him. Leo the roommate was completely useless, and I mean that seriously.
The pop music was grating. I have no love for Linkin Park and it's unfortunate that band had to be tied so fundamentally to the Transformers movies' soundtracks. Green Day's "21 Guns" was also played repeatedly. We get it. How "hip", how "edgy", to put on contemporary music in the film.
The nitpicky:
This is where I complain about the bots not being given enough screentime.
Sideways (Audi R8) -- the best looking car in the film, and he's in it for under a minute.
Sideswipe (Corvette Stingray concept) -- another good looking car, but didn't get to do much.
Demolishor (the big wheel guy at the start) -- again, an awesome looking monster who was so under-utilised.
and... SOUNDWAVE!
The ugly:
I feel very strongly about Soundwave, as you might already know, so this goes in the "ugly" section. I was not impressed. His voice was wrong. In the movie, they made it so generic. I don't care if it was an artistic decision made deliberately to not have the vocoder voice, the decision sucks. And they couldn't even have him say "Ravage: eject, operation: retrieval" or something like that? All he gets to do is float around in space and rape a satellite. With tentacles. NOT IMPRESSED.
The comedy was godawful. And it's truly depressing to find that most people in the theatre ate it up. It's all very democratic, I suppose. It's not my type of humour so your mileage may vary. I just found it disruptive every time they'd cut to something "funny". The twins Skids and Mudflap were annoying and they took up so much time. Michael Bay really loves his crass jokes, with Devastator's balls, Agent Simmons's g-string, running out of toilet paper, the humping dogs (twice), and Wheelie the little bot humping Mikaela's leg. Right.
Bottom line: if you're into toilet humour, you'll love it. Because that was the core of this movie. I can't even guarantee you'd like it if you're an action fan.