TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
PARAMOUNT
RELEASED 19 June 2009
When the first Transformers movie came out just two years ago, I wrote about the thrill of seeing giant fighting robots laying waste to entire cities, and the funny one-liners that littered the movie. The last half hour of that movie is a mini action-masterpiece in it’s own right, and I felt gleefully exhausted after it all. Less than halfway through ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ (we’ll call it ROTF from now on), I wasn’t so much exhausted as losing the will to live. I can’t remember ever wanting a cinema projector to break down more, so we could be spared any more nonsense.
The Autobots are helping a secret government outfit called NEST travel around the world to track down and detroy the remainder of the evil Decepticons. We first see them in Shanghai in an exciting factory/motorway encounter at night. The impressively designed Decepticon looks like a big wheel with crane arms, and it’s down to a parachuting Optimus Prime to save the day.
Meanwhile, Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is off to college and decides it’s time his garage-hidden robot protector Bumblebee must stay behind (not quite sure why or the logic on this). Needless to say, it’s not long before Sam discovers he holds the key to the ‘Fallen’s plans for ultimate destruction (last time it was imprinted on his glasses, this time it’s hardwired into his brain), and is dragging his new room-mate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) and girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) along for a dangerous adventure culminating in a battle atop the pyramids of Giza.
Although the original’s plot seemed a bit confused, at least it had one. ROTF is a total mess. Thousands of years ago, Transformers came to Earth to harvest the sun for energy but decided they couldn’t because if life existed on a planet, they would protect that lifeform. However, ‘the Fallen’ (a very bad, spikey-looking robot, along with his cohorts) decided that he was going to have the sun anyway, and a great battle breaks out between good and bad robots, beginning the Autobot / Decepticon divide. The ‘Fallen’ and his minions are banished, while the victorious Transformers hide a ‘power shard’ somewhere on Earth so that it can never be used to power the huge machine (also hidden on Earth, about the size of an Egyptian pyramid, hint, hint) to harvest the sun. Speed up to present day, and the ‘Fallen’ return to take their vengeance on the Autobots and mankind by destroying the Earth. Maybe I’m missing something, but why don’t the Autobots just destroy the machine and the shard, there and then? And why would the ‘Fallen’ have been so bothered about Earth’s sun in the first place? Why not just jet off to the next solar system and find another sun? The motivation for the ‘Fallen’ just seems incredibly weak, and seeing as how that’s the basis of the whole movie, the film is on shakey foundations for the entire running time.
‘ROTF’ starts off brightly, with the aforementioned Shanghai chase visually astonishing and imaginatively choreographed. Director Michael Bay has obviously not rested on his laurels regarding the technology involved in bringing the robots to life, and there is a definite emotional improvement as well as bigger and more adventurous camera angles. You don’t ever feel like you’re not right at the heart of the steel-shredding carnage (BTW what are Transformers made of?) Sadly, everything else about the film feels like a pale shadow of the original. It’s like they were so excited about pushing the technology that they totally forgot about the story. It’s almost identical to the original, only more confused, illogical, and uninvolving. All the actors seem to have been given 2-year old scripts with ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ scribbled on top and the lines shuffled round a bit. Much of the humour this time around also has an unpleasant crude sexual edge that certainly wasn’t so overt previously. And it all goes on for so long. Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, the non-stop pace of ‘ROTF’ gets tiresome very quickly. There were no ‘beats’, no refrains, no time-outs. It’s like watching a freight train rattling past that just goes on and on and on.
The movies only saving grace is ex-Sector 7 agent Simmons (John Turturro), who reprises his role and frankly is the only actor onscreen who seems to still have an ‘all’ spark about him. Shia LaBeouf does exactly the same schtick as every other film he’s been in, so much so that I actually barely noticed him onscreen most of the time. I can’t believe the turnaround, but two years ago I really enjoyed watching LaBeouf. I certainly noticed Megan Fox, who gets put in some sexy, and some not so-sexy, get-ups. Quite what Fox is supposed to be doing is anybody’s guess. Her character gets a couple of ‘tough gal’ moments just to push the idea that she’s an integral part of the plot and not just eye-candy. Please, I ain’t convinced. For a stupidly convenient way of getting them into the final act, the Witwicky parents pop up again and really annoyed me with their simple presence. Finally, the two soldiers from the first movie (played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson) also hang around, and like every other character in the film, they feel totally redundant. Their scenes seem to have no importance or bearing on the story, what there is of it.
Over the last decade, sequels have begun to often turn out better than the original by recognising the strengths of character and story and amplifying them. ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ has taken the ill-fated route of 80’s sequels by upping the special effects and throwing twice as many explosions into the mix, but has completely ignored what engages an audience - a story with heart. In 2007, I summed up my review of ‘Transformers’ by calling it pure escapism. I’d have to say ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ is pure boredom.
TWO OUT OF FIVE