A Very Late (and 80% scathing) Review of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Right off the bat I would like to say that Transformers 2 was definitely not worth seeing in theaters. In fact, I am actually rather glad that I was not able to see this film in IMAX, where the constant flood of pointless explosions and forced adolescent humor would have burned out my eye sockets twice as fast(more on this later). However, this is not to say that this film has no redeeming qualities, because it does, few as they may be. If I were to gauge this movie using a percentage based scale, I would say that the enjoyable portions of this movie take up about 20% of its total (very long) run time, while the rest 80% is forgettable drivel. Because of the conflict that my brain now faces in giving a movie with giant transforming robots a bad review, I will forgo the usual wall of scathing text and present my fractured thoughts in a handy dandy list.

you'll be seeing plently of this


and this

Lets first start off with the BAD

• Plot is utterly forgettable and unengaging, and after a while you start to not really care about why these giant robots are fighting one another
• The characters are also all rather annoying and relatively unlikeable, with as much dimension as a piece of paper. Some characters didn't even really add anything to the movie (ie. annoying roomate, racist transformers? really?)
  
• The "humor" in this movie was forced and tasteless, seeming to appeal to the lowest common denominator (a transformer that has "balls"? seriously?), when compared to the humor in the first movie which felt more natural and seemed to flow more from funny siutations rather than from lame sight gags
  
• Michael Bay's has an even MORE obvious hard on for the US military in this movie than in the orignal: I could have sworn I was watching one of those army recruitment videos with all of that military jargon and multi-billion dollar tax payer funded hardware being thrown around
• This movie actually made me sick of seeing explosions...I think that's all I really need to say about that.
• But the thing that I hated most about Transformers 2 was that there was a complete lack of focus on what the movie was about, the fucking transformers. Instead of giving any of the new transformers any sort of character, personality, or even cool action scenes, the makers of this film thought it was best to cram as many new transforming robots onto each scene as humanly possible. The first movie introduced us to the transformers, and eventually we knew their names, we knew their voices, we could recognize their (albiet shallow) personalities, and most of all, we actually gave a shit about them. In this movie however, no one, with the exception of one or two out of the fifty or something new transformers, even gets a proper introduction before either being completely ignored or brutually destoryed. On a similar note, many of the original transformers from the first film rarely had any significant screen time, or even lines, in this installment. In the end it all just ends up being rather hollow and disappointing

Not even (frequent) gratuitious use of Megan Fox can save this movie

Now the GOOD

• I have to admit that some of the giant robot fighting scenes were pretty cool, for instance, the scene in the beginning, and most scenes involving Optimus Prime. But, the end scene is probably the one that will most likely get people's fanboy boner going. However, as I stated previously these good scenes only comprise about 20% of the whole, if even that.
• Some of the new transformer designs are actually pretty nifty, pity we never really learn anything about them beyond that.
• I liked the various locales utilized in the film
• One has to admire the obviously large amount of time, money, and effort that was put into this ridiculous project

One of the few good things about this movie: Optimus Prime kicking ass

To reiterate, yes, I thought this was a dreadful movie. However, I do believe that it deserves to make the millions of dollars that it has no doubt already made in its month of release. Why? Because I believe that the makers of this film knew exactly what they were doing, making a loud, (very) dumb, explosion saturated blockbuster that appeals to the general masses who probably wouldn't really give a fuck about plot coherence and endearing characters as long as they were reasonbly entertained. Do I recommend it? Hell no, but not that it matters anyway because you and your mother have probably already seen it, and you may have enjoyed it. Actually, if you did enjoy it then I deeply envy you because it pains me horribly that something that I love as much as Transformers can leave such a bad taste in my mouth.