‘Revenge of the Fallen’ isn’t in the Same League
as the Original, but is Otherwise a Good Time
-----‘Transformers’ was a wonderfully fun and shameless movie about giant alien robots, and normal people getting mixed up with them. The sequel seemed extremely promising, with all of the major players returning. Unfortunately, it takes the few small issues that I had with the first film and magnifies them. However, my disappointment aside, the beautiful effects work is enough to make nearly anyone enjoy the film, and is enough to bring me back for multiple viewings.
-----‘Revenge of the Fallen’ has the Decepticons striving for a way to return to power. They organize, and hope to bring the Autobot Optimus Prime to his knees. Meanwhile, unsuspecting human Sam Witwicky finds a shard of the all-powerful “Cube.” Touching the shard causes him to have visions that hold the key to the Decepticons return to power, making him their number one target.
-----Shia LaBeouf returns as protagonist Sam Witwicky, now on his way to college. Unfortunately, due mainly to the weak script, LaBeouf’s character is but a caricature of his role in the original ‘Transformers.’ He finds less laughs, and becomes more of your archetypical action hero. This is pretty much the ongoing story for this sequel, as it takes out many of the better elements from the original, and replaces them with the lesser parts of the original. Megan Fox also returns, and as is the case with LaBeouf, her character is traded in for a one-note stupid archetype, and she becomes little more than a sexy prop piece. Also returning is John Turturro as the goofy and dishonored Sector Seven enthusiast, Agent Simmons. He gets some laughs, but remains to be a very ridiculous character and one of the more unbelievable aspects of the film, giant robots aside. Newcomer Ramon Rodriguez is also thrown into the mix for no apparent reason. He simply provides another Sam Witwicky character, but a much more ludicrous one whose sole purpose in the film is a few quick laughs. Rounding out the primary cast is returning Tyrese Gibson who stands around to pop out a token line at the end of select scenes, Josh Duhamel doing basically same thing he did in the first film, and Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam’s crazy parents. Dunn and White were agreeably funny in the first one, and they get a number of laughs here too. The problem is that Director Michael Bay forces them into the end of the movie in an unnecessary and poor display of trying to bring more of what people liked in the first film. They’re supposed to be the kooky comic reliefs, not the stars of the film. While that sums up the live action cast, it would be a crime to overlook the brilliant vocal performance from Peter Cullen, returning as Optimus Prime. He breathes a lot of life into one of the film’s lead characters, and it’s just a shame he doesn’t have the screen time that some of the more annoying robots do.
-----I’ll start with the numerous flaws of the film, before I justify why I think ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ is still worth seeing. There are few things I didn’t like with the original ‘Transformers.’ Firstly, the small robots were kind of annoying and gimmicky seeming; not a big deal. Secondly, there was the occasional spectacularly cheesy line of dialogue that didn’t get pulled off; but it was occasional. Thirdly, the characters were at times unnecessarily silly, as if more comedy was needed. All of these small errors I had with the original are magnified ten-fold in ‘Revenge of the Fallen.’ The characters are just archetypes incapable of being anything more than adequate. Not to mention, there is a considerable amount of silliness, as opposed to the occasional scene, with more slapstick than well thought out humor. The small robots are also far too many in this film. I found myself wishing they would just go back to the giant robots, because some of the small ones can be downright annoying. They even abuse their effects work in one scene with the Cardinal Sin, a robot that transforms into a human woman! I wanted to go Darth Vader in the theater when I saw this and just shout, “Nooooooooooo!” ‘Terminator 3’ called and it wants its crappy villain back! My anger about this aside, the film also makes the mistake of taking itself a bit too seriously. In the original, cheesiness was displayed with a shameless execution; the robots were colorful, they were in a team led by Optimus Prime, they fought giant robots-it was fun. In this outing, there are a number of supposedly tense moments were you want to gag at some of the lines being thrown out. We all know what’s going to happen, so can we skip the melodramatic efforts at suspense and drama? There was far too much of this in ‘Revenge of the Fallen.’ Throw in the fact that the Autobot team somehow never even really makes a collective appearance in the film, and I’m wandering why they decided not to use what they built in the first film. Not to mention two new, medium-sized robots with outrageous personalities. I guess we’re supposed to think the bickering between them is funny? It was annoying. I kept thinking, “Shut up; why are you on screen instead of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime?”
-----To add to this unfortunate laundry list of missteps, the plot is also very sketchy and disarrayed. I’m not looking for a poetic masterpiece, just a solid story to center the action around, as seen in the original. It was too tossed around for you to really get any hold of it. The climactic battle also seemed to take up the last 45 minutes of the movie, which would have been fine had it felt climactic. Unfortunately, it looks great and is really cool, but I never thought it was supposed to be the final battle of the film until it was just about over. I felt a bit frustrated when the rushed ending came and that was that, because an excellent ten minute fight scene is better than a good thirty minute one. In its defense however, one of the reasons that the battle seems lacking is due to an earlier brawl in the film that ranks among the best of the year in an astonishing forest beat-down between Optimus Prime and the Decepticons. That aside however, many of the Decepticons don’t even look as cool as they did in the original thanks to their increased size. There are so many small black metal parts to them that they become indiscernible, and lose any sort of distinct style. Also, one of the things that makes Optimus prime look awesome, is his giant, yet well proportioned and astoundingly discernible color assortment that makes him recognizable in a battle. This is eradicated when Director Michael Bay, who I blame for most of the film’s problems, decides Optimus would look cooler if he was bigger in the final battle, and his supposed upgrade turns out to make him look more like a giant jumble of hardware than an awesome robot.
-----Technically, there are some issues, but the saving grace of the film, its effects, are so brilliant that many of my problems with ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ fade into nothingness. The amazing and inspiring musical score from the original is mercifully present, and yet its usage is cut down a great deal for some reason. Give me more of the inspiring score please, for what better tool is there to engage an audience throughout numerous fight sequences? The cinematography is also a style I normally don’t like, with relatively quick shots and shaky camera movements, but as was the case with the original, Bay’s trademark style is perfect for a movie about robots smashing into each other. The effects however, are the film’s true saving grace, and make all of its mountainous problems seem like molehills.
-----This film easily could have, and almost did fall into the category of being merely worth one viewing in the form of a rental; but thanks to fun and wild effects, it’s something I’m going to see at least once, and probably many times more. For all of Bay’s faults, he knows perfectly how to mix real explosions and old school effects, with tons of CG work. These could be boring and meaningless movies where goofy looking robots fly around the screen, but instead the battles are epic and believable. So smooth is the combination of real life and CG that immersing yourself in the action becomes a given as these larger than life battles take place in what feels like our real world. The wonderful use of locations like the deserts of Egypt and lush green forests only add to the spectacle. This too, however, makes me long for the glory days of the first film, when the protagonists were normal people encountering extraordinary circumstances rather than typical heroes taking everything at face value.
-----Obviously, I’m not in love with the film, and am even angered by its missed potential in relation to the original ‘Transformers.’ However, potential aside, if I were to walk into this with no knowledge of what it could have been, I would have been absolutely blown away with most of it. This is the difference between the supreme cinematic concoctions of today, and movies that a good fun, but not much more than that. With ‘Revenge of the Fallen,’ so plentiful is the action that we take for granted how amazing the effects are, and perhaps that is a testament to their perfect execution. So if you can leave your expectations at the door, and just enjoy this as the action exercise it is, you may be able to forgive its inadequacies, and forget just how far it stoops below the original films marvel.
-----I seriously considered giving it a rating in the Rent-It realm, but I couldn’t, because I want to see it again. I want to see it again and enjoy the amazing visuals and goofy humor, and maybe a few more times after that. It’s certainly not the epic the original is, but now that I know that, and am ready for its quick, somewhat anticlimactic ending, I’ll probably enjoy it more. Sure the first film was a well centered epic that covered the whole spectrum of how America would respond to alien robots (including the government, the people, and even the military, much like the alien-invasion classic, ‘Independence Day’), and sure the new one really only follows archetypical heroes, but it was still a lot of fun. Let’s be honest, young Megan Fox running in slow motion will never get old, and it’s this sort of shameless fun that made the original a classic. There’s just something about giant alien robots fighting, and super babes in short-shorts that does the heart good. For me, that’s a formula an ideal movie. I believe that movies exist for these ridiculous concepts that let us escape into the endlessly entertaining worlds we’ll never see otherwise, and they’ll never get old for me. Bottom line is it was fun, and it’s the only place to see absolutely breathtaking stunts as giant robots flying across a big screen becomes in art form in its own right. ‘Revenge of the Fallen,’ certainly isn’t a classic like the original, and is a big step in the wrong direction for the franchise. And yet, it’s definitely one of the more entertaining films of the year, acting on the primitive pleasures we get from big action and smoking hot femme fatales, and that alone constitutes a trip to the theater.
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