Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review
June 22nd, 2009 by Daniel PurvisBefore Revenge of the Fallen began, we were informed that the original film had 14 robots but that if you laid out all of the robots in the second film head to toe, they’d span from wide side of California to the other. In addition, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the record for largest explosion with cast on set. This, I presume, was supposed to be a measure of quality. Of course, this is a Michael Bay film and we all know the joke: Big explosions, lots of special effects, a visual spectacular. What I hadn’t expected was that all the robot fighting and fireballs would be almost to the complete exclusion of any semblance of a respectable story, or even on-screen appearance by the cast.
Revenge of the Fallen is nothing more than robots fighting robots from beginning to end. Though that might sound exciting in theory, in practice, it had me checking the time on my phone twenty minutes in, then every five minutes following (as you can tell by my tweets) and there are some key reasons for this.
First, the robots, with all their spinning, pointy, sharp, black and shiny metal designs, are too complicated to watch when they’re moving on screen. Sure, Optimus Prime, with his blue and red side panels, might look like an impressive piece of machinery when he stands alone in a cemetery whilst glinting in the sun but as soon as he swings a fist at another robot of similar height and visual complexity, all you can perceive is a mass of shapes moving. Occasionally, this cacophony of glinting objects will freeze frame to indicate someone made an important blow but aside from these moments, the battles amount to loud bangs and crashes. People watch boxing for the art and beauty behind the movement. You can see each fist clearly swing, you can see when people duck, counter and maneuver, you can understand what’s going on. Films starring martial artists, such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan, are intriguing because we can see what the artist is doing, we can see the extraordinary and understand it whilst failing to comprehend how they can humanly manage the feat. In Revenge of the Fallen, even if something interesting happened, you wouldn’t know, because all you can see is a tangled mess of fast moving objects. This indiscernible garbage composes approximately 80% of the film and a complete waste of special effects.
Second, none of the characters in the film, either human or robotic, are given enough screen time and depth to create any meaningful connection with the audience. In the first film, most of our time is spent with Sam Witwicky, we can see he’s a clumsy goof desperately trying to chase the girl of his dreams, getting caught up in an epic life or death battle along the way. The interest is in the characters and their interactions. In Revenge, the most interesting, humourous and enjoyable moments of the film occur in the early stages, when Sam’s mother inadvertently scoffs down some hash brownies and ends up high as a kite. From there, it’s all down hill as a mess of robots fill the screen in legion, then get blown to pieces. There’s no connection to the robots, to any of the human corpses that pile up in abundance, no soul at all. It’s just a bunch of toys dying on screen to satisfy Bay’s adolescent fantasies. This is gore porn with shrapnel. There’s no nuance and no tact to the handling of the issues of life or death, essentially making each battle utterly meaningless.
To compensate for this lack of character depth, a range of frustrating and annoying new comic-relief personalities have been thrown into the mix, including two hilariously stereotypical racist twin autobots. These brothers, featuring gold teeth and obvious mental defects, may as well have been written into the script by the Wayland brothers. Their entire script consists of off-hand one-liners, like the rest of the cast I suppose.
And here’s the worst thing, the actors themselves don’t do a half bad job at delivering their lines and playing the characters. They get what’s happening and they’re making the most of a horrible, horrible play. Give them more screen time and flesh out the narrative at the expense of one and a half hours scrap metal and this might have been half-way enjoyable.
Since when the fuck did Transformers become Terminators, anyway?
I thought that I’d seen bad this year when I caught Wolverine: Origins, and that obvious abuse of special effects (could you not see during production that having Wolverine hack through a ladder at the speed of light looked utterly ridiculous?), and then there was Terminator: Salvation, which raped another brilliant series for all it was worth. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes bullshit and boredom to a whole new level.
Stop giving Michael Bay money. Please.
1/5 Stars
PS. Megan Fox is always hot, and ever so slightly redeeming, but I think she’s only got one look, too.









