Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Year: 2009
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Josh Duhamel, Shia LeBouf, Megan Fox & John Turturro
Runtime: 149 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 24/07/20
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Josh Duhamel, Shia LeBouf, Megan Fox & John Turturro
Runtime: 149 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 24/07/20
Michael Bay’s 2007 film Transformers was, to be blunt, not good; but it certainly wasn’t bad either. It took a beloved franchise and put the story of the war between Autobots & Decepticons to one side whilst the majority of the film was dedicated to human characters that all acted like morons. There were a lot of things it got wrong, but overall it wasn’t a total train-wreck. So, when 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came around audiences were already expecting a film that was in general going to be below par but have some excellent action sequences and generally look pretty cool. So how did it manage to stoop even lower?
I’m going to be brutally honest, as much as the Transformers films are my guilty pleasure, I really struggle to pluck up the drive to watch Revenge of the Fallen. In fact, when I re-watched it for this review, I actively got myself drunk whilst watching it to make the experience more bearable. As a result, my opinion may be slightly skewed because I admittedly did enjoy it more when I was a bottle of wine deep, but I was still aware at how bad the film is overall.
Revenge of the Fallen picks up two years after the events of the first film. Sam (Shia LeBouf) is heading off to college and he’s been dating Michaela (Megan Fox) since they helped the Autobots destroy the Allspark and defeat Megatron. The Autobots meanwhile have partnered with the U.S military and are hopping around the globe to hunt Decepticons in hiding. When the Decepticons catch wind of a shard of the Allspark that survived they plan to steal it to resurrect Megatron (and they succeed). Megatron answers to The Fallen, a high ranking Decepticon that used to be a Prime, who wants to destroy Earth I think? I’m not sure, his motives aren’t really explained very well.
Anyway, Sam is important because he is going insane and seeing symbols that relate to some doomsday machine the Decepticons built on Earth millennia ago, so the Decepticons come after him. The Autobots obviously step in and EXPLOSIONS!!!
I’m going to be brutally honest, as much as the Transformers films are my guilty pleasure, I really struggle to pluck up the drive to watch Revenge of the Fallen. In fact, when I re-watched it for this review, I actively got myself drunk whilst watching it to make the experience more bearable. As a result, my opinion may be slightly skewed because I admittedly did enjoy it more when I was a bottle of wine deep, but I was still aware at how bad the film is overall.
Revenge of the Fallen picks up two years after the events of the first film. Sam (Shia LeBouf) is heading off to college and he’s been dating Michaela (Megan Fox) since they helped the Autobots destroy the Allspark and defeat Megatron. The Autobots meanwhile have partnered with the U.S military and are hopping around the globe to hunt Decepticons in hiding. When the Decepticons catch wind of a shard of the Allspark that survived they plan to steal it to resurrect Megatron (and they succeed). Megatron answers to The Fallen, a high ranking Decepticon that used to be a Prime, who wants to destroy Earth I think? I’m not sure, his motives aren’t really explained very well.
Anyway, Sam is important because he is going insane and seeing symbols that relate to some doomsday machine the Decepticons built on Earth millennia ago, so the Decepticons come after him. The Autobots obviously step in and EXPLOSIONS!!!
The plot of Revenge of the Fallen is damn near nonsensical, and much like the first film it goes on for far too long. None of the Transformers are interesting characters and none of them have clear motivations as to why they do whatever they do. The humans are even more stupid than last time, and they were pretty stupid last time!
First of all, the film spends so much time establishing Sam as moving away to college and spends so much time with his parents who are two of the worst characters ever to exist in fiction. He meets new friends who serve literally no purpose and then everything is dropped because he gets taken to Egypt by the Transformers. What is the point in establishing all this new information about Sam, and bringing in all these new characters, when none of it matters?!
The first film had immature and offensive humour as per Michael Bay standard, but RotF goes one further by making literally every character have fart jokes, racial stereotype jokes, sexist jokes, or sexual innuendos. EVERY CHARACTER! It just becomes a barrage of crude humour directed at 12 year old boys who are still at an age where fart jokes are funny, but also of an age where they think the more offensive the joke is the funnier it must be. Megan Fox is pretty much the only female character in the film with more than two lines of dialogue and is still literally just there to be objectified. She also vowed after this film to never work with Bay again so whilst she provided the best performance in the first film, in RotF it’s clear that she just wants to deliver her lines and be done. It’s not a bad performance as such, but you can tell she stopped caring and just wanted out. That being said, she is probably still the best actor in the film.
Visually it’s about what you’d expect if you’ve seen the first film. It has some gorgeous shots on the regular, but it ruins them with some awful and choppy editing. The combat sequences are bigger, but not necessarily better. The Tranfsormers also look a lot more detailed than they did in the first film, more realistic as such. But there’s a pretty regular problem where the animation for the Trnasformers is a different speed to that of the live action film, so they judder a lot. It’s really sloppily put together and clearly the focus was making the models look good and not making them fit in with the rest of the film. It’s also incredibly sad that one of Linkin Park’s best songs, New Divide, is the theme song for the film because it is honestly worth so much more than the pile of shit it is a part of.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen; don’t watch it, don’t buy it, don’t rent it, I mean don’t even acknowledge it exists if you can help it. It is best forgotten about and should have been buried alongside all the cartridges of E.T. for the Atari 2600.
First of all, the film spends so much time establishing Sam as moving away to college and spends so much time with his parents who are two of the worst characters ever to exist in fiction. He meets new friends who serve literally no purpose and then everything is dropped because he gets taken to Egypt by the Transformers. What is the point in establishing all this new information about Sam, and bringing in all these new characters, when none of it matters?!
The first film had immature and offensive humour as per Michael Bay standard, but RotF goes one further by making literally every character have fart jokes, racial stereotype jokes, sexist jokes, or sexual innuendos. EVERY CHARACTER! It just becomes a barrage of crude humour directed at 12 year old boys who are still at an age where fart jokes are funny, but also of an age where they think the more offensive the joke is the funnier it must be. Megan Fox is pretty much the only female character in the film with more than two lines of dialogue and is still literally just there to be objectified. She also vowed after this film to never work with Bay again so whilst she provided the best performance in the first film, in RotF it’s clear that she just wants to deliver her lines and be done. It’s not a bad performance as such, but you can tell she stopped caring and just wanted out. That being said, she is probably still the best actor in the film.
Visually it’s about what you’d expect if you’ve seen the first film. It has some gorgeous shots on the regular, but it ruins them with some awful and choppy editing. The combat sequences are bigger, but not necessarily better. The Tranfsormers also look a lot more detailed than they did in the first film, more realistic as such. But there’s a pretty regular problem where the animation for the Trnasformers is a different speed to that of the live action film, so they judder a lot. It’s really sloppily put together and clearly the focus was making the models look good and not making them fit in with the rest of the film. It’s also incredibly sad that one of Linkin Park’s best songs, New Divide, is the theme song for the film because it is honestly worth so much more than the pile of shit it is a part of.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen; don’t watch it, don’t buy it, don’t rent it, I mean don’t even acknowledge it exists if you can help it. It is best forgotten about and should have been buried alongside all the cartridges of E.T. for the Atari 2600.