Chevformers: Revenge of the Fallen Car Company

WARNING: Rants and Spoilers

Me and Tikara being devout fans of all forms of Transformers went to the premiere of Transformers 2: The Revenge of the Fallen, simply to see if Michael Bay had made up for what he had done to the first one, namely making Bumbles the hero, the Robotic Corn Chip and that god awful flamejob. Unfortunately, it would seem that not only did Bay Skullhump the franchise, but once again further pushing the robotic characters into the background once again.

This instance took place two years after the events of the first movie, in which the now victorious Human and Autobot soldiers joining forces to hunt down the Decepticon threat still present on the planet, in an organization called NEST, a group akin to MASK or GI-Joe vs.. Transformers franchises, though not as successfully put together.
They hunt down the remaining Decepticons, with varying levels of success, but seem to cause ridiculous levels of destruction to cities all over the world. Cities, might I add are filled with about 90% Chevrolets.

Now there is no hiding that Michael Bay has a shining to GM, and this is painfully obvious when every single Autobot is a GM vehicle, and it was only the Deception’s where non-American Cars. Now, I still have reservations that making Bumblebee a Camaro, and the BS surrounding that decision (No the Fans WILL know the difference between Herbie and Bumbles, and VW WAS in on being involved in the movie), but considering that Sideswipe was going to be a Lamborghini, UNTIL Bay chose the Stingray just points out that Bay cares more for his back pocket, than the fans.

The villain of this train wreck is none other than Unicron, The Fallen, a being who is actually in charge of the Decepticons, and rebuilt Galvatron Megatron. The Fallen also wants to destroy the Earth because apparently he visited Earth in Prehistory, and somehow left his mark on the world without anyone even realising it, as all ancient landmarks coincidently have Cybertronian text on them, and the Pyramids are actually built by the Cybertronians to hide a massive gun thingy, I dunno I kinda glassed over when they described it. Whereas, the good guys were after the Matrix of Leadership, a key designed to activate the same weapon, cause ya know Matrix Of Leadership just screams Doomsday Key, though along the way Optimus Prime ends up dying, though he comes back at the end. I mean if writer Roberto Orci was any more anti-canon I would have sworn he wrote Star Trek 11… wait, oh yeah he did.

This movie reminded me of the Rifftrax commentary for Episode 1 of Star Wars, where they comment that “You know what I love about my action films? When a group of characters stand in a hallway and has a really long talk…and if no new characters are revealed in these discussions, the more the better.” To that end, in this two and a half hours, either the human characters are fighting giant robots, or they are talking about fighting giant Robots, interspersed with really odd sequences of Megan Fox dressed in very little…Unlike most people, I don’t find her attractive, in fact I think her position in the movie is unnecessary, love interests have no place in Robot battle movies. Like the previous movie, the human characters are the heroes, instead of being plot points.
Once again Shia LaBeouf (Spike Whitwitcky), who is still the worst actor currently working, and I mean usually Dakota Fanning takes that title from me, but then, I haven’t had to sit through anything she’s made recently, leads this cast, and while I admit the Soldiers in this movie are well played, unfortunately everyone else, ranging from the crazed conspiracy theorist, who ends up being Spike’s roommate at Uni, to the Australian co-ed, who ends up being a robot, and the camera spent way to long on her digitally altered ass, are completely unnecessary characters to the story.

Isabel Lucas’ character brings me to a very odd point in this film, whoever wrote this movie has a thing for the Tentacle rape fetish, and no fewer than two characters partake in this practice. One, being Isabel Lucas’ character, whose tail and tongue digitally violate Spike, or a really awkward sex scene; and Soundwave, who decided to tenderly get intimate with a communications satellite, though I still wonder just how no one noticed the added mass of a giant robot bumping uglies with a satellite.

Now, when I saw the movie, I could not believe the addition of the characters Skids and Mudflap, two painfully obvious, stereotypically black characters, who are not only inherently racist, but actually made me feel uncomfortable to watch. I have gone so far to say that they are the Jar Jar Binks of the franchise, an opinion that is mirrored by many reviewers, there was no reason for adding these characters, and there is no reason to try and defend any action for their existence. The only other character whose design irritated me was Devastator, but not in the design of the Transformer, but in the fact that they gave the 41ft robot genitals, firstly Devastator is a Combiner, therefore consists entirely of the Constructicons and secondly Transformers procreate by imprinting an image onto Protoforms, NOT by reproduction.

The first half of the movie left me cold, in fact several times I was close to falling asleep, Unfortunately the second half, while could have been a lot better, managed to disappoint me. While I did enjoy the final battle… well the parts that didn’t involve Galvatron and Unicron, oh sorry Megatron and the Fallen, because ya know according to Michael Bay, the fans are stupid and wouldn’t get the references and/or name changes. Especially the Decepticon who did a commando roll…and then promptly exploded. But the Highlight for me was when Spike died… granted it was only for about a minute, but the crowd at the showing I was at cheered, and I admit, as did I, however, our cheers quickly turned to groans the minute he was resurrected…somehow, I still have no idea how though. Though he ended up having the Matrix of Leadership in his hands and held it high above him. It was almost enough for me to expect to see a particularly annoying Red sports car turn up and somehow end up becoming the new leader of the Autobots and start hearing “You’ve Got The Touch” by Stan Bush…and if you didn’t get that reference, go and watch the original Transformers Movie from 1986, then you will.

The movie ends quite poorly, in fact it just ends, Optimus Prime, resurrected using parts from a geriatric Jetfire, whose design still doesn’t make sense considering that Transformers exist for millions of years; gains the ability to fly, kills The Fallen, and destroys the Sun Blaster Cannon, the humans fight off the Decepticon army with the hell from the annoying little robots. Megatron and Starscream tuck their tails between their legs and leave the planet. As soon as the day is won, Optimus stands on the head of the Sphinx, and promptly discards the remains of Jetfire, the robot that sacrificed himself to save him, is just dumped to the ground.

Overall, the movie was a poorly constructed, poorly written, and a poorly made piece of tripe I mean I thought the original was bad, but this, truly is a horrible movie that should be avoided like the plague. It just pains me to hear that they are in fact making a sequel to it.