Transformers 2 Review

With a few notable exceptions (such as the Lord of the Rings triology) movie series tend to get worse with each sequel. While Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was, in my opinion, not nearly as good a movie as its predecessor, it is by no means a bad movie and was still a fine piece of science fiction...Michael Bay style.

On the subject of Michael Bay, his respect for and accurate portrayal of the United States military has made his one of my favorite movie directors. Both Pearl Harbor and Armageddon count as some of my favorite movies. However those of you who watched the Director's Commentary of the first Transformers Movie found out that Michael wanted to have many more effects and also more robots involved but was reigned in by Steven Spielberg and others and in the end the first Transformers movie was made relatively cheaply. In my opinion the first movie was a perfect balance between story and action. I am eager to listen to the director's commentary on the Transformers 2 DVD because after seeing the film it looks like Michael Bay was basically given free reign as there are many more robots in the second film and subtly is widely abandoned by the end of the movie which kinda defeats the terms "robots in disguise".

On the subject of the robots, I am happy to see so many of them. Both Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving return to give the perfect voices to Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively (I dont care what anyone says, Hugo Weaving was the perfect choice to voice Megatron in these movies). Other returning robots include Ironhide, Ratchet, Starscream, Scorponok and Bumblebee (who, despite finding his voice at the end of the first movie is still mute for reasons that are never explained). Although I am happy to see that there are more robots in this movie it would not be accurate to say that the new robots are "introduced" rather most of them just happen to pop up on the screen as if they need no introduction. Granted for most diehard Transformer fans, most if not all of the robots really do not need an introduction. However for the general public this is not the case.

Lets get one thing straight first, I have seen the original transformers movie (the one where Eric Idle of Monty Python voices one of the characters), I know a few basics about the original plot, and Beast Wars was, and still is one of my favorite animated shows. The amazing thing about the previous Transformer's movie was that it made the plot and characters accessible to all fans, both new and old. Anyone could go in and see Transformers and walk away having some sense of what they saw without too many questions (those they did have were likely eagerly answered by their children during the car ride home). In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, several robots appear with little or no introduction:

-Arcee, the only female autobot is briefly named and featured early on though the fact that she is actually a single conciousness that controls three motorcycle robots is never addressed in the film. Still this really isnt that bad since she doesnt really show up much once the plot gets goin.

-The twins Mudflap and Skids, while they sort of just appear on the scene early on, end up getting more screen time than any of the other robots (including Optimus Prime). The two (relatively) small robots provide comic relief and are on hand to add to the plot when needed so the lack of a true introduction for these characters can be forgiven.

-Sideswipe in contrast is one the biggest offenders in this category. He appears with almost no introduction (I dont even remember if his name was mentioned, I had to go to wikipedia to get it) and like Arcee he appears only a few times outside the film's opening.

-Jolt is another autobot whose name I could only find on wikipedia. I honestly dont even remember him in the movie. I can understand putting robots in the movie to please the fanbase but at the very least give us some introduction.

The Decepticons are worse offenders when it comes to ambiguity so I wont bother listing all of the ones that appear but I would like to make a few gripes:

-Both Soundwave and Ravage appear in the movie. Both characters were G1 favorites (as I understand it) so it is unfortunate that they are not given a larger role. Soundwave does appear multiple times but to my knowledge he never actually lands on Earth itself and not once do we get to see him in battle. Ravage on the other hand is never even called by name (if he was then I dont remember it). I was able to recognize Ravage since he also appeared in two episodes of Beast Wars but he only appears in one scene of Revenge of the Fallen (although he does play an important role in advancing the plot in that scene).

-Grindor, a robot which was easily mistaken by many (me included) for Blackout from the first movie was another dubious inclusion and brings up a major gripe I had...too many robots looked too much like other robots, some of them were almost identical to robots who were killed in the first movie. Grindor was the only example of this I could find named online but in the climactic battle of the movie several decipticons seem to return from the grave including a twin of Bonecrusher (the decipticon who was decaptitated by Optimus Prime during the highway chase scene in the first movie).

I could go on about the robots but despite my lengthy gripes about them you may have noticed that many of the issues I took are quite petty. The reason is that the movie is still enjoyable on its own without knowing the backstory of some of the robots. In fact Transformers 2 is on its own a good movie. Taken in contrast with its predeccessor Transformers 2 is still a good movie but is just not quite as good.

Moving on to the human cast, both Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox do a good job once again as Sam and Mikaela. Josh Duhamel as Lennox as plays a good character (although by the end of the movie his character seems to be involved in almost the exact same scene as in the first movie, I swear at one point stock footage is used). Outside these three though the cast is not as compelling as in the first movie. John Voight is absent but John Turturro was somehow worked into the movie as former Agent Simmons. Turturro does a good job but his comic additions to the movie are not as funny as in the previous film (personally I blame the writers for this more than Tururro himself since there was little reason his character had to be in the movie).

Speaking of characters that didnt really even need to be in the movie was Leo Spitz, Sam's college roomate played by Ramon Rodriguez. I have given the matter much thought but I still cannot understand exactly why his character needed to be included. It is no fault of Rodriguez (who gives a decent performance) Leo Spitz could easily have been cut from the film and it would still be possibile to make the movie without altering the storyline much at all. My only conclusion is that his character must have been in G1 and was included for the benefit of the fans.

One thing I really found peculiar was how much Ron and Judy Witwicky (played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White respectively) were included in the movie. Early on the two are featured in a completely unnecessary action scene where a fragment of the All Spark transforms the Witwicky's kitchen appliances into hostile (though largely harmless) robots. The scene started as a plot establishment scene about Sam moving to college while his parents commented. There was absolutely no reason for the kitchen robots other than to establish that Sam still has a fragment of the All Spark and that Bumblebee was being kept at the Witwicky house, both of which would still have become apparent shortly after without the business about the killer kitchen ware. Later on the Witwicky parents again are featured in the sequence where Sam arrives on the college campus. During this unnecessarily long and somewhat racy sequence (racy in the sense that at its heart Transformers is supposed to be a movie based on a children's cartoon about alien robots so parents will likely be taking their kids to see this movie), Judy Witwicky become intoxicated and proceeds to stumble around the campus embarassing Sam and being pursued by her husband. The scene, while somewhat humorous, is largely unneccesary, and like many of the scenes involving the parents, could have and should have been cut. The biggest issue I took was when the Witwicky parents show up during the final battle in Egypt almost inexplicably (ok there is some vague plan to use them to get Sam to give them the *spoiler erased here*) but considering the fact that Rampage is a hostile alien robot with advanced weaponry, I hardly think that a Decipticon like him needs leverage to negotiate with an 18 year old boy.

Rather than going on about other things such as how Megan Fox's white pants somehow manage to remain nice and clean even as she is running through a battlefield in which giant alien robots are blasting away at each other along with the US (and briefly Jordanian) military in the sands of Egypt, I would like to come to a conclusion. My final verdict on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is this; if you saw the first movie, go and see this movie (money says you will need if and when Unicron shows up in Transformers 3). If you did not see the first Transformers movie, then watch it before you see Revenge of the Fallen because you will likely be lost otherwise. As I said earlier, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good movie on its own, its just not as good as the first movie (even though Linkin Park still gets to play during the credits).

On a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the best) I give Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 3.5 out of 5 stars.