Okay, I retract my call of bullshit on the 3v1 Optimus against Decepticons scene. For some reason I thought that he WON that fight. If he had, THEN it would've been bullshit, but actually he only manages to take out Blackout before he's beaten. (Speaking of, I thought the way in which he's beaten down was very cool, and perfectly in line with how Optimus Prime, well, is. I almost went OPTIMUUUUUS! right there in the theater.) Actually that scene turned out to be my favorite in the entire movie. Which is saying very little.
(This whole thing is going to be massive spoilers, not that anyone commenting here hasn't seen it if they want to, but still...)
It was... okay. Distasteful might be a better word. This is, however, judging it on its own merits. I found it a great disappointment, nowhere near as good as a movie based on something as timeless and f***ing awesome as the Transformers should be. But let's take a look at some things...
Soundtrack: Only consistently good thing with this movie. When you can actually hear it over the explosions, it's epic and atmospheric. They did a decent job with this, especially the choral tracks.
Action: I'm with Moviebob here. There were a few good scenes that escaped this (mostly), but does Michael Bay have some kind of fetish for motion blur? I'll give you an example, the one-on-two fight Bumblebee gets with Ravage and some random red guy in the desert. Started off nice, I thought, "Hey, Bee's going to get to fight! This is gonna be great!"
Then Bumblebee did something (ripped off Red Guy's arm? Maybe?) Then he did... something else and I realized that while it looks visually cool, I couldn't make out at all what was going on. I saw three distinct points in that scene. Bumblebee putting his mask down, Bumblebee ripping out Ravage's spine (badass, by the way), and Bumblebee ripping the arms off of Red Guy. And I only saw the last two because they put them both in super slow-mo.
As I said, my favorite scene in the whole movie is Optimus vs. Megatron, Starscream, and Blackout. Honestly, it's the one action scene in the whole movie that's really well done. (I'll allow the possible exception of Devastator "vs" the Twins, which at least had that bolo thing going on, and Super Optimus Prime vs. Megatron (sorta) and The Fallen.)
Robot Design: Again, I have to agree with Moviebob here. Not all of them suck (I mostly liked Optimus), but when they did, they SUCKED. Megatron looked terrible again, Starscream was stupid, and I completely agree that The Fallen looks awful. I see that they were trying an Egyptian pharaoh motif for the Primes, and it's a nice idea, but it didn't get implemented well.
Also, every single small robot sucked. (Except Ravage, but you really can't screw up a feral robotic canine.) The Doctor was amusing to listen to but he's a spindly little crab...thing... and I really hated him. Also The Matrix called, they want the probe they put in Neo back. After you clean the Sam-snot off of it.
Out of all the new designs... Soundwave I liked. I'm not sure why Moviebob was angry about him (the low screen time, maybe?) As others have said, he did what he was supposed to, and he did it really well. The scene where he steals a satellite and starts spying on the military so he can coordinate the Decepticons is a lot of fun. Also I liked the wafer-thin Decepticon that Ravage unleashes on the base to steal the Spark fragment. That was a really neat idea and they executed it well (for once).
Oh, and one more thing. Jetfire? Cool. Optimus Prime plus Jetfire's parts? Ugly. As. Sin.
Robot Personalities: Oh hell, don't get me started... The Twins need to die in a fire. No, seriously, being sucked down a plothole (see below) is NOT a bad enough fate for them. Optimus also has some alarming flaws in his design. Why is the awesome, noble, heroic leader I remember suddenly slinging an endless stream of one-liners ("I rise, you fall"?!) that remind one of an eighth-grader's attempt to sound like Sean Connery, and generally running around being a berserker? (Yes, it was cool seeing him rip Blackout's face in half and crush The Fallen's spark in his hand, but Optimus would NEVER do that!) Wheelie is similarly annoying. He's not HUGELY bad, but he's pretty far up there.
Not all of them were horrible, though. Berserk Bond tendencies aside, Optimus is well done as usual, Ironhide is pretty fun, and Jetfire is the single most awesome character in the entire movie. Bumblebee manages to make us all laugh, despite the fact that Bay pulled the "he can't talk except by songs" thing again, which was stupid. And Megatron is his usual awesome, badass, completely ruthless self.
Speaking of ruthless, The Fallen's personality works well, but what the hell happened to Starscream? He's gone from the most awesome Decepticon of all time, a brilliant schemer who stays useful to Megatron while taking every opportunity to undercut him, to a sniveling coward who gets beaten up by Megatron in EVERY scene the two are both in until the very end. No, I'm serious. Even after the fight with Optimus, Megatron takes the time to take Starscream's ripped-off arm and *****-slap him with it. Congurts, Michael Bay, you have wrecked the single most awesome character you had.
Plotholes: Yes, there are plotholes. Let me give you three of them right here, off the top of my head:
1. What the hell happened to Skids and Mudflap? They're fighting Devastator, all well and good. That was actually a pretty fun fight scene (although plagued by the damn blur), barring that one moment where the red one (I think it's Mudflap, but I honestly don't care) somehow survives grinders stolen from the mecha shark in James and the Giant Peach and punches his way out of Devastator's mouth. ... Bullshit.
Anyway, so, Devastator "vs" the Twins. Cut to some other stuff. Cut back and now Devastator's climbing the pyramid.
...Rewind? No. They never appear again in the movie. They're just gone. Apparently plotholes double as black holes. Not that I care about the Twins, but still.
2. Hey, remember that asshat liason guy? The one who treated Optimus' body like shit and ordered everyone back to base? What happened to him after he gets kicked out of the plane? He calls the Navy and then vanishes into the same plothole the Twins went down.
3. Who the hell is the guy Simmons calls, and why does he have a railgun? We have a RAILGUN, and we don't hear about it until the end of the movie?
Misc:
Once again, misuse of shiny things. Devastator is frickin' badass. I will allow a railgun is awesome and can hurt even him, but there is no way that a being powerful enough to rip apart pyramids and about half the size of one can be taken out by ONE railgun shot. At the very least, the shot should've knocked him down and weakened him long enough for the Twins (or SOMEBODY) to finish him off. Oh, wait, the Twins were sucked down a plothole. My bad.
And of course, robot Satan, aka The Fallen. I counted. He lasts a MINUTE from when Optimus destroys the sun-killing machine. This is a robot we just witnessed lifting and subsequently destroying every single soldier and every piece of military equipment for a MILE radius, making even Magneto seem weak and pathetic, and Optimus just jumps him and beats the living shit out of him. Hell, half the fight was kicking Megatron and then blowing half his face off. The Fallen goes down like a chump, like Glass Joe AFTER he's been knocked down twice already. The epic fight scene we DESERVED after all the buildup, after Jetfire's awesome and noble sacrifice, never happens. I honestly feel cheated, Michael Bay.
And... the humans. Stop stealing the airtime from the awesome robots we came to see. I've ranted enough about this in earlier posts, so I'll just leave it at that. Besides... Even worse than the humans? The fucking puerile, five-year-old humor with sex that needs to be burned from my memory.
The dogs.
The freaking brownies (and the ensuing stupidity from the single worst character in the entire movie).
Don't get me started on the baby booties and ensuing scene. Just. Don't.
EVERYTHING that Skids and Mudflap ever say or do. Most of whatever Wheelie does falls under this too. (If I ever see Wheelie hump Megan Fox's leg again I will personally set fire to that prop. Or whatever section of hard drive contains his CG data.)
The list goes on, to the point where I was literally gagging in the theater. Sometimes the humor is on point (much as I hate Bee not talking, the radio gags were great as usual) but very rarely, and the rest of the time it goes beyond horrible. The humor alone could have killed this movie for me, but there's just so much more...
So, overall... Some people are going to enjoy this, if only for the mindless fun. The action is decent minus the motion blur (again, the Optimus 3-on-1 actually wins PRAISE from me), the plot is okay (not counting the plotholes, of which there are a LOT more than the three I named) when it's focusing on the robots (nobody gives a damn about Sam Shitwicky), and overally it's an okay action flick if you can stomach the bad humor. I still regard it as hardly worth the cash (and I paid 6.50 Peruvian soles to see it, which is about $2.20 USD) and a huge disappointment to any true blue Transformers fan hoping to see their franchise done justice. Revenge of the Fallen doesn't even come close.