(Well well, I ended up seeing the movie after all but by that time the internet has spoken. Very, very ill will has been lashed out by fans and a handful of movie critic towards movie for being apparently annoying, loud, juvenile, and even offensive. And since I thought almost the same for the first movie, I was extremely pessimistic about this sequel. So now, I?ve watched it (and I can?t un-watched it) and decided to not let my opinion go to waste and write a review as I did for Watchmen and Friday The 13th, so what do I think.)
Short answer: Crap.
Long answer: Like the first movie but twice as a crap.
Long, Intelligent answer: A below average sequel with sloppy storytelling, poor handling of unlikable and bland characters, hard-to-follow action scenes, and a juvenile as well as at times racist script. This movie honestly does NOT deserve the millions of dollars it?s earning.
Normally this is the fuel for the extremely hyperbolic cynics who will say that people are stupid; they don?t understand what they?re watching; all they know is that it has a lot of explosions and unrealistically hot college chicks, they won?t care if it?s exactly bad or not, it?s just there for them prevent boredom and never get anything out of it. However, you have to remember two important words in any form of media and entertainment that affects its appeal: target audience. Who is this movie aimed for with its petty toilet comedy mixed in with loud and incomprehensible action? Kids. This movie is, deep down in its core, a kids movie with a PG-13 rating slapped on to fool parents and adults into thinking that they might get entertainment value of this as well. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is its target demographic on the spot: a kid in elementary school who thinks that all it takes to act like an adult is to cuss for no good reason, boost about his heterosexuality by talking about barely legal women, and speak in stereotypical Ebonics.
However, like all things, what was childish and cute in the beginning, will no longer cut it with better more intelligent films out there; sooner or later it will be time to grow up. For this franchise, it needs to grow up NOW!!!
The movie continues the Autobots mission of trying to rid the planet Earth of the remaining evil forces of Decepticons, but the Decepticons have other plans as they resurrect their leader Megatron (a plot point that the trailers in no way spoiled) so that they can properly advance in their conquest to destroy the earth and somehow claim rule over Cybertron, the Transformers home planet. However, once Megatron is brought back we learn that he isn?t the real one in charge. No, the real villain who?s been ordering Megatron and the Decepticons around is ?The Fallen?, an old robot from the distant past who?s looking for an artifact known as ?The Matrix of Leadership? which it plans to use so that it can blow up the Earth?s Sun in order to collect Energon, an energy that gives the Transformers life and will allow The Fallen to create more Decepticons so they can create an army to finally fend off the Autobots in an epic, loud, and interesting final battle.
Or so I?ve heard, because what I myself got from the movie was some kid on his way to college, and his girlfriend trying to take their relationship to the next level but his conspiracy theorist roommates, his clingy mom and dad, and the tough college life of weed, complete lack of wholesome and humble women because everyone?s a supermodel, and douche bag teachers (because, you know, that?s all college ever was and ever is) are getting in his way to achieve his ultimate goal: to be in relationship with girlfriend, because that all that matters to him and his teen angsty life. Now this is all fine and all, but there is one problem that kills this story: THIS IS A TRANSFORMERS MOVIE!!! This movie is suppose to be about Robots in Disguise who are waging a war against each other, not about some dull and completely uninteresting love story with a bunch of human characters who serve no purpose, but are scripted and portrayed on film to having more coherence to the story and take up ¾ of the actual movie while the Autobots and Decepticons themselves don?t really do much that contributes to anything except make stuff go boom!
The story and the way it?s told is handled so poorly that it?s incredibly hard to tell what?s going on; taking this film at face value, the viewer will be given the impression that all the movie is really about are the robots and because of that makes the viewer have expectation from the filmmakers to tell him/her about each individual Autobot or Decepticon robots. Instead the movie tells us jack about any of the robots and instead goes FAR out of its way to make sure the audience knows and understands every detail about Sam Witwicky, his girl who name escapes me but no one cares so it?s okay, his stoner/conspiracy theorist friend, his parents, the army, the CIA, the people at the butcher shop, the college professor, etc. with only a few of these people actual matter while the rest serve no purpose other than comic relief that is not needed and stalls the plot. All of this to mask weak writing since the script writers has to actually pull away from the story to tell a joke because they don?t know how to merge it in with the action allowing the movie to be more realistic in terms of narrative.
It would be as bad if the jokes were funny to people above the age of 10 years-old. Everything from parents trying to talk to their kids about sex, a robot with a mini-gun for a crotch making pelvic thrusts to fire shoots, another robot humping a girl?s leg, two dogs humping each other, and Sam trying to fend off a hormone stricken college girl with sex on the mind trying to aggressively pin him down and force herself on him because rape is funny as long as it?s girl on guy ( and because, you know, that?s all girls think about in real life, amirite?), etc. and this childish shtick goes on and on for the entire movie. And don?t think that the robots are safe either; if they?re not saying dated ?badass? one-liners, then they?re speaking in bad accents that make no sense for ROBOTS to speak, from (Nazi) German, to an elderly Britain (from a robot who is centuries old, long before human could even speak English, let alone have accents), to stereotypic black.
When the film FINALLY feels like relieving the audience of bad jokes, the action and explosions take place, for about 2 minutes and then goes back to 15 minutes worth of bad jokes. There is absolutely no consistent pacing in this movie. The fight scene ends abruptly quick, leaving the audience to scratch their heads as to what just happened. The final battle, however, does the opposite by taking way too long and absolutely goes nowhere until the fight with Optimus Prime and The Fallen, who gets beaten in 30 seconds flat and BAM!! That?s it, the end of the movie, but not before the mandatory sequel hook to let everyone know there?s going to be another one (as if we couldn?t figure that out already by ourselves, Hollywood).
This movie is everything that Transformers isn?t, and this is coming from someone who isn?t that into Transformers but is pretty sure that if he were to make the next one, he?d do a hell of a lot better job than Michael Bay and his team of flunkies.
Short answer: Crap.
Long answer: Like the first movie but twice as a crap.
Long, Intelligent answer: A below average sequel with sloppy storytelling, poor handling of unlikable and bland characters, hard-to-follow action scenes, and a juvenile as well as at times racist script. This movie honestly does NOT deserve the millions of dollars it?s earning.
Normally this is the fuel for the extremely hyperbolic cynics who will say that people are stupid; they don?t understand what they?re watching; all they know is that it has a lot of explosions and unrealistically hot college chicks, they won?t care if it?s exactly bad or not, it?s just there for them prevent boredom and never get anything out of it. However, you have to remember two important words in any form of media and entertainment that affects its appeal: target audience. Who is this movie aimed for with its petty toilet comedy mixed in with loud and incomprehensible action? Kids. This movie is, deep down in its core, a kids movie with a PG-13 rating slapped on to fool parents and adults into thinking that they might get entertainment value of this as well. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is its target demographic on the spot: a kid in elementary school who thinks that all it takes to act like an adult is to cuss for no good reason, boost about his heterosexuality by talking about barely legal women, and speak in stereotypical Ebonics.
However, like all things, what was childish and cute in the beginning, will no longer cut it with better more intelligent films out there; sooner or later it will be time to grow up. For this franchise, it needs to grow up NOW!!!
The movie continues the Autobots mission of trying to rid the planet Earth of the remaining evil forces of Decepticons, but the Decepticons have other plans as they resurrect their leader Megatron (a plot point that the trailers in no way spoiled) so that they can properly advance in their conquest to destroy the earth and somehow claim rule over Cybertron, the Transformers home planet. However, once Megatron is brought back we learn that he isn?t the real one in charge. No, the real villain who?s been ordering Megatron and the Decepticons around is ?The Fallen?, an old robot from the distant past who?s looking for an artifact known as ?The Matrix of Leadership? which it plans to use so that it can blow up the Earth?s Sun in order to collect Energon, an energy that gives the Transformers life and will allow The Fallen to create more Decepticons so they can create an army to finally fend off the Autobots in an epic, loud, and interesting final battle.
Or so I?ve heard, because what I myself got from the movie was some kid on his way to college, and his girlfriend trying to take their relationship to the next level but his conspiracy theorist roommates, his clingy mom and dad, and the tough college life of weed, complete lack of wholesome and humble women because everyone?s a supermodel, and douche bag teachers (because, you know, that?s all college ever was and ever is) are getting in his way to achieve his ultimate goal: to be in relationship with girlfriend, because that all that matters to him and his teen angsty life. Now this is all fine and all, but there is one problem that kills this story: THIS IS A TRANSFORMERS MOVIE!!! This movie is suppose to be about Robots in Disguise who are waging a war against each other, not about some dull and completely uninteresting love story with a bunch of human characters who serve no purpose, but are scripted and portrayed on film to having more coherence to the story and take up ¾ of the actual movie while the Autobots and Decepticons themselves don?t really do much that contributes to anything except make stuff go boom!
The story and the way it?s told is handled so poorly that it?s incredibly hard to tell what?s going on; taking this film at face value, the viewer will be given the impression that all the movie is really about are the robots and because of that makes the viewer have expectation from the filmmakers to tell him/her about each individual Autobot or Decepticon robots. Instead the movie tells us jack about any of the robots and instead goes FAR out of its way to make sure the audience knows and understands every detail about Sam Witwicky, his girl who name escapes me but no one cares so it?s okay, his stoner/conspiracy theorist friend, his parents, the army, the CIA, the people at the butcher shop, the college professor, etc. with only a few of these people actual matter while the rest serve no purpose other than comic relief that is not needed and stalls the plot. All of this to mask weak writing since the script writers has to actually pull away from the story to tell a joke because they don?t know how to merge it in with the action allowing the movie to be more realistic in terms of narrative.
It would be as bad if the jokes were funny to people above the age of 10 years-old. Everything from parents trying to talk to their kids about sex, a robot with a mini-gun for a crotch making pelvic thrusts to fire shoots, another robot humping a girl?s leg, two dogs humping each other, and Sam trying to fend off a hormone stricken college girl with sex on the mind trying to aggressively pin him down and force herself on him because rape is funny as long as it?s girl on guy ( and because, you know, that?s all girls think about in real life, amirite?), etc. and this childish shtick goes on and on for the entire movie. And don?t think that the robots are safe either; if they?re not saying dated ?badass? one-liners, then they?re speaking in bad accents that make no sense for ROBOTS to speak, from (Nazi) German, to an elderly Britain (from a robot who is centuries old, long before human could even speak English, let alone have accents), to stereotypic black.
When the film FINALLY feels like relieving the audience of bad jokes, the action and explosions take place, for about 2 minutes and then goes back to 15 minutes worth of bad jokes. There is absolutely no consistent pacing in this movie. The fight scene ends abruptly quick, leaving the audience to scratch their heads as to what just happened. The final battle, however, does the opposite by taking way too long and absolutely goes nowhere until the fight with Optimus Prime and The Fallen, who gets beaten in 30 seconds flat and BAM!! That?s it, the end of the movie, but not before the mandatory sequel hook to let everyone know there?s going to be another one (as if we couldn?t figure that out already by ourselves, Hollywood).
This movie is everything that Transformers isn?t, and this is coming from someone who isn?t that into Transformers but is pretty sure that if he were to make the next one, he?d do a hell of a lot better job than Michael Bay and his team of flunkies.
