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Description
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Director: Michael Bay
Studio: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Productions, Hasbro

Cast:
Shia LaBeouf
Megan Fox
John Turturro
Josh Duhamel
Tyrese Gibson
Peter Cullen
Hugo Weaving
Tony Todd
Mark Ryan

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tells the story of a college bound Sam Witwicky getting wrapped up in the Autobot/Decepticon conflict when Megatron is resurrected and a new evil follows suit by the name of The Fallen.

Here we are back at it again with my review series of the Transformers movies leading up to Rise of the Beasts, with my review on the second film of the former Bayformers franchise and arguably the most hated....

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Now Transformers 2007 was a massive hit when it released and helped rejuvenated the franchise and gave it new life in addition to being a great film especially for me and getting me into the franchise. And with its success, a sequel was immediately put into the works. But there was one problem....

The time of the film's production took place around the same time as the 2007-08 Writer's Guild Strike and as such, the production faced many development hurdles that ranged from initial script rewrites, shooting happening simultaneously during the writing, reshoots, and a few other complications.

And when it was released, Revenge of the Fallen while a commercial and box office success, was very much panned by critics and fans alike and while I can see where the negative word of mouth is coming from and do think its a bit of a downgrade from the first film, its a movie that I still somewhat enjoy as a genuine guilty pleasure experience and find a bit overhated as I feel like if it was done differently and if not for the complications set by the Writer's strike, Revenge of the Fallen potentially could have been a better film. But for the movie that we have, it's a movie that is bad but still watchable enough in my opinion....

POSITIVES

The visual effects, the action and the CGI work for the Transformers themselves is still just as good as the first film and that is the one thing that remains consistent throughout the film franchise despite the varying degrees of quality. We get some new Autobots and Decepticons in the sequel and the designs (for the most part) and CGI used to bring them to life are very good and the action is still very exciting and even a bit more brutal when it comes to certain Transformers deaths in this.

And a lot of the best action of the film is on full display in arguably the best scene of the film and arguably the Bayverse as a whole, the forest battle with Optimus against Megatron, Starscream and Grinder. Even those who hate this movie can admit that the scene is the highlight of the movie and for good reason. It's a very intense and brutal sequence that shows Optimus in a 3v1 and has the odds stacked against him and getting beat down, but is refusing to back down and powers through the fight and viciously fights back against Megatron, Starscream and finally Grindor each increasingly more brutal than the last, showing Optimus's undying desire and selflessness to keep humans like Sam safe even if it means dying in a fight and ironically culminating in admittedly a pretty brutal and shocking moment where Megatron sneak attacks and kills Optimus, forcing Sam to run as Optimus dies while telling him to run as his last words. And though he is revived by the end of the film and while the movie does admittedly peak a bit early at that scene and doesn't get quite as epic as that battle, that entire sequence is definitely one of the best action scenes and moments of the film franchise for sure and the highlight of the movie.

The score by Steve Jablonsky carries on throughout the Bayverse and still slaps as always when it comes into play during the exciting action and sequences, and adds to the moment when it comes.

MIXED

The villains of the movie fall into this category as I like them but felt they were a huge missed opportunity in here.

First off, Megatron returns in the sequel and while on his own, he still remains badass and imposing of a character and does have his moments to shine, he plays secondary antagonist as the disciple to the titular Fallen who will get into shortly in this category, and thus he's not as cool as he was in the first film or has much of a presence, which is someone that continues to be the Achilles heel for Megatron in the remaining sequels where he is pushed to the sidelines with whatever new main villain comes.

And then we have the titular Fallen, who is such a waste of a potentially cool villain. On one hand, he has a rather badass and even creepy look to him, is an ancient enemy with an intriguing backstory and has an awesome voice by Candyman himself, Tony Todd. All of that is cool but the biggest problem with him is despite being the overlooming evil of the sequel and having his name in the title, he feels like an after thought as he doesn't really do anything until the final act of the movie where he tries to use the Sun Harvester to blow up the sun and then he gets quickly killed off by the just revived Optimus upgraded with Jetfire's parts.

And though I do think the final battle of the movie itself is entertaining at bits, its mainly consisting of characters just running about through this abandoned village as the battleground and Autobots, Decepticons and the N.E.S.T. soldiers continuously firing at each other and the actual finale of the climax where Optimus is revived by Sam with the maguffin of the movie, The Matrix of Leadership, and then upgraded when former Decepticon Jetfire gives his life to help in his power up to confront The Fallen and Megatron, while visually awesome, feels rather short and anticlimactic as he dispatches and injures Megatron and brutally kills the Fallen. It was an admittedly cool scene but it could have been longer of a fight and shouldn't have had the Fallen go down in what seems like 20 seconds.

NEGATIVES

The writing compared to the first film is significantly weaker and more clunky, especially in parts where the movie tries to be funny and while a few jokes are good, the other attempts at humor fall flat as they're very juvenile, low brow and add nothing of substance to the movie as a whole including.....

A scene where we have the "pleasure" of seeing q closeup shot of Simmons in a jockstrap,
One of the Allspark mutated appliances in Sam's kitchen having a little cannon for a penis,
An unnecessary 3 or 4 seconds of Sam's chihuahua and another dog that wasn't in the first movie humping each other and later Wheelie doing the same to Mikaela's leg
Sam's mother getting high off of weed brownies and running around Sam's college,
Some failed comic relief from Sam's roommate Leo who is a useless and frankly annoying character who mostly bitches and freaks out,
Skids and Mudflap being annoying comic relief at best and mildly racist stereotypes at worst,
And who could forget everybody's favorite....
Devastator's overhaul balls and Simmons stating that he is below
"Enemy scrotum."

And in addition to the failed attempts at humor, there are also some awkward and even uncomfortable scenes in the movie like one scene involving Alice, a girl at Sam's dorm that turns out to be a Decepticon Pretender, trying to get close to Sam and extracting the Allspark knowledge from him and her means of getting close to him involves pinning him down in a sexually aggressive way and then attacking him and throwing him around with her disgustingly long tongue. And its a subplot that goes nowhere as Alice is then quickly dispatched and her inclusion could've been written out without missing anything. Another include a scene afterwards of Megatron pinning down Sam in the abandoned warehouse and being examined by Scalpel who has this gross looking tentacle creature go into his mouth and I guess scans the knowledge within his brain in a very disgusting and uncomfortably sick manner that feels very unnecessarily gross, though I guess it is admittedly effective if that's what the filmmakers were going for.

The humans get a little too much focus in the sequel and there aren't as much Transformers on screen as I'd like and the only ones we do see more of during the main plot line is Bumblebee and unfortunately the Twins and the other Autobots including the cool new ones like the Arcee triplets, Sideswipe and one character introduced late in the movie, Jolt, are barely featured and are just pushed to being minor roles until the final battle.

Outside of Leo, Wheelie and the Twins, the characters we follow like Sam, Bumblebee, Mikaela and Simmons are mainly just fine and aren't too bad in my opinion, but I wish there was better work with the characters and had more focus on some of the new characters that are worthy of screentime.

I understand that the Writer's strike caused some big complications in the production and some setbacks with the writing but with what the movie goes by as of now, the writing in general is not the best and had things have gone differently without the strike, maybe just maybe, the movie could've been salvaged for the better.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I don't hate this movie and do think its dramatically overhated, I can't lie and say Revenge of the Fallen is a great Transformers movie, because it isn't. At best, it can provide some dumb guilty pleasure fun and surface level entertainment in areas with its action and visuals and at worst, its a lackluster continuation that nowhere near reaches the highs as the first film. Its a movie that I can watch and consider a palatable guilty pleasure as there is definitely some merit still intact but unfortunately not enough for me to call this a solid followup and of the original Bayverse trilogy, its certainly the weakest one that potentially could have been salvaged if not for the Writer's strike and complications that came of it.

5/10

What do you think of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?

Description
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Director: Michael Bay
Studio: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Productions, Hasbro

Cast:
Shia LaBeouf
Megan Fox
John Turturro
Josh Duhamel
Tyrese Gibson
Peter Cullen
Hugo Weaving
Tony Todd
Mark Ryan

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tells the story of a college bound Sam Witwicky getting wrapped up in the Autobot/Decepticon conflict when Megatron is resurrected and a new evil follows suit by the name of The Fallen.

Here we are back at it again with my review series of the Transformers movies leading up to Rise of the Beasts, with my review on the second film of the former Bayformers franchise and arguably the most hated....

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Now Transformers 2007 was a massive hit when it released and helped rejuvenated the franchise and gave it new life in addition to being a great film especially for me and getting me into the franchise. And with its success, a sequel was immediately put into the works. But there was one problem....

The time of the film's production took place around the same time as the 2007-08 Writer's Guild Strike and as such, the production faced many development hurdles that ranged from initial script rewrites, shooting happening simultaneously during the writing, reshoots, and a few other complications.

And when it was released, Revenge of the Fallen while a commercial and box office success, was very much panned by critics and fans alike and while I can see where the negative word of mouth is coming from and do think its a bit of a downgrade from the first film, its a movie that I still somewhat enjoy as a genuine guilty pleasure experience and find a bit overhated as I feel like if it was done differently and if not for the complications set by the Writer's strike, Revenge of the Fallen potentially could have been a better film. But for the movie that we have, it's a movie that is bad but still watchable enough in my opinion....

POSITIVES

The visual effects, the action and the CGI work for the Transformers themselves is still just as good as the first film and that is the one thing that remains consistent throughout the film franchise despite the varying degrees of quality. We get some new Autobots and Decepticons in the sequel and the designs (for the most part) and CGI used to bring them to life are very good and the action is still very exciting and even a bit more brutal when it comes to certain Transformers deaths in this.

And a lot of the best action of the film is on full display in arguably the best scene of the film and arguably the Bayverse as a whole, the forest battle with Optimus against Megatron, Starscream and Grinder. Even those who hate this movie can admit that the scene is the highlight of the movie and for good reason. It's a very intense and brutal sequence that shows Optimus in a 3v1 and has the odds stacked against him and getting beat down, but is refusing to back down and powers through the fight and viciously fights back against Megatron, Starscream and finally Grindor each increasingly more brutal than the last, showing Optimus's undying desire and selflessness to keep humans like Sam safe even if it means dying in a fight and ironically culminating in admittedly a pretty brutal and shocking moment where Megatron sneak attacks and kills Optimus, forcing Sam to run as Optimus dies while telling him to run as his last words. And though he is revived by the end of the film and while the movie does admittedly peak a bit early at that scene and doesn't get quite as epic as that battle, that entire sequence is definitely one of the best action scenes and moments of the film franchise for sure and the highlight of the movie.

The score by Steve Jablonsky carries on throughout the Bayverse and still slaps as always when it comes into play during the exciting action and sequences, and adds to the moment when it comes.

MIXED

The villains of the movie fall into this category as I like them but felt they were a huge missed opportunity in here.

First off, Megatron returns in the sequel and while on his own, he still remains badass and imposing of a character and does have his moments to shine, he plays secondary antagonist as the disciple to the titular Fallen who will get into shortly in this category, and thus he's not as cool as he was in the first film or has much of a presence, which is someone that continues to be the Achilles heel for Megatron in the remaining sequels where he is pushed to the sidelines with whatever new main villain comes.

And then we have the titular Fallen, who is such a waste of a potentially cool villain. On one hand, he has a rather badass and even creepy look to him, is an ancient enemy with an intriguing backstory and has an awesome voice by Candyman himself, Tony Todd. All of that is cool but the biggest problem with him is despite being the overlooming evil of the sequel and having his name in the title, he feels like an after thought as he doesn't really do anything until the final act of the movie where he tries to use the Sun Harvester to blow up the sun and then he gets quickly killed off by the just revived Optimus upgraded with Jetfire's parts.

And though I do think the final battle of the movie itself is entertaining at bits, its mainly consisting of characters just running about through this abandoned village as the battleground and Autobots, Decepticons and the N.E.S.T. soldiers continuously firing at each other and the actual finale of the climax where Optimus is revived by Sam with the maguffin of the movie, The Matrix of Leadership, and then upgraded when former Decepticon Jetfire gives his life to help in his power up to confront The Fallen and Megatron, while visually awesome, feels rather short and anticlimactic as he dispatches and injures Megatron and brutally kills the Fallen. It was an admittedly cool scene but it could have been longer of a fight and shouldn't have had the Fallen go down in what seems like 20 seconds.

NEGATIVES

The writing compared to the first film is significantly weaker and more clunky, especially in parts where the movie tries to be funny and while a few jokes are good, the other attempts at humor fall flat as they're very juvenile, low brow and add nothing of substance to the movie as a whole including.....

A scene where we have the "pleasure" of seeing q closeup shot of Simmons in a jockstrap,
One of the Allspark mutated appliances in Sam's kitchen having a little cannon for a penis,
An unnecessary 3 or 4 seconds of Sam's chihuahua and another dog that wasn't in the first movie humping each other and later Wheelie doing the same to Mikaela's leg
Sam's mother getting high off of weed brownies and running around Sam's college,
Some failed comic relief from Sam's roommate Leo who is a useless and frankly annoying character who mostly bitches and freaks out,
Skids and Mudflap being annoying comic relief at best and mildly racist stereotypes at worst,
And who could forget everybody's favorite....
Devastator's overhaul balls and Simmons stating that he is below
"Enemy scrotum."

And in addition to the failed attempts at humor, there are also some awkward and even uncomfortable scenes in the movie like one scene involving Alice, a girl at Sam's dorm that turns out to be a Decepticon Pretender, trying to get close to Sam and extracting the Allspark knowledge from him and her means of getting close to him involves pinning him down in a sexually aggressive way and then attacking him and throwing him around with her disgustingly long tongue. And its a subplot that goes nowhere as Alice is then quickly dispatched and her inclusion could've been written out without missing anything. Another include a scene afterwards of Megatron pinning down Sam in the abandoned warehouse and being examined by Scalpel who has this gross looking tentacle creature go into his mouth and I guess scans the knowledge within his brain in a very disgusting and uncomfortably sick manner that feels very unnecessarily gross, though I guess it is admittedly effective if that's what the filmmakers were going for.

The humans get a little too much focus in the sequel and there aren't as much Transformers on screen as I'd like and the only ones we do see more of during the main plot line is Bumblebee and unfortunately the Twins and the other Autobots including the cool new ones like the Arcee triplets, Sideswipe and one character introduced late in the movie, Jolt, are barely featured and are just pushed to being minor roles until the final battle.

Outside of Leo, Wheelie and the Twins, the characters we follow like Sam, Bumblebee, Mikaela and Simmons are mainly just fine and aren't too bad in my opinion, but I wish there was better work with the characters and had more focus on some of the new characters that are worthy of screentime.

I understand that the Writer's strike caused some big complications in the production and some setbacks with the writing but with what the movie goes by as of now, the writing in general is not the best and had things have gone differently without the strike, maybe just maybe, the movie could've been salvaged for the better.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While I don't hate this movie and do think its dramatically overhated, I can't lie and say Revenge of the Fallen is a great Transformers movie, because it isn't. At best, it can provide some dumb guilty pleasure fun and surface level entertainment in areas with its action and visuals and at worst, its a lackluster continuation that nowhere near reaches the highs as the first film. Its a movie that I can watch and consider a palatable guilty pleasure as there is definitely some merit still intact but unfortunately not enough for me to call this a solid followup and of the original Bayverse trilogy, its certainly the weakest one that potentially could have been salvaged if not for the Writer's strike and complications that came of it.

5/10

What do you think of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?