Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Let me start by saying that I really really wanted this to be a good movie. I was really looking forward to the amp up that Michael Bay had been promising on his website.
When the novelization came out in May I had it read the day after it was released. These novelizations almost always have minor differences from the finished movie (presumably because they were based on an early version of the script). While reading the novelization, I began to worry a little, but I kept that mostly to myself. I had no desire to spoil anything, and the text leaves a lot for visual interpretation.
I went to the midnight showing in IMAX hoping for the best, and went home wishing I had caught a matinee at a regular theater the next day instead. It wasn't that the movie was particularly bad, it just wasn't the movie that I stood in line for 2 hours to see. Guilty of the same crimes as the Matrix sequels, this one will probably go down as a chapter best forgotten in the minds of most hardcore TF fans. So what went wrong? Well the visual effects were every bit as impressive as the first movie. The soundtrack was a little more heavy metal and a little less symphonic, but there is nothing bad about that. The story and the transformers themselves were a different matter. The first movie laid the foundation of what could have become a legitimate science fiction series, but the writer and director seemed to think it would be better to go in the direction of Spy Kids and Jimmy Neutron, opting instead to create a film that is considerably less than the sum of its parts.
To explain what's wrong with the charactors, I'm going to have to geek out a bit, so bear with me. [Possible spoilers ahead] The transformers (the bipedal ones) are supposed to be a simulacrum of humanity. It is arguable that they would emulate vocal inflections and modes of speech that match their own pre-earth personalities. It makes sense that they would do so to facilitate communication with humanity. But suspension of disbelief suffers greatly when it comes to incontinence and incompetence. Two of the transformers admit to being illiterate - yet somehow they were able to properly interpret and emulate human language. One of the transformers is supposed to be very old, although the time frames already established by the story make it seem like he shouldn't be very aged in transformer terms. Despite this, he walks hunched over, uses a cane, doesn't know which direction he is shooting in, and farts accidentally. These things seem to go way beyond actual human emulation.
To explain what's wrong with the plot I'll have to offer some spoilers: consider yourself warned. The plot contradicts the events of the first movie, but this is explained away because the transformers all just "forgot". Then, of course, Megatron subjugates himself to emperor Palpatine -- I mean, "The Fallen". These are bugbears to be sure, but the plot of this movie has so much going on that half of it seems irrelevant. I'm all for complexity in a story, but it has to compliment the overall narrative, and it fails to do so here. Fans screamed for more decepticons - and got them, many in the form of generic "protoform" soldiers fighting in a desert in fake Jordan that looks suspiciously just like the desert in fake Qatar in the first movie. There is a subplot involving the parents that culminates in a weak excuse for a tearful moment near the end of the movie.
Revenge of the Fallen is not a terrible movie, but it is clearly pointed more at the 7-12 year old crowd than it is to the thirty-something fans that were hoping to see a beloved convention from our childhood grow up with us. This sort of dooms the announced third movie to the same mediocre fate.
When the novelization came out in May I had it read the day after it was released. These novelizations almost always have minor differences from the finished movie (presumably because they were based on an early version of the script). While reading the novelization, I began to worry a little, but I kept that mostly to myself. I had no desire to spoil anything, and the text leaves a lot for visual interpretation.
I went to the midnight showing in IMAX hoping for the best, and went home wishing I had caught a matinee at a regular theater the next day instead. It wasn't that the movie was particularly bad, it just wasn't the movie that I stood in line for 2 hours to see. Guilty of the same crimes as the Matrix sequels, this one will probably go down as a chapter best forgotten in the minds of most hardcore TF fans. So what went wrong? Well the visual effects were every bit as impressive as the first movie. The soundtrack was a little more heavy metal and a little less symphonic, but there is nothing bad about that. The story and the transformers themselves were a different matter. The first movie laid the foundation of what could have become a legitimate science fiction series, but the writer and director seemed to think it would be better to go in the direction of Spy Kids and Jimmy Neutron, opting instead to create a film that is considerably less than the sum of its parts.
To explain what's wrong with the charactors, I'm going to have to geek out a bit, so bear with me. [Possible spoilers ahead] The transformers (the bipedal ones) are supposed to be a simulacrum of humanity. It is arguable that they would emulate vocal inflections and modes of speech that match their own pre-earth personalities. It makes sense that they would do so to facilitate communication with humanity. But suspension of disbelief suffers greatly when it comes to incontinence and incompetence. Two of the transformers admit to being illiterate - yet somehow they were able to properly interpret and emulate human language. One of the transformers is supposed to be very old, although the time frames already established by the story make it seem like he shouldn't be very aged in transformer terms. Despite this, he walks hunched over, uses a cane, doesn't know which direction he is shooting in, and farts accidentally. These things seem to go way beyond actual human emulation.
To explain what's wrong with the plot I'll have to offer some spoilers: consider yourself warned. The plot contradicts the events of the first movie, but this is explained away because the transformers all just "forgot". Then, of course, Megatron subjugates himself to emperor Palpatine -- I mean, "The Fallen". These are bugbears to be sure, but the plot of this movie has so much going on that half of it seems irrelevant. I'm all for complexity in a story, but it has to compliment the overall narrative, and it fails to do so here. Fans screamed for more decepticons - and got them, many in the form of generic "protoform" soldiers fighting in a desert in fake Jordan that looks suspiciously just like the desert in fake Qatar in the first movie. There is a subplot involving the parents that culminates in a weak excuse for a tearful moment near the end of the movie.
Revenge of the Fallen is not a terrible movie, but it is clearly pointed more at the 7-12 year old crowd than it is to the thirty-something fans that were hoping to see a beloved convention from our childhood grow up with us. This sort of dooms the announced third movie to the same mediocre fate.
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