Sunday, June 28, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Raise your hand if any of the major flaws of Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen were surprising.  Outside of Mudflap and Skids, this was nothing more than the sequel to the original Transformers flick.  Michael Bay spent a shit ton of money to make stuff look cool and then quickly edited in a story after all the CGI is done.  In the end, the transformers action was obviously better while everything else was clearly worse.

Whether or not the sequel was more flawed than the original, the CGI is still beyond anything else being released right now.  The Optimus fight in the woods and the entire desert sequence were well beyond anything that was done in the original.  The fights were clear and the movements of the robots could actually be seen this time around.  The screen is still busy as hell but I wasn’t left guessing who did what.  The Devastator transformation was sweet and the old transformer (who’s name I never heard clearly) looked awesome with his robot beard.  And Megan Fox took off her clothes in the middle of the backyard for no good reason 15 minutes into the movie, maybe the best plot point of the entire story.  

Alright, where to start.  Let’s get the basic shit out of the way.  The lack of a coherent story was too obvious this time around.  This felt like Bay started with the action sequences and worked his way backward to a screenplay.  The entire college section should have stayed on the cutting room floor, but without it you wouldn’t have the hot chick turning into a decepticon and that is was the whole point of that half hour of story.  Even worse was the political trash because it was awful to watch and made even worse because it was only included for the parachute sequence.  This stuff can usually be ignored because it is Michael Bay and all I want to see is some shit blow up but the negatives didn’t stop there.

The part of the movie that is getting the most attention is Mudflap and Skids and for good reason.  They are inexplicable.  I don’t know if their inclusion was racist or just plain retarded.  I’d like to think retarded because it is easier to understand when people just do something stupid.  There is nothing wrong with squabbling brothers, especially when they were animated so well, but why did they have to be designed and speak that way?  What possible good could come from that? 

This is not so much a negative but something that I just don’t understand.  How is this movie rated PG-13?  I know that the MPAA is some hidden cabal that passes judgment with no oversight but the violence here is clearly R rated.  Forget that we are talking about robots, here are some of the moments that are clearly shown on screen; an execution with a bullet through the back of the head, a stabbing through the chest, a curb-stomping, a fist through the head, a ripping of the spine straight out of the body, and just multiple severing of limbs.  If these actions were done by and against humans, this would have gotten a freaking NC-17 rating.  So if all the humans are actually CGI does that count?

No matter how negative I sound, I will still be there 2 years from now when the 3rd movie rolls out.  And if they change directors I don't know if that will improve things.  You might get a coherent story with little to no childish to the point of baby-level humor, but will anyone else spend so much time in effort making the robots look cool?  I wonder if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will improve like the original Transformers did when I watched 150 times between HBO and Cinemax.

5 out of 10


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