Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen- by Matt R.

Posted by Greg Weinstein | Filed under Culture, Film

tans1 I liked the first Transformers movie. Seems the Fallen were desperate to get their revenge for that.

Do the flip, but make sure you stick the landing.

transOpt When we last saw Optimus Prime, he was voiceover narrating to the universe about the human condition. He’s back now with a history lesson. The Transformer race has been to our planet before, 17,000 years ago. What this has to do with anything, I do not know. But guys had spears.

Last movie, the bad robots came here to find a Cube that was the source of great power for them. And Even Stevens destroyed it. But now there is a little sliver of that left and when Indiana Jones Jr. touches it, he gets zapped with eons of information. Just so I remember correctly, he spent the last hour of the last movie jumping from rooftops, holding this thing. He even stuffed it into a hole in the bad guy’s body. But no flow of information then. So only when it’s a tiny piece of this giant Rubik’s cube of knowledge, does it have this effect? Or when the writer’s need a plot point.

At least Megatron is still dead.

Crap.

trans2 In the made-up world of Transformers, the things that are supposed to kill you, do not. And the most secure locations, are not. The bad robots don’t even need to come up with a separate, elaborate plan to get this guy off the bottom of the ocean. They just dive in and Michael Phelps him out.

I swear to Steven Spielberg that if the main source of conflict between Shia and David Silver’s ex-girlfriend is that he can’t tell the “hottest woman in the world” that he loves her, I will rip my 1984 posters right off the wall. I’ve told Megan Fox I loved her twice. This morning.

Megatron isn’t the Fallen? There’s another, older, badder bad robot actually named the Fallen? And he lives on the ship from the Matrix. And they hatch little robots in pods like the Matrix. And the name of the key to turn on the machine that does something I still don’t understand, but kills the sun is called the Matrix of Power, shortened immediately to the matrix. Well, sure. Why not?

trans3 So now there are out-of-commission robots permanently transformed on our planet. Even though the opening stated that they’ve been here once before, 17,000 years ago, they’ve actually been here that whole time. And the one in the museum is an ancestor of the original ones, but he’s old because he’s been here too long and his body is falling apart. Except the Fallen was actually here on that original trip to Ancient Egypt and seems spry and ready for revenge. So certain death doesn’t kill robots and old age only affects them when it’s needed for comic relief.

And now they can transform into humans. And the robots can switch sides. And let’s go to Egypt. Why Egypt? Because there is a lot of old stuff to blow up there. And how do they get to Egypt? Space bridge. Ever seen the movie Jumper? Nobody else did, either. Except maybe some of the writers. And the exact thing the bad guys are looking for the entire movie, is the one thing that can save Optimus Prime. But it cannot be taken, it needs to be earned. So Shia has a deathbed fever dream about the robot ancestors in which they give him the key. It appears from the dust in the real world when he wakes up. And saves Optimus, who then loses the matrix, which just brought him back to life, but he doesn’t die without it. Then the old robot gives him his life force, which would have saved us all some time from the start, and goes and fights the bad guys, who have uncovered a sun destroying, radio antenna under the rocks of the pyramids that nobody in 17,000 years had ever noticed before.

If that didn’t just blow your mind, than the Fallen have won.

transformers_revenge-of-the-fallen Yes, the robots are cool. A lot of metal on metal crime goes down. The fight scenes create a lot of damage. Meghan Fox is hot and I’d watch her do laundry for a month. Some parts are really funny–it’s fun to watch Shia get beat up by an 80 pound Fembot’s tongue. And this is Michael Bay, what else was I expecting? But there are stories written by third graders with more continuity in their plotting. Out of a possible 5, I give this 2 ½ hours, which is how long I was sitting there wondering when something would make sense to me.