Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen movie review

The plot holes, the stupid characters, the bad jokes and heavily flawed everything…. If you think I got one second of enjoyment out of this… then you are right.

I am well aware of all the people in the world that completely hate this one. I’ve heard all the complaints, all the critics whining about it, all the jerks whining, and pretty much everything else. I do acknowledge the flaws of this film, and there are some things that tick me off about it…. but for some reason, I don’t stay mad at this movie for long. I actually think it’s a lot of fun. Before I go into why I still like this, let me make a list of the most common complaints I’ve seen people make.

1. The twins, Skids and Mudflap, are ‘racist stereotypes’.

2. The action is hard to see.

3. There’s no story.

4. Megan Fox is pointless.

5. All the characters are stupid.

6. The jokes are stupid

7. I’m an entitled critic whose viewpoint on everything is superior to everyone else’s, and I want to hate everything so I can get more hits on my reviews, because negativity is the best way to go for that, apparently, so I’ll nitpick everything about it, even the tiniest thing, to make it look worse than it really is, and anyone who gets the slightest bit of enjoyment out of this movie is stupid, brain-dead, and will cause the downfall of cinema as we know it. That’ll teach those idiots to have an opinion.

That’s what I’ve seen. Is it all true? Some of it is. But like every movie, people take things WAY overboard and WAY too seriously.

First, some background information... I thought Jetfire explained it pretty well in the movie itself, but I guess not. Honestly, this is a little tricky to explain, because of one thing… the writer’s strike. The film was written during the writer’s strike, so maybe a good portion of its flaws are excusable for that reason alone. Unfortunately, there are still some MAJOR plot holes.

If you read the tie-in comicbooks published by IDW, like I did, your brain would be hurting. The film contradicts so many things the comic set up. I’ll try to explain it the best I can.

The Dynasty of Primes were the Allspark’s first creations. If you read the tie-in comicbooks published by IDW, you were informed there were 13 original Primes. In the movie, there were only 7. I don’t know why they changed that. Anyway, the Primes ruled over Cybertron and took care of the Allspark. It turns out that the cube’s energy isn’t limitless, so it needs the power of suns to keep going. The Primes gathered their servants and set out on a mission across the galaxies to search for suitable suns to gather energy from, using a machine called the star harvester. The harvester can only be powered by a key, known as the Matrix of Leadership. The Matrix is the artifact that holds the wisdom and power of the Dynasty, essentially the essence of the Primes themselves.

The rule they had was to not take a star that harbored a planet with life on it. One of the Primes decided to screw the rules and tried to take Earth’s sun. He was known from then on as The Fallen. He stole the Matrix, and the other Primes tried to stop him. In the film itself, during Jetfire’s flashback, you can clearly see the Primes overpowering The Fallen. In the prequel comics, he kills all but 1 Prime. The last remaining Prime gathers the sum total of his brothers’ energy to banish the Fallen to another dimension. This is where some big plot holes happen.

If you count the comics as canon, like I do, you know that The Fallen remained trapped in that dimension until Optimus was killed. The absence of a Prime is what freed him. In the movie, he isn’t stuck anywhere! He’s just sitting in a chair, on life support it seems. So… how did he get out? Or was he never there to begin with? Well, thanks to a talented writer at IDW Publishing, known as John Barber, he fixed this plot hole, as well as many others, using a plot point from the third movie. Since I’m not there yet, and wish to spare you confusion, I won’t explain.

Despite the lack of correlation between the comics and film, it was still a pretty cool setup for the plot of this movie. The execution of it was… less so.

The fact that the film focuses almost entirely on Sam and his girl problems is a start. I cannot express enough how much I hate him. Every scene he’s in, I want him to die. I want to strangle the life out of him! He’s so STUPID! Every time there’s an opportunity to let the Autobots know “Hey! A shard of the artifact that created your entire species is in my girlfriend’s purse! You might want to go and get that before something bad happens!” he doesn’t let them know. WHY?!?!? Is there any reason to keep that a secret? I know I wouldn’t! The only thing keeping it a secret did was put himself, his girlfriend, and his family in danger. Why is he such a freaking moron?

Then there’s the romance… ugh. This is one of the worst romance plots I’ve ever seen in my life. While it is not nearly as bad as Twilight’s romance, it’s still high up on the list. I don’t buy that these two are a couple for one second. Their chemistry is garbage, they’re both idiots, and they’re just annoying. Mikaela keeps trying to get him to say ‘I love you’, but he won’t. Is that what ANYONE wants to see in a Transformers movie? No! The only reason she’s there is to boost ticket sales for the people who are bigger idiots than the characters because they only see these movies because Megan Fox is ‘hot’.

She was attractive in the first one, but she wasn’t the best actress. I tolerated her there. She was a decent character. Here, she is pointless. The only purpose she serves to the plot is to make Wheelie relevant. I like Wheelie. Some say he’s annoying, but I highly doubt those people have seen the 1986 G1 Transformers movie. G1 Wheelie is one the most annoying little turds ever. Anyway, Megan Fox… yeah, she’s terrible at acting in this. I don’t even find her pretty at all! She is one of the worst supporting actresses ever!

The best example of a good supporting actress is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy from The Amazing Spider-Man movies. She’s intelligent, solves problems on her own, adorable, and is an all around likeable character. Megan Fox as Mikaela is none of these things. A weak and pointless character like her is one thing I can’t stand.

What else about this movie sucks? Leo, possibly the worst character of the entire film. What purpose does he serve? Getting Sam to Simmons so the plot can move forward. After that, he should have stayed behind. He’s not funny, he’s stupid. Are there any human characters I DO like? Yes there are. Since the Autobots have arrived on Earth, they made an alliance with the governments of the world, called NEST. Lennox and Epps were some of the first humans to fight alongside them, so they were the first candidates for the team. These guys are awesome! They actually help out the Autobots in ways that don’t irritate the audience. Why don’t the films focus on them? That is an amazingly stupid question.

It doesn’t center around them because they’re not ‘relatable’ to teenagers or some BS like that. Because NOBODY can relate to being in the military, whether it’s with alien robots or not. Nobody. In the world. Of course, there’s the human antagonist, Galloway. He’s not necessarily a villain, just a jerk. He doesn’t think the Autobots are trustworthy. Not much more to him. The part where Lennox tell him to ‘pull the chute’ is hilarious. It’s one of the few jokes that work in the movie.

Speaking of which, a great majority of jokes in this movie are… bad. Sam’s not funny, Leo’s not funny, the humping dogs part is unnecessary, as is the shot of John Turturro’s @$$. I could have done it better. In fact, I think I could have written this entire film better. There is one gag that does make me crack up every time. It’ priceless. Watch this.

It’s so stupid and childish, and is completely inappropriate… but I still laugh at it! Why? I don’t know. It’s funny to me, for some odd reason. I get the joke, too. That robot's name is Devastator. He's made of several other robots called the Constructicons. They all take the forms of construction vehicles. One of them happens to be a crane. Get it?

Another thing that I absolutely love is Simmons. Excluding the shot of his @$$, he is hysterically insane. If you read the comics, like I did, you’d know why he is crazy. Other people hate him, but I enjoy how over the top he is.

As much as I hate these human characters, they are in no way the worst humans in Transformers history. There was Kicker from Transformers: Energon, and the kids from Armada, Koji from Robots in Disguise, and Spike from G1. They are all 3 times more annoying, stupid, and unlikeable than any human from the entire trilogy could ever imagine being. Does that make the people in Revenge of The Fallen any better? No, I still despise them, but they’re kind of enjoyably bad… to an extent.

There are some redeeming factors to the movie, believe it or not. Where are they? In the robots. These are the guys we come to see, as always. Thing is, there isn’t much screentime for them. The heavy focus on human characters overshadows the robot characters, so if you go by the films alone, you don’t get to know them that well. Again, I read the comics, so I have a better understanding of these characters. The average moviegoer has nothing else to go on for them.

In judging the robot characters by the movie itself, they range from cool to decent to forgetable. Coolest one is Optimus Prime, obviously. He has 2 of the best fight scenes of the entire film. The forest fight, he takes on Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor all by himself, and beats the crap out of them! In the final fight with The Fallen and Megatron, he combined with Jetfire to become Super-Motherf***ktoid Prime! He shoots Megatron in the face with his own fusion cannon arm! Half his head is gone! Then, as he’s killing The Fallen, he delivers the best line in the entire trilogy: “Give me your face!” This started a running joke by fans: Prime’s face-taking fetish. He apparently has a collection of all the faces and heads he’s taken from his enemies. It’s hilarious, but some could argue that it’s out of character for him. Like I said in my review of the first film, this Optimus does strive for peace, but this is war he’s dealing with here. He’s not going to be a boyscout character.

Other Autobots include Ratchet, Ironhide, and Bumblebee, who were in the last movie. Ratchet and Ironhide don’t get much screentime, but Bumblebee gets the most. You’d think they’d show off the newer characters instead of shoving Bumblebee in our faces the whole time, but no. The newer characters include Sideswipe, who only gets 5 lines, Arcee and her sisters, who only get 3 lines, Jolt, who has no lines at all, and it took me 5 times to watch this to even notice he existed. He’s referred to by name once, and his only purpose is to connect Jetfire’s parts to Optimus. That’s it.

Of course, we also have the twins, Skids and Mudflap. Are they racist stereotypes like everyone says? No. They’re not. They’re just young and immature. They also happened to choose the type of diction associated with ‘gangstas’, which for some reason, a lot of people think is restricted to black people. That way of speaking is in fact NOT limited to that ethnicity. I’ve seen people of all sorts of ethnicities talk like that. Even then, it’s a small portion of each ethnic background who talk that way. That means people who think the twins are racist must think their type of personality is only limited to black people. That is what’s truly offensive.

There isn’t anything wrong with the twins. I like them. I thought they were funny. But, since I’m white, I can’t say black people shouldn’t and can’t find them offensive… just like other people can’t say everyone should and must find them offensive to begin with!

Moving on from that, we have the Decepticons. Returning from the first film, we have Starscream, who is not as cool as he was before, a brief cameo from Scorponok, right before Jetfire kills him, and back from the dead is Megatron, revived by a shard of the Allspark. His new design is awesome! He has a flying space tank as an alt mode, and a murder arm that is both a sword and a gun. He’s not as scary or threatening here as he was before, unfortunately. Optimus goes all Chuck Norris on him- twice!

Hearing Megatron call The Fallen his ‘master’ felt off at first. That’s right, The Fallen is what was really calling the shots. He was the real leader of the Decepticons, and Megatron was just his puppet. I felt kinda sorry for him. He was already insecure and mentally unstable, and The Fallen took advantage of that. This could have made for a defining character changing moment for Megatron, but the writer’s strike and time constraints affected the outcome of it, which in turn, made Megatron look like a tool, blindly following some guy that was too stupid to get another sun somewhere else.

One thing I noticed is the emphasis on the Decepticons. We get more scenes of them interacting with each other than before, as well as a closer look into what their plan is. While it’s not much, it’s better than before. Unfortunately, there are characters just there to die, like Demolisher, Sideways, Grindor, and the generic soldiers. But, when they are onscreen, they get showcased in a spectacular destruction or action sequence. The Decepticons certainly are more memorable than the new Autobot characters, so not all is lost.

We also get an interesting look at Cybertronian biology. First off, there’s the saliva like substance some of the Decepticons secrete from their mouths, as well as some weird green slime within their bodies, as seen when Bumblebee rips out Ravage’s spinal cord. Perhaps the most surprising thing seen, was the eggsacs that contained the hatchlings that were on the Nemesis. How the heck does that work?!? This form of reproduction is never seen in any other continuity of Transformers, so I have no idea how they’re made, or how they grow into an adult robot! Just another thing about the live action universe that baffles me and intrigues me. There needs to be a book explaining this stuff.

My favorite new character out of all of them is Jetfire. He’s old, confused, cranky, and British. Perfect. I don’t know what it is about old British people, but I always love characters like that. His best quote is-

“My father! He was a wheel… the first wheel. Do you know what he transformed into? NOTHING! But he did so with honor!”

Despite the lack of screentime and character development, it’s always a relief to see the robots fight each other to the death. Well, we kinda get that. The final battle in the desert is mostly humans shooting at the Decepticons. The Autobots take a back seat to it all. That being said, the action is still great! It’s what saves this movie from being worse than it really is. The forest fight is the best scene of the entire film, and the desert battle is exhilarating. It reminds me of Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla. The rest of the movie is of questionable quality, but the big fight makes up for it!

I guess other people are blind as bats, because one complaint I keep seeing is how they can't see the action clearly. They say all the Transformers look the same, they say they all look like walking junkyards, blah blah blah. I can see everything perfectly! The fight between Bumblebee and Rampage is a bit tricky, but everything else is clear. But that's just me. The only reason some of the robots look the same is because there are so many clones. Constructicon clones, generic clones, and a Bonecrusher clone, for some reason. But not as bad as Attack of the Clones. Not even close.

All the flaws do bring the movie down, which is sad. It could have been fantastic! It had great potential, but the studios rushed the production, and the writer’s strike didn’t help, either. But for what the end result was, it’s not too bad. I have conflicting opinions with myself about it. One side of me knows I have to hate it for one reason or another, the other side makes the best of what we got.

Really, there’s not much terribly wrong with it. Flawed, but not to the point of needing to get angry about it. The only reason it got bad scores and reviews nearly everywhere else is because its shortcomings were blown out of proportion. People weren’t too fair on the movie. While this is the weakest of the trilogy, I do not believe it’s a bad movie. It’s fun, full of action, and all around enjoyable. The filmmakers did put a good amount of effort into this. If they weren’t so rushed, and other conditions were favorable, it would have been a lot better. I can forgive some of the problems it had. For what it is, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a darn good movie.

FINAL RATING: 36 / 50

STORY: 2 / 5

ACTING: 3 / 5

CHARACTERS: 3 / 5

CG/EFFECTS: 5 / 5

ACTION: 5 / 5

SOUNDTRACK: 5 / 5

TONE: 3 / 5

ENJOYABILITY: 4 / 5

REWATCH VALUE: 3 / 5

OWNING VALUE: 3 / 5

You could say it’s a guilty pleasure, but I feel no guilt. I love this movie. But in the grand scheme of things, this was just filler. The events that conspired in this movie were simply a means to an end. Between the movies, Soundwave would approach Megatron with information regarding a secret plan he once made with someone thousands of years ago. Using this intell, Megatron would take his current situation and make the ultimate comeback in the most epic movie of the trilogy… next time.

As before, I’ll leave a link to the movie’s wiki page on  the most reliable wiki site for Transformers ever. Check it out HERE.

In the review of the last movie, I made a list of nitpicks, but there are so many here, I think I’ll make an entirely separate article for it. Check back soon for that.