Critics Corner – “Transformers 2″

Film Outlet	Movie Critic	Rating Given	Review Date
	Prodigal Son	2 / 4 nests	6-29
	Peter Travers	0 / 4 stars	6-24
	Owen Gleiberman	B	6-23
	Roger Ebert	1 / 4 stars	6-23
	Critics / Users	C- / B+	6-29
	N/A	N/A	N/A
	Rating / T-Meter	4.0 / 20%	6-29

Read our preview of the film here.

Giant transforming robots have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The “Transformers” animated TV series began when I was but two years old. The animated film, when I was four, elicited tears when I witnessed the death of Optimus Prime. I had so many metallic and plastic vehicle/robot hybrids, I became adept at calling them out even as they remained behind my preschool teacher’s back. I was even apparently known for yelling, “Transformers,” when released for kindergarten recess. My long forgotten childhood came rushing back to me in 2007 with the release of Michael Bay’s live-action Transformers and it was the one film that year I just knew would live up to the hype. Sadly, it turned out only about half-true. Apathetic was more the applicable word than disappointed and my view remained that way regarding the impending release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. With expectations tempered, could the sequel to my boyhood dreams make up for the first installment?

Ever since Sam Witwicky shoved the all-spark cube into Megatron’s chest, rendering him lifeless and having the U.S. military drop the leader of the Decepticons into the ocean, Optimus Prime and the Autobots have remained alongside the human race as protectors against any future enemy attack. A new national security advisor to the president isn’t the biggest fan of the new militaristic advisors and accuses them of withholding weapons technology secrets and increasing the chances of Decepticon attack merely by their presence. His aim is to rid the Transformers from Earth, if only to maintain his developed ego.

Meanwhile, Sam is now in a committed relationship with Mikaela, but he’s attempting to retain a normal life after discovery of an alien race, by moving on to college. Mikaela can’t afford the college life and thus remains in their hometown working at a motorcycle shop and keeping an eye on her recently-out-of-prison father. Sam discovers a sliver of the all-spark didn’t make it all the way into Megatron’s chest and instead causes some trouble at home. He hands the sliver to Mikaela for safe-keeping, but while at school he suffers a mental breakdown, seeing and drawing foreign symbols as a result of previously touching the all-spark.

Hidden deep inside the ocean alongside Megatron’s remains lies the title character, The Fallen. He’s one of the earliest Transformers, encountering Earth back in 17,000 B.C. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, he’s a Decepticon and ever since being banished to the seas, he’s been awaiting his revenge on the human race. When the Decepticons get word of Sam seeing alien images and still possessing a piece of the all-spark, they make it their mission to hunt him down and strip him of the information trapped inside his mind. Such a result will give The Fallen a chance to rise and Decepticons another chance at taking control of Earth.

Devastator dwarfs the competition.

One of the massive problems I had with Bay’s first venture into the world of Autobots and Decepticons was the cheesy humor. Bumblebee pees on John Turturro, Autobots try to hide in suburbia and Wheelie attempts to inconspicuously shield his face from anybody who might recognize him. It seemed out of place in a giant robot movie and put a damper on all of the “Bayhem” released. Sadly, Revenge of the Fallen is an even worse offender. Dogs hump legs, mothers go on pot benders and two new Autobots make Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves look like Stephen Hawking. Frankly, it was embarrassing to sit there and watch how these things play out onscreen. The sad thing is that it’s all completely unnecessary, because during tense, action-oriented moments the film sustains itself perfectly well.

While the “humor” weighed this film down more than the original, Bay managed to improve his directorial style this time around. He’s always been known for the ADD-style editing with no shot ever lasting longer than a beat or two, but he didn’t help his cutting technique when the majority of his robotic in-fighting shots were obscured by other pieces of the set. This could very well have been done to make the job easier on special effects house ILM, but it made it difficult for the viewer to follow the action and make out just who was who. Thankfully, the intrusive objects have been removed and the audience now has a better semblance of the action taking place. Although why the choice to make Decepticon leaders Megatron and Starscream both gun-metal gray fighter planes, I’ve no idea.

The film is complete spectacle, only compounded when projected on the IMAX format. Bay shot two action scenes, one in a lush green forest and the other near the pyramids of Egypt with IMAX cameras, and the scenes have a magnificent pop to them. The detail is startling and works as a perfect device for which to display meta-Transformer, Devastator, made up five individual Decepticons. The film works at a massive volume, both visually and aurally, which is perfect for intensity in the action, but only makes the transition to scenes of pure human interaction more jarring.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen delivers in its promise of giant fighting robots, but sadly believes more is needed for which to draw the viewer into the world. The human relationships are canned at best and attempts draw in the child crowd like Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace works just about as well as that film. IMAX is certainly the only format for which to see the film, as the visuals provided are glorious. The film is the latest case in style over substance and its only hope for a redemptive inevitable third outing is to drop the “funny” business and remember the robots are what we’re here for. A boy can still dream, can’t he?

Now this is something you don’t see everyday, but the mega-hit Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (yes, I can already call it a mega-hit with it grossing $60.1 million on opening day) has generated some buzz that it perhaps doesn’t wish for.  (Note: there may be hints of spoiler-ish material here, even though I haven’t seen the movie—reader beware).  In the movie, “the Twins,” which we have posted about before, are two Autobots heavily featured in the movie, who are constantly at odds with one another who the Hollywood Reporter states:

Skids and Mudflap, twin robots disguised as compact hatchbacks, constantly brawl and bicker in rap-inspired street slang. They’re forced to acknowledge that they can’t read. One has a gold tooth.

The first thing that came to mind as soon as I read this was, Jar Jar Binks.  That whole fiasco over Jar Jar’s “jive” talk…”me’s a gettin’ pretty hungry,” or what have you, this appears to be a very similar thing.  One robot rocks a gold tooth?  Rap comes under fire again, but this time it is almost a form of reverse robot discrimination.  I mean as soon as the first clips of this movie started coming out, I knew I wasn’t seeing this.  A crying Bumblebee robot?  I want to consider myself level-headed and reserve judgment, and I am not really taking sides in this argument over the robots, since I haven’t (nor will I) see it, but everything is telling me to steer clear of this.  Honestly, how stupid does this entire film sound right about now?  I have read that there is childish humor.  The reviews have been realatively poor (to be expected). This is soooo, not my type of movie.  I can’t wait to read one of our writers review of this film because I am not going anywhere near this thing with a 17 foot pole.  No way, no how.

Back when we brought you news of the Christian Bale meltdown months ago, I thought it would be the one time we’d ever link to a TMZ story on the site. Although tempted to bring you the Leighton Meester sex tape news that surfaced last week (joking), the folks at Thirty Mile Zone have provided some more information that might be of interest to film fans.

TMZ got a hold of two e-mails sent from Michael Bay, director of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, to head honchos at Paramount studios. The first, dated May 4, has Bay blasting the company for their marketing efforts and failure to register Transformers as an event film in the pop culture ether. He even goes on to say the President of the company went on Wall Street and name-dropped Star Trek and G.I. Joe as the two blockbusters the studio had in the pipeline this summer.

The second e-mail, dated June 6, must have been a direct result of sending out the initial e-mail as Bay relents and thanks Paramount for “busting (their) butts” to finally get the film out there.

I think both e-mails are interesting reads, just from the perspective of seeing the filmmaking process up close. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Although I may not like all the movies the guy directs, I do respect Bay.

Here are the e-mails: May 4 and June 6.

We’ve seen the title baddie from the upcoming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the first teaser poster, but it was only his face and it was pretty dark. Now, courtesy of MTV, we bring you the first screen capture of The Fallen in his full glory.

There’s really no sense of scale in this picture. We don’t have anything to help determine just how large this robot is, but I’d imagine he’s pretty massive. The Fallen made his debut in the comic book world and has remained there until now, so I have no pre-ordained thought about how he should look. I guess he looks mean. Maybe a little skinny for my taste. His waste looks like it belongs to a Barbie doll. I just read that he apparently transforms into a jet. Yea! As Decepticons seemingly can take no other form. Isn’t there something else they could turn into?

I’ve become increasingly harsh on the prospects of this film and I’d rather not do that. What do you think of how The Fallen looks?

When Tranformers was released in 2007, it ended up being the highest grossing blockbuster of the year.  That’s not surprising, as it was based off a very popular toy line and an animated TV show.  Director Michael Bay, like J.J. Abrams of Star Trek, didn’t borrow too heavily from the show and come up with his own vision of Transformers.  He made it appealing to everyone so no one would have to watch the show to understand the movie.  The essence and concept of Transformers was there, but Bay turned it into something completely original.  The movie also turned Shia LaBeouf into a superstar and made Megan Fox a pin-up goddess for essentially every male.  Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen will be the follow-up to the hugely successful Transformers.

Autobot Olypmics - Floor Exercise

Most of the actors reprise their roles from the first Transformers (one notable exception being Jon Voight as Defense Secretary Keller) and the basis of the sequel follows the events of the first film.  Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), world savior from the evil Decepticons, is getting ready to attend college under the watchful eye of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the rest of the Autobots. Before leaving, he must say goodbye to his friend/car Bumblebee (Mark Ryan) since incoming freshman are not allowed to drive cars on campus. Naturally, Bumblebee takes it hard and cries windshield wiper fluid.  Another person he must say goodbye to is his girlfriend, Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox), whom can’t afford to go to college with Sam.  She instead takes up work at a motorcycle repair shop. Sam’s parents Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White), who now know about Bumblebee and the Autobots, drop Sam off at college and plan for a vacation in France. At college, Sam discovers a small piece of the Allspark, which gives the Transformers life.  He soon begins to have visions of symbols and starts to draw them everywhere.  Optimus Prime approaches Sam about his visions and says there may be a new Decepticon threat to Earth.  Since Decepticon Starscream managed to escape in the first movie, he brings back more reinforcements to Earth to revive their leader, Megatron, and find Sam and his Allspark.  Sam seeks the aid of Reggie Simmons (John Turturro), a now off-duty CIA agent who worked on the secret government project that held Megatron captive in the first movie.  Simmons, who is working at his mom’s deli, tells Sam that the images he is seeing are identical to markings found in ancient ruins around the world.  Sam discovers these ancient symbols may reveal the true origins of the Transformers.  He must find the ancient symbols and avoid capture by the Decepticons, who want to extract information from him.

Michael Bay, who directed the first Transformers, will return for this one. Writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman have come back to write the script, along with Ehren Kruger (The Ring).  With the same director and writers returning it can be expected this film won’t stray too far from the original’s formula.

This scene guest-directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Since I enjoyed the first Transformers, I’m sure I’ll feel the same about this one.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen may be one of the most anticipated movies of the summer and this will undoubtedly score huge at the box office.  Let’s just hope it doesn’t suck like most sequels tend to do.

Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen opens June 24^th.

UPDATE: The video has been removed from everywhere at Paramount’s request. I guess it WASN’T the first legal footage. We’re still waiting on that.

Michael Bay posted this video on his website (shockingly enough, titled  MichaelBay.com), which contains a 90-second scene from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as well as some brief clips of other carnage and mayhem (Bayhem?) we can look forward to seeing in the upcoming sequel.

Remember when Bumblebee peed on John Turturro’s character in the first Transformers film? That was Michael Bay’s idea. He thought it would be funny. Those who got the joke will probably be good with this scene. Those who didn’t (aka me) might not be too pleased about what we get to see here. Bumblebee cries. Holy goodness. They’re not human, they’re robots! I’m also pretty sure I spotted a Transformer using the aid of a cane in the subsequent clips. As far as I’m concerned, it’s that type of crap that hampered Transformers the last time. I was hoping it would be avoided this time, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Ho-hum.

On a positive note, all of the other footage in this video looks promising. So, let’s get excited about that.

It seems as if the news on Transformers 2 just keeps on coming in.  First the trailer that premiered during the Super Bowl.  Now comes word that the original Bumblebee who is a Camaro from Transformers the movie gets a new facelift with the upcoming Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.  The Autobot’s design will be based on the new Camaro car design rolled out by GM.  We have the exclusive photo from the Chicago Auto Show via MTV below.

Bumblebee gets a new grill.

I’ll be perfectly honest with you, at first glance, I don’t notice a hell of a lot of difference between the “new” Bumblebee and the older one. He is still yellow, still seems to have similar lines, and when he is in robot form, looks nearly identical to what I remember from the first film, as far as I can tell. I am glad that it isn’t a drastic makeover, as that would make little sense to me. I thought he had a cool, fresh design in the first film, so fortunately, this doesn’t appear to be too much of a departure from that. I can (semi) understand why Michael Bay and GM would do this (money!), but at the same time, I can’t think it would have any bearing on the film itself. Please educate me and fill me in on what you see differently in the design. Appreciated!

There was first news of the Autobots Twins pic that debuted in the last few weeks.  Then we found out that the Dinobots were not to be a part of Transformers 2.  Michael Bay has given us an update and spoken on what Transformers 2 has in store.  And now, this….there is quite a bit of steam being gathered for this picture.  Tentpole!!  Below, we have posted two concept pics of “The Fallen” and “Devastator” as well.  Thanks to Latino Review for those. Let us know what has your juices flowing about the movie!

Devastator concept art.

The Fallen concept art.