Review: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Alright, let’s get a few things sorted before this all kicks off. Transformers was a damn good film. It gave us what we wanted: Robots turning into cars and fighting and by god, they gave us it by the barrelfull. My original niggles stemmed from the fight scenes being too long and confusing. It’s much harder to tell where one robot begins and one ends when they’re in a ruck. Also, the dialogue was cheesy and pretty stilted. Saying that, Transformers, unlike many Summer blockbusters, knew its place. The fact it was so self-aware of its own ridiculousness allowed cynics like me to relax and go along with it. The humour was just right in the first, from the fantastic Bernie Mac’s used car salesman character to Shia’s easy, accessible but nonetheless geeky protagonist. It was the Goldilocks of 2007, everything was just right.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen was an almost guaranteed success from the word go. There was only one way to make people like it more than the original and that was more robots, right? Right! For the months leading up to it I looked around online for the lowdown on the new robots we were going to be seeing. New additions to the Autobots lineup looked amazing as ever with Arcee (A pink motorbike), Jolt (A blue electric car, has electro-whips as weapons) and Sideswipe (Some badass supercar with 2 swords for arms) joining the team. On the Decepticon side, fan favourites Soundwave (A sattelite) and Ravage (A mechanical jaguary.. type.. thing) were set to join as well as the “Constructicons” (7 construction vehicles that combine to form Devastator). If that wasn’t enough, Megatron and Starscream were back as well as a NEW big bad baddie, The Fallen.

SO, yeah, sounds pretty terrific. There was one problem: none of the exciting new characters got ANY kind of screentime or lines in the ENTIRE 147 (far too long) minute film. Arcee and her 2 other friends (also motorbikes) got one, maybe 2 lines in the entire thing and featured so little it was infuriating. The motorbike Autobots were genuinely fascinating machines and we were offered no action with them whatsoever. The same can be said for Jolt, who speaks not once in the entire feature and is only seen briefly fighting in the background of the final showdown. Sideswipe got a little more attention and for that I’m thankful. I mean, what’s the point of introducing these truly amazing new characters if we never see them do anything? “Well, fear not” the producers told us, “How about... these guys?!” and with that, The Twins were born. The Twins, or Skids and Mudflap are possibly the most intensely and horrifically irritating characters to have ever been brought into the Transformers universe. It is baffling to me that, not only were they ever introduced into the film at all, but that the screentime they got was probably more than Megatron, Bumblebee or even Optimus Prime.

The Decepticon side of things wasn’t all that great either. In fact, they had the exact same trouble as the Autobots: Too many cool robots being boring, too many annoying robots being all too prominent. The aforementioned fan-favourite Soundwave (who won a poll on which Transformer they’d most like to see in the sequel) took up the duties as a secretary. Never once transforming into his robot form, never once descending to earth, Soundwave pretty much floated about and, yeah, sent memos to the Decepticons. Thrilling. And The Fallen? The mysterious, huge, ancient bad guy who so badly wants revenge for something or other (still not quite sure what it was...)? Yeah? He’s in it for about... 10 minutes. He bums around Cybertron most of the film, seemingly active and then just... flies down to earth on a whim. He was fine and dandy THE WHOLE TIME which completely negates the impact of the prophecy a Decepticon early in the film imparted as its dying words: “The Fallen shall rise again”. Okay then, baddie, so what you were saying really was: “The Fallen never really fell, but sooner or later he’s going to be bothered to come down to earth and kick some ass”. The new “little guy” Decepticon, Wheelie, is not worth a mention whatsoever. He’s that awful.

Most of this review has been about the robots themselves. Then again, that’s what the films is mostly about. Plot and characters come second to the cool robots and that’s the philosophy they stuck to and made work in the first one. The problems with the second are obvious: Firstly, it’s trying far too hard to be an all-encompassing epic. This second film suddenly throws us into ancient Transformers mythology, with adventures going on all around the globe which really does stall the flow of the narrative, even one as flimsy as the Transformers one.

Secondly, to balance out all this new dramatic stuff, it seems some completely inappropriate and plain bizarre humour has been shoehorned in. It really was quite baffling watching Devastator, the 120ft mean machine crawling up a pyramid. I mean, we’re meant to be experiencing fear for the human race at this point before a swift camera swoop reveals that Devastator is in fact a male with 2 wrecking ball testicles. Classy. As well as this, Megan gets her leg humped by a tiny Transformer and Shia’s dogs and parents get it on. (Yes, now Shia has TWO dogs, that’s JUST how sequelly this sequel is)

To be honest, it’s just real messy. Moments which should have been game-changing and awe-inspiring like Optimus combining with Jetfire come off just OK but really anti-climactic, while almost all the easy charm of the two leads has fizzled out into one tiny ongoing device where neither wants to say “I love you”. It’s a good thing the fight scenes still rock (although god help me if I have to describe one) and there’s enough classic 2007 stuff to be brought back to the table.

**
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