Greetings, Visionaries!

Somewhere within the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen there exists a really fun, well-made film.

Unfortunately, you have to wade through about forty-five minutes of fat and bloat.

Don’t get me wrong.  Despite the almost total trashing that everyone on the internet seems to be giving the flick, I actually enjoyed it – just not nearly as much as the first film.

The flaws in this film are so apparent that you’ll notice them the instant they come across the screen.  With that in mind, I’m just going to do a quick rundown of where this movie went wrong (from here on thar be spoilers!):

Plotbloat.

I just coined a new phrase just so I could talk about one of the biggest problems with this film.  This movie runs two hours and thirty minutes long.  Like I said before, that’s about forty-five minutes too long.  There were way too many unnecessary scenes or over-extended scenes that could have been trimmed down.  Do we need to see dogs humping?  Do we need to see Sam’s mom wigging out over French cuisine or going googly-moogly over accidentally ingesting pot brownies?  No.  As much as I loved the humor that Sam’s parents brought to the first film, that doesn’t mean that their popularity translates to automatically giving them more screen time to fill.  And this was only a small fraction of some of the fat that needed cut from the film.  I hate to say this, but how do you manage to create a twenty minute fight scene and have it get boring half-way through?  I’m serious – the big desert fight between the military, Sam and his brood, the Autobots, and the Decepticons should have been this epic thrill fest.  And it certainly started out that way.  It was pretty riveting seeing this massive battle going on.  Then, something weird happened at about the ten minute mark – I looked at my watch, wondering just how much more fighting we were going to see, as well as how long it actually takes for a couple of characters to make it a quarter of a mile on foot when all they do is keep mentioning how they need to only go a quarter of a mile on foot.  Now, see what you made me do, Bay?  You made my first bullet run on almost as long as your movie.  Great.  It’s contagious.

Comic Relief

Having characters in your film to provide comic relief is great.  But, when almost half the main cast seems to only serve as comic relief, you have a problem.  I would like to see some adventure and maybe some plot move forward, but instead I keep seeing some guy freak out comically over the situation he’s been thrown into every three minutes, a welcomed return character from the first film quickly wear out his welcome, and at least three Autobots (two Autos and an allegiance-changer) do mostly nothing but annoy me with their attempts at being comical.  When it looks like you pulled a George Lucas and dumbed down your film with too much potty humor and bodily functions (Episode I, anyone?) you need to take a hard look at you life and wonder where you went wrong.  And for the record?  I don’t think the twins – Mudflap and Skids – were racist at all, just annoying and unnecessary.  That’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

Leakage

What the hell was up with all of the Transformers suddenly spewing liquid from their mouths every five minutes?  Didn’t happen in the first film.  What was the point?  Next.

Too Many Plot Threads

Seriously, there were way too many McGuffins baked into this pie.  We gotta go get the sliver of the Allspark, now we have to go get the other sliver of the Allspark.  Now we have to stop them from resurrecting Megatron.  Now we have to keep Sam away from Megatron.  Now we have to find the Transformer who knows all about this new McGuffin!  Now we have to stop The Fallen from getting that McGuffin.  Now we have to save Optimus.  McGuffin!  McGuffin!  How many more times can I say McGuffin!  I started to get dizzy just trying to keep up with where everyone was going and what everyone was doing.  Speaking of dizzy…

Director’s Trademarks

Every director has certain trademarks or calling cards in there directing style – some like lots of close-ups.  Some like to insert themselves into the film in a small cameo.  Some like to film the sequences out of order.  Michael Bay has two that stand out – he likes to have the camera circle around a character a couple of times during a dramatic or emotional scene and he also likes to insert brief moments of slo-mo during action sequences.  Seriously, man – stop.  The overuse of the spinny thing was starting to make several of my friends really dizzy.  After the twenty-somethingth time, I was starting to get a little nauseous myself.  And with the bits of slo-mo?  You know, that movie was probably only two hours long if you had just taken all that out.  You did what moviegoers were afraid that Watchmen had done (and actually didn’t) based on its trailer.  I know you use these techniques in all of your films, but please – find some new tricks.  I think you’ve earned these ones a long vacation.

Final Battle – The Abridged Version

Remember that long-winded battle I mentioned above?  Well, after that finally finishes we are finally treated to what we’ve been waiting for for what seems like half a day – the final showdown between Optimus Prime and The Fallen.  And… it’s over.  What?  It went down like a Don King boxing match.  Maybe three or four punches and it was over.  Oh wait, no – Megatron still needs to get his licks in.  Okay cool!  Nope.  Done.  Quick wrap up to Optimus delivering a speech on an aircraft carrier (which a friend of mine was kind enough to point out – repeatedly – a major flaw with the carrier) and we fade to credits.  Hold on a minute.  I sat through a battle that could have been cut down a bit to prevent drowsiness and you reward me with the same disappointment I had when Clark fought Doomsday at the end of this season’s “Smallville”?  Why do you hate me, Michael Bay?  And why do you hate the Transformers?  They were good to you in 2007.  So were we.  What happened?

I know, based on the rather large paragraphs above, that it appears like I didn’t like the film at all.  In reality, I really did.  There were enough elements about the movie that made me enjoy it despite its flaws.  Peter Cullen always delights as Optimus Prime, and his screen time was always great to watch.  I actually liked what they did with Soundwave.  It his character perfectly, and he was voiced by Frank Welker (Unfortunately, they only had him do the standard “Dr. Claw” voice without the voice modulation.  Still, close enough for me!).  Also, we got to see him launch Ravage!

Other things I liked about the film:

-          Nice development of the relationship between Starscream and Megatron that we know and love.  Oh, there was a nice, subtle play of power struggle combined with groveling and Megs calling Starscream a failure.

-          The first forty –five minutes of the film were really tight, despite the fact that the over-excessive comedic scenes were already starting to rear their ugly heads.  The college stuff with Sam was actually better than it’s been given credit for.  It built up Sam’s dilemma between having a normal life and dealing with his destiny rather well.

-          Devastator.  His appearance was short, but holy crap was he awesome.

-          Bay finally added in the old story elements of Energon and the Matrix of Leadership.  And he did it rather well.  Always a pleasure when you incorporate more of the mythos of the property you’re adapting.

-          All of the acting was spot-on.  I don’t think there was a bad performance in the bunch.  Even Megan Fox, who some might say can’t act, did a decent job.  Hey – even Michael Bay told her on the set to just look hot.  What are you gonna do when that’s your motivation?

Like I said before, I did like Revenge of the Fallen, mainly because I was able to see through all of the excess that there is actually a tightly-crafted film hidden in there.  I had fun watching the further adventures of an 80s toy property in live action form.  I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first one.

And that’s Michael Bay’s fault.  I think one of the reasons why the first one worked so well is that Steven Spielberg had an active hand on the film, guiding Bay so as not to overdo it.  Unfortunately, Spielberg’s money was the only active thing on the second film.  Left to his own devices, Bay made the same mistake that that Encyclopedia Britannica made back in the 80s – he had so much great information, he put it all in.

Overkill.

All The Don needs is a little Energon, and a lot of ketchup.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under Donnie Sturges, Fandom, geek love, movies, toys. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.