Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a hot, hot mess. It’s so hot it should be on a tin roof, or be dropped. But however bad any review may be, people will still go to see this movie. Nothing can stop the power of sex appeal and robots together. It earned $16 million on its Wednesday night premier alone, which is a record. It earned almost $600 million in two weeks. This movie is so shiny that people will stand everything else that is terrible about it.
The story makes no sense and the way it is presented in the plot is chaotic at best. There were so many action scenes the dialogue punctuated the fights … not the other way around. For being two and a half hours, a great, complex story could have been carefully designed to engross the audience. But instead, it is action followed by explosions followed by yelling, running and explosions.
There was no way for it to end well because absolutely nothing had been done over the course of the movie. It just ends, the credits roll and then the audience wonders what just happened. This movie is too big for its own good. There are too many fighting robots and not enough reason for them to fight. Everything was very epic, but for no reason. What was not epic was the ending.
For being so grandiose, there should have been multiple dimensions in peril, not just some machinery, or aliens, or Megan Fox’s empty head or whatever it was. This script is so incred- ibly terrible and cut and pasted together there was no way it wouldn’t be one of the worst movies of 2009. To be fair, it is a causality of the writers’ strike.
The plot holes are jarring, distracting and confusing. The heroes walk out the back door of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which is located in downtown Washington, D.C., they are suddenly in a field with the majestic Rockies in the background. There were no apologies or attempted Lucille Ball style explanations. It just was.
Also, Petra is not visible from the Great Pyramids, so there is no way the heroes ran from one to the other. And if there is a mythical gun, why not use it on more than one thing?
Shia isn’t given much to do and only really has one moment to shine. It’s about four seconds long and then something explodes or invades earth or bursts through a wall. Furthermore, Shia is in one of the robots when it transforms. I thought there might be a cool control room, Shia driving a huge robot, but instead he is just running on the ground a shot later like nothing happened. Somehow he traveled several hundred feet to the ground safely, quickly and without a hitch step.
As a final note, someone needs to be either fired or promoted regarding these “racist robots.” It is a steaming pile of controversy that could have been avoided easily, but then GM would have to be plugged elsewhere in the movie. The robots add nothing to the movie and could be excluded entirely, but instead I guess it was supposed to be funny.
But the movie is just so shiny. It’s so pretty. It’s so pretty it hypnotizes the audience into apathy. This is its only redeeming factor. The robots are pretty, Megan is pretty and the $600 million isn’t arguing.