Movie Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Thousands of years ago, a group of Transformers harvested the energy, to create energon for their home world of Cybertron, from suns with the understanding that no harvesting would be done that would harm any planets with life. The Fallen, one of the original Transformers, went renegade and wanted to harvest Earth's sun which would have killed all life on the planet. Several of the other Transformers got together and banished The Fallen to the moon. They also hid the Matrix of Leadership, the key that powers the Sun Harvester,

Current day, two years after the first movie, the Autobots (along with several new Autobots from Cybertron) are working with the US military, in an organization called NEST, to find, capture and destroy the Decepticons, who have been sited on every continent of the world. During a routine takedown mission, Optimus Prime and others take down a Decepticon whose last cryptic words are: "The Fallen shall rise again." Meanwhile, a new government honcho has been given the authority to rule over the Autobots' decisions on earth.

Sam Witwicky is headed off to college for his freshman year while continuing his relationship with Mikaela -- now a distance relationship. While packing at home, a fragment of the AllSpark falls on the floor and several household appliances are turned into robots that start attacking his family. Bumblebee, who is in the garage, attacks the robots and the government cleans up. The fragment also injected his brain with unknown Cybertronian symbols.

Sam's parents are distraught seeing Sam grow up and leaving the house. At college, Sam meets his roommate, Leo, a guy who runs a conspiracy website about giant robots. He also meets a girl, Alice, who happens to be Decepticon robot (Pretender) and tries to probe his mind for the location of the Matrix of Leadership under orders of The Fallen.

Under orders from The Fallen, the Decepticons resurrect and rescue Megatron from the depths of the ocean where he has been held captive since the last movie. Megatron is to lead the Decepticons to find the Matrix and await The Fallen's return. Sam's mind stores the location of the Matrix, so the Decepticons try to retrieve the information and the Autobots must protect him. During an ambush on Optimus Prime, Optimus is killed by Megatron and the other Autobots rescue Sam.

Sam meets up with Agent Simmons from the first movie and the race begins to find the Matrix to resurrect Optimus Prime and defeat The Fallen before he and the Decepticons find Sam and the Matrix to fuel the Sun Harvester and destroy the sun.

Review

The sequel to the original movie is even more complicated than the original. It has a few plot lines going on simultaneously, which might confuse some people, especially those who are not fans of Transformers. I understood most of it but a few plot holes still exist. Most of the plot holes I can overlook but a few minor inconsistencies occurred near the end of the movie that bothered me a little bit.

The special effects are very good. The robots looked almost real to me. As with most Michael Bay movies, there are tons of loud and very destructive explosions. If you like that sort of thing, you will love this movie. Normally, this would bother me but it is an action movie after all, so it is to be expected.

The music is average but still devoid of the original theme song from the Transformers cartoon, which would have made a big impression on fans of the cartoon.

Shia LaBeouf and the beautiful Megan Fox reprise their roles as Sam Witwicky and his girlfriend Mikaela Banes. Kevin Dunn and Julie White returned as Sam's quirky parents Ron and Judy Witwicky. It is also good to see John Turturro return as the manic Agent Simmons, who lost his job because of the Transformers. There are a bunch of newcomers to the movie as well. Ramon Rodriguez plays Leo Spitz, the owner of the robot conspiracy website, who goes bonkers after he is confronted with the truth. John Benjamin plays Hickey Galloway, the annoying government official that is trying to run the show, does a good job and really making us dislike him. Isabel Lucas plays Alice, the Decepticon pretender, and tries to seduce Sam to get information. She is another beautiful addition to the cast.

I like the voice cast a bit better than the first movie. The legendary Peter Cullen, of course, reprises his role as Optimus Prime. Hugo Weaving and Charles Adler returned as the voices of Megatron and Starscream, whose dialogue is substantially increased since the first movie -- Starscream sounds almost like the original in the cartoon. The other legend from the cartoon, Frank Welker, is part of this movie but not as Megatron but, rather, as Soundwave and Devastator, which is something for fans to look forward to. Tony Todd voices The Fallen, as only he can. A pleasant surprise that I did not know about was the great Michael York voicing one of the ancient Primes.

There are many new Transformers in this movie, some good and some bad, some old and some new. Soundwave and Ravage are a welcome addition to this movie. Sadly, Soundwave does not transform into a tape player but, instead, He transforms into a Cybertronian craft with a jet mode and a satellite form. He still performs the same role but just in a different form. Ravage is still a minion of Soundwave and still looks like a jaguar but his alternate mode is strange as a Cybertronian missile? I don't understand that. Devastator makes his live action debut -- this time he is comprised of seven construction vehicles. And of course, The Fallen is a new addition.

The Negatives

There are a few negatives about this movie that I want to discuss.

First off, why did the writers choose to make the sequel about The Fallen? The character of The Fallen does not appear in any of the cartoons. From the comic books that I have read, I have only seen him in Transformers: The War Within, a mini-series. I do not know if he shows up in other comic series but I do know that he is a relatively new character that no one knows of outside of the comic books. I just find him a very odd choice for a sequel, especially this early on in the live action movies. I would have rather had him show up around part four or five but not part two. Everyone has only been introduced to the characters in the first movie, so, I think the first sequel should have explored the transformer universe with a more detailed perspective before delving off into newer characters, like The Fallen.

The writers of the screenplay could have made a cleaner story with fewer complications. They could have focused on one big thing instead of several medium-sized things. Some of the storylines that were smaller detracted from the main storyline, being that of The Fallen. At no point during the movie did I sense a feeling of dread or impending doom, unlike with Unicron in the original series.

A few little inconsistencies annoyed me slightly. One of them includes the fact that Sam's parents appeared out of nowhere in the desert where Sam and the Transformers were fighting. I suppose that one of the Decepticon jets carried them there but why? As a bargaining chip to get Sam to reveal the location of the Matrix?

It is widely known that Michel Bay paid the screenplay writers $8,000,000. I would think that for that kind of money the writers would have written a perfect Maxis script without so many mini plots going on at the same time and the little inconsistencies like I mentioned. Is $8 million not enough? I could write a better story for a few hundred dollars!

Theodore Galloway, the American National Security Advisor, who tries to undermine the Autobots, is part of an unnecessary subplot. What is the point of it? No one really takes him seriously in the movie and it's not really developed, making it seem all the more unnecessary.

Sam's parents are funny but I think that their comic relief detracted from the seriousness of the movie. I know the movie is not realistic but I really do like comedy of this kind mixed in with an action movie.

A few robots annoyed me. I never understand why Transformers would have accents. Mark Ryan voices Jetfire with an Australian accent! Mudflap and Skids, also known as the twins, are too annoying robots that use ghetto talk -- I just wanted them to shut up! Also, if you did not think that Wheelie was annoying in the original series, you might now!

What is up with Deep Roy as an Egyptian guard? Why was he cast? I kept thinking that he would break into his Oompa Loompa dance!

What is up with Devastator? I was excited to hear that he would be in this movie until I saw what he looked like! He looks like the junkyard gorilla crossed with a Brillo pad and a vortex fan for a chest. I really could not tell what I was looking at. The toy version looks just as bad. He is defeated a lot easier than he should have been. A good idea would have been to have the whole movie about designing Devastator and make him be the ultimate villain of the movie rather than The Fallen.

I had a difficult time telling the Decepticons apart from one another because they all look the same -- almost every one of them was painted mostly silver and gray. The Autobots were more colorful, so I could tell most of them apart. The Decepticons were also all a lot bigger than the Autobots, which is a little strange to me.

The Fallen was defeated much too easily by Optimus Prime. I waited the entire movie to see how bad The Fallen was. What I got was a few minutes of battle at the end of the movie. How anti-climactic is that? The Fallen survived billions of years and he is defeated this easily. It makes me wonder how he survived all that time.

Roger Ebert

While browsing the seibertron.com website, I noticed a link to a blog response from Roger Ebert concerning the fan response on the website forums about his negative review of the Transformers. It all seems very silly to me.

I can understand why Roger Ebert gave a negative review of the movie based on the quality of movies he usually reviews. I went into this movie knowing that it would be neither a masterpiece nor perfect. I knew not to compare it to great movies of our time.

My problem with Roger Ebert and other professional movie reviewers is that they rarely watch movies with the frame of mind of the viewers for which the movies were intended. Transformers is a movie about giant transforming robots and based on a children's cartoon, so this cannot be taken seriously or compared to great dramas, like The Godfather. Rather, Transformers is a movie that needs to be watched with an open and young perspective. It is very unfair to call this movie crap by comparing it to realistic movies written for adults. The Transformers needs to be viewed as what it is: an action movie for children. I don't care if the viewer is a big fan of the Transformers and happens to be an adult, when watching a live action movie based on a cartoon, it needs to be watched with that frame of mind or there is no point to watching it.

Conclusion

In my opinion (all reviews should be done as opinion pieces/editorials), the Transformers sequel is neither great nor terrible. It is far from great but nowhere near the bottom of my list. I suppose that I am mostly neutral about the movie. I liked the first Transformers movie slightly better but even that is somewhere in the middle of my movie list. It offers plenty of action and fun. At near two hours, it is rather lengthy but I was never bored.

Be sure to check out my review of Transformers (2007) HERE.