TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

Tagline: Revenge takes many forms.

(Action, Sci-Fi, Pyramids) [PG-13]

Only to help spawn our new army! The Fallen decrees it! After all, in your absence, SOMEONE had to take command...

In this second installment of the TRANSFORMERS series, there have been two years of relative peace since Megatron was sent to the depths of the ocean. The humans have begun working with the Autobots in a joint organization called “NEST” to hunt down any remaining Decepticons. As it turns out the group is about to be disbanded when Sam Witwicky accidentally drops a shard from the “Cube”, which opens up the possibility of bringing Megatron back from the depths. Meanwhile, a sinister former Prime known as “The Fallen” wants to extract a map from Sam’s brain imprinted there by his great grandfather’s glasses. The map leads to an alien machine that could end the world. Can Sam, Mikaela, Optimus and the rest of the Autobots find and destroy the machine in time? 

This storyline is basically one of those "THE GOONIES" situations where for some reason old school Autobots know about the “Tomb of the Primes” when the location was secret and everyone involved died? The Primes literally sacrificed themselves to keep the location of “The Matrix of Leadership” secret. Yet for some reason, Megatron had a map to it when he crashed on earth that projected itself into Sam’s great grandfather’s glasses? It can only mean, someone must have documented it in the Prime language, and later the Decepticons were able to get their hands on it. It’s not necessarily a plot hole (a bunch of those come later in the series) but it would have been nice if they did what the "THE GOONIES" did and at least had a character mention that the “no survivors” story was odd. 

What this movie got right was a lot of the visuals. If eye-candy effects could give you diabetes, this movie would be banned. It’s that crazy. Some of the design work is full-blown epic. The improvement in “Devastators” design, in general, is beyond amazing. I still think Optimus looks pretty solid, but I will never stop loving the original design. This movie is also wildly entertaining if you can suspend certain expectations in this universe. I also really liked some of the characters, the score, and the soundtrack. It actually had one of the better soundtracks in the franchise.  

What went wrong? Well if you didn’t like Sam’s mom and dad in the first movie, and I certainly didn’t, this movie is even worse when it comes to them. They take over a good chunk of this movie and I can’t wait for them to get off the screen. We also get introduced to a character named Leo (played by Ramón Rodríguez). Leo is like the one annoying friend you have that seems to think everything is about them but you can’t quite shake them. That is how he comes across in this movie. I pretty much wanted someone to leave Leo back at the college at the beginning of the movie, but this dude sticks around till the final scenes. I also did not like the fact that we get a Decepticon in this movie that takes on a form that seems so useful that it begs the question of why not “every” Decepticon just doesn’t decide to be one of these. I mean, it’s basically the ultimate Decepticon form and yet we never see this happen again in the entire series. I don’t want to give it away because I am guessing there are still at least 4 people that have never watched this series. My other major issue was that they made one of the Decepticons basically a horn dog over Mikaela (Megan Fox best known for TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES). Why? Why Ehren Kruger did you write this crap, why Roberto Orci did you write this crap, Alex Kurtzman did you write this crap? I think the scene should have been removed, but whatever, what’s done is done. 

Acting wise all of the cast that returned improved from the first installment. Shia LaBeouf as Sam is maybe the only character that is less likable than in the first movie. Tyrese Gibson is better as Sergeant Epps (F9: THE FAST SAGA), and Josh Duhamel is almost always great, but he’s more well-rounded here as Major Lennex. John Turturro is less weird and power-mad in this one as Simmons (I guess he got to climb on the actual pyramids in Egypt for this movie). So I really don’t have many complaints about the characters aside from Leo who should have just been left in the dorm room. 

Overall this runs a bit long, but even with the numerous complaints I have, this one is pretty entertaining and I have to give it at least a 4 out of 7. Removing some of the stupidity would have helped it out. Two of the Autobots in this are so cringy, they were cut from the next movie. 

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