Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Or: what’s with the unnecessary subtitles? Just call it Transformers 2

I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Transformers fan. Sure, I’m semi-familiar with the characters, and I watched the awesome early 90s Beast Wars; but other than that, I can’t say I’m particularly familiar with Transformers. Regardless, the 2007 live action film was a pretty big blockbuster and so I found it to be my duty as a critic to watch said blockbuster, and its recently released sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Let me just start off by saying this: this film is directed by Michael Bay. Those of you familiar with Michael Bay know that he’s not much for story or character development, but he can craft quite an action sequence. Those of you unfamiliar with Michael Bay probably love his films.

Of course, there are plenty of action scenes in this film and although they tend to use that spinning camera trick a little too much, they’re still pretty damn intense. Explosions aplenty, cars being destroyed, buildings collapsing: it's all there. The style with which these scenes are constructed is impressive, and I guarantee that as long as you like to see things explode, you won’t be bored with them.

Unfortunately, you will be bored with just about everything else in the film. When you go to see an action film, you go to see action. It's understandable that (more often than not) the plot is going to be thin (if present at all). However, you simply have to hope that the plot doesn’t take away from the film. Which it does in this movie.

The entire first hour of the film has no plot whatsoever, simply featuring Shia Lebouf and Megan Fox running around. Pointless shenanigans abound. Finally, after a couple of fight scenes, it's revealed to us that the characters are supposed to find a key of some kind, so that they can stop the bad guys from destroying the sun. Yes, that is the plot.

The next hour or so involves them running through Egypt trying to find said key, while a ridiculously long battle goes on between the humans/Autobots and the Decepticons. The last half hour consists of an incredibly long and unnecessarily drawn out climax that involved more slow motion scenes than every Zack Snyder film put together. I grew tired of the film about an hour and a half into it, and was about ready for it to end fifteen minutes later.

Overall, the film feels like about an hour and a half’s worth of plot and good action scenes, stretched out into a two and a half hour film. If the movie hadn’t tried to be anything more than a stylistic action movie than it would have been far more enjoyable. Instead, you end up with a film about transforming cars from space that takes itself way to seriously.