June 25th, 2009

"The Fallen" refers to the main villain of the film, who was one of the original Primes way, way, waaaay back. He landed on Earth before in 17,000 BC to build a Sun Harvester, which is a machine that basically eats the current planet's sun and converts it's power into energon -- which is what gives the robots life (which the Decepticons are running out of currently). There was a rule he ignored, though -- the Sun Harvester can't be built on a planet which contains life. The Fallen was stopped from activating the machine by the Primes after a big war and his plan was, for the time being, thwarted. He can only be defeated by a fellow Prime, and since the only one remaining is Optimus, he plans to have him killed so he can return to Earth and claim our sun. And luckily for Sam, he's a walking map to the Sun Harvester after the incident with the Allspark.

Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) about to shit his pants, as usual.

With such a dark end-of-the-world plot going on, a good contrast is the humor featured. Sam's parents -- Ron and Judy, who stole the show for me in 2007, are back and are as goofy as ever. One scene where the already ditzy Judy gets some weed brownies from the college dorm her son is moving into and eats them provides some serious entertainment. Another good source of laughs is Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez), who is Sam's alien obsessed, conspiracy spewing roommate. He pretty much reacts to things the same way Sam first did in '07, but is a lot less heroic. Shia LaBeouf is great in his role again, providing his usual dry, sarcastic humor and hilarious natural reactions to the craziest things (I almost died laughing with his reaction to the "Alice" character). But while the majority of viewers find Michael Bay's brand of comedy enjoyable, one criticism the franchise has always endured was of it having to aim for low brow humor, which I can both agree and disagree with at the same time.

I can agree because Transformers is marketed towards children. Not exclusively -- since it's trying to pull the crowd who have already grown up with the series, but very heavily aims for the youngsters in other areas of marketing . If you look at all the tie-ins involved with it -- from the action figures, to the children's clothes, kid's meal collectibles, to the book bags for the little tikes, it's fairly easy to see how parents get angry when there are jokes about masturbation, some kind of sexual reference every 5 minutes, and cuss words being tossed around more than a game of Ultimate Frisbee. The PG-13 movie during this decade gets away with a lot more than they ever did in the 90s. I do disagree with their complaints though, because it's a PG-13 movie. Why are you bringing your five-year-old snot machine to see it?

If these two asked for Popeyes Chicken next, I woulda left the theater.

I do have to call a spade a spade and throw my name in the hat of people who were not completely satisfied with the new Autobot twins Mudflap and Skids. They speak in street slang and have a clichéd "ghetto" personality. This is worse than Jazz's "token black guy" portrayal in the original due to the fact there are two of them now, and neither match the cool factor Jazz embodied. In fact, they're dopey looking, bumbling fools and one of them (Skids) even has a gold tooth. I didn't mind this too much until they both admitted they "don't do much reading" later in the film. I'm not going to get my boxers twisted over this like some reviewers, but it's definitely one aspect of the film that knocked it down a few pegs for me.

Another thing that bothered me is including Shia's hand injury from 2008 into the script. During a teleportation scene with the elderly Autobot, Jetfire, the group lands in the middle of Egypt and Shia's character lands very awkwardly on his hand. That's fine, but the next scene (which is, like, 10 seconds later) his hand is magically bandaged up by Mikaela. Does that bitch just carry around a massive first aid kit or something? This was completely unbelievable and it actually bothered me a great deal the remaining duration of Fallen. Points deducted.

Overall, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a great sequel. My senses aren't as overwhelmed like they were after walking away from the original, but I can't say I didn't like it on a whole. It's nothing new; the formula that made Transformers work so well is in full effect again, but it's on the fence between being cool and being stale at this point. The third, inevitable film will cement the franchise's legacy, for better or for worse.

If you liked the first one, you'll like Fallen as well, just don't expect anything terribly groundbreaking. I personally wasn't a fan of the ending, mainly because I hate when big threats are disposed of too easily and everything is solved at the end of the day, and it's all wrapped up into a neat little package. I don't buy it. I'm always in the minority with my movie ending gripes, so whatever.

The fight scenes alone are worth the price of admission, so if you're reading this in the summer, go see it. If this is months after the fact, buy it on Blu-ray, not DVD. From personal experience of owning both copies of Transformers, the only way to appreciate a film like this is in HD. It's a night and day difference.

Highly recommended, if you know what you're getting yourself into.