Empire's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Movie Review

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
Bigger, badder, madder, faster, more intense!

Plot
Autobots and the US military have united to form NEST, an elite unit dedicated to wiping out Decepticons. But when they catch a rogue ‘bot in Shanghai, it warns that something very bad is heading for Earth: a diabolical entity known as ‘The Fallen’.

Review

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A notable moment occurs during the dementedly frenetic final act of Transformers 2. A robot-on-robot fracas is unfolding around Egypt’s Giza Necropolis, with Devastator, an especially massive mechanoid comprised of several construction vehicles, set on clawing its way to the peak of a pyramid. As it lumbers up the dusty colossus, a shot tilts up to its mid-section, revealing two wrecking balls dangling down. Yes, Michael Bay, the man who brought us cyber-micturition in this movie’s predecessor, has one-upped himself: Decepticon testicles.

If the thought of that gag makes you laugh, chances are you’ll have a ball with Revenge Of The Fallen. If not… well, Bay really doesn’t care. His first and only sequel since Bad Boys 2 is, like that film, marked by swaggering confidence, wild excess and a string of bad-taste jokes. Dogs hump each other, robots hump human legs and the camera spends so much time ogling Megan Fox’s torso you start to wonder if it’s being operated by a 13 year-old boy. There are now 42 robots, including one that looks like a jaguar, one that can turn into ball bearings to access high-security areas and one in the form of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

It all looks good on paper, as does the added-value 150-minute run time. But it’s a case of same meal, bigger portion, with the flaws of the first not only present but accentuated. You’ll be even more hard pressed at the end of this one to remember which robot’s which — there are three or four new Gremlin-esque ones that chitter and skitter about like the first movie’s Frenzy — and few get more than a scene before Bay’s attention flits elsewhere. Even the Fallen, an Emperor figure to Megatron’s Darth Vader, who can hurl tanks around with the aid of his jagged staff, is only blandly nefarious.

The plot, meanwhile, is as baffling as before, not only bringing back the abstruse Allspark but throwing in a new MacGuffin called the ‘Matrix of Leadership’. It tries harder to be funny but is actually less so, despite Shia LaBeouf working some early new-kid-on-campus schtick, Rainn Wilson amusing in a single scene as a rock-star astronomy teacher, and John Turturro doing an entertaining reprise of MIB wannabe Simmons (“What you’re about to see is top secret: do not tell my mother”). This is a film that doesn’t know where to stop — even comic-relief characters get their own comic-relief characters, like the offensively irritating Twins, who bicker in hip-hop slang, or Wheels, a turncoat Decepticon who for some reason talks like a ‘30s screen gangster.

What saves it, just about, are the effects. At times the frame is so packed with whirring cogs and twirling cranks that you could replicate the effect by staring at the innards of a domestic appliance, but when these CG moto-men from another world duke it out, the images are often so screwy it’s impossible to do anything but sit and stare. The Shanghai-set opening sequence is lunatic fun, with Optimus Prime leaping onto the face of a colossal, rampaging unicycle and ordering it to, “Pull over”. And while Prime’s later forest face-off against a trio of Decepticons suffers by comparison to a recent film’s spar between a big ape and three dinosaurs, there are more flawlessly rendered money shots in the last 40 minutes alone than in a dozen less ambitious blockbusters.

It’s just a shame there aren’t more ideas behind the spectacle, since we’re not given much in the way of compelling reasons to root for one pixelly pugilist over another. Long before the final minute it’s become a numbing, wearying viewing experience. Next time could we have less balls and more brains?

Verdict

Reviewed by Nick de Semlyen

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Average user rating for Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch. ... More


Posted by the film man at 21:23, 13 December 2011 \| Report This Post



Awsome
In the plots case Michael Bay has just simply copied the plot from the first film, all thats different is tht instead of The Cube its something called The Matrix of Leadership. This would usualy bother me but the action is bigger and better than the first and so is the ideas for different robots (one can hack into the US Military Satalite). So overall I realy enjoyed this as much as the first. ... More


Posted by the film man at 14:47, 28 June 2011 \| Report This Post



Awful
A dreadful excuse for a movie. Like the post from rosmonty below says, I'm giving it 1 star because I wasn't allowed to give it none. ... More


Posted by Turd Ferguson at 14:10, 28 June 2011 \| Report This Post



Still Spectaculer
A great sequel, it's not as funny as the first film but the action and the special effects are bigger and better. And the plot isn't even that bad. I think much better than the first. ... More


Posted by the film man at 22:58, 02 June 2011 \| Report This Post



A Very Guilty Pleasure!
A film franchise with great talking alien robots directed by the King of Explosions? Seriously what were people expecting? It is however an overblown mess of a film with plenty of things ill judged from racist comedy sidekicks (far too many sidekicks) to a plot that is overly complicated than it needs to be. However this is no-brain fun with plenty of action and impressive effects. It isn't a great movie BUT I still managed to have alot of fun watching. ... More


Posted by DMeister at 02:47, 24 March 2011 \| Report This Post



Bad Bad Movie
This is more like the movie we expect from Michael Bay. I knew the first one was a fluke ... More


Posted by bnicholson50 at 20:25, 01 March 2011 \| Report This Post



Empire should be ashamed of themselves.
Prejudiced. Incomprehensible. Boring. ... More


Posted by Concise_Statement at 19:58, 29 August 2010 \| Report This Post




tp://www.imdb.com/title/tt1055369/]Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallenaster, bigger and better isn`t the case for this sequel. It is bigger. More action, more Transformers (although that ain`t always a good thing: what the hell were the writers thinking when they wrote those Twins into the script?) but above all more unnecessary scenes. That is the films` biggest problem: the film is with a 149 minute running way too long, not making it faster and better than the original at all. There have been... More


Posted by TheGodfather at 21:46, 17 August 2010 \| Report This Post



Very flawed but underrated
Its not half as good as the first film for many reasons. Lets start with the story. The first film put a story there just to allow for great set peices and as the rest of the film was so good yout didnt mind. But for most of the time you dont have a clue whats going on. The end result is just silly, theres a giant machine inside a pyramid, yeah that makes sense. The next problem is those twins, very annoying, racist and badly designed. This film also brings in way too many robots, six robots wil... More


Posted by stevolegendbauer at 17:22, 04 August 2010 \| Report This Post



Pantsformers
What an awful film. The first one was great fun - bright, snappy and moved at a healthy pace. This one has a drawn-out plot, bewildering visuals and a dull script that makes Spiderman 3 look like X-Men 2. It's a half hour too long, buries what little story it has in a pointless 45 minute desert sequence and contains some dreadful performances (yes YOU, Megan Fox and John Turturro). Michael Bay - please stop making films immediately! ... More


Posted by Iano at 13:06, 26 July 2010 \| Report This Post



1 star only because I wasn't allowed to give none!!!
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen. The plot, when I could actually make out the dialogue over the music, just didn't make sense at all. I'm all for a bit of escapism but this was just woeful. The story seemed to jump about and leave unexplained gaps everywhere and I was totally confused. The acting was really poor and I couldn't believe it when I saw that Steven Speilberg was a producer - he must have been having a bad day when he got involved. Michael Bay must be a very extraor... More


Posted by rosmonty at 11:59, 19 July 2010 \| Report This Post



Michael Bay you have to explain why you think this works
the rascist robots? The ethnic stereotypes? Why you can't shoot an action scene like you did with the frist one? Why did the American army have to do re-writes? All this humping and mean fox bending over to the camera whatever way you like? ... More


Posted by monkeyhumour at 03:37, 08 July 2010 \| Report This Post



Transformers 2: Even Better!
Now the only thing I complained about in the first film was the lack of close ups of the robots and this film has ticked that box. The robots were amazing and hats off to the guys sitting in front of 5 screens creating them. The story and cast were amazing again but I got the feeling that Megan Fox’s character was told to be more bitchy in this film. Not good, well she’s not in the third film so I can’t say anything about here character. ... More


Posted by LUCASLITTLEWOOD at 18:23, 02 July 2010 \| Report This Post



FUCK...MICHAELS...ARSE...
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? LONGER, WORSE, LESS FUNNY AND YEAH... ... More


Posted by newblue11 at 17:02, 24 May 2010 \| Report This Post



FUCK...MICHAELS...ARSE...
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? LONGER, WORSE, LESS FUNNY AND YEAH... ... More


Posted by newblue11 at 17:02, 24 May 2010 \| Report This Post



RE: Cheap humour lets it down
the VERY worst summer blockbuster EVER. no need for debate ... More

Posted by empire No. 1 at 04:56, 21 April 2010 \| Report This Post



RE: Cheap humour lets it down
the VERY worst summer blockbuster EVER. no need for debate. 2/10 ... More

Posted by empire No. 1 at 04:54, 21 April 2010 \| Report This Post



Cheap humour lets it down
This sequel to the awesome Transformers is quite a good movie, except that two chief flaws let it down and keep it from becoming the enjoyable and rousing experience it wants to be. First of all, the cheap humour found in the first film is multiplied in amount here and as a result, Revenge of the Fallen feels like a teenage boy's wet dream. The plot this time round is also too complicated for its own right and suffers from At World's End faults. But the film is still very entertaining and Mich... More


Posted by djphilips at 14:10, 09 April 2010 \| Report This Post



RE: Megan Fox should win an oscar,even though she's a terrible actress.
I quite like Michael Bay movies. I'm not saying the guy is Scorcesse or Kurosowa but in general he makes entertaining films...however, having watched this film at the weekend it is easily the worst film I've seen over the last 10 years. Absolutely shocking. Batman and Robin has been atop my worst movie ever made list since it first came out but this has to be a close second for me. Shocking ... More


Posted by Rob at 09:47, 29 March 2010 \| Report This Post



RE: Megan Fox should win an oscar,even though she's a terrible actress.
Finally saw this. It almost makes Batman and Robin look like Hamlet. First viewing almost unbearably crap. Second viewing (to be sure I wan't being too harsh) revealed it to be a bit better put together than first impressions led me to believe, liked a lot of non human being related stuff. Conclusion, just about bearably crap. That is all. ... More

Posted by jobloffski at 22:19, 23 March 2010 \| Report This Post



Megan Fox should win an oscar,even though she's a terrible actress.
The guy kept on getting electricuted but got up like 5 seconds later,they didn;t put anything into this,all they put an effort into was the explosions but terrible movie and Megan os running for her life in the desert with loads of makeup on,so crap,but it's actually funy how crap it is ... More


Posted by JohnPaul1996 at 19:49, 08 March 2010 \| Report This Post



Its ranting time
WTF michael bay. I love defending you, your films may not have the most elaborate scripts but thier usually really entertaining. I was really looking forward to this expecting it to have the best action scenes evar and its just average at best. You have $200million and an amazing concept and you go and make an average to less than average film, seriously WTF, and why did this film only come out 2 years after the first one, fucking greedy bastards. Everyone working on this film should have just b... More


Posted by suleiman at 16:24, 01 March 2010 \| Report This Post




Wow. Never have I seen a film so action packed and so loud to be so incredibly boring. ... More


Posted by willchadwick at 13:49, 26 February 2010 \| Report This Post



"Beginning, middle, end. Facts, details. Condense: Plot. Tell it!" quote from film
As in the title of the review there is very little in the way of a plot here and that was said b one of the characters 2/3 thirds in. Were it not for the silly attempts at comedy (the twins, college friend, agent Simmons, mother at college scene, comic relief robot) this film would have received two stars at least. It annoyed me (and fans) that Ironhide etc was pushed to the background this time and that the final action scene was a mess of the desert scene from the first one. Starscream was al... More


Posted by Rico rodrigeuz at 12:57, 26 February 2010 \| Report This Post



Wanksformers
I've never really been one of those in the Micheal Bay hate camp, I enjoyed Bad Boys 1 + 2, thought the first Transformers film was good fun, The Rock a great film and the Island a decent effort as well BUT.... after seeing this my overwhelming feeling was that he should be taken out the back and shot in the head. It's just a meaningless succession of FX setpieces, there's no real fun. feeling, meaning or anything - the last time I felt this way about an FX heavy movie was when I saw Van ... More

Posted by Fluke Skywalker at 15:08, 06 February 2010 \| Report This Post



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Transformers: Revenge Of The FallenBigger, badder, madder, faster, more intense!

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
Bigger, badder, madder, faster, more intense!