the blog of nathan loding

Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Star­ring: Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, John Tur­turro
Directed by: Michael Bay
Writ­ten by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtz­man
Rated: PG-13
Rat­ing: ** (two stars out of five)

I’ve waf­fled for some time about whether I should give this two or three stars.  I’ve decided on two.  It just wasn’t that good, but all the spiffy, reflec­tive robots had me think­ing it was better.

I was not a ter­ri­bly big fan of the first film.  In the tran­si­tion from one web­site to another, my orig­i­nal review has been lost.  I gave that film two stars as well.

Revenge of the Fallen begins with a cheesy voice-over from Opti­mus Prime, pro­vid­ing some of the most unneeded nar­ra­tion I’ve heard.  The open­ing starts with some strong action, as the Auto-Bots find and elim­i­nate another Decep­ti­con.  The move doesn’t get much bet­ter than that.

The gen­eral plot revolves around Trans­form­ers lore and the his­tory of the Prime’s – the strongest, truest Auto-Bots.  The last of the Prime’s is Opti­mus.  Well, that’s not exactly cor­rect – there are two Prime’s left.  The other is The Fallen, Megatron’s mean men­tor, who fell from grace after attempt­ing to destroy Earth.

One of my biggest com­plaints in the first film was the lack of clear visu­als on what should have been a major achieve­ment in CG ani­ma­tion.  Even the scene immor­tal­ized in the pre­views of Opti­mus fight­ing with another bot on a free­way was blurry at best.  The amount of work, the sheer count of poly­gons and mov­ing parts – that should have been crys­tal clear on screen.  It wasn’t.  And it’s not here either. 

Another major com­plaint was the lack of Michael Bay’s typ­i­cal gor­geous use of color and dust.  Bay is noth­ing if not a mas­ter of action, and, while some may suc­cess­fully argue that his films are weak, they are incred­i­bly col­or­ful with very beau­ti­ful vio­lence.  The first film was obvi­ously lack­ing in Bay’s usual flair.

Luck­ily, this film does add some of that flair.  But it’s not enough to make it a bet­ter film.  The char­ac­ters are weak.  The story is overly com­pli­cated.  The ani­ma­tion is blurry.  The action isn’t note­wor­thy until the end.

And the end … the brief, anti-climactic end­ing … the voice-over nar­ra­tion again.  Oh, the agony.

Two stars is plenty for this film, and that’s sim­ply because the action at the end of the film is quite good.  Anti­cli­mac­tic for it’s finale, but quite good until then.