Movie Chronicles » Transformers 3

Movie Chronicles Transformers 2 Review June 21st, 2009

Trans­form­ers 2 is a sequel that builds on its pre­de­ces­sor in every way; more robots, more humor, more action, more sex­i­ness, bet­ter effects, more explo­sions and more char­ac­ters. As a pop­corn fueled block­buster it suc­ceeds in being fun and ridicu­lous, a two and a half hour escape from real­ity to a world of 30ft robots and insecticons.

As a fan I spent time spot­ting the indi­vid­ual robots and all the new­com­ers, espe­cially the ones I’ve seen as toys — yet ulti­mately I left want­ing more, lots more. The excite­ment at see­ing the new char­ac­ters quickly dwin­dles as they dis­ap­pear ten sec­onds later, with the off chance of another appear­ance slightly later. Side­swipe, Arcee, Dev­as­ta­tor, Jolt, Side­ways, all con­struc­ti­cons, The Fallen, Grindor and Sound­wave are momen­tary plot ele­ments, each are a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing in their own way — you could blink and miss them for the most part. How­ever, the new char­ac­ters that have plot invested in them — Jet­fire, Rav­age, Wheelie, Skids and Mud­flap are all superb and valu­able addi­tions. Alice is an odd plot point, inter­est­ing but an idea still not fully explored.

The hype about Side­ways, Arcee and Demol­ishor, spurred on by the super­bowl teaser, make up the open­ing action sequence, includ­ing the NEST bonus footage. It’s all over in a flash — Arcee is seen chas­ing Side­ways as briefly as in the TV spots, the twins — cur­rently as an ice cream truck, attempt to help but curb badly and fall apart. The rumored scene show­ing the truck split­ting in two and then reform­ing, past some bewil­dered kids (as read in the Beth­le­hem Steel call sheet) isn’t there. The motor­cy­cles drop away and Sergeant Epps calls in Side­swipe — a kick, a slide and a flip and a huge sword slices the Audi R8 clean in two. Mean­while Demol­isher is run­ning amok in Shang­hai, tak­ing out heli­copters and gen­er­ally destroy­ing every­thing he comes across on those enor­mous great wheels. Opti­mus Prime drops in via para­chute, speeds along the bridge and leaps onto his head, cre­at­ing that spec­tac­u­lar explo­sion as seen in the teaser and filmed at Long Beach. A swift blow to the head and Prime takes him out — easy as you like, but not before he can mut­ter some­thing about The Fallen returning.

Cut to Sam’s par­ents house and Sam Witwicky is leav­ing home for col­lege, his mom, one of the piv­otal com­edy ele­ments, is mak­ing a scene. Pack­ing for col­lege, Sam uncov­ers a shard of the AllSpark, it burns through the floor and sets the kitchen abuzz with lit­tle ter­ror­iz­ing robots — out to attack Sam. Bum­ble­bee is called in to save the day, but his weapons destroy the house and dejected he’s sent back to the garage. Cue the “I’m so excited” ShoW­est footage and Sam leav­ing home and Mikaela.

The ever so sin­is­ter Sound­wave is the over­seer, keep­ing watch on all human activ­i­ties. He sends in Wheelie to steal the shard from Mikaela and lis­tens in on a debate at the auto­bot hangar. Here a gov­ern­ment big­wig is moan­ing about the oper­a­tion, and over a live video feed reveals Mega­tron and the AllSpark’s loca­tion to the decep­ti­cons. If you’re watch­ing this scene in the glo­ri­ous full screen IMAX expe­ri­ence, Opti­mus Prime will be actual size as he stands tall — it’s spec­tac­u­lar to imagine.

Rav­age falls to earth, his mis­sion — to retake the AllSpark parts. Every­thing about Rav­age is bril­liant, the way he sneaks and prowls is per­fectly ani­mated, it’s mes­mer­iz­ing. The ball bear­ing bots are released into a secu­rity bunker, where inside they form a tall slither of a robot which steals the cube, Rav­age pro­vid­ing cover fire with his hind mounted turrets.

Back at col­lege, Sam is mov­ing in and his par­ents are help­ing — his mom describes the dorms as Hog­warts before get­ting stoned on hash brown­ies — hilar­ity shortly ensues. We also meet Ramon Rodriguez’s Leo Spitz — a spunky but cow­ardice con­spir­acy the­o­rist. Leo points out the sul­try Alice, played by Isabel Lucas, and she’s already mak­ing eyes at Sam. At the stu­dent party Alice comes onto Sam, and when Bum­ble­bee turns up she forces her way into the car for the ride. To the car radio and lyric “your cheat­ing heart”, Bum­ble­bee makes a nui­sance of him­self, and as seen at Prince­ton, Alice ends up cov­ered in green goo, storm­ing off into the night. All the while, Mikaela sits at home, miss­ing out on their first web­cam date.

The dev­as­tat­ing Decep­ti­con news is bro­ken to Sam at the cemetary by Prime, “It’s not my war”, and all that lark about lead­ing a nor­mal col­lege life. Now the sym­bols start appear­ing and Witwicky Jr. can’t stop draw­ing them every­where — includ­ing an episode in Astron­omy 101.

With Megatron’s co-ordinates, the enor­mous Long Haul, Rav­age and con­struc­ti­cons descend into the watery depths to res­ur­rect their leader, sac­ri­fic­ing one of them­selves so that the (Ger­man) doc­tor can piece him back together — in an instant it seems. With new life it’s up and away, as a jet and into space, to con­front Starscream and receive orders from his mas­ter, The Fallen.

Next up, the sec­ond of the three BD Live sequences, Wheelie attempts to steal the AllSpark shard from Mikaela, and we know how that turns out. Wheelie’s char­ac­ter is filled with crude lad­dish humor and his on screen moments are always enter­tain­ing — maybe with the excep­tion of the leg hump­ing one which is just plain odd. With Sam hav­ing a men­tal break­down (brought about by sym­bols), Mikaela flies out to meet him, walk­ing in on him and Alice seem­ingly mak­ing out.

“That kiss tasted like diesel”, Alice trans­forms into a spindly Decep­ti­con and attempts to choke Sam with her huge mechan­i­cal tongue as Mikaela fends her off. Hot wiring the Sat­urn Astra, the three, Leo in tow, set off with Alice on the bon­net, akin to a famous Ter­mi­na­tor 2 scene. Her life ends pre­ma­turely as she is crushed against a lamp­post — a shame as the char­ac­ter had poten­tial (you could make a whole movie about a sin­gle robot dis­guised as a human, hunt­ing a boy, maybe the boy would be named John). Shortly there­after we get the third BD live sequence; Grindor swoops in and car­ries the trio off to Starscream and Mega­tron — the fall should surely kill them but they mirac­u­lously escape unharmed. “I am zee doc­tor!” screeches the spindly mechanoid examining/torturing Sam, beneath Megatron’s huge claw.

The next action scene shows how much the spe­cial effects have devel­oped in just two years — Prime and the auto­bots flood in to save the humans, lead­ing to an escape sequence and a for­rest fight we’ve seen snip­pets of in the TV spots. This fight is awe­some, the effects are per­fect and sud­denly Opti­mus Prime is kick­ing all sorts of ass (swords and all) as he takes on Mega­tron, Starscream and Grindor all at once, all expertly chore­o­graphed with the token Michael Bay slow-mo death scenes. This is the adren­a­line kick we’d hoped for. Ulti­mately it’s all too much for prime and Mega­tron destroys him, lit­er­ally stab­bing him in the back and explod­ing his chest cav­ity. With their leader gone, it’s time for the Decep­ti­cons to mobilize.

From hereon the slower sec­ond half some­what fails to match up to the first — many proto­forms are seen falling to earth, destroy­ing Paris, air­craft car­ri­ers, etc., and amidst the car­rier destruc­tion the rein­vig­o­rated Fallen arrives on earth — through a hacked satel­lite net­work he issues a global broad­cast look­ing for Sam Witwicky, he wants what’s in his head. This appar­ent global Decep­ti­con attack never mate­ri­al­izes on film — you’d expect some mon­tage of world­wide robot destruc­tion. NEST gets shut­down in the process.

Instead we cut to the unfold­ing mys­tery of Sam’s sym­bol obses­sion — which for no dis­cernible rea­son has implanted itself in Sam’s head; ‘it’s his fate’ is the best expla­na­tion we’ll get. There’s a short and improb­a­ble chain towards explain­ing the sym­bols — Leo hap­pens to know the guy that runs Big­Eff­in­gRo­bots, who hap­pens to have seen the sym­bols and hap­pens to be Agent Sim­mons — (now work­ing in a Deli after the shut­down of sec­tor 7), here he has details of ancient prophe­cies and Trans­form­ers on earth. Wheelie reads said details (whilst on a leash) and points the four to the Smith­son­ian museum, where­upon they stum­ble on Jet­fire, a bum­bling old British fool with a cane — the Black­bird SR-71 and for­mer Decepticon.

Jetfire’s ram­bles are a charm­ing non­cha­lant back­drop to the Trans­form­ers mythol­ogy; he quite ran­domly ends up tele­port­ing all par­ties (Skids, Mud­flap and Bum­ble­bee included) to Egypt, via the Space Bridge — Sam hap­pens to dam­age his arm in the process. Now begins the unnec­es­sar­ily long ‘mys­tery’, with an aim to res­ur­rect Opti­mus Prime — fol­low­ing lame clues to find the Tomb of the Primes and the Matrix of Lead­er­ship, which breaks into dust on touch. Mean­while, Sim­mons has con­tacted the NEST crew and, with Primes’ body, Auto­bots and rein­force­ments, they set off for Egypt. All very slow and drawn out.

The action kicks in again near the pyra­mids, or more pre­cisely, in White Sands, New Mex­ico. NEST’s arrival coin­cides with Starscream’s swoop­ing attack on Bum­ble­bee and the twins, split­ting the group in two and send­ing Sam and Mikaela run­ning towards NEST; leav­ing the twins, Sim­mons and Spitz to con­front what­ever the build­ing site throws at them.

The next big robot bat­tle com­mences, although with­out the chore­og­ra­phy, urgency or adren­a­line of the for­rest fight. As NEST and the auto­bots fend off Mega­tron, con­struc­ti­cons (Scrap­per, Long Haul, Scav­enger), Rav­age and numer­ous char­ac­ter­less repaints, the twins find them­selves fac­ing the vac­uum suck­ing behe­moth Dev­as­ta­tor (some­how made of the same con­struc­ti­con mod­els already bat­tling else­where — slightly con­fus­ing for fans).

We don’t see much of Devastator’s con­stituent parts (noth­ing more than the footage seen in the TV Spots) and there’s no expla­na­tion for their pres­ence. Mud­flap gets sucked into Devastator’s vor­tex before attack­ing him from the inside and being spat back out, and as the humans stand beneath the slow mov­ing giant for safety, it begins its climb up the pyra­mid. Dev­as­ta­tor is entirely dis­ap­point­ing with it’s giant demol­ish­ing balls clang­ing above Sim­mons as he sends in the order for the top secret rail gun — an attack that takes the giant out in one fell swoop. No bat­tles, no clever auto­bot team up to take him down, no aggres­sion or per­son­al­ity; might as well have been one giant snail with a Dyson.

Mean­while, the tanks and guns that strug­gled to take out Decep­ti­cons in the first movie, take out attack­ing robots with rel­a­tive ease. And as Sam and Mikaela des­per­ately run from more giant robots, the Decep­ti­cons can’t catch up or shoot straight, crazy. The high­light of this seg­ment comes in Bumblebee’s han­dling of Sam’s parent’s hostage sit­u­a­tion; launch­ing on Scrap­per from above and exe­cut­ing him with expert style, before rum­bling with Rav­age and rip­ping his spine out in slow motion. We see Arcee for another split sec­ond before she gets destroyed by a mis­sile, I think she utters a cou­ple of words; no mis­in­for­ma­tion from Bay this time around. Side­swipe makes an appear­ance, com­mand­ing some men, whilst Ratchet and Iron­hide are rel­e­gated to minor battles.

As bat­tle draws to a close, one last gasp mis­sile from Mega­tron catches Sam, knock­ing him down, where for a few moments we are led to believe he might be dead. “Am I dead? Where am I?” Sam asks, as the scene cuts to auto­bot heaven and the ghosts of the primes with their mes­sages of fate and lead­er­ship. The Matrix of Lead­er­ship re-materializes and Sam uses it to bring Opti­mus Prime back to life, but not before announc­ing his love for Mikaela.

With­out warn­ing, The Fallen, in his brief third appear­ance, tele­ports in, steals the Matrix and tele­ports back out to the top of the pyra­mid, to begin acti­va­tion of the sun har­vester. In response, Jet­fire sac­ri­fices him­self to heal Prime’s bro­ken parts (as the only decent thing he’s ever done) and aug­ment his pow­ers — here comes Jolt’s ten sec­onds of star­dom — his robot mode and elec­tri­cal pow­ers are called upon to facil­i­tate. Prime now flies off to bat­tle The Fallen and Mega­tron simul­ta­ne­ously atop the pyra­mids, and again he kicks all sorts of metal rear; heav­ily dam­ag­ing Mega­tron (who cow­ardly flees to fight another day), and behead­ing The Fallen in a bru­tal attack, sadly it’s all over quite quickly. Where all the other Decep­ti­cons have gone isn’t clear, Starscream could aid but doesn’t. Opti­mus Prime is vic­to­ri­ous and the movie ends shortly after with Sam and Prime stand­ing aboard the John Sten­nis air­craft car­rier, once again await­ing what­ever the future may bring. New Divide plays us out and there’s no extra scene at the end of the credits.

Roll on Trans­form­ers 3.

Comments 24 Responses to “Movie Chronicles Transformers 2 Review”

Ed June 21st, 2009

So like does Arcee talk in this film? Does every robot?

orphan008 June 21st, 2009

Thank you so much for this post! This pretty much set­tles it for me, I’ll wait to bor­row it from a doof that buys the DVD.

I’m sure the CG in the movie is stun­ning, but the plot and storyline…LAME!

gcsham­man June 22nd, 2009

Saw the movie on Sun­day and I was com­pletely dis­ap­pointed> I just want Micheal Bay to watch the Trans­form­ers car­toons and pick his favorite episode and make a kick ass movie from it. In Trans­form­ers 2, the con­ti­nu­ity of robots is off (con­struc­ti­con gets killed and later he is alive to form deves­ta­tor (ie: scavenger/demolisher); or when deves­ta­tor is formed, con­struc­ti­con is fight­ing in the desert (ie: long haul/rampage/mixmaster fight­ing indi­vid­u­ally yet deves­ta­tor is climb­ing pyra­mid). I really hope that the next one he does will be from the fans for the fans. He F-Up on this one.

den­nis June 24th, 2009

the movie was great ! saw it 2 times in 2 days.

to gcsham­man: iff you watch corectly you see that not al parts of dev­as­ta­tor were destroyed. and the con­struc­ti­cons were fight­ing after he was shot not before. so it did make sence. the mid­dle part right part of his body were destroyed and that were also the parts witch didn’t fight later on in the desert.

so next time iff you say some­thing about a movie make sure you know were you are talk­ing about .

fozzie June 24th, 2009

Spe­cial effects were awe­some but that just shows what 2 years has brought us. The edit­ing is what was at fault. to den­nis: if you saw it 2 times in 2 days who was hunt­ing sam and mikela in the dessert town (long haul) who also was at the time formed as dev­as­ta­tor try­ing to suck up sim­mons and the twins. Also small stuff mix­mas­ter knocks amer­i­can flag of bridge in new york. shot a cou­ple min­utes later of them cross­ing same bridge with flag there (going to sim­mons deli), then bridge deck shot and they are on ben franklin here in philly and its blue. Bay just shoots too fast and fig­ures he can clean it up in edit­ing. Good basic story which could have been cleaned up bet­ter. I would still see it again but for all the hype too many holes. Has any­one seen Bar­ri­cade yet?

fleti­foreskel June 24th, 2009

@fozzie: i com­pletely agree! no — last time i saw bar­ri­cade spark­ing after his fight with bee in pt. 1

but back to rotf.
does any­one know what hap­pened to all the auto­bots after the fight at the end? who sur­vived? what hap­pened to skids and mud­flap? was it black­out who picked up sam´s car?

in my eyes the biggest fault bay made, was to look the auto­bots he intro­duced in pt. 1 (ratchet and iron­hide) just like empty tins.

Jango_Zilla June 24th, 2009

Poor char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, I was hop­ing the Auto­Bots would be intro­duced but I couldnt tell who was who. Soundwave’s role meh not much but at least I got to see him with his Welker voice. Great visu­als, loved the for­rest bat­tle. I wished Jet­Fire was in the film for a bit longer I actaully enjoyied him oddly enough haha. This movie was fun, yeah long but hey; Kong,LOTR,Pirates, and frig­gin harry pot­ter were long too. Some unness­esary humor but I still had fun. I per­son­ally would like to see this again. I had fun it’s A LOT bet­ter than Godzilla Final Wars, that movie mon­sters are killed off easily.

Blfsh3 June 24th, 2009

First the bad: To many human char­ac­ters that really play no part in the story. To much time con­sum­ing Inter­miedi­ate school Humor.
The movie moves around from one loca­tion to another very quickly and bounces around from one scene to another too quickly. Makes it feel very choppy. It some­times defies logic how humans and robots move all around the planet so quickly. between explo­sions and fallen rocks and being tossed by 30 ft tall robots humans man­age to stay alive unharmed. Not enough char­ac­ter devel­op­ment on Auto­bots.
The good: Action sequences where amaz­ing. prob­a­bly some of the best you will see this sum­mor. Sound­waves orig­i­nal voice a plus. Rav­ages grace­full move­ments and his rear mounted back can­nons where on tar­get. Decip­ti­cons on their crashed space­ship was really cool too. Arcee and Side­ways, Jolt, jet­fire pleas­ing to the eye wish they did more with you. Last Opti­mus just steals the whole movie.

Jon June 24th, 2009

it was the best movie this yr n one of all times u can pick any movie apart if that is what makes u happy but to see megan fox on the bike was price­less n that is a must c again n again. cant wait to buy it on dvd.

Roctor323 June 24th, 2009

i love this movie but they didn’t intro­duce the new robots and how they got there

lalola June 24th, 2009

cool but i just can fig­ure out where the new auto­bots come from?

TimK June 25th, 2009

I say the movie yes­ter­day: f***ing loved it!! All of the crit­ics can suck it! This movie was packed with action AND emo­tion. I would have sat through another hour will­ingly! I hope this movie breaks EVERY record in the movie indus­try– then some­one will have to say some­thing nice about Michael Bay. By the way Mike– Thank You– you are awe­some– you made my summer!!!

May­ombe June 28th, 2009

I saw the movie last evening and i thought it was awe­some! Great action, much more screen time and dia­logues with robots… I‘m not a Bay fan, but i think the movie is well bal­anced and with a good plot. I was really dis­a­pointed with only a cou­ple of things. First i believe that side­swipe (R8) was pretty cool and could have a more impor­tant part in the movie. Sec­ond, the robots were always repeat­ing… there were a lot of con­tru­ti­cons fight­ing the humans at the same time dev­as­ta­tor was destroy­ing the piramid. But i sup­pose that they were those new gen­er­ated decep­ti­cons in the cocoons in the crashed star­ship, as there were some anony­mous ones, and they were some sort or clones or some­thing. Finally i don‘t like the fact that humans, with their weapons, can destroy trans­form­ers so easely… some­thing never seen before in the car­toons. Except for those details, i give it a 8,5/10!

Movienut77 June 29th, 2009

For all of those that have enjoyed this movie, I’m happy for you. For all of those that grew up watch­ing trans­form­ers, I’m sure you share my dis­gust at the total dis­re­gard for the story, char­ac­ters and ulti­mately the fans. ‘the fallen’? give me a break. three hours of a sun­day school spe­cial meets national trea­sure hunt meets 2001,so bru­tal. the total lack of auto­bot face time is pathetic con­sid­er­ing its a three hour film, granted the bat­tles were pretty sweet, but intro­duc­ing bots that they just made up is weak. giv­ing the jive talk­ing posers so much face time even weaker.
Bay should stick to explo­sions and that’s it. I hope they don’t mur­der GI Joe too.

Zillaboy29 June 29th, 2009

Trans­form­ers 2 was com­pletely incred­i­ble and see­ing it on IMAX is the best way to see it. My few com­plaints was not enough Auto­bot Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. There were a lot more Auto­bots in this movie and most of them had no intro to who there were or any­thing. Espe­cially ARCEE who is one of the Trans­form­ers favorite charaters in the Fan­dom world that had NO film time and was KILLED in an instant in the final bat­tle. I do how­ever have to say the merg­ing of Opti­mus and Jet­fire was pretty damn awsome. I hope in Trans­form­ers 3 that Bay will add some of the clas­sic char­ac­ters and give them more screen time and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. I loved the movie and would see it again and I will buy the dvd when it comes out but I am a bit dis­s­ap­pointed in a lot of ways about this movie.

hot shot June 30th, 2009

awsome! it was a great movie and i would see it over and over and over again! the plot is good, and the act­ing was awsome. the com­puter graph­ics were totally amaz­ing. the bat­tles were com­pletely cool, and there should have been more! great gjob michael bay, you gid an ausound­ing job. cant wait untill #3!

Megan­FoxLvr July 2nd, 2009

This movie sucked. I loved the first one, but this one blew! Robot heaven– really? Bum­ble­bee still doesn’t talk. That was gay. The 14 or so decep­ta­cons that come down for the final bat­tle got killed by humans who could barely kill any decep­ta­cons at all in the first one. Oh yeah, good job with the sto­ry­line about the gov­ern­ment cov­er­ing up the bat­tle at the end of the first movie. I’m sure the thou­sands of peo­ple who saw them fight down­town were all silenced or ruled not cred­i­ble by the pub­lic. Michael Bay ruined this movie the same way he ruined Armaged­don. That sucked too. The decep­ta­cons were pussies in this movie and that blows. Dev­as­ta­tor sucked the big one when he should have kicked the twins asses. What a dissappointment.

Joey125 July 3rd, 2009

Did the new robots add to the film?
Yes, some added some kick-ass robot fight­ing and line but some didn’t get the screen time for them to shine out a lit­tle bit.

Which was the best new char­ac­ter?
I really liked Opti­mus Prime because he really kicks ass in this movie. His dou­ble swords and his will to fight all 3 Decep­ti­cons in the for­est fight.

Which was the worst?
I really didn’t hate any of them in the movie, they where all good char­ac­ters and fighters.

What would you have done dif­fer­ent?
Maybe had things move on a bit faster than they did just to make it not so long (not that that is bad). Some bad rea­sons of the film where its length so maybe doing that would shorten the movie.

Did the movie fly by too quickly or did you think it was too long?

Were Skids and Mud­flap annoy­ing or gen­uinely funny?
Not annoy­ing at all, but they could have been a lit­tle more seri­ous than they where. The racist thing is noth­ing, I hate when peo­ple down the movie just because of that, they where very funny though.

What was your biggest dis­ap­point­ment or favorite part?
My favorite part would have been the for­est fight with Opti­mus and Sam and Mega­tron, Starscream and Grindor they was really cool. Opti­mus really proves why he is the main main man in Trans­form­ers. Really cool. The most dis­ap­point­ing part was.…NOTHING! It was all really cool.

trans­former lover July 4th, 2009

best movie i have ever seen. all the noobs that cry about how it didnt fol­low the story line of the car­toon, need to get a grip. michael bay didnt cre­ate this movie just so he could copy a car­toon, michael bay did this because he wants to start his own legacy on trans­form­ers. MICHAEL BAY 4 Pres­i­dent!!!! btw gcsham­man ur a moron.

Not a review July 10th, 2009

ummm that was not a review but a com­plete syn­op­sis of the movie… yeah good going giv­ing it all away — what there was to give away anyways

Checkit July 17th, 2009

Just saw the movie…Loved the action, but HATED the unec­es­sary use of exple­tives! Movie hyped as a children;s movie, but too much lan­guage! Good writ­ing will not neces­si­tate the use of such crude humor! The stuff didn’t move the movie for­ward. The action sequences, the CG and the effects were great! Also, Why were the twins SOOOO stu­pid! They were Obvi­ously urban youth (An AUTOBOT with a GRILL?) Are U seri­ous?! All they could do was Cuss and fight. When asked about the sym­bols from the ancients, they said…“We can’t read.” Not we don’t under­stand those sym­bols, but we can’t read period. Ter­ri­ble! It could have been MUCH bet­ter in those areas!

Tae Song September 1st, 2009

Things I thought were story prob­lems in the Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen movie… and a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion to get around some of them… you’ll just have to imag­ine it as they are not shown in the movie…

Prob­lem:
Why does Sam give the All-Spark shard to Mikaela rather than Bumblebee?

Expla­na­tion:
The All-Spark shard is already affect­ing Sam’s mind, cre­at­ing a men­tal block which pre­vents him from men­tion­ing it to Bum­ble­bee and instead causes him to give it to Mikaela as a part­ing gift.

Prob­lem:
Why doesn’t Bum­ble­bee ask Sam about the kitchen appli­ance Transformers?

Expla­na­tion:
He does ask but no one can tell what he’s say­ing because he is hav­ing prob­lems with his vocal proces­sor. He retreats into the garage to repair it and plans on ask­ing Sam once he gets it working.

Prob­lem:
Why doesn’t Sam men­tion the shard he gave Mikaela when Opti­mus Prime men­tions the Decep­ti­cons have stolen what he thinks is the only remain­ing shard from a US base, at the meet­ing in the graveyard?

Expla­na­tion:
The men­tal block cre­ated by the shard causes him to for­get he ever had one at that point in time.

Prob­lem:
Why doesn’t Sam use the shard he has to bring Opti­mus Prime back.

Expla­na­tion:
He shows it to Bum­ble­bee and deter­mined it doesn’t have enough charge to bring Opti­mus Prime back from the dead. There is enough charge to revive a dor­mant Trans­former, Sky­fire. For the story’s sake you’ll just have to go with it.

Prob­lem:
Who is the Fallen tak­ing out his revenge on when all of his broth­ers sac­ri­ficed them­selves to hide the Matrix of Lead­er­ship from him?

Expla­na­tion:
He seeks vengeance on the human race over the falling out with his brothers.

Prob­lem:
We see the Fallen get skew­ered by the Primes, why isn’t he dead?

Expla­na­tion:
They do kill him, but the Decep­ti­cons are too numer­ous and keep man­ag­ing to raise the Fallen from the dead or out of impris­on­ment. A large num­ber of Trans­form­ers joined the Fallen because they agree with the Fallen that their exis­tence is more impor­tant than that of the human race or any other race.

Prob­lem:
Sam goes to Prime heaven… and they tell him the Matrix of Lead­er­ship is earned through deeds… so how is it then the Fallen is able to pop in and take pos­ses­sion of it? Why doesn’t it turn back to dust when he tries to use it?

Expla­na­tion:
The All-Spark cre­ated those imagery and sound in Sam’s mind. It was all a hal­lu­ci­na­tion. Just to prove it, you didn’t see Opti­mus there.

Alter­na­tive is the Fallen is a noble char­ac­ter in his own way with a flaw. He is actu­ally try­ing to save his race, which is true no mat­ter how you want to look at it.

Prob­lem:
How does a pro­jec­tile from a rail gun sup­pose to hit Dev­as­ta­tor when they don’t have direct line of sight? Due to the dis­tance and the cur­va­ture of the Earth it shouldn’t have been pos­si­ble to hit Dev­as­ta­tor a rail gun.

Another prob­lem is rail-guns only work well in video games. They would need a huge amount of elec­tri­cal power and have to be insanely long to build up enough veloc­ity to even approach the speed of bul­lets launched using gun pow­der from a gun barrel.

Expla­na­tion:
The pro­to­type rail-gun is used to accelerate-launch an exper­i­men­tal pro­jec­tile, which has a guid­ance and propul­sion sys­tem to adjust for the cur­va­ture of the Earth.

I don’t see why they couldn’t have used a nuclear-tipped cruise-missle or even con­ven­tional cruise-missile.

Prob­lem:
The Sun har­vester idea doesn’t work for me, either. The Sun is a nat­u­rally occur­ring gigan­tic nuclear reac­tor held together by it’s own immense grav­ity in the vac­uum of space. It puts out tril­lion, tril­lion, tril­lion ter­rawatts of power per sec­ond or more. I don’t know the exact amount, but at nearly 1 bil­lion miles from the Sun we only get an infin­i­tes­i­mal mount of the total out­put. In order to use up all the nuclear fuel it has, the device would have to some­how accel­er­ate the nuclear process, which means it would have to expend addi­tional energy mak­ing the whole process ter­ri­bly inef­fi­cient. And it isn’t pos­si­ble to accel­er­ate the nuclear process… since it’s one con­tin­u­ous explo­sion after another… it’s already out­putting the max­i­mum (which is absolutely enor­mous) amount of energy that’s phys­i­cally pos­si­ble. It’s like killing the duck that lays golden eggs just so you can sell it for some cop­per coins. It doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t.

Expla­na­tion:
Magic… suf­fi­ciently advanced tech­nol­ogy is indis­tin­guish­able from… of course that was a sci­ence fic­tion writer who said that… you got me. They needed it for the story… Why did they even need to build it on a planet? It looked like a they could have carry it around as part of a space­ship, which would make more sense, if they’re going around the uni­verse look­ing for stars to drain. They end up just destroy­ing it in the end so… what­ever. As if there weren’t enough stars in the uni­verse the Fallen picks Earth. He must be a racist… there’s just no other rea­son to be fix­ated on our Sun… there’s bil­lions of stars with no inhab­it­able plan­ets in the universe.

There were other prob­lems, but I don’t want to seem like I am nit-picking and believe me there were other prob­lems. Big ones like how is it Mega­tron is able to kick Prime around like a rag doll in the first movie, but in the sec­ond movie Mega­tron needs the help from Starscream and Black­out to kill Prime?

Crit­i­cism:
There was way too much crude humor. Dog hump­ing dog, Sim­mons show­ing off his thong under­wear, dog hump­ing dog (yes, it was in the movie twice… you it’s think it’s exces­sive to list it twice… well, we had to watch it twice… why we needed to see that at all is beyond me), Wheelie hump­ing Mikaela’s leg. Guys jerk­ing around on the bath­room floor.

Point­less scenes:
The scene with the kitchen appli­ance robots wreck­ing the Witwicky res­i­dence. If you didn’t have that, there would be less of a rea­son for Sam to tell Bum­ble­bee about the shard and no rea­son for Bum­ble­bee to ask about where they came from. You already have a shard to bring Mega­tron back to life and you don’t use it to bring Opti­mus Prime back and Sam was already in con­tact with the All-Spark for a con­sid­er­able amount of time in the first movie, so it wasn’t nec­es­sary for him to be in con­tact with it again to start hav­ing a men­tal break­down or he could have run into some­thing at the col­lege trig­gered the men­tal break down and you could have used the tasers to wake Jet­fire from his slum­ber. Oh, like Jet­fire was a seri­ous character.

The guys with white paint jump­ing around in the open­ing was point­less. It looked like it was some­thing you found on the cut­ting room floor of a B-movie. We find out the Trans­form­ers have been here on Earth for eons in the film as the story unfolds, any­way. A sol­dier with a bazooka would barely raise an eye brow. Cave­men with stone spears do not pose a cred­itable threat to a Trans­former. For giant robots to stop work­ing on some­thing of vital impor­tance them to notice cave­men, seems ludi­crous. It wasn’t even well done. I didn’t even like the design of the Fallen.

I had a prob­lem with the design of the Trans­form­ers. A whole lot of the machin­ery is exposed. Does it look cool to some­one to see the machin­ery under­neath for it to look techie or some­thing? They do men­tion force fields in the first movie, but force field + armor is still more pro­tec­tion than just force field alone.

Too many comedic char­ac­ters:
Sam’s mom
Sam’s room­mate
Wheelie
The Twins (Mud­flap and Skids)
Jet­fire (but it’s part of his char­ac­ter and he dies at the end)
Witwicky dogs

And these were already on top of wise cracks and (attempts at) funny moments from the nor­mal char­ac­ters. Why do we even need comedic char­ac­ters? If it’s for the kids, then why do you have all those hump­ing scenes, guys jerk­ing on the bath­room floor.

I think many peo­ple would have pre­ferred more time spent on the robots, I mean it is called Trans­form­ers, right? Did we really need to see Simmons’s under­wear? It was OK in the first movie, since Mikaela was get­ting back at him for threat­en­ing her dad, at least there was a sem­blance of a rea­son there in the first movie.

Less attempts at humor, espe­cially crude humor, please… it’s not sup­pose to be a com­edy… most of them weren’t even fun to watch… it was more like… you enjoy­ing a meal then find­ing out some­one put a bug in it… that’s what it was like watch­ing some of these scenes. I’m sure the per­son who put the bug in thought it was funny, but not the per­son eat­ing it.

Oth­er­wise it would’ve been one of the best action movie of all time.

Nek­wan December 31st, 2009

I like this movie so much. I love all the auto­bots and decp­ti­cons. I think the Decep­ti­cons need a sep­a­ra­tion, mean­ing more col­ors in them since the Mega­tron and Starstream looks alike. Let Decep­ti­cons have their sym­bol printed on them more with a lit­tle color. Have a bet­ter greet­ing of new com­ing trans­form­ers like Dev­as­ta­tor or the Fallen. But just as Opti­mus Prime described his allies or com­pan­ions of the Auto­bots in Part 1, they should have done the same with Mega­tron and his troop for peo­ple who first came to under­stands what are the Trans­former.
I thought the movie was some­what too short when com­par­ing it to part 1. But over­all i like the movie

Trans­form­ers 2 Revenge of the Fallen — Trans­form­ers 2 crit­ics chime in – all is not good! July 24th, 2010

[…] We posted our exten­sive Trans­form­ers 2 review up on Sun­day night — it focuses on explain­ing the sto­ry­line step by step with an analy­sis of the new char­ac­ters and robots from a fan’s per­spec­tive. Some fans were not happy with the out­come. View Movie Chron­i­cles review […]