Transformers 2 or Michael Bay’s continuing love affair with BOOMTITSHOO-RAH!

The Good: Most of the scenes with the Witwickys, Optimus is a bad-ass, Jetfire, Wheelie, Bumblebee, fights are slightly more discernible, cool locations, Hugo Weaving’s acting is more distinct, relationship between Starscream and Megatron is better fleshed out, Isabel Lucas is hot, and to be fair, so is Megan Fox

The Bad: Too damn long, new Autobots Skids and Mudflap are embarrassingly shallow, new human sidekick Leo is also a pain in the ass, unnecessary international wanted fugitive subplot, inappropriately bombastic music, grating clanking and grinding whenever a Transformer is present, characteristic Michael Bay spin-cam and slow motion cinematography, unapolegetically contrived and cliche deus ex machina final resolution, and at least thirty minutes of scenes focusing on U.S. soldiers and military craft, taking away focus from the namesake of the movie

What the Critics Say: The first one was alright, but Bay crossed the line with the indulgences here. Quote:

Only an asshole could have made this film, or, at the least, a jerk of the most obnoxious and insecure order. Michael Bay has proven this before, and Fallen is his most repugnant creation since Bad Boys II. I pity the people who find these things entertaining. Their synapses must be fried. Like that Will Smith/Martin Lawrence sequel, Fallen is all climax (which is to say, not at all—just what is Bay hoping to compensate for here?), free of anything comparable to pacing, fluctuation in tone, or flow. Make no mistake: this film (and anyone in creative control of it; why, Steven, why?) has nothing but contempt for their audience. It wants to make them feel small and dependent, to eat garbage and ask for more. Calling it the death of cinema would be an insult to cinema; film thrives, and will outlive even the biggest of dumps taken on it. Nevertheless, it is an affront of the greatest order, and it will take years of scrubbing to get the stain out. – Robert Humanick, The House Next Door

Are they right? While I still shake my head at critics expecting an airtight plot out of sci-fi movies based on toys, yeah. They’re pretty much right. It doesn’t have to stop you from enjoying what you can, though.

The Bottom Line: Everyone’s watching it. You will end up watching it if you’re any sort of popcorn blockbuster follower. If you like wrestling, reality TV, and those National Guard advertisements in the theater, you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. If your favorite movies are confined to the Sundance selection, you will be appalled at the base appeal to violence, lights, T&A, slapstick, racism, and LOUD NOISES. But for most of us, it’ll still be cool to see the care bestowed upon big-screen robot transformations in addition to Shia LeBeouf’s career, even if the screenplay and directing make us die a little inside.

 

All right, obviously, I’m capabable of liking the summer blockbuster. I liked Terminator: Salvation, I like the Matrix movies, I could even watch most of Attack of the Clones without crapping myself in frustration. But there’s one form of brain-rape that severely limits my ability to enjoy a movie: And that is Michael Bay.

Bay (Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor) got a pass on the original Transformers. It was our first time seeing Megan Fox and Optimus in big-screen glory and, while it was obvious that the man knew nothing about Transformers mythology, he was willing to let the robots have their simple fight while telling his touching tale of a boy and his first car.

After making a gajillion moneys, Bay decides that he officially knows how to tell this story best and makes Transformers 2 with the “help” of screenwriters Ehren Kruger (The Ring…The Ring Two) and Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci (Transformers, Star Trek). The main idea is this: The robots are cool, but let’s show how awesome humans can be by highlight their most advanced form — the United States military!

Aw, man, there SO wasn't enough of me in the last movie.

And somewhere in there there’s a story about Sam Witwicky growing up and stepping into his destiny, whatever, LET’S SEE MORE GENERALS SENDING IN JETS TO PROTECT THEIR MEN, YEEEEEAAAAH.

Essentially, Michael Bay and his team took a story about the ancient origin behind the Autobot-Decipticon feud and turned into Black Hawk Down meets Rat Race with less political overtones than either of them. (At least, Rat Race makes you think of the effect of capitalism on our society). The Transformers are there…but they’re more like vessels for Bay to get to the next epic military clash featuring soldiers who are not only defending America from the external alien threat, but also from the meddling of the damned bureaucrats.

The Plot

Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf, Even Stevens, Indiana Jones 4) is heading off to college, somehow having grown tired of owning one of the coolest cars ever. In an effort to “lead a normal life,” he instructs his Camaro Transformer Bumblebee to leave him be and join Autobot leader Optimus Prime in their hunt for Decpitcons on Earth, but not before finding a shard of last movie’s Macguffin, the Allspark. Upon contact with that shard, Sam absorbs a plethora of ancient symbols from the Transformers’ home planet, Cybertron, which starts to affect his “normal life” college activities, including hanging around at a ritzy frat house and getting hit on immediately by hot chicks (ah, the joys of freshman year).

Meanwhile, Optimus (voice of Peter Cullen, original Optimus voice actor) is aiding old pals William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson) with a special ops U.S. force called NEST, protecting humanity from the scattered Decepticons. Since the last movie, Optimus has added a few team members including biker-gang female Arcee, Corvette Stingray Sideswipe, and modern-day minstrel twins Skids and Mudflap, who, in addition to being obnoxiously “ghetto,” are the only new Transformers that get any notable screentime (they’re voiced by Tom Kenny, voice of Spongebob Squarepants, and Reno Wilson, a.k.a. “it’s okay, one of them is black”).

Optimus hates racist stereotypes.

Anyway, after a particularly successful mission where half of Shanghai is destroyed, the big bad governement (apparently mandated by Obama) swoops in in the form of national security advisor Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey) to tell them to kick the Autobots off the planet. As this tense power play unfolds, an ancient Decepticon predecessor known as “the Fallen” (voiced by Tony Todd) sets its plans in motion to revive Megatron (Hugo Weaving), kill Optimus Prime and consume the Earth’s sun for energy.

The fate of the world lies on Sam’s shoulders who has the location of the sun-killer in his brain. Tagging along on his adventure are his new college room mate Leo (Ramon Rodriguez, or an affront to Latinos in film eveywhere) and Seymor Simmons, the demoted Sector 7 agent from the last movie (John Turturro). Smokin’ hot girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox) is involved there too, somehow, but she mainly seems to be following Sam so that he can say the words “I love you.”

The Acting

…is not terribly atrocious. LeBeouf is there, doing his charming geek hero thing and that’s nice, that’s his job. Megan Fox doesn’t have much to do but say things sultrily and look pretty, and she seems to be perfectly content with that. Her “dramatic” scenes are eclipsed by Michael Bay’s slow-mo camera practically grinding scenes to a halt, so it’s hard to tell if she’s capable of any real pathos.

Annoying sidekicks are, unfortunately, very present in this film in the form of the Twins and Leo. The latter quite literally seems to exist for the purpose of getting tazed. And Skids and Mudflap generate chuckles in small doses until you start to wonder what could have been there instead of them…then they’re just sad. Lennox and Epps also have nothing to do but fire guns, frown at Galloway, and look intense.nSector 7 agent Seymor Simmons returns to ham it up, but, with the exception of a HI-larious underwear scene, actually doesn’t manage to offend terribly.

 

Yo, dawg, we look like a DAMN stoplight.

Though Optimus actually has little to say in this movie, Megatron’s speaking role has been beefed up. Not only that, but I think Hugo Weaving’s voice is much easier to hear this time around, as the sound guys may have decided to use less techno-distortion to make him seem robotic. However it was accomplished, Megatron is slightly more of a flawed character now, serving the Fallen and beating up on the treacherous Starscream. It works.

Finally, one pair of characters that most critics probably could have done without were Sam’s parents, Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julie White). I actually found them to be a nice comic relief, as they were in the first movie. They were funny caricatures of suburban parents, inent on property values and empty nest syndrome. They’re unfortunately dragged unnecessarily into the film’s climax, but I was genuinely enjoying the domestic mayhem of seeing them help Sam move into his dorm room.

BabeWatch

Isabel Lucas as Alice. Ho-ly. Easily beats out Megan Fox, not for any particular improvement in acting ability, but in on-screen intensity. She’s a bitch and scary in many ways, but ultimately, even after learning her secret, it’s still tempting to succumb to her.

Alice is pissed about the cost of that textbook.

The Transformers

…are hardly the focus of the movie.

Seriously, the Autobots, minus Beavis and Butthead, have maybe ten lines. Returning from the last movie are Ironhide and Ratchet, who dont’ say or do much of anything. Bumblebee gets a couple of standout scenes by virtue of being Sam’s loyal friend. No one seems to remember poor Jazz. They also throw nods by including girl Transformer Arcee, Sideswipe, and someone called Jolt in there. But they’re on screen for about five minutes total.

The Decepticons, while having much more interesting robots, are also little more than monsters in (often poor) disguises. Soundwave appears as a communications interceptor as well as his minion, the jaguar-bot Ravage. The Constructicon Devastator appears for the movie’s climax, complete with two wrecking balls as testicles. From the first movie, Blackout and Scorponok make cameos.

As I mentioned, the most interesting part in all this is the relationship between Starscream and Megatron. Starscream would like nothing more than for Megatron to be wiped out, and yet he always has to be serving someone. For his part, Megatron is seen as more vulnerable and yet also a cunning fighter capable of matching Optimus. So Megatron and Starscream are upgrades in this movie.

The ones that steal the show are two Decepticons – RC truck Wheelie (Tom Kenny again) and famous SR-71 Blackbird, the ancient Jetfire (Mark Ryan). The former is a Brooklyn punk who becomes affectionate toward Megan Fox’s character. The latter is awakened from the Manassas Air and Space Museum and turns out to be a noble old coot. He is also a badass.

 

 

His cane is also an axe. This is awesome.

Either way, Bay doesn’t seem to care much for the robots since the ending handily forgets about almost all of them, even though the last time we saw some were in battle. But oh, well, at least it ends on an aircraft carrier! HOO-RAH.

Sounds & Music

Freakin’ loud. Particularly the Transformers when they’re simply idling. Why is there so much ratcheting and whirring? Why? Why can’t they just SAY things. I’m not begging form auditory accuracy when dealing with a movie about robots that change into cars.

Steve Jablonsky scored this movie and he tends to think of Transformers as majestic aircraft carriers. A simple pan-up of Optimus Prime’s leg produces a Pearl Harbor naval fanfare.

The movie is also fond of the newest Green Day tracks as well as a made-for-Transformers follow up to “What I’ve Done,” the latest Linkin Park single “New Divide.” Linkin Park is credited as helping with the music. And, like the rest of the film, they produce a generic mess of blah which makes “What I’ve Done” sound like Beethoven.

Special Effects

I think it’d be more appropriate to label the whole thing a giant special effect and give it a subcategory of “movie.”
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Ultimately, Transformers 2 just wasn’t made for me. In fact, I don’t even think it was made of wingnuts and jingoistic war fans. I think it was made for Michael Bay. This is what he considers great cinema. It’s his world and we’re just buying the movie tickets.

I will probably watch Transformers 3. These movies offer action, special effects, and representations of cool robots, at least. There’s only so much you can do to make the Transformers franchise unenjoyable. But I have no hope for the charm from the original movie or any lack of obtrusiveness on Bay’s part. And unfortunately, the amount of movie this will make will only encourage him to keep treating his movies like cheap, formulaic whores.

There should be a system where you track how many tickets were ordered, thus seeing how much hype a movie had when it opened…and then ask customers to pay what they think was fair, given what they had just been subjected to. A system in which you decide what Michael Bay gets for his “efforts” would keep him from being the 11th highest grossing director in America or, as Roberto Benini probably recognizes it, Michael Bay land.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen gets FIVE out of TEN Matrices of Leadership.