Written by: Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro
Rating: [1.5/5]
The steep decline of a franchise at times takes its time and in others, they completely fall off the cliff. Luckily for some, they take a while before the inevitable fall, but with the Transformers films, they wasted absolutely no time in going from being serviceable entertainment to something woefully unwatchable for large stretches. Revenge of the Fallen does just that almost in an impressive manner.
Now going off to college and beginning a long-distance relationship with girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) begins to have strange visions related to the Autobots and Decepticons. With this special connection, he now has, once again found himself in the middle of a giant battle between these large robots.
With the mild entertainment that could be found in the original Transformers, this franchise had the opportunity to build upon the newly established world and rake in some cash. While they did the latter quite handsomely, the drop off in quality proves quite evident in this feature where they try to dig into some lore but it results in an incoherent feature. They certainly try to make it comprehensible with all of the exposition that gets dropped to explain where the plot is going and relating it to the present, but the way this feature decides to navigate it all leaves much to be desired.
Outside of all of the monsters mashing into each other, the major emotional thread of the story comes from following Sam Witwicky as he finds himself in the middle of these robot wars. Now going off to college, he must contend with starting this next phase of his life knowing well his relationship with his girlfriends faces peril because of the long distance and deciding to go without Bumblebee. While elements of the human story do carry some intrigue, mostly from his parents and just how deranged and funny they are around their son, it all quickly goes downhill when Sam begins to receive visions tying him back to the Autobots. Poor Shia LaBeouf was saddled with having to sell these weird phases Sam would have that look silly and not in an intentional manner seeking to cause a laugh. Everything just gets worse when they continue to shoehorn him into the story when the robots begin, once again, mashing into each other.
With the exposition dumps needed to get to a point where the plot begins to move, there’s this seriousness imbued with the story that never really finds its balance with some of the truly horrid writing, especially when it comes to the attempts at comedy. One does not even need to mention the robot genitalia gag in the feature to speak on how putrid the efforts at comedy proved to be to really look at many of the decisions of this feature and just scratch your head in confusion. Choices were definitely made but perhaps needed much more thought when thinking on how it would land. Michael Bay does not balance it all out and unfortunately cannot make up for all of the many negatives of this feature through his direction of the action.
Considering the action sequences felt at least competent in the previous feature, what we see in this sequel feels like quite the letdown. It’s not as if there was this massive bar to climb but the dull characterization of these robots along with their design does not render them a good opportunity for well-shot action sequences. By sticking with the realism of how these robots would look in reality, it makes these set pieces look incomprehensible and not visually appealing to watch even in the slightest.
Well and truly a step-down, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen takes the minimal promise from its predecessor and shows the definitive cliff this franchise falls into and will prove it cannot recover from. The team behind the feature made their decision as to what direction they wanted to take these films and the characters and demonstrated they were going down a path that would not end with quality storytelling or filmmaking. No one came out of this feature looking good except Megan Fox, who barely had anything to do thanks to the script but at least showed up and collected her check.
Films with Josh 
