Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a Cinematic Travesty

At their absolute worst, Michael Bay’s movies feel like an alien trying to copy the theater-going experience. While all of the individual ingredients – the explosions, the otherworldly robots, and the women who have flawless makeup through it all – are there, they never cohere into something legible. Saying that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen lives up to its notoriety would make it sound better than it is. This is an overstuffed, obese sequel that doesn’t care about what its predecessor was trying to accomplish, running off after new ideas that the previous movie should have mentioned if they were so important; somehow, the Fallen returned. Its foolish ambitions are often the exact reason it’s so overstuffed, that and the infamous writer’s strike that also derailed Quantum of Solace. It’s populated by every cliché imaginable, from socially inept parents to sexually active sorority girls to borderline-racist robots that talk like a Nebraska native’s idea of people from the hood, and though I wasn’t exactly expecting a dead-serious Spielberg drama, Bay’s sequel tries just hard enough to be sincere to make you wonder why it wasn’t. This movie is rightfully infamous, a step down from an already unimpressive predecessor that leans into all its worst tendencies with reckless abandon.

Set a couple of years after Bay’s first Transformers movie, Revenge begins with the Autobots and their new human allies working together to wipe out any remaining Decepticons. Some of these evil robots are disguising themselves as heavy machinery and sports cars in Shanghai, while others lurk at the bottom of some deep ocean trench, hiding from their Cybertronian enemies and the puny, insignificant earthlings that have shacked up with them. But that’s only the beginning, as when the Autobots catch and destroy another Decepticon, he tells them that the fallen will rise again. Ominous stuff, though I wish it were relevant to anything the previous movie accomplished. Instead, it utilizes insane levels of exposition to all but reboot its own franchise, everything from strange glyphs that Sam Witwicky sees in visions to him having what looks like a mental breakdown in front of his new college class, rushing to the front of the lecture hall to rave about how Einstein’s wrong while drawing mysterious, alien symbols on the blackboard. The first forty-five minutes of this movie are an all-out sprint towards an uninspiring twist of fate, proving that Revenge of the Fallen is a sequel without any real ideas.

Where did these Fallen – ancient, pyramid-inhabiting Decepticons – come from? Why didn’t we hear about them in the previous movie if they’re really so important? The movie doesn’t say, and it trusts you to know the lore surrounding Transformers while penalizing you if you don’t. I was occasionally confused as to why Michael Bay had bothered to call this movie a sequel, as his rough attempts don’t follow up on what came before so much as send it in an entirely new direction.

Revenge of the Fallen spits out more raw information than any other sequel I can think of, and the kicker is how little of it is actually relevant. One robot tells our human heroes no time to explain before teleporting them across the world to some remote desert, and if any single moment defined this movie’s flaws, that would probably be it. Then again, there’s also the Oscar-worthy tidbit featuring a little robot humping Megan Fox’s leg to choose from. It doesn’t know how to have a serious moment, and I wouldn’t have an issue with this if it weren’t constantly undercutting itself with doubts about what exactly it wants to feel like or do. At one point, a human character crawls underneath a Decepticon flaunting his metal body on one of the Egyptian pyramids and whispers into his radio, I am directly beneath the enemy’s scrotum. And he was.

It’s absurd how many of the bots in this movie trade character for stereotypes. Autobots Skids and Mudflaps are the worst, vague caricatures that some have described as a minstrel show; at one point, they talk about how they don’t know how to read. As for me, I’m just disappointed that Bay didn’t think his characters as worthy of any for themselves. What’s the first image that pops into your head when you think of conspiracy theorists? Sam’s new college roommates are exactly that. Do you want an Egyptian midget fighting in the army? Bay’s got you covered on that front, too. Sam’s parents are some of the worst, exaggerated mom and dad figures played for lame jokes, and for reasons that aren’t entirely explained, they fall out of the Egyptian sky in the movie’s final act so that they can join Sam and Mikaela in dodging big alien robots with guns in a way that might make you wonder why the humans bother joining these Cybertronian battles at all.

Watching Revenge of the Fallen is often like watching a highlights reel, in a bad way. One scene features some soldiers jumping out of airplanes during the day, but the panoramas of them falling through the sky were shot during sunset. It’s like Bay cares more about his movie looking cool than being consistent. Its visual effects are impressive, because of course they are, but they’re such a jumble of metal that it’s hard to tell where one bot ends and the other one begins. Their designs look like a scrapyard threw up all over the screen, and when two of them are fighting, they make an indecipherable mess, which isn’t too far from how I’d describe the screenplay – but we already discussed that.

The image I’ll remember the most from this movie is a Decepticon disguised as a hot sorority girl sticking a long, deadly-looking metal probe out of her panty-clad butt while pretending to seduce Sam on his dorm room bed. That’s not a good thing. Revenge of the Fallen is a collection of clichés that doesn’t know how to be anything else, and its tonal whiplash between heroic seriousness, shallow humor, and masturbatory sensuality aimed at 14-year-old boys is disorienting. This movie is a loud distraction from its own design issues. It throws so many ingredients into the pot without any idea why some of them belong, and earned upwards of $800 million at the box office while fueling Bay to come back and make more of these things. One almost wishes the Fallen had actually destroyed Earth to save us from his misguided ambitions.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – 2/10

Luke 14:28-30