While there are some who will lump sequels in with remakes and reboots as evidence of Hollywood's lack of originality, I don't have a problem with them. Me and sequels are cool. What I don't like, though, are bad sequels. You know what I mean, those sequels that are so awful that they make you resent the original movie.
Take, for example, the sequel to Michael Bay's live-action adaptation of the Transformers toy line. The first movie wasn't too bad; it was actually a pretty entertaining ride. But the sequel — Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — is a total piece of flaming dog crap. It's a terrible movie from start to finish, and I'm gonna tell you why.
We pick things up two years after the events of the previous movie. Optimus Prime (the voice of Peter Cullen) and the Autobots have teamed with an elite squad of soldiers from around the world to create "NEST," a group dedicated to hunting down and eliminating the Decepticons that are still in hiding. But this is of little concern to Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) as he prepares to head for college. While he is initially only worried about maintaining a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend Mikaela (Megan Fox), things will soon get much worse for him. Sam stumbles upon a fragment of the AllSpark, which fills his mind with alien symbols to the point that he begins having a series of mental breakdowns.
It turns out these symbols contain clues to finding an energy source hidden on Earth by a cabal of Transformers thousands of years ago. If the Decepticons were to discover its location, it would bring ultimate power to an ancient Decepticon known as "The Fallen" (the voice of Tony Todd) and destroy the planet in the process. Aware of the threat, the Autobots and their soldier teammates travel to Egypt's pyramids to wage war on the Decepticons.
I've seen bad sequels before, but holy cow. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is without a doubt not only one of the worst sequels I've ever seen, but one of the most irritating movies I've ever had the misfortune to sit through. Watching it, I got the impression that it has nothing but absolute contempt for its audience. This movie hates every single person who watches it and thus chooses to be as unpleasant as possible as a means of torturing us. And what gets me is that in spite of the overwhelmingly negative reviews, this piece of crap still brought in a worldwide box office gross of over 800 million dollars. I can't even begin to fathom that. Are moviegoers so stupid that they're willing to give a horrible movie nearly a billion dollars just because it has the Transformers name on it? That can't be true, can it?
While I felt his work on the first movie helped make it an entertaining watch, Michael Bay's direction on Revenge of the Fallen is terrible. It's like Bay compiled a checklist of all the clichés he's known for and put them together into one movie. It's full of explosions and overbearing action sequences, jittery camerawork that's more annoying than anything else, soldiers kicking ass, and visual effects that are admittedly pretty damn good. But watching even five minutes of the movie was enough to give me a headache. It's an all-out assault on the senses, appearing as if Bay has made a movie that practically beats you over the head with itself.
Bay's direction is unbearable, but it doesn't help that he's backed up by a terrible script too. Credited to Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, the script is absolutely atrocious. For starters, they spend way too much time focusing on the human characters when I wanted to see more of the Transformers. I thought the movie was called Transformers, not Shia LaBeouf's Wacky Egyptian Adventure. I just wanna see some alien robots fighting and not have a bunch of crappy people crammed down my throat. Is that too much to ask?
It really wouldn't be so bad if the human characters hadn't been so dreadfully written. Sam's mother was annoying enough in the first movie, but Kruger, Orci, and Kurtzman decided to crank it up by having her run around like a moron after eating a bunch of pot brownies. A combination of the awful writing and Julie White's terrible acting make this a character that I honestly wanted to strangle. And the fact that Sam's parents turn up during the climax despite having outlived what little usefulness they had within the first twenty minutes of the movie makes their presence practically unbearable.
But they're not the only useless characters, oh no. There's Sam's roommate, a one-joke character who gets old really quickly. There's some useless bureaucrat who keeps bugging NEST about random crap. And let's not forget those two Autobots who pretty much everyone everyone hated. You know the ones: the ones that are pretty much every negative stereotype of modern African-American culture all rolled into a pair of CGI robots. The two characters are frustratingly irritating, every second they're on screen feeling like torture. There is no humor in their attempts at comic relief, no amusement in their antics. They're to Revenge of the Fallen what Jar Jar Binks was to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
And then there's the cast, who are okay at best. Some of the actors are terrible, particularly Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam's parents and Ramón Rodriguez as his roommate. And Megan Fox isn't particularly thrilling either, but considering that she's only here for her looks and not whatever acting talent she may have, that's to be expected. I will say, though, that there were a few performances that I did like. One came from John Turturro, who I thought was a lot of fun. He's better at providing the comic relief than any other factor in the movie, mainly because he's actually amusing (unlike all the other crap in this movie). And I'll confess to enjoying Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf isn't quite as good as I thought he was in the first movie, mainly because not as much is asked of him. But he's still likable and charming in the role, and as poorly written as the human characters are, LaBeouf still manages to bring a little substance to the table.
I also enjoyed the voice work contributed Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, Hugo Weaving as Megatron, and Tony Todd as The Fallen. Cullen once again plays Optimus with the heroic presence he needs. But he's played Optimus for so long that I'm pretty sure it's old hat for him by now. Weaving always plays great villains no matter what, so it's no surprise his voice acting here is great. And as for Tony Todd, the guy was pretty much created to play characters with awesome voices. He can be incredibly intimidating when he wants to be, so Todd plays The Fallen perfectly.
Unfortunately, Revenge of the Fallen is still really bad. It's more disappointing than anything else, considering that I did enjoy the first movie. The fact that they actually put time and effort into making this thing and at least didn't try to keep it from sucking is just sad. And I still have yet to figure out how it made so much money despite being so awful, but I guess there are some questions that will never be answered. One hopes that the third movie in the trilogy learns from the second one's mistakes. The reviews aren't great, but I'm hoping that when I get around to seeing Dark of the Moon will at least be slightly better than this piece of crap.
Final Rating: *½
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