Overall verdict: 5.5/10
A franchise starts its fall
The Good: big action, well acted characters, generally impressive special effects
The Bad: inconsistent CGI, uninteresting characters, flat jokes, shallow narrative, erratic camera work
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Where should I start?
Maybe i shall start on the plot which, although not a total mess, lacked whatever semblance of depth the first film had. Instead of building upon previously established plot threads, Transformers 2 decides to throw everything out and plonk in a whole new mess of plot threads. The whole backstory about thew "Primes" coming to earth eons ago seemed like it was just conveniently inserted into the plot as there was no mention of this particular story thread in the previous movie. The motivations for Megatron have also changed, from chasing the allspark to earth in order to seize its power in the first film to coming to earth to find his "Master" whom we are introduced to as "the fallen", an ancient decepticon that came to earth a long time ago. Already, inconsistencies with the first film and plot holes the size of Saturn's moons abound.
Next we have the characters. Instead of developing the already underdeveloped robot cast from the first movie, Hasbro decides to include even more robots. Some of them are not even named in the movie and just end up becoming cannon fodder at the end of the day. The already decently developed character of Bumblebee gets sidelined after a rather embarrassing bout of crying with the plot thread of Sam and Bumblebee's strained friendship left undeveloped. Optimus Prime himself takes a dive down from being a level headed and compassionate tactical commander to being an impulsive and brash bully with a bad attitude.
He "talks down" to humans now instead of treating them as equals, he rushes headlong into a battle without as much as a tactical analysis and he needlessly puts his own team in danger more than once with his impulsiveness. The Fallen, the seemingly new and more menacing villain, comes across as having more bark and no bite; being able to "use the force" and throw things around with his mind or something but barely holding his own in actual hand to hand combat.
The humans don't fare any better either. Whatever witty humour there was in the first movie got replaced with terrible, and even offensive sexual jokes. Done in moderation, sexual jokes are fine. But Transformers 2 takes the innuendo to new heights of unnecessary offensiveness. I highlight "unnecessary" as many of the jokes could have been replaced with better ones or done away with no effect to the story. It is just so counter productive to have so many sexual jokes in a film made for all ages. It offends the kids and the parents. Heck even me as a teenager felt offended by those jokes. The acting takes a turn for the worse. At times it gets so over the top that the characters some across as caricatures of their former selves, especially John Turturro's character, Agent Simmons. On the other hand, the voice acting from the robot characters keeps more true to its cartoon roots than the first film with more time devoted to dialogue interplay between the autobots or decepticons.
The acting of the human characters is only thing that takes a turn for the worse. The CGI is highly inconsistent in this movie. You got great scenes, very nicely rendered and animated, mostly in the first half of the movie. But once the movie moves to Egypt and toward its climax, the level of detail and fluidity in the CGI robots starts to dip. Its lowest point is at the final battle between Prime and The Fallen which looks like an X-box game cutscene with lighting and texturing on the robots that look really out of place among the physical background.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a wild, unrestrained misguided practice in EXCESS. Everything is just so overblown, from the action, to the acting, to the budget. Even the media coverage and publicity was overblown and it resulted in Transformers 2 NOT living up to the hype.
If anything, Transformers 2 feels like a extra long running toy commercial. All that matters is CGI graphics, action, explosions and new robots. Story, characters and what not apparently do not matter anymore. The sadder thing is that so many people LOVE this kind of shallow and excessive shows that it would just encourage movie producers to make more. This is an pretty but offensively silly excuse for a film; Big and brainless.
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Entertainment: B-
Story: C-
Acting: A
Characters: B-
Music: C-
Replay value: B-
"Brains": D-
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