Transformers 2 - Revenge of the Fallen

First published on 25 Jun 2009.

It's a reasonable expectation that a film by director Michael Bay is going to include plenty of explosions and spectacular special effects. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen delivers everything one might expect and more on these scores. But when the writing credits include the team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the scribes behind the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot, you would reasonably expect a story and characters that are well developed, that can bridge the gap between the die-hard fans and newcomers alike. You would be sadly mistaken.

The plot here is sheer formula. Destruction of the world threatened by giant robots. Stalwart heroes and their own giant robots oppose them. Young man holds key to saving the world. Stalwart heroes and giant robots fight. New friends are made and more enemies revealed. More fighting. Resolution.

How many times must we see the young man who saved the world in a previous movie turn around in the second movie and say "but I just want a normal life - I don't want to be involved in another globe-spanning adventure with giant alien robots... who would want to have a cool car that turns into a giant robot at his beck and call"? How many times must we have the stereotypical 'government official' to get in the way and prove that gummint should leave things to the "people who really know what's going on", before getting his vaguely humourous comeuppance?

Comedic elements seem aimed at the pre-teen market and include a robot duo who would make Jar Jar Binks seem endearing - an interesting choice in a movie that heavily features Megan at her Foxiest. But worse still are those flubs wherein Bay seems to have forgotten he's making a film about sentient machines. When Sam (Shia LaBeouf) is only one step ahead of his pursuers and his robot car screeches to a halt in front of him, ready to whisk him away to safety, he should not have to fumble with the door handle. It's sentient - it would open the door for him, like it did a number of times in the original film. Duh.

To cap it all off, one of the main enemies is defeated in a deus ex machina so blatant that it made everyone in the cinema wince. Infuriatingly, this same device could have easily and immediately destroyed the ultimate threat to the world that the aforementioned enemy was quite literally standing upon. Instead, we got another 15 minutes of "suspense" before we found out if the world would be saved.

You like 'splosions and special effects? Hey, you got 'em. But for anyone over the age of 12, this hardly makes up for lead-footed plotting or the fact these metal machines can't even stay consistent within their own mythology. Transformers indeed. Gregory Moore