After the sheer brilliance of the first live action Transformers movie we had pretty high hopes for Revenge of the Fallen when it was released at the cinemas in 2009. The original had been subtle, but visually stunning and action packed; a clever recreation of the amazing cartoons of our childhood with the additional boyhood fantasy of the stunning Megan Fox and that car scene. However, where the first reincarnation had been a classy recreation, Revenge of the Fallen is a shoddy follow up.
Despite retaining most of the original cast, along with executive producer Steven Spielberg, director Michael Bray and writers Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman, it just all came out wrong somehow. The only major changes we could see from the original’s line-up is that John Voight’s role as secretary of defense was not continued. Maybe he saw how bad the script was and decided he had better things to do. A sequel to Anaconda would have been a better use of his time.
Dumbed down and overly obvious, the first things to annoy about the film is a combination ofbad dialogue and a poor plot, followed closely by Bumblebee’s transformation into an imbecilic pet. The ladle they used to trowel on Megan Fox’s makeup doesn’t help the film either. Apart from the cool addition of Soundwave, the new Autobots are pretty stupid, which is even more annoying with what appear to be poorer special effects than the original. To be honest the cartoons looked better than Revenge of the Fallen at times.
With an idiotic college romance sub plot, lame attempts at comedy and a fate induced overall story it’s got little going for it. Perhaps the daftest bit of the film is a “comedy” cut scene moment when we see Sam’s mum and dad in Paris being revolted by eating snails, the muppets.
A few cool stunts at the end and a couple of badass Decepticon moments can’t make up for the poor storyline throughout. However, the sort of cool ending and the implications regarding the sequel left Transformers Revenge of the Fallen with a little hope, but not too much.
Transformers Revenge of the Fallen DVD review: 1.7/5
