Transformers Revenge of the Fallen

There are films released during the summer that ask that you simply turn off your mind for a couple of hours and enjoy the spectacle. A film based on a cartoon based on a toy about an alien species of robots that have brought their war to Earth in disguise as mechanical objects would naturally fall into this category. With these lowered expectations then, it is quite baffling to witness how absolutely awful Michael Bay’s Transformers Revenge of the Fallen is. It is the worst movie in years, dating to the last Transformers film from 2007.

Bay is obviously in love with CGI effects and explosions. His incompetence in using any other piece of the cinematic art form (dialogue, acting, mise en scene) necessitates him relying on this calling card. Yet in this case, the effects are way over done. The robots are focused on so much that they become cartoonish in appearance. The audience would have been better served if the entire film remained animated for no other reason to save Bay from his own excesses. We aren’t saved from them or from the limitations in his filmmaking also pushed to excess.

Bay finds it necessary in a film about nothing to push little pieces of his morality into the script. The “Fallen” is a laughable allusion to Lucifer that counters the son of god status he attempts to grant on Optimus Prime. He makes it quite obvious he feels our government is turning its back on god. He even throws in President Obama’s name into the dialogue in an attempt to tell us what this President would do in the event we are over run by aliens. The ironic thing about Bay’s moralizing is that the comic relief he provides for this film are two Autobot twins who are essentially mechanized images of actors in black face.

After the initial Transformers film the quality of this sequel should come as no surprise. But childhood dreams die hard. A generation of kids grew up in the 1980s dreaming about what it would be like if their toys came to life. Michael Bay made that possible and now needs to rust in hell for what he has done to those now dead fantasies.