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Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen – Loud, Proud and Utterly Ridiculous

Look out! The critics are coming!!

Rating: 3 out of 10

Everyone strap in, because we are about to go on a familiar ride, one we all took last summer and now we look back on with a mixture of sadness and nausea. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is already breaking records and is primed to repeat the scenario of last summer’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The spotlights are pointed to the ring and we all wait for the inevitable three-way battle between the critics, the movie fans and the head honcho himself, Michael Bay. This flick already grossed more than $60 million dollars in one full day of release, which gives it the auto-greenlight for a third chapter in the robotic roadhouse, but as fast as the ticket sales went through the roof, the reviews have mostly plunged into the floor, many of them nailing similar points and themes running through the movie. I can’t honestly say mine will sound all that different, but you never know, I may crack an original joke here or there.

Revenge of the Fallen continues the mission of the Autobots and their decision to help the people of Earth rid themselves of the terrors of the Decepticons. Unbeknownst to our shiny, metallic heroes, the Decepticons are on their own mission to find a long lost source of Energon, the fuel that keeps them going, and with it revive Megatron, bring their supreme leader, “The Fallen”, back to power and blow up the sun (that’s one hell of a daily checklist). Dragged back into the middle of the fray is Sam Witwicky who finds himself battling with his own mind and a frantic jumble of ancient robotic lettering, possibly leading the way to an ancient machine which will help in the destruction of the sun. It’s a chaotic fight to the finish in a battle not just for the planet, but the entire future of the Transformers race.

There are many who will argue that this movie shouldn’t be held to any real criticism. We should just go in expecting the story and plot to be nothing more than linking posts between the battery of beautiful robot beatdowns. The CGI is amazing and the transformers are all incredibly well-animated, but the drawback is we’ve seen this all before in the first flick. So the opening argument doesn’t hold. All in all the fight scenes began to wear thin towards the end of what was already a needlessly long movie (clocking in at two-and-a-half hours). Remember, this is Transformers here, not the futuristic version of The Godfather. Numerous scenes could have been cut and others drastically shortened in an effort to trim the fat, but the wizards behind the curtain were hell bent on making this one longer, louder and more insane in every respect over the original.

No matter what the movie is about, no matter how fantastic or silly the premise, story is king and it needs due respect, which Mr. Bay and his creative team chose to ignore in an astounding sense. What’s even more shocking about the terrible writing is the duo behind it, now responsible for one of the most disappointing flicks of the summer, is also the same wordsmiths behind Star Trek, without a doubt the best movie of the year so far. They have managed to swing the pendulum of quality from one extreme to the other in a matter of two months. Here’s to hoping their talent follows the laws of physics and swings back once more towards quality and awesomeness as they gather steam for Star Trek 2.

I’m not going to lay out a litany of complaints about the script since that would take up too much time and possibly give me carpel tunnel syndrome, but I will address the controversy surrounding the twin autobots, Skidz and Mudflaps, who are characterized as urban, street talking brothers originally in the form of a beat up Ice Cream truck until they upgrade to newer, slicker looking street cars. These two play directly to the twelve-year-old members of the audience giving them all the comic relief they could ever want, but for anyone out of elementary school the hip-hop heroes were the most racist stereotyping seen in years. It was bad enough when one of them transformed for the first to display a prominent gold tooth jutting out from its bucktoothed mouth, but then the paperthin veil was torn off when both of them shuffle-stepped nervously before admitting they were both illiterate. There’s been a lot of subtle finger pointing going on since the movie released about where these particular character traits came from, whether it was in the original script or changed in production, but so far there is no clear winner in the blame game. To me, it doesn’t matter where it originated, what matters is all the people up the chain who witnessed it, approved it and thought, “Hell yes, that is hilarious.” It was pointed out by another perceptive reviewer that we wouldn’t have even gotten close to seeing these terrible stereotypes if those characters were played by real black actors on screen, but since they were animated robots, suddenly that makes it all peachy keen. At this point with all the cash that will be rolling in this weekend, I predict Mr. Bay and the folks behind the movie to lovingly give the whole racist stereotyping controversy a nice big middle finger and giggle their way to the bank, but I reserve hope that maybe next time around they will think a little more about it before greenlighting characters audiences thought they left in the dark days of cinema.

There were a few glimmers of improvement though and they deserve mention. Shia LeBouf still manages to show his talent even when battling against a terrible script and entire football fields of green screen imagination-land. He’s cemented his star in the blockbuster world, but hopefully it will give him more time and power to make his way back over to drama and indie fare again. If you haven’t already, check out The Battle of Shaker Heights, if only for him, Amy Smart and Shiri Appleby. Josh Duhamel once again gave some true grit, but was barely seen in the overall length of the flick. John Turturro managed to shake of his incessant annoyingness from the first movie and become a reasonable comic foil this time around. Yet, the real surprise and honorable mention must go to Megan Fox. She transformed (pun intended) from the bitchy, unattainable sex-pot into a real person, a young girl with feelings and a cuteness I didn’t expect. She gets a few brief moments in between the massive mayhem to shine just enough to give me and other movie watchers hope that her talent extends farther than her reflection in the mirror.

Recommendation: Bigger doesn’t always mean better and this is silver screen proof. A two-and-a-half hour explosion concert is nothing when not backed up by a worthwhile and legible story. For those thinking IMAX is the way to go, please don’t take any drugs before hand. Your mind will most certainly be beaten into a colorful mush.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Lost Hopes

“Why does there have to be protesters at every premier?!”

Nineteen years. That’s how long we waited for this movie to come to fruition. Nineteen years. Someone born after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade left the theater is no old enough to vote, get married and fly halfway around the world to fight for the right for this movie and many others to be made. For their sakes, I seriously hope they don’t see it. They’ll all go AWOL instantly.

Yes, I’ll get right out there and say it, I did not like the movie. In fact, I was fairly offended by time it was over. I’ve read a number of reviews that are cutting the movie a ton of slack because it’s an Indy film and we all just love him so much and we’re so glad to see him back, but there is only so much slack in the world and it must have gotten used up in the mere hours before I got to see it on opening day. I guess from now on I should keep an extra helping of slack in an airtight jar in my closet, just for these occasions. (There are spoilers from this point on, so if you still want to go in untarnished, stop here. Just know deep in your heart that I tried to stop you.)

Let’s see if I can list out just a small helping of the problems with this flick:

- The magnetism of the Crystal Skull (and other alien body parts): This little tidbit of information was brought out pretty quickly in the film as one of those cool tricks only Indy seem to know about, but for the rest of the film the magnetism became a choice of each individual scene. You could feel George Lucas think, “Should we have it attract metal here? Yeah that would be cool” or “Nah, that doesn’t seem cool here. Let’s not make it magnetic at all. Or how about we stop it’s magnetic powers with this mystical hemp cloth!! God, I’m a genius.”

- CGI – Spielberg has a well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to it’s limits and making it work. On the flip side, Lucas has an equally well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to the other end of the spectrum where he think he can just replace real actors from this point on. The quality and usage in Crystal Skull was borderline childish. The duck boat effects over the waterfalls, the unnecessary CGI in the jungle chase, the mind numbing alien ship evacuation, all of these felt like a freshman in animation school could have been impressed by his work, but not coming from Spielberg, who previously with War of the Worlds actually made me a tad skiddish going outside after the movie was over since I believed those things could be there.

- Indy’s age: Harrison Ford reportedly waited for a long time to find a script that he was happy with and took a respectful look at his age and the age of his character. This is what he agreed to? I can’t think of a fight scene where he got more beat down than in this chapter during the ant hill sequence, adding the fact that he is about twenty years older now. We needed Indy to be smarter, more clever, using that intelligence that he cultivated over a quarter of a century as a professor, but instead we get a completely ludicrous senior citizen MMA match in the dirt. Even the slightest touch of realism here would have seen Indy with a broken hip.

- Shia, the Monkey King: This almost ranks as the most disappointing part of the movie because they were just starting to win me back when Shia gets sucked up into the jungle trees. He gets wrapped up in a piar of vines that decide completely on their own to retract and pull him up into a mystical monkey kingdom, where in three agonizing seconds of screen time, Shia learns to swing through the trees like Tarzan and lead the monkeys on an all out assault against Cate Blanchett. If they had made a point earlier of saying all the monkeys in that region of the world were strict haters of Communism, maybe I could have joined in the fun, but they happen to leave that out.

- Indy vs. Nuke: Yep, why not? Let’s open this movie big since people have waited so long to see it hit the screen. What could possibly be bigger than showing Indiana Jones survive a nuclear blast in the first 20 minutes of the film? What could possibly not make sense about there being random lead lined refrigerators in a fake town? What could possibly not seem plausible about that same fridge being magically vaulted by the blast miles away, with Indy not only able to walk afterwards, but just plain able to get out of the fridge at all? Didn’t kids lock themselves in those and die all the time in the 50′s?

There are more things I could go into, but I’ll just leave you with those few bullet points. I’m all for continuing franchises and moving the story along as long as they are treated with the same intelligence and respect as the previous versions. This was not only denied the respect of a well written script, but it also managed to deny the respect of its audience. My advice now is for Spielberg to slow his downward spiral by moving as far away from George Lucas as possible, and if he likes a script from now on (as he supposedly did with the Indy version done by Frank Darabont, which Lucas vetoed), man up and shoot it. It couldn’t have been nearly as awful as what we got in the end.

Even worse is the fact that this will make a retarded amount of money, like previous crapfest Spider-Man 3, and further the studios and other directors to think making movies like this, no matter how bad, is a profitable and worthwhile venture. I’m begging someone with influence and opportunity to sit these people down, show them Once, Lars and the Real Girl, Brick, hell, make them watch the original three Indy films and see if they can’t remember what doing a good job really felt like.