Review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) by Jeffrey B — 15 Jan 2015

As sequels for many franchises are granted with the privilege of letting down the original, Transformers 2 tops the charts. Michael Bay returns, after directing his 2007 TF movie, to direct his first sequel with the running time multiplying. And the sequel went so astray due to lack of plot structure and boring action sequences, in which the special visual effects aren't guaranteed enough to satisfy fans as much as they were with the original.

Shia Labeouf a joins the cast again as Sam Witwickey, who's now in college and away from his annoying parents. Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Julie White and Kevin Dunn reprise their roles from the original. One of the new cast members is Ramon Rodriguez as Sam's college bud Leo. Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving also reprise their voice roles for Optimus Prime and Megatron. When a new Deceptigon threat comes to earth to rejuvenate Megatron and escort their evil leader, The Fallen, to earth to use cybertronian built machine called the harvester, to destroy human life on earth and rule for eternity.

The plot was exceedingly hard to follow. I give credit for the performances ( especially Shia Labeouf, John Turturro and Ramon Rodriguez - who proved themselves as great actors ) The humour was impressive and laughable just like in the first TF, but the human characters seem to be present in the movie for the sake of using human beings because they're so lazily developed on being part of something that gives them nothing to do with the plot. Another major let down is the action sequences: from the opening battle sequence to the point were the story proceeds to Egypt, the action sequences aren't much to satisfy with as they were in the first TF and they could've been toned down a bit and with the addition of less explosions to focus on more plot. The only great battle sequence is the conclusion in Egypt, which was awesome and the robot design of the gigantic Devastator was also incredible, except for the awful robot balls ( they should have checked the editing ). Sometimes I wonder what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen could have been like, if Bay and his screenwriters just gave their concentration and plot structure a bit more time.