Should Have Stayed Buried

For whatever reason the 2007 Transformers film was a massive success. Made on a budget of $200 Mil, it grabbed $709.7 Mil at the Box Office, and that doesn’t take into account DVD sales, television licensing, toy sales, other merch, and the like. It was an absolute juggernaut that said, “these robots in disguise are here to conquer our world… through cinema.” Michael BayStarting off as an intern for George Lucas, and then moving up to directing commercials and music videos, Bay eventually got his break in film showcasing an ability to blend direction, editing, and special effects to create absolutely thrilling films., master of making big things go boom cinematically, had another hit on his hands and helped to cement himself, at least for a while longer, as the director du jour of bro cinema.

But I did say, “for whatever reason,” and that’s because while the film was hugely successful, it hasn’t exactly had staying power. Yes, it had five films in its main series, plus two spin-offs and a vaguely related animated film, but only four of those films could be considered massive theatrical successes. The franchise then slumped, and has struggled to find any kind of toe hold in cinemas again. And, beyond that, it’s not exactly like people talk favorably about these films. Even when they came out the common defense was, “yeah, these films might be dumb, but they sure are pretty.” Over the years even that thin defense has fallen apart and people have come to realize, “wait, were these films actually bad?”

Yes, they actually were, and it’s hard to think people couldn’t have known it back when the first sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, came out because, wow, this is an absolutely terrible film. In a kind and just universe this would have been the film to derail Paramount’s plans for a huge Transformers franchise. Instead, due to a combination of anticipation after the first film, Michael Bay’s director prowess, and raw American patriotism, this film went on to make more money than the first film (on the order of $836 Mil worldwide) and forced everyone to realize we were all in for several more of these stupid films afterwards.

But let’s look at it objectively. What makes Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a terrible film? To start, it has a nonsensical plot that can’t even hold together. As we learn, after their success fighting the Decepticons in the first movie, the Autobots had teamed up with the U.S. Government to act as worldwide watchdogs, going after any further Decepticon agents that show up around the world, fighting and killing these threats as they arise. But after a particularly dangerous op that caused some severe damage in China, the U.S. Government decides maybe working with the Autobots really isn’t the best choice, instead ruling they need to be caged and contained for the safety of the world.

While this is slowly playing out, Sam Witwicky is off to college. He wants to leave his past behind so he can get a degree, online date with his girlfriend, Mikaela, and try to just be a normal kid. But fate won’t let him be normal. When he finds a shard of the All Spark in his old hoodie, images of the ancient Prime language imbed themselves in his brain. Sam is now a map, with the images in his head being the key to finding a new piece of tech, the Matrix of Leadership, that the Transformers need to, potentially, restart their race. But if the Decepticons get it first they’ll use it to create an unstoppable army that will wipe away the world. And with the help of their great leader, the Fallen (voiced by Tony Todd), they just might be able to pull it off.

In recent years, Michael Bay (director) and Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman (screenwriters) have stated that the production for this first sequel was troubled because of the 2008 Writer’s Strike, so they had to cobble together a script as quickly as they could before the strike happened, and then film what they had and try to fix the film in the edit. It’s entirely possible what they say is true, but considering the film we actually got isn’t that different tonally or functionally from the first film, this does feel like the team trying to say, “oh, well, this film was bad because of world events,” when it reality it was, “this film was bad, but we’ll blame it on world events instead of taking the blame that really should fall on us.”

Watching the film what we have is an incoherent mess of ideas that never gel together. The plotline about the U.S. Government souring on the Autobots is fine, up to a point, since it at least gives us a pitting of factions that makes us care about the Autobots. But the film can’t actually commit to this storyline, instead dropping it two-thirds of the way through when the climactic final battle begins, and then it just pretends it never happened. “Problems with the Autobots? What problems? That wasn’t a storyline we raised and won’t resolve at all.”

Then we have Sam, who really doesn’t need to be in this film at all. I praised Sam and Mikaela as the only good parts of the first film, and that was true. But that doesn’t mean these characters need to be dragged into this movie when the only things they really add are, “hey, we have a map and clues, let’s follow the map and clues.” Anyone could have done this storyline. An Autobot could have been the primary keeper of the secrets of the Matrix of Leadership… which, actually does happen.

Most of the way through the film the team of Sam, Mikaela, Sam’s new roommate, and the Sector 7 G-Man from the first film all head to the Smithsonian to find a hidden Transformer and revive it with the shard of the All Spark. This robot, disguised as a Stealth Bomber, then stops the film so it can explain the whole plot to us in case we didn’t understand anything that was going on. Which was good because, yeah, without this the plot would make even less sense. But having to have a character stop, stare at the screen, and spend fifteen minutes explaining a movie over halfway in is not how you write a cohesive or functional story. It’s boring setup and it’s bad writing.

And all of this is so that the kids can go running after a new MacGuffin that is in no way, nuh uh, not at all like the previous MacGuffin they had to find in the first film, and it absolutely in now way results in the exact same kind of climactic battle either. The film changes the setting from New York City to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, but otherwise this is a carbon copy replication of the whole last act of the first film. Sam has to run around, keeping the key item away from the bad guys while the Autobots do everything they can to protect him. And I cared as little about what was going on there as I did here.

All of this is, of course, in support of a story about the Fallen, the big bad that is suddenly introduced in this film when, previously, he had never been mentioned before. The Fallen is a disgraced (i.e., Fallen) Prime, one of the great Primes that used to rule over Cybertron, the Transformers’ home world. But when the Fallen went bad, he took the other Primes down during a massive civil war that destroyed Cybertron and threatened to destroy Earth as well when the war moved here. The Fallen has a plan to use the Matrix of Leadership to restart a massive machine hidden inside the Great Pyramid, an energy weapon that will harvest the power of the sun which will create enough Energon to revive the Transformer race (at least the Decepticon part of it). Which would all be great if the film spent time developing the Fallen, his plan, or anything else in this film.

Like the first movie, though, we don’t really get plotting. We don’t spend enough time with Sam to remember why we liked him (and poor Mikaela is reduced to little more than arm candy this time). We don’t spend enough time with the Autobots to think of any of them as real characters, so when they go into battle and some of them get injured or die, we don’t have any feelings on the matter. We don’t get enough time with the Fallen to ever think of him as a threat, and his big machine he wants to use is little more than a deus ex machina for the heroes to blow up (which, of course, we know they’ll do) to motivate the last act of the film. Nothing here works.

And this isn’t even digging into all the little issues with the film, like the obnoxious pair of new Autobots that’s introduced in this film, the Twins, or the fact that the film seems to love the idea of dogs, and little Transformers, humping things, or how one of the key moments of the movie includes the heroic G-Man standing under the big, swinging testacles of a Decepticon. Who thought any of this was a good idea? Did the production team really think, “let’s put this dude under the Constructicon’s scrotum,” was really the best way to handle this scene? It made it into the movie, so I guess so, but still… This is not good.

So why was it a success? Patriotism. This film is a big old, “rah rah, go team” for the U.S. military, with the soldiers and front line grunts being heroes that help the Autobots (and Sam) against all threats, foreign and domestic. It has a lot of love for the military, and this film came out in 2009 when America was still feeling pretty protectionist after 9/11. The will and the might of America was right, and the Autobots stood with America, and we as audiences could love and respect them for that. It was a very specific film for a very specific time, some pro-American military escapism right when we needed it most, one could say, and so the film went on to do gangbusters at the cinema.

But going back and watching it again it’s not hard to see it for what it is: a whole lot of white noise. Yes, Michael Bay can direct the shit out of anything, no matter how bad it is. He has his big swooping shots, his weird angles, his powerful cinematography, plus so many explosions, and he works it for all he can. It’s a very pretty film, but that doesn’t stop it from also being pretty terrible. Bay does all he can to polish up this turd, and all he does it make a much shinier turd. It worked for audiences back in 2009 (even if critics hated it), but now I think just about everyone agrees this is probably the weakest of the opening trilogy of Transformers films (which was a low bar to start with) if not one of the worst of the whole run.

There’s no other way to put it: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a terrible movie. Bay did what he could but the script was bad, the characters are unnecessary, and nothing of value happens in the film at all. This is power slop cinema, through and through, and the more years that go on the more audiences realize that this film shouldn’t have been the success it was. At best this film should have proven to everyone that the first Transformers film was a fluke. Instead it gave Paramount and Michael Bay carte blanche to make whatever terrible films they wanted in the series after. And they did…