I remember sitting down on a Saturday morning throughout my childhood, waiting for my weekly dose of Transformers...and the cartoon soundtrack "more than meets the eye". I even remember purchasing my first Optimus Prime from Tip Top (a local toy store), including the Transformer collection where you connect five other Transformer toys together to produce a Super-Transformer. It fills me with a sense of nostalgia looking back, and when I first heard that Hollywood had decided to make a human version of the series, I was extremely sceptical at first and didn't want to watch it.With the fond childhood recollections of this well-written (from what I remember at least) series, anything that could ruin these memories was a risk I was unwilling to take at first. However, after numerous positive appraisals from a lot of people I decided to watch the first one. I wont delve into complete details but I will admit that it was much better than I had previously expected. With this in mind, I was far less reluctant to watch the second movie. Of course it had its flaws but like the sequel I believe this was down to the actors selected.
Shia LaBeouf. Where do I start on this actor? I'm not being funny but every single film he's been in (as with Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter), he has the same look of bewilderment throughout the entire 150 minutes. I do not understand what Steven Spielberg sees in him as an actor, as there are far more capable of doing a better job. I don't like to slate individuals, because in the movie Disturbia, I thought his acting was realistic and suited the part.
This was all until I discovered that it wasn't really tailor-made acting for that film, but more his actual generic acting itself. Regardless, I refuse to critique him for Disturbia, or Holes as I feel he did a good job. Unlike Radcliffe however, Shia has not progressed as an actor his age might have hoped. At least Radcliffe moved from specked-bewildered-with-mouth-open acting to much-more-realistic-specked-bewildered-with-mouth-open acting.
Megan Fox is potentially the most beautiful actress to come on to the movie scene in a long time but even this will not deter me from describing how I see her acting abilities. I will take my hat off and admit that her seduction techniques worked on nearly every male in the cinema and were almost too realistic for most to stand up during the half-time interval, however hey may as well have cast Carmen Electra for her similar "acting" qualities.
Besides.. the day I see someone who looks like Shia LaBeouf walking around with a Megan Fox and being so cocky as to believe that she wouldn't leave him for a Ryan Reynolds lookalike...I'll eat my words. Is this just a sad state of affairs that Hollywood has resorted to in recent years? What happened to the James Dean's or Joaquin Phoenix's (in Gladiator) of the world where every movement and spoken word is more believable than skin-deep looks of beauty?
Similarly with the first movie, I felt the special effects and graphics were phenomenal and explosions worked in sync with the post-production graphics expertly. I don't like to be completely negative about movies from an overall aspect as I believe that credit will be due where it is deserved, and the special effects team saved this movie almost single-handedly.
The following trailer for Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen provides a taste of things to come throughout the movie:
As the trailer gives away, the cheap (almost forced) humour is a massive no-no and fail in almost every situation except for perhaps one part of the entire film. I don't understand what Michael Bay/his writers were thinking when developing an Action-Comedy-Sci-Fi-combination within a single film. I am unsure if these writers wrote the roles specifically with the chosen actors in mind or not, because Shia LaBeouf tends to have the similar goofy lines in the majority of his recent movies.
Furthermore, the slightly racist connotations of the twin robots stereotypical urban black personalities has been overlooked by most people, yet it even made me chuckle at how a Blockbuster could write this into the script. Maybe I should take my own advice from a previous post in that I should watch these movies with a pinch of salt rather than the underlying meanings of things.
My flatmate accurately described how the movie was written before I watched it and I can agree with his quote: "You know when you're a kid and you write a story and you're locked in a massive battle where your team is losing... but suddenly, you forgot to tell people, that you own the Sword of Elzar with the capabilities of destroying everyone that would have been previously impossible, but is now easy because of the weapon I just told you about just then"... Well this is basically how the movie is laid out, so if you like an easy-to-watch, CGI-fuelled action-movie, with intense graphical scenes, Megan Fox (mmm) and (err) comedy thrown in, by all means go ahead...But seriously...robot heaven?!...come on.
It's not all bad for Paramount and Dreamworks however, as the movie did score the best opening day ever for a Wednesday release, with an estimated $60.6 million domestically (USA). Furthermore the movie has also earned an estimated $201.2 million, bettering Spiderman 2's $152.4 million to become the second biggest five-day domestic gross of all time, not to mention becoming China's biggest box office hit ever by earning 400 million Chinese yuan ($59 million).
I've rated this movie 4/10 based on the reasons mentioned. Don't take my word for it if you don't want to, but don't say I didn't warn you.
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