Review - Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (4/10) - 2009: Transforming From Bad To Worse

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.

An Introduction To James

Welcome to my first blog. There has been a lot of going's on in and around the Internet the past few years regarding blogging and its effect on everyday life. Everyone seems to be so totally consumed in blogging that until now, I held my own and limited my postings to Facebook and my views on movies between friends. As times change and progress, so must I.

Why "Grenglish Productions" you may ask yourself? A long story short, I am an English national who moved to the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea when I was very young, and grew up in a Greek-Cypriot environment (One that I love). On a daily basis internationals and locals alike will use a combination of Greek and English in a single sentence, for almost every conversation, also known as "Grenglish". This more or less covers my English roots and Greek lifestyle in a single word, so decided it would be most appropriate, regardless if it's easily understandable to those who have not heard it before.

As with advertising, the film industry is a popular job (understatement of the century), with everyone under the sun wanting to be the next Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp and Paris Hilton (well maybe not that one...but still!), and will do anything to gain a bit of fame.

I have always loved film but decided to study Advertising and Marketing Communications for my undergraduate degree. Adverts for me have always been miniature movies, so MA Producing Film and Television was the next logical step for me.. I always envisaged producing spectacular advertisements such as the Nike football first-person camera and Smirnoff Purified advertisements (see below), to name a couple..





I just never believed that I could succeed in a tight-knit industry without any contacts or previous experience, but after doing my highly-competitive Advertising and Marketing course, I've realised that anything is possible. Advertising is the other dream-job that everyone seems to think they would enjoy for a change of scenery. The sad thing is, some agencies take on students with law degrees over actual advertising degrees. While this may be seen as a moulding technique by some agencies to produce their perfect employees from different backgrounds, it would be far more profitable and less time consuming to employ those who have trained over three years to produce the best results. (Hint: Choose Bournemouth University Students.. We know what we're doing!)

From a young age, I have always enjoyed watching movies and have been fascinated at their production from an acting and cinematographical point of views. I relished tasks during English class between 12-15 years old that included group amateur movie-making, where I often wrote the scripts, filmed, directed and edited the final movies on VHS tape. Whilst this was an amateur attempt at film producing, I believed that this would be a fantastic career choice at some point in my life, which led me to the world of advertising as explained earlier.

Unlike most of my friends, since the invention of the DVD with its vast memory capacity capabilities, I always watch the “Making Of” and “Behind-the-Scenes” in every DVD extra that is available on the films that I own. I also took part in countless school plays, with my first speaking role arriving at aged four. Whilst still in Junior School, I was even lucky enough to play a lead role by the age of ten in the Senior School production of the Water Babies. In my mid-teens, other roles included Mr. Bumble in Oliver, and two roles in The Wiz, thus establishing the acting and production industry in my life from a very young age. I believe that television and film is a natural step up from this process and participating in a few student films during my undergraduate years intensified my love for the course at Bournemouth and the industry in general.

This blog will include links I find interesting and hope you do as well, in addition to my personal views on various blockbusters and lesser-known indie films I come across. It will also include a diary-like progress report on my own film shorts for my course and hopefully generate discussion amongst you, my subscribers.

I've only got one chance to attempt to break into the film industry and hopefully by reading this blog you will get to know a bit about my character (almost impossible from text alone) and how I plan to "make it" and become a house-hold name (here's hoping... after all; what's the point if there's no ambition eh?).

Cheers,

James