Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picks up with the Autobots and the American military chasing down villainous Decepticons throughout planet Earth. Humanoid hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) is preparing for both college and a long term relationship with love interest Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) before discovering that his previous encounter with the Allspark has given him exceptional scientific and linguistic abilities. And Starscream (Charlie Adler) has rallied the troops with the assistance of The Fallen (Tony Todd) and is preparing to resurrect Megatron (Hugo Weaving) so that he can lead an invasion force to use an ancient device buried within a pyramid to harvest the energon lying within our Sun.

But he didn't count on contending against the power of love.

With nearly two and a half hours of footage, the film covers a tremendous amount of ground planted with the same silly comedic distractions and fast-paced shallow dialogue that dominated its predecessor. At the same time, with so many characters demanding their voice be heard, and so many plot threads requiring a cinematic stitch, I suppose terse dialogue is necessary if not disappointing. John Turtorro (Agent Simmons) steals the show once again and revitalizes the second act with an energetically offbeat and charismatic transformation. And there were a number of points after the second hour where I thought Revenge of the Fallen was going to end in an Empire Strikes Back like fashion (without a carbonite parallel) and leave us eagerly anticipating the next installment. But it kept going and the audience kept cheering and I couldn't help feeling old for searching for something more than explosive battles, competent clichés (Turtorro stating "not on my watch" for instance), and frustrating familial filibusters.

One Transformer did stand out for me however because his presence attached a bit of ambiguity to the either/or dynamic lying at the heart of the Autobot/Decepticon feud. Jetfire (Mark Ryan) was once a Decepticon but decided to join the Autobots after centuries of fighting. True, there are still only two choices, Autobots or Decepticons, but it's nice to see a freethinking character who was able to change his allegiances based upon his subjective interpretation of his historical circumstances.

Transformers

Michael Bay's new film Transformers unravels a teenaged synthesis of hormones, military paranoia, and tryin' too hard comedy. The Decepticons and Autobots are back in another epic battle, fighting over the Allspark, a giant cube with the power to create or destroy worlds. Along for the ride are a number of would be high school heroes, numerous military personnel, cranky, mind-your-own-business parents, and the ever weird and wonderful John Turturro. The action sequences are slight, the offbeat comedy tedious (except for the masturbation bit), and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's script borrows heavily from every big time blockbuster this side of Cybertron. Focusing primarily on the myriad humanoid characters, Transformers forgets the main reason behind Transformers: Transformers. Instead of providing us with an elaborate narrative, transporting the Hasbroian folklore to another dimension, Bay caters too intensely to his earthly plot devices and quickly drowns his tale in banal political mumbo jumbo (note that Iranian scientists are not to be credited but North Korea's military is on par with that of China). Optimus Prime does wax quixotic about goodness and we are briefly reintroduced to Megatron's acerbic abuse of Starscream, but their scenes are far to brief, making me wish I'd simply rented seasons one through three, as well as the first full-length feature film.