Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Review

Michael Bay set out to make the biggest movie of the summer. Instead, he made the most disappointing.

I'll begin with the most basic problem: the script. I'm not asking for a deep, psychological quandary - I'm aware I went to see Transformers. I would just like something that A) makes sense and B) is original. I guess Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have been writing so much lately that they are running out of ideas. There is a little bit of Star Wars, a little bit of The Matrix - hell Kurtzman and Orci even stole from their own work: I noticed a striking similarity between one of the final scenes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and one of the final scenes of Mission Impossible III. Also, Kurtzman and Orci have decided that they don't need to explain things.

They confused a lot of people with the time travel plotline in Star Trek, but this is worse. Who is the Fallen? One of the original Primes. Only a Prime can kill him. Why? I don't know. Because he's so powerful? Maybe? You wouldn't know how powerful he is by how short his battle scene is. His big moment lasts less than three minutes. In the middle of an action sequence that just seems to go on and on. Also, what is this all-powerful Matrix of Leadership (was that the best name they could come up with? Honestly?) besides being the key to a weapon that could destroy the planet? I don't know. What the hell was that place Shia went to where the spirits of the original Primes fixed everything? I don't know. And why did they do that? Because it is his destiny, I guess. I was too busy shaking my head at that point. But that grand sweeping gesture speaks to the deepest problem in the whole franchise.

The film is called Transformers but the focus is always on the humans. I understand that it may be deemed necessary to have humans in the movie so that audiences have something to grasp onto and relate to. I get it. I won't point out that it wasn't necessary in any other iteration of the franchise. Would you like to know why? Because those Transformers had personality. Someone needs to send a memo to Bay, Kurtzman, and Orci that just because the Transformers are made of metal doesn't mean their dialogue has to be. Nothing that comes out of their mouths seems to have anything that feels like life. It all feels so stiff and forced. So it becomes impossible to care about them. But back to my point about the focus on humans. The story focuses on the humans as if they are the ones with the power to do anything. But whenever anything needs to be accomplished, the humans just call in the Autobots and sit back and watch. The humans get all the attention and the Transformers do all the work.

Now it's Michael Bay's turn. Bay, you disgust me. I'll touch on the racist robots for a moment first: Wheelie and Skids. It's bad. It's really bad. Watching them I was reminded of blackface performers from the days of vaudeville. But what really bothers me is the sexism. It bothers me that every woman in the film is gorgeous, wearing skin tight clothing (what little of it there is), and shiny lip gloss on lips that are always in a sexy pout. It bothers me that every shot of Megan Fox seems to start on her ass or chest and pan up to her face. That bothers me. But worse than all of the disgusting behavior is this: you are boring.

Bay and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen are boring. I know what shot that he is going to cut to. I know what he is going to put in slow motion. I can predict because he always does the same thing. It's old and it's stale and it's boring. And so is Transformers. There is a blandness to everything, a genericness, a feeling that you feel like you've seen it all before.

So why should you pay to see it all again?