you know the bitter taste left in your mouth when you're let down after being promised much, and after expectations that were built up so hard? i do, and transformers 2:rotf , after eagerly anticipating for its release for the best part of the 2 years that just went by, felt me reeling from the sheer horror and disgust of just how awful it is.
first things first, i'm no micheal bay hater, in fact, i enjoyed the first transformers film very much. bay-ham - bay's penchant for blowing things up bigger and louder and at such frequency that it borders between mind-blowing and mind-numbing; as some call it - is a delightful form of escapism to me, and i poured scorned and disdain on the reviewers critiquing tranformers adversely, claiming that the plot was wafer-thin, the characters one-dimensional and the cinematography choppy.
all senseless and empty exposition. tranformers was never meant to be the dark knight, with layered presentations of a given subject matter , measured performances from the actors, among the many other things that the dark knight was.
no, transformers was meant to be a visual fest, with special effects galore, and yet equally enjoyable in a thoroughly dissimilar way.
rotf, on the other hand, sank to new lows. grandiosely top-heavy with special effects, a visual tour de force, one could describe it, yet, so very glaringly, and grossly, vacuous underneath.
characters like ironhide and ratchet, from the first film, and the sideswipe, arcee and jolt (the new additions) had barely 2 lines of dialogue throughout the entire 2 and a half hour movie.
the twin, skids and mudflap, were given plenty of screentime but were plain - the jar-jar binks of transformers, as some have so aptly described.
devestator, the most powerful and devastating of transformers destroyed by 2 shots from a human warship??
i wanted to watch transformers, to watch giant robots slug it out, yes, and i wanted at least some attempt to bring these beloved childhood characters of mine to life, not merely use them as some astonishingly sophisticated prop in a series of huge explosions and jokes that fell flat.
i want to be able to follow thw story, not merely be led, and almost force fed, one ridiculous scene or set-piece after another.
below are 10 questions from yahoo! movies, and really there are way more than that. but this is a good start.
1. In "Transformers," there was this giant battle in the middle of downtown Los Angeles -- excuse me, Mission City -- that was witnessed by thousands of people at the very least. But somehow the government was able to cover up the whole thing, and now the existence of alien robots is just an internet rumor? How did they do it? Pay off everyone who was there and quickly fix millions of dollars in damage? Also, didn't Keller (Jon Voight) go on TV and tell everyone we were being attacked by "a technological civilization far superior to our own"? How did they spin that? If remember, the novel said Mendelson Robotics is blamed as part of a failed test of new weaponary. Also at the end of the first movie Keller even indicated it was explained as a failed training exercise.
2. There are two pieces of the Allspark cube left: the military has one under lock and key, and Sam discovers another. The Decepticons steal one and bring Megatron back to life. But when Sam (Shia LaBeouf) wants to bring back Optimus, he has to find the Matrix of Leadership on the other side of the globe. Why not use the other piece? Mikaela (Megan Fox) has it in her backpack the whole time. It brought his kitchen appliances to life, why can't it do the same for Optimus? Mikaela's shard was used on Jetfire
3. Speaking of Megatron's rebirth, when the Decepticons venture deep into the ocean to revive him, the Navy crew tracking them reads five contacts. When they get down there, they tear apart one of the robots for parts to rebuild Megatron. Then as they rise to the surface, the same Navy guys say they spot six contacts. The little "Doctor" robot popped out down there, but he's about a third of the size of a person. Would he have shown up on sonar?
4. That reminds me: even if I were to forgive the Doctor's German accent -- and director Michael Bay is asking me to forgive a lot of ridiculous accents -- why would a robot need glasses? He has little lenses that flip in front of his mechanical eyes. Couldn't he just get his eyes adjusted? You'd think with all the laser guns, someone could perform a Lasik procedure.
5. Apparently, Transformers can look like people now. How? And how is it that even though the robo-girl (Isabel Lucas) is made of metal, she can still straddle Sam without crushing him. And if Bumblebee knows something's wrong with her, why does he spit antifreeze at her instead of telling Sam? Yes, his voicebox is broken, but wasn't it fixed at the end of the last movie?
6. The Fallen is the last of the Primes, since they all sacrificed themselves to stop him from destroying the sun. But then he says that Optimus is a descendant of the Primes. First, Transformers have kids? And second, how could he descend from them if they were all dead? And if the Fallen could only be destroyed by a Prime, why didn't the originals just gang up on him back in the day? And what makes Optimus so special, anyway? Megatron beat him earlier, but all it takes is a few spare parts from creaky old Jetfire for him to take out the Fallen?
7. Sam, Mikaela, and Simmons (John Turturro) go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. to find Jetfire. Then they walk out the back onto a wide open field with old planes and mountains in the distance. When did the National Mall start to look so much like to Tucson, AZ (where they really filmed that scene)?
8. The geography is just as bad when they go to Egypt. The stone city of Petra in Jordan is over 250 miles away, over mountainous terrain, with few paved roads and the Israeli border between them, so how can they drive from one to the other in a couple of hours. And the Pyramids are said to be shooting distance from the Mediterranean, but they are actually well over 80 miles inland. Even if the Navy ship had a secret rail gun, and even if the captain would take an order to fire from a former agent of a government branch that no longer exists (over a walkie-talkie that inexplicably starts working again), how could it hit a moving target from that distance?
9. Sam briefly dies and goes to Robot Heaven. Robot Heaven?!?!
10. Where does Sam's bandage come from? What about his extra sock? Why does Sam's roommate not contribute anything at all? What was the Fallen doing for those thousands of years Megatron was frozen in ice? How does one satellite receive transmissions from everywhere on the planet? Why does Wheelie hump Mikaela's leg? Why do we have to see John Turturro's thong? Why are robots who join together to become Devastator also seen fighting the Army at the same time? Why does the government want only our military fighting Decepticons when our weapons seem unable to make so much as a dent on any of them? Why did the ancient Egyptians build a pyramid around the sun-destroying machines instead of just breaking it? Why is the Matrix of Leadership bigger in the Fallen's hand than in Sam's? And how do Mikaela's pants stay so clean?
yet at the end of the day, i'm less incensed and bitter about the film than saddened, and feeling prostrate and helpless about it.