It is only the pyrotechnic and digital spectacle that makes this second endeavor of the franchise in cinemas something worthwhile

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2020)

Two years after the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) faces the anxiety of entering college. This means that he will have to live separately from his parents, Judy (Julie White) and Ron (Kevin Dunn), leave his girlfriend Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) and explain the situation to his friend and protector Bumblebee, as he intends to take a normal life from now on. At the same time, the government deactivates Sector 7, resulting in the dismissal of Agent Simmons (John Turturro). In its place is created NEST, an agency led by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), who works in conjunction with the Autobots. However, NEST faces resistance from Theodore Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey), the national security consultant, who considers it superfluous.
The structure of the script remains similar to the formula that made the first a great success, maintaining the humor and action, however the great defect of "Revenge of the Defeated" is in its total exaggeration and imbalance in the narrative. The plot starts back in time (12,000 BC) to justify the existence of robots in the early days of humanity and then go back to the present day and talk about the partnership between Autobots and humans in the fight against the Decepticons. As it should be, there is the childish love between boyfriends Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox), and also the eternal ability to save the world from the American armed forces. And add robots, lots of robots. I can't say that the excesses of Transformers 2 are a surprise. Michael Bay would be no different. The only thing usually "less" in a typical Hollywood sequel - although there are several honorable exceptions - is a script. After all, coherence, logic and intelligent dialogues hinder robot fights, don't they?
While Transformers (the first), is an introductory tape of this universe with some level of quality (some, not much), but that simply does not allow us, with its mind-boggling cuts and shaky cameras, to understand what is happening or even to differentiate between robots and even among humans, the second film is more of the same, or rather, much more of the same. Michael Bay went crazy and created the two and a half hours more incoherent as possible and look that there is no need to go into the question of the geography used in the tape, as it is laughable enough to say that the robots go from the pyramids of Egypt to Petra, in Jordan , as if they were literally next to each other. Transformers is a production clearly aimed at male teenagers, as it combines three elements that always win the attention of this group: robots, cars and hot and unattainable women who, for some obscure reason, seem attracted by awkward nerds who ... like of robots and cars. Instead of focusing on the main plot, the film wastes time on ridiculously useless, pseudo-funny and inexcusable profanity and eschatological and racist jokes. Thus, the public has to endure sequences with copulating dogs, crazy middle-aged ladies, robots with iron testicles and incontinence problems and, mainly, the useless twins Autobots Mudflap and Skids. The problems of the script for the first film, such as the disconnected subplots (there were hackers and the minister, there was Sam, there were the military, etc.), are fixed in the worst way: putting all the characters in one plot. So expect to see Sam's relatives all running from the slow-motion explosions.
LaBeouf again embodies the ordinary youth in an unusual situation, a role that the actor lives with charisma. Megan Fox has the job of being ... well, hot, with the feature exploring her "natural attributes" as much as possible, including shots that resemble the series "Baywatch". What about the scenes with the physical gifts of Megan Fox, which Michael Bay knows how to exploit in the same way that porn directors do? Her first scene with her rear end painting on a motorcycle is embarrassing. Megan Fox does not seem to mind being used as a simple sexual object throughout the projection, even changing clothes in public and without any explanation just to make a declaration of love to her boyfriend (or "affection", since one of the subplots) ridiculous of the feature lies in the fact that Sam and Mikaela resist the word "love"). Employing the old crutch of interpretation of her mouth smeared with red lipstick and her lips always parted (I believe this is what Fox understands to be "character building"), the beautiful actress also does not seem to be bothered by the fact of Mikaela, despite from initially being presented as a strong and independent young woman, then being forced to embody the old cliché of the young lady who needs to be protected by the men around her - and just note that, throughout the film, there is always someone to hold the girl's hand when it is necessary to run away from robots. In the "hot" item of the film, Megan Fox has as a competitor the beautiful Australian debutant Isabel Lucas, who "plays" Alice, a college friend of Sam who basically shoots himself at him.
Despite the confusion of the montage by Michael Bay and team, it is undeniable that ILM's computer graphics work is a delight to the eye. The movement of the robots is fluid, believable and perfectly immersed within the environment in which they are inserted and the combat scenes are impressive when merging physical scenarios with beings created entirely on the computer. Watch, for example, how Bumblebee gesticulates nervously when Sam scolds him as he leaves the garage to face some angry appliances. On the other hand, the transformations of the creatures occur so quickly and confused that we can never understand the relationship between their alternative forms and the repositioning of their parts, which is unfortunate, but, I believe, necessary: after all, like a 3-car. meters long could it plausibly transform into a 10-meter-high robot?
New characters like Jetfire and the main villain Fallen have very interesting concepts, although extremely poorly explored. Jetfire, a dodgy decepticon and source of valuable information, becomes a transformer with Alzheimer's, while Fallen never justifies being so dangerous as to be adored by Megatron. Even so, several transformers appear only in the background, even some quite popular ones like Arcee, Ratchet and Ironhide. The classic Bumblebee continues to stand out.
Let's say that Michael Bay wants his films to climax all the time. However, the big problem is that there is no expectation at any time, and everything is meaningless. Twice worse, twice loud. The film has great moments in action, going through the hallucinating start in China, the chase on the college campus, the fantastic fight in the forest (high point of the film) and the final confrontation of the Egyptian desert. In fact, the "final" battle in the desert should easily be an hour long and you can't understand almost anything that's happening. Visually, we can only identify good robots from bad ones because it is simplistic enough to avoid any confusion about their personalities: Autobots are always depicted with strong colors and blue eyes, while Decepticons appear in metallic gray tones. and with red eyes. In addition, the work's internal logic begins to crumble completely, with robots that are super powerful a moment before starting to fall easily with half a dozen shots a few minutes later. Even with a completely flawed script and full of holes, it was to be expected at least to maintain a cohesive narrative structure. When the English title Fallen arrives, which in theory is the most powerful of the Decepticons, just two punches of Optimus Prime are enough to destroy it without any ceremony, demolishing the gore of history and all the suspense created around it and creating an anticlimactic and disappointing ending.
All of Michael Bay's habits are there, of course: the backlit maiden, the boring circular travellings until the excessive use of slow motion and low-angle framing that try to overestimate the heroism of the characters. In addition, there is no more "authorial" element in Bay's work than the explosions - and every five minutes something seems to be destroyed in an immense fireball in Transformers 2, which ends up becoming monotonous and commonplace. Populated by boring characters (from Sam's parents to his college roommates, past ex-agent Simmons from Turturro, "cute" robots and any creature with a single line throughout the film), Transformers 2 still proves the Bay's notorious egocentrism: if in the original he made a self-reference to Armageddon, here it is his turn to include a Bad Boys 2 poster in the college dormitory, which indicates that those college students have a bad taste proportional to their lack of intelligence.
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" contains special effects and common defects. It is definitely not a transformative film (with a pun), but a large patchwork of well-stitched pieces, but without finishing. If you pull the thread of the script, it will drop the end to everything that is on the side because the primary idea is to have fun. The big problem is the spectator leaving 150 minutes of projection with absolutely nothing to emphasize on a work from the technical or visual side. Bay may not know how to make movies, but he knows how to film chaos, explosions and the military like no one else, especially considering his customary aversion to the use of the green screen, making the incendiary show of adventures that appears on the scene even more worthy of applause. And it is only the pyrotechnic and digital spectacle that makes this second endeavor of the franchise in cinemas something worthwhile for the general public to see this feature film (extremely long) in cinemas.