Please stop making these films, Bay...

Rating: 1/10 (25 June 2009)

I just got home from having watched Revenge Of The Fallen, and my initial impressions are that this is the worst film I've ever seen in the cinema. The first film was pretty boring, but at least it had some soul to it and the action was fun.
This film has absolutely no soul. All of the new transformers are generic look-a-likes with no personality. Prime is literally the ONLY likable robot in this movie. I could go on and on about how stupid it is to give transformer hip-hop lingo and English accents but it's not worth the energy.
I looked the film up just now and immediately discovered the reason why the film feels so badly structured, why there is no tension in the movie, why you JUST DON'T CARE what happens at ANY point in this film: the outline for this movie was knocked out in 2 weeks because of the writer's strike. The writers bashed out a rough storyline in a hurry, then Michael Bay himself wrote a 60 page 'scriptment' outlining the action scenes, jokes (which are nearly all puerile toilet humour, or adolescent stoner jokes) and new transformer designs. Michael Bay has no business as a writer and this film is the proof. The screenwriters were then given 4 weeks to turn Bay's 'scriptment' into a full script. 4 weeks!! Most decent films take at least a year to write! Oh, and then they were paid $8 million for their troubles. Jeez.
The film is 2 and a half hours long but could have easily been 45 minutes shorter. The dialogue is horrible all of the time and there is no character development throughout the whole thing. Both Le Bouef's and Fox's characters are exactly the same at the end of the movie as they are at the start, and the Transformers by their very definition don't have personalities to develop. Character development is the essence of EVERY FILM! Doesn't Bay know that?? No wonder this film is such a noxious turd. We're supposed to care that the world is in jeopardy, but at no point does the threat seem real because everyone is 2-dimensional. Even when Optimus 'dies' we don't care.
The only time I ever got involved in the on-screen action was the fight sequence in the woods. Optimus kicks a lot of robot ass and it was a taste of how this film could have been had someone just had the sense to throw the script away and write a better one. Oh, and to get a better director. Even the explosions got old waaaay before the end because action is meaningless unless it puts something or someone in danger, and makes you feel that danger acutely. You get the feeling that stuff blows up in the film because it can. It changes nothing. It serves no purpose. It is dull.
3 things to note about this movie:
1. Don't even try to follow the plot. It's a waste of energy. As soon as people start teleporting to Egypt, give up. It's a mess from here on.
2. The twins are the most obnoxious attempt to appeal to a black audience I've ever seen. They are also cinema's most irritating on-screen creation since Jar Jar Binks.
3. If you watch it, see how many other films this one pays 'homage' to (read: blatantly rips off). I counted 12 movies, the most glaring of which are Armageddon (asteroids falling on Paris), the Terminator franchise (robot woman clinging onto a moving car) and the Matrix (every single slow motion 360 pan, and the fact that all the new Transformers just look like squiddies). See also Indiana Jones, Star Wars, LOTR and many more. Originality is truly dead here.
To summarise, you know something is wrong when you are actually rooting for the main characters to die at the end just so the freaking film will end. I watched this film with 12 people and every single person declared this among the worst films they've ever seen. Watch at your own peril.