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I'm not ashamed to admit that morbid curiosity was enough to drag me into the first live action Transformers movie, or that I actually found it's clunky awkward humor to be fairly enjoyable. Plus for some reason I'm actually a huge fan of Mountainous Dewtron, a non-character with maybe 5 seconds of screen time who I had to go ahead and name myself. I don't know what it is, I just found a vending machine turning into a berserk robot and firing cans of soda at people to be hilarious. Still though, it was not a good movie, and I had not planned ever to make any effort to see the sequel. That was, of course, until I heard how unbelievably terrible and inappropriate it was. Bring on your dog sex and racist robots Revenge of the Fallen!
We start out with some aborigines hunting a tiger while Optimus Prime narrates. Suddenly, evil long-headed robot! Plus a weird close up on someone's teeth. Meanwhile, in present day China! OK... meanwhile in the Pentagon! Dagnabit pick a setting movie! OK, we've got an evil racist ice cream truck... and we have Optimus Prime explaining that he's been working with some new Autobots and the U.S. Army to hunt down any remaining Decepticons out there. Uh... yeah. Anyway, we've got a big action scene here which actually has niece steady camera angles, which is a huge improvement over the previous movie. OK, now we're into a dorky scene with humans so I have time to reflect on our rapid fire character introduction.
I realize that it's bad for my sanity to compare any of these various robots to the Transformers characters they're named after but dog-sex-by-paragraph-3! Ahem. Direct comparisons are bad for my sanity, but when you have something that isn't a van, and has this- humping dogs again, this sophisticated british accent, why are you calling that Ironhide? Ironhide wasn't even that popular, that's why he was unceremoniously executed. Well, OK, it was a little ceremonious. Anyway, while our token human here is packing up to go to college, a broken chunk of the MacGuffin from the previous movie falls out of his pocket, burns through the floor, and animates various kitchen appliances. Bumblebee, who at least is the right color, appears to slaughter them all, and is then scolded and sent to the garage. Our dorky protagonist scolds him while his girlfriend... strips in the middle of the lawn in broad daylight, the hell?
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Uh, yeah. Moving on, we have "the twins" here, which appears to be their official name, or maybe just Twins. Oh hold that thought, Soundwave is tentacle raping a communications satellite. So yeah, the twins. OK, the racist ice cream truck? That's actually two characters. One horribly offensive black stereotype of a robot turns into the front half of an ice cream truck, then a second turns into the back end. And they're good guys. They're also no longer an ice cream truck because in these movies transformers can magically scan things and update their vehicle mode, so now they're each a little mini car. Also, tentacle-rape-happy Soundwave here totally sounds like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.
Now, here's a really weird scene. The short version of what's being said here is U.S. GOVERNMENT BAD! U.S. ARMY COMMANDERS GOOD! That's kind of a weird stance to put out there so blatantly. Here's more weirdness. We have a set of 3 motorcycles that turn into inherently unicycle riding robots called Arcee. There's three of them, but somehow they collectively qualify as just one character... who can create holographic riders apparently. GASP! MOUNTAINOUS DEWTRON IS BACK! Or it might just be a plain ol' non-murderous vending machine. Time will tell I guess. And, I realize I'm all over the map here, but so's the movie. I have to say I really like the main character's parents in these movies. They're really just awesomely dorky.
... And now Naughty Tentacle Soundwave is launching a missile from his crotch which upon hitting the ground turns into Ravage, who runs over and vomits a few hundred ball bearings down a pipe which turn into little robots in a very Bakugan way, which then in turn pipe up an somehow turn into this essentially 2 dimensional weird spiky fairy robot. The words unnecessarily convoluted come to mind, especially because we just kinda cut to a dance club after that. In the club, our protagonist Sam is having kanji hallucinations and writing red rum with cake frosting while his girlfriend and her dog prepare for a session of cybersex. A random floozy attempts to rape Sam, who escapes into the welcoming seat of Bumblebee. She follows along though. Also, am I officially writing a slash fic here yet, this is really getting brain hurty. Oh, and then Bumblebee attempts to murder the floozy in the passenger seat, bashing her head against the dashboard and spraying strange yellow fluid on her. She gets out, then it's off to a secret meeting in a graveyard, where it's suddenly broad daylight, with Optimus prime, to discuss this movie's MacGuffin. Which might be the same one from last time. It's kinda hard to keep up with the plot when they keep throwing NT Soundwave and racist ice cream trucks in my face.
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So now Ravage is jumping onto a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean from, uh, somewhere, to go get the constructicons to dive in and help pull Megatron's corpse up from the bottom of the Marianas trench. Then a crazy German scientist prawn with glasses bursts out of Ravage's chest and demands they cannibalize "ze little one" for parts to fix him. Which doesn't seem to take long. Megatron immediately flies off to uh, Space, to go visit Starscream. Starscream was in the previous movie but, like pretty much everyone, didn't have a speaking role. Heck, really nobody did besides Prime, but they decided to change that now, so we've got a properly backstabby sorta gay Starscream getting chewed out, but then Megatron gets lectured by his boss, the robot from ancient africa in the baffling intro. Oh, and "without more energon, the hatchlings will keep dying" says Starscream while holding up some sort of dripping dead robot fetus.
Now here's a creepy astronomy teacher! He's just sleaze incarnate, while lecturing. "There are no questions until I've reached the Climax of my lecture." What is WRONG with his guy. Oh, and Sam is hallucinating and speaking in tongues and scribbling on the chalkboard. And now we cut away randomly yet again to girlfriend and dog land, where they are being spied on by a remote controlled toy truck. He's Truckules Jr. until someone says otherwise. He talks like Joe Pesci, which is weird. Specifically, a bad Pesci impersonator. Girlfriend beats him up and locks him in a suitcase. Anyway, apparently it's arbitrarily time for a big ol' fight scene now! Sure, why not? It's no more random than anything else so far. Or not! Whatever! Just do your thing movie!
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OK, Sam? Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs.Slutty comes to visit him. The slut from the club that is, not his extremely slutty girlfriend. Then she grows a robo-tail. So, I guess we can call her something something like oh... Hookertron. So yeah, Hookertron tries to strangle him with her tongue before transforming into her robot form. Yon tongue is also apparently forced down his throat. So... dog sex and tentacle rape are now tied 2 to 2! Thanks PG-13 movie! Hookertron goes on a bit of a rampage, shooting up the library and... K, even in robot mode that extendo-tongue has a human tongue on the tip. That looks really really wrong. Sam Girlfriend and College Roomie escape by car, but then a helicopter harpoons them and drops them into Decepticon HQ. Which is like, a block away from the college it seems. "It feels good to grab your flesh! ... but first, we have some Delicate work to do." That awesome little prawn thing shows up, calls itself The Doctor, and shoves the "bug" from The Matrix down his throat. For reasons I don't comprehend, but am counting as tentacle incident #3.
OK, now it's a fight scene. Optimus Prime does a slow motion backflip while firing down because this movie is trying to throw in a fair number of nods to the real Transformers movie where it can. So anyway, there's a fight scene for a bit, where the only recognizable character, if we can even claim this movie has characters, is Optimus Prime, because only him and Bumblebee have the decency to have, you know, paint. So anyway, Optimus rips, uh, Starscream's skull? in half, then Megatron impales him, because, well, adaption decay. Anyway, Megatron chews out Starscream... who I thought just died. Differentiate character designs movie! Soundwave's tentacles pump white fluid into the satellite to call Sam's mom and breathe heavily, and somewhere in there they summon some new Decepticons. Which come crashing down as meteors, destroying an aircraft carrier and, where ever Mom and Dad are. Oh, and did I mention that Megatron's boss here has this weirdly elongated face with little flippery gilly wingy things down the side? I'm going to start calling him Linc-Con. He appears on every TV in the world and threatens to destroy "your cities" if they don't turn over Sam, and they offhandedly mention that Obama is president in this movie, which is interesting, because usually you just have some random guy in these movies who's apparently the first black presi- oh hey! And oh dear gods! The twins have big lips and giant silver and gold buck teeth! Why movie! Why!
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So here's more military porn. The evil government shows up in some Recons from Advance Wars to steal the autobots away from the pure and innocent military. I'm not trying to bash the military or praise the government here, but seriously, this movie is like, advocating military coups by random generals at this point here. It's crazy. Oh right, so Optimus Prime died for our sins and now we have to deal with I-talk-only-through-radio-and-TV-quotes-Bumblebee to mourn. And the twins admit to being illiterate! What the hell! Sam showed them the crazy kanji he's been seeing and drawing on everything, they recognized it as the written form of their native language, and then when he asked what it meant, they admitted they were illiterate!
OK, so, now we go to meet with that secret agent goon guy from the previous movie who has lost his job and is now working as a butcher. He does however maintain a secret underground lair with a giant filing cabinet full of exposition in it. This includes photos (sadly only of the vehicle forms) of what are allegedly Transformers from the 1920s, which is a cool concept, I wanna see that Model-T turn into a robot with a handlebar mustache and monocle. Oh hey! Pulling out Truckules Jr. who Girlfriend is trying to domesticate, it's revealed that we actually do have to track down the 20s-bots for some arbitrary reason! Keen! And gah! Did you just flash arbitrary full frontal male nudity at me movie? What the heck was that about? So uh... the all break into the Smithsonian to find a stealth bomber they bring to life with their shard thing, and then suddenly realize he's a decepticon by, and I am serious, looking at the logo on him. He's old and senile and scottish and has a cane and spits on people. So, he's the most likable thing in the movie now. He also apparently actually changed sides to the autobots but forgot to change the logo and... OK wow. In the middle of a tirade about how his grandfather was the first wheel, and he didn't even transform into anything, he farts out a parachute. Also, when the concept of defecting comes up, Truckules Jr. says he wants to do that, tells us his name is Wheelie, and starts to uh... submissively hump Girlfriend's leg calling her Warrior Goddess. I'm not kidding. The characters point it out. It goes on for a while. Anyway, Highlander here teleports everyone to Egypt for some reason.
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So, he gives this big crazy backstory about how there used to be 7 Primes who went around finding uninhabited planets to set up machines to convert suns to energon which can only be activated by The Matrix of Leadership, but one of them turned evil, which you'd never expect from someone whose name was already The Fallen and decided that uninhabited part was lame, so the other 6 stole the matrix and hid it in uh... their own fused and bundled together corpses. And also, only a prime can kill The Fallen apparently, and Optimus counts, so.... yeah. This exposition makes no sense whatsoever, but it tosses some arbitrary buzz words around! Oh, and apparently we can bring Optimus Prime back from the dead with King Tut's pyramid somehow according to exposition that apparently continued after the camera cut away or something and oh hey it's the guy who played all the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate factory. By the way, did I mention that aside from Optimus Prime, and partial credit for Bumblebee, the only autobots to maintain any presence in the movie after being introduced like 2 minutes in are Wheelie and the frelling twins?
Oh, so here we're working out where the magical revival machine is by working out that clearly, if you're standing at the pyramids and head directly towards the constellation Orion, you'll head right to it. Now, the logic by which this was deduced is pretty shaky, but uh... if you don't see an immediate problem here, please never attempt to work astronomy into any stories you may attempt to write please. Plus their destination is a huge frelling temple which is pretty much the biggest structure in the entirety of Egypt. Then the twins start fighting. Because, you know, Their Kind is prone to random fits of violence. Yes, this movie is this bad. So they go in and desecrate the tomb and find the Matrix which... magically turns to dust when they pick it up. Sam scoops it into a sock and says it'll totally bring Optimus back from the dead, because he believes in it!
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Oh, and we get more military porn where the air force drop Optimus Prime's corpse and a bunch of dudes with parachutes right into the desert. Oh and then Starscream shows up and starts shooting at everyone. Everyone splits up. Oh, and we're now gearing up for another fight scene. Hey, here's "Arcee and Ironhide"at least getting mentioned, some military porn as people plan, and, it seems the Constructicons are now forming Devastator... so, I guess it was Ravage they cannibalized Under the Sea? Or did we just totally forget that scene, because it follows that we could have torn the twins limb from limb and repaired Optimus forever ago... but no, there's Ravage right there. Yeah, we just full-on forgot that scene happened. Oh, and here's a... robot mosquito helping the big horde of nameless decepticons search. I'd have given him the obvious name, but it's disrespectful to an old anime series, plus he was killed like, immediately after being introduced.
So... now Devastator is inhaling everything in sight. This includes eating one of the twins, and yes, they are going for a Unicron thing. Which, sadly, extends to the twin who I was REALLY happy to see die suddenly bursting out of his right eye unharmed. By the way, I know it seems like there are because I keep mentioning all the false starts, but this movie is really weirdly lacking in fight scenes. This here, which is only just now starting? Yeah, this is the third fight in the movie... and it's over. Now, 3 fight scenes in a movie could be a lot, if they're big impressive set pieces, but these are like, 30 seconds each. In a two and a half hour movie. Which is ostensibly all about robots beating up other robots. Oh, we aren't done, we're just... not looking at the fight which is theoretically going on somewhere in the background. Lots of military porn shots though, here's another. Oh hey, Arcee actually appeared on screen and said something... just prior to unceremoniously exploding. Well, two of them exploded. The third might have escaped. Even more military porn. Oh, if I haven't made it clear what I mean by military porn, I mean if you cut any of these scenes out and watched them on their own, you would assume you were watching an armed forces recruitment commercial. Heck, I'm not entirely sure they didn't just strip out the voice overs and insert some old ones in.
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So uh... what ever happened to the old scottish robot? I really feel like a fairly important scene just completely fell out of the movie where he explained how to revive Optimus Prime and then died. I suppose I might just not have been paying attention, but I think they just made some kind of horrible editing mistake here. Sam asks where Optimus is, and says he has to get to him right now, while holding his sock up dramatically. Oh, hey! Here's Highlandertron! He has a battle axe and is being relatively awesome. He even gets to say he's too old for this crap. Officially, his name is Jetfire, but again, this is a confusing use of arbitrary naming. Why not Kupp? Also, direct quote from the MIB butcher guy here. "I am directly below Enemy Scrotum." Yes, that's right folks. Devastator's got nards. Specifically, 2 wrecking balls hanging between his legs, clanging noisily together. I'm still more concerned with Soundwave's white-fluid pumping tentacles that penetrate things though. Did I mention yet that this movie is PG-13 by the way? There've been quite a few swears I haven't mentioned, dogs humping, giant robot tentacles, several instances of tentacle rape, a lot of other obviously intentional squicky imagery, and military footage, and the only thing to appeal to kids is horribly racist robots.
Anyway, Sam dies and goes to robot heaven where the 6 dead Primes tell him that he's "earned the matrix" and should return to life to stab Optimus in the chest with it, so he does. Then The Fallen, AKA Linc-Con just kinda, teleports out of nowhere and steals The Matrix... or maybe it was Megatron. Either way, uh, teleporting? Since when can anyone do that? Oh right, Highlandertron did that earlier too. Speaking of whom, he offers Prime to "Take his parts" and rips his own heart out, then we... kinda have this Magical Girl transformation scene where the rest of his body flies up thanks to characters I don't recognize shouting technobabble and becomes flying power armor for Optimus. We actually get something approaching an interesting fight scene as Optimus Prime rips Linc-Con to pieces. Megatron and Starscream run away, Optimus just kinda unceremoniously drops his new power armor in a heap because it'd look weird with his vehicle form. Gee, way to honor the sacrifice of the only remotely likable character you had there buddy. Well, OK, I like the parents, but they fell out of the movie forever ago. Anyway, Optimus gives a really generic incoherent speech, and the movie is abruptly over. I just paused the credits to take note of "Written by Ehren Kruger & Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman." Wow, those are all really cool names, belonging to really horrible writers. Oh, and now we interrupt the credits to show Sam returning to college. And we get a credit for the terrible music in this movie... and while we apparently give top billing in the credits to Hookertron and College Roomie, Peter Cullen has to wait until after Bedouin with Donkey and Bonecrusher the Mastiff as himself before getting credited. As does Frank Welker who they hauled in to voice Naughty Tentacle Soundwave, but not any of the other voices you'd figure they might as well get out of him while they have him.
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Now, I divulge my nerdy voice actor knowledge here for a reason. The only way they managed to make this movie is by drawing in and pacifying a whole bunch of nerds by roping in poor Peter Cullen to do the Optimus voice. Credit where it's due. Oh, and I do mean roping in too. This was some REALLY phoned in voice work. The guy clearly didn't really want to be doing this. And this is from someone who has lent his voice enthusiastically to a lot of things that are hard to take pride in. Go watch the intro to Voltron, I'm sure you can find it on youtube. The man REALLY sells you on how awesome Voltron is. I doubt that's all that sincere (although, in fairness, Voltron is pretty awesome) but he gave 100% on that. He really committed himself to playing the villain in the freaking D&D cartoon. But these movies? You can tell by his voice he's just mortified to be doing this. So, you know, if anyone out there reading this is in a position to do so, give the poor guy a good gig to make this up to him, won't you?
Oh, and I'm so not kidding about the whole Naughty Tentacles Soundwave bit by the way. You don't get any screenshots of him. He does not meet my standards of decency. I suppose Devastator's nards do though. Also, what's up with... really, everything in the movie. Horrifyingly racist robots, one name split amongst three "characters," that whole scene where Ravage puked up the bakugans that formed that blade fairy made no sense and was never picked back up, there's so much sleaze, and I'm not even making all this stuff up. I've seen movies this incoherent before, but this didn't have a Full Moon Video logo up front. It was released in theaters, and actually really well received. What the hell?
