Michael Bay: The Eighth Wonder of the World

When examining the excesses of Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, one must consider Bay's legendary reputation for explosions (as shown in the above video). In Transformers 2, that reputation is not only intact, but thriving.

Bay's orignal 2007 movie had several things going in its favor:-
1/ Spielberg's Dreamworks studio was footing most of the bill, so the budget (and therefore Bay's vision) was restricted until it could be proven that Transformers could be a sizable box office hit (of course, it was). Those restrictions were a good thing, forcing Bay to milk the most spectacle out of more mundane situations as well as pace his excesses...so he didn't run out of money.
2/ There was plenty of time to work on the script back in 2006/2007 as the Hollywood writers had no desire to strike. Therefore the plot was much tighter, stremlined...and when there were the inevitable goofy character's-havin-fun-banter stuff, it was part of the story, and didn't last long.
3/ The concept was new to a whole generation in 2007...and presented in a fresh, exciting way when put into the hands of visionary Bay. The Transformers were powerful, mysterious, balancing the alien with the familiar. Because it took half a movie to set the Autobot characters up, they felt more enigmatic due to their lack of screen time.

Without these parameters, the sequel suffers.


With an extra $50-$60 million to spend on locations, hardware, running-time and visual effects...Bay is off the leash and out of control. The fights go on a bit too long, losing sight of the objective of the scrap..and there are too many Transformers to register in the memory...the poor robots from the first film barely make an impact. The ones that do are twenty times more irritating than even the jive talkin' Jazz was in the first film. If Jar Jar Binks is in digital heaven, then new characters, The Twins, will be his bitches.

The script is overlong and meandering, with no real depth or jeopardy being created.
Returning Josh Duhmal has NO character arc at all this time (and it was slight in the first movie). The story is a less urgent retread of the first (the Decepticons are after the macguffin, the shard of the All-Spark, PLUS they want The Matrix of Leadership, a key that will activate a machine that will destroy the sun, and harvest it's energy). Instead of more end-of-the-world intensity (that's why Transformers/Armageddon/The Rock work so well) you just get tons more basil expostion scenes as people dump BS sci-fi explainations of the madness that is to follow. It in these long scenes that apathy rules.

It's the loss of the mythic where the movie falls down the most, despite the increased scope of the visuals. The archetypal boy-becomes-a-man plot is replaced in the sequel by a teen angst love story that irritates more than entertains. And the mythic Bay montage sequences with accompanying rousing music are completely missing from the Autobot scenes. Because there's more dialogue with the robots themselves, the movie feels more kiddyish this time round...and it also undercuts the enigmatic quality of the metal aliens. The Fallen is a ranting non-threat...which impacts on poor old Megatron and Starscream...who come away from the affair as bickering twats.

Despite the drop in quality, it's still fun ride. Bay is unmatched in the complex beauty of his cinema compositions or in the application of explosions in mainstream movies. The money is up there on the screen from the Egyptian locations, sumptous and gritty cinematography to the jaw dropping quality of the effects (as good as the original). Megan Fox once again induces mutiple cup-filling, as does Isobel Lucas as the evil fembot. As for the story...the action IS exciting....the humor IS funny...and the visuals ARE engaging. Bay is a visionary, and that vision is on the screen. But if the room full on monkeys with typewriters had a few more months and the director had a few more tranquilisers to keep Bay at bay...there might have been a better movie here.