Throwback Thursday: My Movie Review of Transformers 2

A rather klutzy amalgamation of worthier elements
by tommy (movies profile) Aug 4, 2009

Shortly upon leaving the theatre, I heard someone nearby saying, "That was more like a thrill ride than a movie." I disagree with this; indeed it's not much of a movie, but while I believe the first Transformers deserves the "thrill ride" honor, but this one does not. A good rollercoaster builds excitement up with all the suspense, foreshadowing, and creative turns that a good movie does, but "Revenge of the Fallen" seems like neither one nor the other--instead, it's a rather klutzy amalgamation of worthier elements.

The film begins with a flashback accompanied by an almost Lovecraftian revelation that humans have, in fact, shared the planet with transformers for a long time (well actually, it looks more like a scene from "10,000 BC," which many may read as an ill-omen), then throws the viewer into a present day narrative about the continuing war with the Decepticons, a rather colorful battle in Shanghai, and the coming-of-age subplot about the human protagonist as he heads off to college and tries to preserve the attention of his girlfriend.

Despite all these seemingly-important scenes being offered up front, however, the viewers will find themselves questioning the backstory of this movie, which is only explained in any detail by a new robot character introduced halfway through. Without that much-needed direction, it all feels like a gratuitous mess of scenes that would be more appealing had they only been more judicious. We get shots of robots fighting it out, shots of the protagonist's stupid mother bumbling around, shots of Megan Fox's physique, and shots of a few notable college personalities, and they seem so hammed up as to nearly insult viewers, as though the director sees no real reason to put any of them there, other than because he thinks we yearn for them and will love the movie for them, no matter how bad it is. To be fair, I don't think Bay was being so malicious; he seemed to be trying for something epic in scope with this movie, but he neglected the central narrative that must ultimately govern all good epics.

Nor are the individual scenes in this film always good on their own merit. By far the biggest disappointment in the whole film is that, although we have plethora of new robots to sample, seeing them fight just isn't what it could be in this film. Hand-to-hand combat between robots should not look nearly so fluid and organic, and frankly LIGHT, as it does here; there are points where they soar into what looks like kung fu, and in fact, stop just short of what might resemble ballet! Furthermore, the angles from which battles are often viewed were ill-advised; there are too many shots that zoom in so close and too many that view things from the rear, to the point that often one can barely distinguish which robot is clobbering the other. These worsened fight scenes are added to some recurring problems from the first film--the old transformers theme song again gets left out in favor of a Linkin Park ballad that doesn't fit, villainous spy-bots still look gross and weird rather than creepy and cool, and numerous elements thrown in to appeal to white-collar suburban Americans still abound to try and upstage the titular robots.

For all that I can say negative about so much of the film, though, fragments of a better movie are still visible, mostly in the film's humor. There is little that would be considered golden about the comic value of this film, or even innovative. It pulls countless gags out from all over the established humor book, with no less (possibly more) than three stupidly-neurotic characters (the mother, the roommate, and a shell-shocked veteran, the actor of whom seems to have trouble deciding whether he's supposed to be Italian or Jewish), an old robot who acts like a classic cantankerous old man, robotic twins who act a little like Abbot and Costello, and slapstick gimmicks ranging from slippling to tripping to ball-busting. Much of it could be appropriately-scored by "Yackety Sax" or ""That's All Folks," yet I still liked this film best when it seemingly realized that it wasn't worthy of being taken seriously, and so didn't even take itself as such. There's also a good deal of memorable acting here to liven things up; Fox serves mainly as eye-candy but in a few scenes channels the heroine archetype of the fast, tough Latina (Michelle Rodriguez might be proud or jealous; I can't rightly say which), the veteran proves to be the funniest of the "annoying" characters in the film, and Optimus Prime, even though he's just a voice, still compels viewers. Through even the worst lines he gets, the actor injects a voice that sounds deep, gruff, and booming, but never at the expense of also sounding kind and nurturing. The obnoxious jingoistic streak that Bay is infamous for is present here, of course, but ROTF also pokes fun at the US government through a thoroughly obnoxious bureaucrat who is elitist for no good reason, constantly pesters the military about how he wants them to approach a war, despite obviously being a pampered snob with no idea how to approach a war, and is brutally rude and snarky to Arabs. Politically-minded people will probably see more than a little satire of some recent politicians in this character, but all people will find it amusing to finally watch him get what's coming to him. Then, Optimus and the government also have a bit of a disagreement--subtle, but I wasn't expecting it in this film.

All of the above elements helped make TROTF a more watchable film, but the question of whether they made it worth watching in the first place is troublesome. The first film was a shallow-but-enjoyable ride that, though far from perfect, made me expect better from the series in the following titles, but this new film has drained my glass quite a bit. It simply plays out like long a roll of clips primarily useful to put together trailers as part of the film's overblown hype-machine. Since massive ad-campaigns, and not a more artistic, masterful touch--such as punctuates actual good action films like Terminator and The Matrix--seem to have become the strategy of Michael Bay's transformers series, I say he ought to be retired from duty in favor of new blood. Otherwise, our favorite robot heroes might as well be left around rusting.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) Review

I will start by answering the preeminent question everyone has: No; this isn't Bayformers.  You can breathe a sigh of relief if you were expecting a disaster that's Revenge of the Fallen bad.  The plot will confuse nobody (save for the very young, maybe), the action is fluid and visible, Megan Fox actually does a good job, and although not all jokes hit, you won't be driven crazy by their stupidity.  If you're worried about the allegations of penis and fart jokes, rest assured there is just a penis joke and a fart joke that pass quickly, and best of all, there's no racism to be found in any characterizations.

Unfortunately, this new take on the iconic reptilian roughhousers is grounded to the point of being tedious in many places.  The revised origin of the turtles; loosely based on the Fred Wolf cartoon's take but essentially its own thing (a theme prevalent through much of this version), eats up time as it's revealed by the film's pedestrian human cast.  When I said Megan Fox does a good job as April Oneil, I mean that she adequately conveys when she's happy, sad, moved to tears by a sweet moment (and to be fair, you might be, too), and terrified, but she's still not playing a very interesting character.  Also along are Will Arnett as Vernon Fenwick, who is much more likable than his Fred Wolf counterpart but not nearly as great as he was as Batman, Whoopi Goldberg as April's boss, Bernardette Thompson, who is sadly no more likable than her Fred Wolf counterpart (though for whatever reason, a different race and gender), and the Foot Clan, almost entirely reinvented as a gun-toting, western terrorist organization.  Some may like this change of pace, as it's at least different from the Foot in every other Turtle movie, but when Karai, a character whose most faithful adaptation was in 16-bit fighting games, is reduced to pointing a pistol at people and driving a Humvee, the change truly rears its ugly head.  I have no idea why she's in this movie.

Questionable new elements aside, things progress more-or-less the way you know if you're familiar with the brand; April runs afoul of the villains, the Turtles save her, she faints, they wake her up and introduce themselves and their rat sensei, Splinter (played by Monk himself, Tony Shaloub), a flashback montage is played, pizza is eaten, and then the fight is on to defeat the Foot Clan.  It's at that point that finally, the movie comes into its own.

I'm not ashamed to say that Platinum Dunes' skepticism-prone take on the series does a few things better than the past movies.  Aside from the original books, I think this is the most violent I've seen the Turtles and especially their foes get, and although it will be discomforting to some, it was long overdue.  Heavy, brutal, head-bashing, bone-smashing impacts are inflicted by both sides, and nobody screws around.  People hold up the original 1990 movie as the ideal TMNT film, and also as a rare adaptation that tried to reconcile the original Mirage series and the vastly altered Fred Wolf cartoon, but even it contained an extremely awkward moment where a scene of the Foot attacking April's apartment was interrupted by Michelangelo challenging a Foot ninja to a "chuck-off", and both sides just stopped and watched.  As is well-known, the other live-action movies just got more inane from there, but no such illogical cheese is present here.  Jokes get in where they fit in, sometimes as mid-action quips, and a fair amount are even pretty funny, but there's no pausing to fool around when lives are at stake.  There's a pretty great truck chase segment; not something any other TMNT film has had, and Shredder is all new levels of menacing.  He's barely a character, but his amped-up, "old-meets-new" arsenal of technologically charged blades provides some great new fights with the heroes.  He's not taken down in any cheap way, either; the Turtles all bring their A-game against him, and even Fox's April gets some nifty licks in.  It's cool, it's exciting, and it's funny.

But then it's over.  Much as the film seems to go on too long during the boring exposition, just when it's gotten good, it flies by too fast.  The pacing is awkward enough that I wonder if things were filmed first and then arranged in some arbitrary order, because it seems like it just coasts at first, and then fires off all of its exciting bits in rapid succession; like some constipated machine gun.  The closest it came to enraging me was in the form of scenes that, in the trailers, made it look like we were going to get more adventures, instead being throwaway gags at the end--though in all honesty, they're more likely sequel hooks.

In summary, this new take on the Turtles isn't a total loss.  It gets some things right about the brand (or as right as they can be; given how many different versions there are), there are some fun, if brief and objectively trivial, nods to old fans, and at least some of the new things it brings to the table have merit.  Still, while there's only so much one can do retelling the origin story of the Turtles (this is the seventh time; count them), this film disappoints even those modest expectations, and ultimately the highest praise I can give it is that I was left wanting more instead of less.  Hopefully, what we got at the end of the first film promises more character development, and more fun exploration of the Turtle mythos in the inevitable sequels.

Then again, we remember what happened last time.