If I could describe the new movie, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” in one word, it would be: extraneous.
A sequel to 2007’s hit, “Transformers,” the sequel starts off two years later, now with the Autobots helping the U.S. military track down the remaining Decepticons. Over the course of the movie, we find out that the Transformers as a race are quite old and have visited Earth before. One guy, The Fallen, had tried to take over the planet, defying the other Transformers (essentially becoming the first Decepticon). He was exiled elsewhere…at least, until Megatron and his cronies decide to revive him in an effort to finish the job, and take down Optimus Prime and the Autobots once and for all.
Here’s my main problem with the movie: it was just too much. The flick was 150 minutes long. They could have cut 20-45 minutes out of it easily and still maintained the general story they were going for. Instead, there were plenty of extra scenes of Sam’s parents, or introduction of needless characters (specifically, Leo). The time taken to reintroduce all these old characters, let alone the new ones, could have been axed entirely without the overall story suffering (specifically, I would have tossed the entire “going off to college angle,” as it really didn’t do much. It could have been reworked to simplify the story). The actual plot involving The Fallen, the history of the Transformers, and the developing relationship between Sam and Mikaela would have been enough for the movie – all the extra fluff was pretty useless (read: extraneous).
And while the action scenes and special effects were still pretty badass, I must say that I was disappointed in that ending. I won’t go into further details, but I wanted more. The fight scenes in general were decent, but nothing on an epic scale like in the first movie. Also, all these close-up shots of the Transformers fighting each other make it really difficult to tell who is who…
So yeah, it was a fun movie that actually had some funny parts (but didn’t pull off all the jokes they tried…especially with “The Twins”…I hope bankruptcy keeps Chevy from releasing those ugly vehicles…), but it certainly wasn’t better than the first one, and kinda lost some of the magic that the first one did. I’ll still pick it up when it gets released, but the original remains the far better film.