Revenge of the ballin'

I should start this with a disclaimer: I’m not particularly fond of director Michael Bay. Unlike majority of his audience I’ve never found his drawn-out, explosion-ridden films enjoyable and most of his lead characters feel like an affront to the human race. When I knew I would have to sit through his latest project, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen I had to make a conscious effort to keep an open mind. Yes, people thought I was slightly crazy as I sat down in the cinema muttering to myself “just keep an open mind”. But this process was going well until the opening credits started and the first of many unnecessary explosions began.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to 2007s uber successful Transformers and takes up where the first one left off. After saving the world, befriending an alien race and getting the girl of his dreams Sam Witwicky (LeBeouf) is off to college and determined to be a `normal guy’. Needless to say the universe has other plans for him. The evil Decepticon robots return to Earth to destroy Sam after he learns the origins of the Transformers. Luckily for Sam he happens to be BFF’s with the good robots, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime, who have formed an alliance with America’s military forces.

However, you don’t need to know any of this because like all Bay films the plot is about as necessary as a Paris Hilton album. The remainder of the movie follows Sam and friends across what the military commander describes as “some random Egyptian desert” in a bid to find the key to destroying the universe before the Decepticons get it. Given the average person goes down at least three IQ points after watching Bay movies, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen still asks viewers to throw a lot more than caution and logic to the wind. For example, for supposedly superior beings it’s laughable the ancient Transformers went for the ol’ hide-the-key-to-destroying-the-universe-behind-a-painting trick. Alas, Bay expects you to go along with this and many other plot shortcomings.

Fans of the first Transformers movie are likely to be disappointed with this effort. Sure, the effects which bring the robots to life are still amazing but what’s really missing is the human element. What made Transformers enjoyable was the talent and quirks of actors like LeBeouf and John Turturro. In the sequel, the actors have little room to move and it feels as if Bay has begrudgingly thrown in the human characters as a segue way between action sequences.

Composer Steve Jablonsky once again delivers a truly suspenseful score for the movie and there are moments when it’s best to close your eyes and just enjoy the brilliance of his work. He has composed on several of Bay’s previous films and here he manages to create the perfect musical balance between adventure and danger. His new music fits ideally into the background of the film and once again Jablonsky proves himself to be one of the most creative and original composers around. Bay, on the other hand, tends to follow formula and regurgitate ideas that work.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen seeps with unoriginal ideas `borrowed’ from a range of earlier and better films. James Cameron must be asking for royalties for a scene practically ripped straight from Aliens where the key baddie, the Fallen, resides in an outer space lair complete with baby Decepticons dangling in embryonic sacks around him. It bares such an uncanny resemblance to the Queen alien, I was sure Sigourney Weaver was going to burst in at any moment and snarl "get away from her you bitch". This is not to mention several effects shots almost identical to those in X-Men 2 and the Mufasa-esque voice of Optimus Prime.

Even the most loyal Bay fans must have been questioning the sanity of their beloved director after a scene in, wait for it, robot heaven. Yes, he really has outdone himself this time and the Bayhem has been raised to an all time high. It’s as if he has made a conscious effort to provide Matt Stone and Trey Parker with as much source material for a Team America sequel as possible.

Did I mention the movie duration? I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was married with children by the time this fiasco finally wrapped up. To pass the three and a bit hours I counted the number of people who walked out of the opening night screening. There were four.

It’s no wonder, as this has to be by far the most ludicrous of all Bay films (which is saying a lot considering this is the guy who made Pearl Harbour and Armageddon). There is no semblance of plot throughout the entire movie. Instead of a beginning, middle and end, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is comprised of three main ingredients; explosions, slow motion shots of military equipment and Transformers doing what they do best – transforming.

The lead characters, many of them continuing over from the first film, adhere to all the clichés. The military unit in particular nearly implodes from cliché overload. You have the token Caucasian soldier with his roguish good looks, the token black soldier who belts out phrases like “whoop ass” as often as he loads his gun and there’s the token British soldier whose sole purpose in the film is to predict impending doom.

Yet it’s Bay’s female characters who leave the nasty aftertaste. At the fore you have Megan Fox playing the token hot chick who, on top of pouting and disrobing on queue, also wisely purrs the line “all girls like dangerous guys”. Once you throw in a college full of women who dress and act like they’re in a non-stop Nelly video and Sam’s idiot of a mother, you get the feeling this is a director who has contempt for the opposite sex. In fact, there isn’t one female character in the film who isn’t in some way offensive. It seems Bay is betting on his audience wanting their women to be like his movies; dumb and eye catching, with nothing under the exterior.

Consensus? Long enough to make Titanic feel like a short-film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen delivers on the explosions and robots but lacks suspense and originality.