- If I were into brevity, my summary of the movie would be as follows:
EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Testicle joke! EXPLOSION! Sam and Mikaela refuse to verbalise their love for one another. EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Government stooge shows up and tries to shut down NEST, the secret anti-Decepticon task force. EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Sam goes to college; his mom loses her mind. EXPLOSION! Sam is a “poor kid”? When did that happen? EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Oh hi, roommate who has dedicated his life to exposing alien robots after what happened two years ago. EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Testicle joke! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! The Autobots seek out Sam for help — and he denies them! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Oh wait, his fate is tied to theirs. RIP IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM! … and we’re in Egypt. EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Destruction of antiquities! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Testicle joke! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION!
If I were into brevity. Which I’m not.
EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Testicle joke! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! Prime kills The Fallen in the blink of an eye. Sam and Mikaela admit their love. The end. - I absolutely loved the first movie to pieces, despite it’s complete and utter ridiculousness. It was the right mix of comedy and action and everything about it was ironic and epic in a first rate way. Somehow in the process they decided to make the sequel the most unbelievably offensive and obnoxious movie possible. The humour from the first movie is now completely dumbed down in this one, relying on testicle jokes 80% of the time (WHY DOES A ROBOT NEED TESTICLES, I ASK YOU) and liberal and unnecessary use of “ass” and “shit” the rest of the time. And I say this as someone who is not offended by contextual swearing in movies! The approximately 117,839 explosions did an excellent job dulling the senses to the point where when Optimus Prime killed The Fallen, I didn’t notice it had happened because I had zoned out. The rampant racism and sexism was completely up front, in your face, and unapologetic.
- There are two new characters, twin Autobots, who are the equivalent of Jar Jar Binks in this movie, racial stereotypes and all. Theresa and I had “Is it just me, or…” moments after the movie and in ten seconds of Googling just now, there are dozens of other articles about it. SciFi Scoop describes it, for those who haven’t seen it:
The slur goes that Mudflap and Skids, the two supposed comic-relief robots in the movie, promote offensive racial stereotypes. Both robots have ape-like builds, bulging eyes, large ears, one has a gold tooth, they drawl, they bicker, they admit they can’t read, they talk about “putting a cap” in other robots and of course one of them is voiced by a black actor. Whilst some people see these two robots as nothing more than the Jar Jar Binks duo of Transformers, for many others these factors add up to one thing: a clear racial slur.
This is what one of the robots looks like:
SERIOUSLY. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE. Depressingly, if you read the comments of most of the “Is this racist?” articles, most people are like “OMG WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU’RE OVERTHINKING CGI ROBOTS.” I’m sorry, you’re going to have a HELL of a hard time convincing me that everything about thesecaricaturescharacters is NOT racist. The writers say this characterization was added by Michael Bay after they completed the script; Bay says they did them this way after the “direction” taken by the voice actors. I remain revolted in any case. - Megan Fox draping herself over a motorcycle in her opening shot was nearly pornographic, holy god.
- Bumblebee’s disability is that he cannot speak unless through clips from the radio. Why, then, are we suddenly getting a bunch of Tom Hanks quotes when he “talks”? Is there suddenly a radio station that only deals in movie quotes? Seriously, people, characterization: be consistent. I know, I shouldn’t be asking this of a movie about toy robots.
- Why is Starscream, who has a pretty wicked awesome name, suddenly transformed as an Igor to Megatron’s Master? I’m 87% sure he had a hunch in one scene. Evidently this is how he was portrayed in the cartoon; if so, I prefer the nondescript version from the first movie.
- Wheelie was essentially Tommy DeVito in robot form. I hoped in vain that he might say “HOW THE FUCK AM I FUNNY?” but he did not.
- Best lines of the entire movie:
Fratboy #1: Where are you going?
If they had stuck with humour like this, like the kind they had in the first one, this movie would have been 98% funnier. Also the bit where Professor Rainn Wilson took a bite of an apple, tossed it to a student, and mouthed “Finish it” to her, followed by her swooning.
Sam: To get you a tighter shirt.
Fratboy #2: There isn’t a tighter shirt. We checked. - THE MATRIX OF LEADERSHIP. Quite possibly the most LOLTASTIC artifact to ever be depicted on screen.
- One of my favourite things that Michael Bay does is the “around the world” reaction shot where he shows random people on the planet watching cataclysmic events on TV because invariably his depiction of middle America always looks like what I imagine 1940s Kansas looked like, regardless of what year it is in the actual film. Sadly, this movie did not have a 1940s Kansas family and I was a little put out by that.
- I read a quote awhile ago where Steven Spielberg said this might just be Michael Bay’s best film and I have to agree. Bay has absolutely sublimated his filmmaking with this movie. For years Bay has been making movies that are emotionally empty, void of narrative, and filmed with the cold, calculating eye of someone who might have the best formal sense of composition in Hollywood and it’s finally come to a head in this movie because he’s finally managed to fetishize it all in the most basic, pre-cognitive way. The only way he could top this movie for pointlessness would be to make a greatest hits film that cobbles together every explosion sequences from his previous films. It would have as much plot and purpose as anything else he’s made. It would be a masterpiece. Jesus Christ. Michel Bay, I hate you again.
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I just watched an hour of it before giving up. You forgot the sudden inclusion of a real president, Obama, an appeaser who couldn’t deal with the crisis, including a subliminal-type shot of him with the words ‘your leaders are lying to you’ over the top. I was looking for the tighter shirt quote which is why I ended up here. That was hilarious, the rest was mostly horrible…what I saw of it anyway…
I never saw either Transformers, so this entirely hilarious review is slightly lost on me. I Googled the Matrix of Leadership, though, it made me laugh.
The only Michael Bay movie I think I’ve ever seen was THe Island, and I liked that one, so I always thought he was alright. Poor Michael Bay has lost his touch, lol. He’s apparently making a third one in two years, too. Hopefully it won’t suck as much as this one seemed to.