Movies 2

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

transformers2.jpg

I went to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last night with my friend, and decided to wait a day before writing a quick post about it. I wanted to see if my unfavorable gut reaction would change after having a little bit of time to reflect on it and discuss it with others. It has not.

Let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed the first Transformers film. It was an extremely entertaining movie with amazing special effects. Sure the plot was dumb, but it was based on children’s toys after all. I am totally capable of enjoying a dumb movie as long as the rest of it is entertaining. However, Revenge of the Fallen is so beyond dumb that it was no longer enjoyable. Scene after scene I found my self thinking “this is extremely retarded”. The plot, the constant dirty jokes, and the dialog were all very poorly done. Even most of the action scenes were insensible. But aside from all that, I think the greatest problem the movie has is that it has lost the charm/novelty that the first film had. All that the first Transformers had going for it was the crazy special effects and the “cool factor” of seeing giant robots fight each other for the first time, but all of that is gone now. The CG looks exactly the same as it did in the first film, no better or worse, but no longer special. Also, all of the action scenes had a very “been there, done that” feel to them. I just wanted the movie to show me something new and cool that would get me excited the way that the first movie did, and it eventually does at the very end. The final battle was spectacular, and blows away anything seen in the first film, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that up until that point I was barely entertained. In the end, I would have a hard time recommending this move.

On a bit of a side note, was anyone else extremely surprised by the amount of blatant racism in this movie? The most obvious example are the two “Jar Jar Bots” Skids and Mudflap who are disguised as compact hatchbacks, are constantly fighting, and talk in bad Ebonics about how dumb each other are. One of them even has a gold tooth, and when they were asked if they can read, they both say that they don’t know how to. There are a number of other examples, such as one scene that had a stereotypical bucktoothed black guy. I don’t think I have ever seen a movie that was so openly racist. I am honestly shocked that that sort of stuff can be in a movie these days.