Second Look - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Note: The following review contains spoilers for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and potentially other Transformers stories.

Following the success of the 2007 Transformers film, a sequel was inevitable. This sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF), was released in 2009 to negative reviews, not helped by the script being one of many victims of a then-recent Writer’s Guild of America strike. Though I reviewed this film already, I’ve been wanting to re-review it for a while as I wasn’t sure whether the thoughts presented in it were entirely my own. For this, I decided to watch the movie again, this time via the Walmart-exclusive Big Screen Edition Blu-ray; though I’m not one to actively support Walmart, this set is unique in that it also includes the IMAX footage, a rarity amongst home video releases. Upon what is approximately my third or fourth viewing of this movie, I can safely say that, even as a Transformers fan, I genuinely did not enjoy it.

Two years after the previous movie, a group of Autobots, in collaboration with the military as NEST (Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty), are hunting down Decepticons in Shanghai, China. A Constructicon named Demolishor (Calvin Wimmer) reveals himself and goes after the Autobots, only to be defeated by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). With his last words, Demolishor cryptically tells the Autobots that “The Fallen shall rise again”, leading NEST to try and investigate what this could mean. Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) is preparing to leave for college, which his mother (Julia White) is emotionally unprepared for. As he puts on his old shirt from the battle of Mission City, he discovers an AllSpark fragment that brings several kitchen appliances to life (“Appliancebots”), requiring Bumblebee to destroy them while causing damage to the house. Once Sam finally reaches his dorm room, he meets an alien conspiracy theorist named Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez), who runs a conspiracy website (that also sells kitten calendars) where he and his team are trying to expose the existence of the Transformers.

While the story has some potential, since the character of The Fallen (aka Megatronus) had previously only appeared in a Dreamwave comic at the time, it has several issues, chief among them the pacing. The movie tries to do too much at one time, resulting in a rather slow-paced movie that drags in several places as it tries to resolve a large number of subplots. So slow-paced was the movie that, amongst me and my family, I was the only one to not fall asleep during our most recent viewing, not helped by the fact that the final battle in Egypt seems to stretch on for infinity. That’s not to say there weren’t any interesting elements in the movie, as one of the highlights of the first three films is usually most scenes involving the military and their interactions with the Transformers, since they are often more interesting than the Witwicky family.

One major issue with the movie is that there’s way, way too many characters, especially among the robot cast. The 2007 movie had a fairly large number, though it was at least more reasonable to give each side a good number of characters. Here, as my brother described to me, it’s like they “vomited the entire toyline onto the screen”, resulting in a large number of characters that don’t seem to contribute much of anything, if even at all. There’s a number of characters I could list, though the most ultimate example I can think of is an Autobot named Jolt; you wouldn’t know who he was unless you were really paying attention or knew about his toy, since he literally just stands there in the background for three shots and does absolutely nothing.

Fine, he does one thing (Jolt is blue robot on the very left). Also pictured:
Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, foreground), Jetfire's corpse (Mark Ryan, center
background), Ratchet (Robert Foxworth, right background)

As for the human cast, any major character that’s not related in some way to NEST bogs the movie down. Sam Witwicky’s parents, Ron (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Julia White), are especially unbearable most of the time, as they don’t do much other than embarrass Sam. A particularly grating scene involved them showing up at Sam’s college, where Judy unknowingly purchases pot brownies off-screen, then proceeds to eat them and subsequently get high, causing her to nearly reveal Bumblebee’s presence. They are also brought over to the final battle in Egypt by the Decepticons for seemingly no reason, since there was nothing really going on that would warrant adding them to a sequence already jam-packed with characters.

The movie also introduces too many concepts at once, those being the Primes, Pretenders and Combiners. The Primes and Combiners, the latter being the Constructicons that combine to form Devastator, were handled pretty decently, though I have some qualms about the usage of Pretenders. One of the many subplots that resolves itself in the first half is that the Decepticons are trying to get Sam’s AllSpark fragment, so they send the Pretender Alice (Isabel Lucas), disguised as a human college girl, to retrieve it. While the idea isn’t bad, this seems like an interesting premise that was wasted here, as it seems like it could carry a whole other movie, perhaps even with the potential for a Pretender to disguise themselves as someone higher up to make it more interesting. The execution though feels a bit rushed and the idea of a robot with a human alt-mode was, while somewhat clever for the Pretender concept, made more disturbing in that the tip of her robot tongue was still organic; this idea would later be perfected in Transformers Animated, though it may be at least partially attributed to it being within the animation medium rather than live-action.

As an interesting side note, though at least one of the Appliancebots, Ejector (the toaster), got a toy, the idea has been explored for Transformers that turn into everyday objects, which would be more or less perfected in the form of the recent (as of this writing) Shopkins-esque Transformers BotBots toyline, which involves small (roughly 1-inch tall) robots that turn into household objects one might find in their local shopping mall.

One thing that might be more noticeable for some viewers is that the character Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) is sometimes placed in a more sexual position for no real reason; one scene in particular that always bothered me at least a little was one following the Appliancebot “uprising”, in which she changes clothes outside while seeing Sam off to college, if only because it didn’t seem to add anything to the scene. However, singling her out would be a bit of a disservice to the fact that this movie features an overabundance of sexual humor for the sake of cheap laughs. A few that stand out include the Decepticon-turned-Autobot Wheelie (Tom Kenny) dry-humping Mikaela’s leg, Seymour Simmons (John Turturro) changing his pants in one scene that includes a clear shot of his rear (the same scene also causally uses up the movie’s one allotted f-bomb) and, for seemingly no purpose, two brief sequences of the Witwicky family dog Mojo (Chester the Chihuaua) “dominating” their other dog, Frankie (Paris). I’m not sure exactly who those sequences were made for, though it’s something the movie could’ve certainly done without.

This also extends to the movie’s depiction of Devastator; while I certainly have no major issues with Devastator’s design (his gorilla-like stature fits perfectly with his more feral depiction in the movie), the only real thing that was totally unnecessary was a rather infamous pair of visible “wrecking ball testicles”. Cheap joke aside, this raises some questions, chief of which is why he would even have them in the first place from a logistical standpoint. While he is a robot made from nine Constructicons in the movie (6-8 in toy form depending on Size Class and toyline), none of them, not even Hightower, whose alt-mode is a crane, even possess a wrecking ball. Thankfully, this feature is included in none of the various toy versions of Devastator.

In addition to the movie proper, I have also read the ROTF comic and novel adaptations, the former as it came out before the movie did and the latter after I had already seen it once or twice to see if the book was any better. While the novelization includes some extra scenes that were cut from the final film (and, if memory serves, some slightly different personalities for some of the robot characters), the comic adaptation (if I recall) is a more distilled version of the movie that makes things a bit more bearable. One thing that I liked both for, however, was featuring an ending that I liked better than in the actual movie; in the movie, Optimus Prime is the one to ultimately kill The Fallen (Tony Todd) after a lengthy battle where Optimus is wearing Jetfire (Mark Ryan) as a “corpse backpack” (aka Jetwing Optimus Prime), whereas in those two adaptations it was actually Megatron, who turns on his master after Optimus convinces him that The Fallen is just using him for his own gain.

Honestly, just go read this instead.

One thing I can give the movie praise for is the visuals, especially in the way that the Transformers are seamlessly integrated into the environment. The designs of the robots themselves can be interesting to look at, particularly their transformation sequences and the small moving parts on their robot forms, plus a few such as Demolishor and Rampage (Kevin Michael Richardson) stand out for having very unique robot designs. However, a large number of Decepticons happen to be colored gray, so those who aren’t keeping track of the characters may get lost even with each robot having a unique design. That said, the Constructicons are a bit easier to keep track of on account of them having very bright colors. Despite that, one of the Appliancebots seen at the beginning, referred to outside the movie as “Dickbot the blender guy”, features a questionable design choice of having a cannon placed on his groin, which was thankfully reworked in the tie-in storybook When Robots Attack! to have the cannon placed on his arm instead.

As mentioned earlier, the Big Screen Edition Blu-ray is unique in that it also includes the IMAX footage, as seen in the version shown at IMAX theaters. This is evident whenever the aspect ratio changes from standard theatrical widescreen to an even bigger image, and in the two scenes in which IMAX cameras were used, the forest battle in the first half and the Devastator combination sequence in the second, it is very noticeable (including multiple cuts between IMAX and non-IMAX footage). Whenever it does change, however, it has very crisp visual quality, to where you almost want the whole movie to look like that just to have something to praise. Devastator’s combination scene has always been one of the few genuine highlights of the movie for me, and I must say it looks totally wicked in IMAX compared to the standard footage.

The quality of the acting is overall a bit all over the place, though I will only focus on a few of the more prominent actors. Shia LeBeouf takes the focus for a good chunk of the movie as Sam Witwicky, though whatever potential his character may have had eventually devolves into him screaming “BUMBLEBEE!” and “OPTIMUS!” during major fight scenes. Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes doesn’t get to actually contribute much to the story aside from her interactions with Wheelie; Fox would later be replaced in the next film by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and her character of Carly Spencer, with her absence explained away in Transformers: Rising Storm #2 (a Dark of the Moon tie-in comic) as Sam and Mikaela having broken up. Ramon Rodriguez’s performance as Leo Spitz was okay for what it was, as he played the part of a conspiracy theorist pretty decently, however beyond his role in the college portion of the movie, Leo seems like a largely superfluous character who gets annoying to watch rather quickly.

I would, however, buy 20 of those kitten calendars
(Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) is the guy holding them).

John Turturro, known for The Big Lebowski amongst other things, isn’t a terrible actor, however his character of Seymour Simmons usually gets a little grating to watch after a while, especially since we didn’t really need to see him without his pants on. By contrast, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson (Major William Lennox and Master Sergeant Epps, respectively) are still more entertaining to watch as their characters and their relationship with the Autobots is usually more engaging than those of the civilian characters.

As for the voice acting, Peter Cullen’s role as Optimus Prime is one of the few saving graces of this movie. That said, there are a couple points in the story where he seems to act a little out of character, which I only say because Cullen’s take on Optimus across multiple continuities and mediums is generally consistent with each other. The scenes in which Optimus kills Demolishor and The Fallen come off as a little too angry and bloodthirsty, the latter including the more infamous line “Give me your face,” which has since become memetic for how out of character it sounds for Optimus to say.

Though Hugo Weaving’s take on Megatron is not nearly as iconic as Frank Welker’s, he actually isn’t bad in the role and still does a pretty decent job playing the leader of the Decepticons since he’s already had experience playing villainous characters, even seeming to emulate Welker in his performance. While Frank Welker himself was absent in the previous movie, he comes back here to reprise his role as Soundwave, who in this movie becomes a satellite, as well as provides vocal effects for Ravage, Reedman, Grindor (a Blackout lookalike) and Devastator. Kevin Michael Richardson has more of a bit part as an unnamed Prime in a vision had by Sam, however, in the little time he has, he has a commanding presence (I could not say the same for his role as Rampage); this is not his only foray into Transformers, having previously appeared in Animated Season 2 as Omega Supreme, though he would go on to voice the major character Bulkhead in the Transformers: Prime TV series and video game, as well as in the sequel series Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015).

Tom Kenny as Wheelie (I’ll get to Skids later) is a little odd, since while Kenny delivers a good performance as always, the character does little of significance to the story besides try to steal the AllSpark fragment and point the human cast to the location of Jetfire. He also provides a lot of the movie’s swearing, so it’s kind of interesting to hear Tom Kenny cut loose a bit compared to stuff like SpongeBob SquarePants, though his character would thankfully be toned down a bit for the next movie. Mark Ryan as the Decepticon-turned-Autobot Jetfire is actually kind of funny, since he injects a little much-needed humor in some of his scenes to make the movie seem like less of a slog; his lines about Earth’s name and one of his ancestors being the first wheel were particularly chuckle-worthy.

Around the release of Bumblebee, Hasbro began putting out a new Transformers toyline called Studio Series, a subline of the larger Generations toyline, with the goal that each character from across all six live-action films (so far) not only features a more screen-accurate mold, they are also in scale with each other; each toy is also numbered by approximate order of release and is labeled with the movie they are supposed to be from. For 2019, the toyline increased its Revenge of the Fallen representation as a celebration of its 10^th anniversary. Among these is Leader Class Jetfire (ROTF, 35), who can be combined with either Voyager Class Optimus Prime (Transformers, 32) or Leader Class Optimus Prime (Dark of the Moon, 44) to create Jetwing Optimus Prime.

Perhaps the most significant bit of ROTF representation in Studio Series is the ability to create a more screen-accurate Devastator, made up of eight separate Constructicon toys, each of them released across 2019-2020 in sets of four across multiple Waves. Only two of them, Deluxe Class Constructicon Scrapmetal (41) and Voyager Class Constructicon Rampage (37) have been released so far as of this writing, though for the record, the rest of them are: Deluxe Class Constructicon Hightower (47, 2019); Voyager Class Constructicon Long Haul (42, 2019), Constructicon Mixmaster (2020) and Constructicon Scrapper (2020); and Leader Class Constructicon Overload (2020) and Constructicon Scavenger (2020). Unlike the Supreme Class Devastator toy from the original ROTF toyline in 2009, each of his components in Studio Series has their own robot mode in addition to their construction vehicle alt-modes, so even if you only manage to get one of them you still have a complete toy.

Completing this set will set you back $260. Gotta catch 'em all!

One thing that should be brought up is the twin Autobot characters of Skids (Tom Kenny) and Mudflap (Reno Wilson), who were a bit controversial at the time of release, to the point some considered them racist. This seems to stem from their personalities, in that they speak “street” while dropping swears and mild slurs. This characterization was largely adlibbed in the studio by their respective voice actors, whose intent was that the two behaved like, to paraphrase, “white wannabe gangstas.” Knowing this, the behavior of Skids and Mudflap in the film makes more sense, though that’s not to say it doesn’t get obnoxious. As for whether or not they are racist, I am not dismissing the fact that someone out there found them offensive in some way, though after watching the movie three or four times, I personally am still at a loss.

I will admit, however, they're not exactly prettiest bots to look at.
From left: Skids (Tom Kenny), Mudflap (Reno Wilson)

As a result of this, the characterization of these two gets addressed in other material. Issue #6 of one of the tie-in comics, Transformers: Tales of the Fallen, features an appearance of Skids and Mudflap on Cybertron, in which them acting “gangsta” is explained by brain damage they received from the Decepticon Flatline performing experiments on them; whether this information actually helps their case is up to the reader. Going even further, the twins make a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, in which they don’t speak and later disappear from the story; in the comic adaptation, based on another version of script, the two are even outright killed (I have not read the novel version, so I can’t say for sure there).

Despite this, something possessed me back then to try and get their toys, including one based on their combined ice cream truck form early on in the film. I’m not sure whether this had to do with them being twins and myself being a twin, though I did end up owning their toys based on their more prominent vehicle forms in Deluxe and Legends Class (I also own their dog tags for some reason; like, the cheap kind that turn your neck green if you wear them for an extended period). Even looking at their characters again, I would still probably be tempted to get Skids and Mudflap’s toys if they had Studio Series representation, though I’m speculating that the controversy surrounding their initial debut might not seem worth it for Hasbro (then again, they based two toys off of different one-off versions of Bumblebee and a Target exclusive based on Megatron in ROTF getting battle-damaged, so who knows?).

Whereas Bumblebee set the bar really high for the Transformers live-action film series, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen set the bar really low and is possibly the worst out of the first five films. The movie simply tried to do too much at one time within its rather weak plot, making it seem like more of a chore to sit through. There is a chance that the movie might have turned out better if not for the writers strike at the time (and if they had delayed the movie to compensate), though as it stands it’s still pretty bad. There are certainly even worse movies out there (ex. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), though this movie is bad enough to be almost entirely skip-worthy. I would recommend against watching this movie unless you are a Transformers superfan (such as myself) or you simply want to form your own opinion. If you do want to watch it, I would recommend doing so through the Big Screen Edition to get the best visual experience. Otherwise, whether or not your experience includes the various tie-in comics, I would actually recommend reading the IDW comic adaptation instead.