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All-Time Stinkers #2: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen


(This blog post contains a startling number of critic review excerpts. I really couldn't say it better myself)


"The movie's ID overload reaches such crazy levels that the fabric of reality itself starts to break down. After a few hours of this assault, you feel the chair melt and the floor of the movie theater becomes an angry mirror into your soul."-Charlie Jane Anders


"My son does not own any Transformer dolls, but if he did, upon my return from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I would have taken those Hasbro toys outside, placed them under the wheels of the car and driven back and forth across them until they were ground into dust."-Mary Pols


"Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan."-John Bradshaw


I remember I had no interest in seeing this flick back when it came out in 2009. I watched the first Transformers and didn't think it was that great... so why bother with the sequel, right? A couple friends of mine wanted to go to the movies on a Friday night because that's what you did back then before theatres went the way of the dinosaurs. This was before the days of Rotten Tomatoes, so I hadn't heard about this film being critically eviscerated anywhere. From the Paramount logo on, it was such an absolute nightmare to sit through that only one film experience has ever rivaled it (more on that tomorrow). Like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Force Awakens, everyone in the audience seemed to enjoy this film. When I rightfully pointed out that that experience was the film equivalent of being bludgeoned with a hammer, I was told I didn't have a sense of fun and needed to "shut my brain off." (i.e. go into a state of the "anti-intellectual pride" that David Cross spoke of) Rather than merely be annoyed like I was with Star Wars, I was outright offended and insulted that anyone could have had a pleasant experience with this. Rather than accept this as a new normal, I actually begged my friends to reconsider on their opinion on the ride home. It was the highest grossing film of that year ("the glorification and rewarding of dumb" that David Cross speaks of), although it swept the razzies with "Worst Picture" and "Worst Director" amongst the winners. But let's get this over with once and for all and never speak of it again, which will be hard since we're going to see at least three more of these Transformers war crimes advertised over the next five years.


This is the part of my blog where I usually summarize the plot, but I think the great Roger Ebert summarized himself perfectly back in his initial review in 2009: "The plot is incomprehensible. (No joke, here's Wikipedia's summary of the prologue: "In the year 17,000 B.C., the original Transformers leaders, the Seven Primes, travel across the universe to create Energon with star-absorbing machines called Sun Harvesters, which destroy stars in order to collect their raw material. One of them defies the rule to never destroy a star that sustains life by establishing a Sun Harvester on Earth, earning him the name "The Fallen". The Fallen is confronted by the other Primes, who imprison him before he can harvest the Sun using the Matrix of Leadership. The rest of the Primes then sacrifice themselves to hide the Matrix with their bodies in an unknown location." WHAT?!) The dialog of the Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock." Lots and lots (i.e. absolutely endless) amounts of explosions happen and people run in slow motion.


This movie is packed to the brim with so many affronts to taste and intelligence, along with a very healthy dose of sexism and racism, that the brain simply cannot keep up. On the intelligence side, the script not only throws so much exposition at you, it's also unbelievable the lines of dialogue director Michael Bay whipped up that respected actors like John Turturro and Rainn Wilson have to vomit out. There's two sidekick transformers named Skids and Mudflap that border on Al Jolson blackface. Shia Labeouf dies and goes to Transformers heaven. There's a million explosions (not much of an exaggeration), everything's in slow motion, the camera shakes, the aspect ratio flicks from full to widescreen so much it hurt my eyes when I saw it on the big screen. There's a lot more, but because it's hard to articulate my criticism intelligently for a film that has no intelligence, I will conclude with Roger Ebert's guttural reaction to another film called North: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."


This film was my number one all time stinker for almost 10 years before another displaced it. To find out what the number one worst film of all time in my humble opinion is, you'll only have to wait one day more.


Rating: No stars


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