Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Movie Review

By Purple

If Michael Bay knows how to do anything, he knows how to give the people what they want. If you want to rattle your skull with something that's a few stories tall and full of enough metallic eye-candy to pop your eyes out, seek out an IMAX theater showing "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen". It's big, it's loud, it's dumb and it's filled with enough incredibly expensive effects that it blinded audiences worldwide this weekend and made back its 200 million dollar production budget in its first five days.

Sure the "Transformers" sequel is a jumbled mess of story threads that go nowhere, but it runs on the sure winning formula of when in doubt, blow something up and the effects laden haze will distract the audience from the gaping plot holes left behind. As the second "Transformers" is basically two and half hours of loosely strung together corporate advertising for Hasbro toys, GM cars and trucks, and a recruiting video for the US military, I don't think the filmmakers and audiences alike expect much from the story department.

What is surprising about the new "Transformers" movie was seeing the level of ultra-violent, robot-on-robot carnage the "Transformers" dish out to each other. Hero and villains alike serving up the sort of over the top splattering fatality finishing moves you'd expect to see a "Mortal Kombat" mature rated videogame than a PG-13 film. Some of the more gruesome mechanical moves include seeing one robot pulling the spine from the skin of a robotic beast and an eye-ball popping skull crushing moment that would make this movie an R-rating if it were blood instead of motor oil spewing forth.

I guess its all part of the cinematic meat and potatoes stew that's core to the "Transformers" franchise. And what better side dishes to some robotic ultra violence than a healthy portion of pervy camera shots that linger on Megan Fox's curves on the sweet side, and then sour by forcing us to glimpse of more of John Turturro than we want to see on an IMAX screen.

Michael Bay has said he's done with working on the "Transformers" brand and he won't be back for the inevitable third movie. Instead Bay has expressed interest in working on something without explosions in them for a change. And while we can hardly believe it and can't wait to see how that turns out, in the meantime this could be an excellent opportunity to take the "Transformers" into a new direction. Perhaps something more timely like having the "Transformers" step in and save the day for the failing GM auto maker by introducing them to a new best selling car that becomes the first 'green' Autobot, running on a hybrid engine that uses solar panels, recycled wind power, and all of the digital magic that ILM can muster to gloss over any nagging details the actual auto industry has yet to solve.

It may not help out the real GM, but as Michael Bay knows, as long as stuff blows up at the end, the people won't care. For Movie Magazine, this is Purple.

© 2009 - Purple - Air Date: 07/01/09
Movie Magazine International

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