My Thoughts on "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"
Note:
This was originally written on Sunday August 6, 2023. Just like my Armageddon ☄️ review, this review is actually an excerpt from a description that I wrote for a re-edited version of a YouTube video that I did. It was a compilation video showing all of the explosions 💥 in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. There were other explosion compilation videos 💥 that I had done for Michael Bay's other movies which included Armageddon ☄️, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II, Transformers (2007), Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Transformers: Age of Extinction, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Transformers: The Last Knight, and 6 Underground. The only thing I did to these videos was flip them because on YouTube, they were all flipped to the right in order to avoid copyright, and I just flipped them back so that the image would in the right direction and everything wouldn't be all mirrored.
And of those re-edited videos, the Transformers movies and Armageddon ☄️ were the ones that I had I written such long descriptions for that I felt they needed to be separate and be their own things. And of the Transformers movies that I had written descriptions for, only the descriptions for the Transformers sequels were the ones that I felt were long enough to warrant being separate being their own things. I'm starting off with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen because I'm trying to do these in order, and Revenge of the Fallen is the first Transformers sequel, and was the first one who's explosion compilation video 💥 that I had written a description for. I did all of them in order, so the next one will be Dark of the Moon if I don't decide to post the Godzilla (1998) review first.
I even rewatched Revenge of the Fallen a couple of days ago at the time of this writing (of me writing this note), and it wasn't as bad as people on the Internet said it was, or as bad as I say it is in this review. I actually enjoyed it. Also, surprisingly, I didn't even really feel the length of the movie. It is a really long movie, it's 150 minutes long, which is 2 hours and 30 minutes, which is really long for a movie. You even say it's too long for a movie like this. Michael Bay has this weird thing about making really long movies. He hasn't made a movie that's under 2 hours in 29 years, not since the original Bad Boys from 1995, which 119 minutes long, or 1 hour and 59 minutes, just barely under the 2 hour threshold. Every movie he's made since then has been over 2 hours. His longest movie by far is Pearl Harbor, which clocks in at 183 minutes, or 3 hours and 3 minutes. This has been a common criticism of his movies is that they're way too long, and longer than they really need to be.
But, when I rewatched Revenge of the Fallen this time around, I didn't even feel the length. It went by pretty fast. I also found myself not having a problem with most of the things that people say that they have problems with in this movie. I guess maybe I've been too influenced by other people's reviews of this movie over the years, when I wrote this, because rewatching it again, I didn't have any of these problems with it. Except for maybe the Skids and Mudflap thing, that's still pretty bad no matter how you slice it. They were kind of nothing characters when I rewatched this movie this time around, like they lacked any real personality, they lacked any real development, they lacked any backstory, and they lacked any real purpose.
You get the sense while watching it that these two really didn't need to be there, as they add nothing to the overall story. Wheelie is more important to the plot than they are. The only remotely useful thing they do in this whole movie is that they get into a fight at Petra, and reveal the Temple of the Primes by they break the wall. By defacing a national monument and World Heritage Site during a petty sibling fight, they helped Sam and the gang find the Matrix of Leadership. UNESCO's going to want to have a word with them when this done, in fact, UNESCO is going to pissed at everyone given what happens at the end of this movie. All of the ancient monuments and World Heritage Sites in Egypt 🇪🇬 just completely destroyed.
Skids and Mudflap aren't even that funny either. The only reason that they exist is to be comic relief, and yet, nothing they said or did made me laugh. It used to make me laugh when I was a kid. Like, that scene where they call Leo a "shrimp taco 🦐🌮," and talk about beating him up or killing him, that part made laugh a lot as a kid 😄. But, seeing it again as an adult, it does nothing for me 😐.
Speaking of being a kid, I do believe I say in this review itself, or in one of the notes and updates that I absolutely loved this movie as a kid. It was one of my favorite movies of 2009, and I bought the DVD Collector's Edition 📀, which I think was called the "Big Screen Edition" or something like that, and I watched it repeatedly. I did the same thing with the first movie of course, as did many kids at that time. The Blu-Ray 💿 I currently have of the movie is also called the "Big Screen Edition." The reason why is that it has the IMAX scenes in the IMAX aspect ratio, which is 1:43.1. The DVD version 📀 had that too, and I was all confused when the aspect ratio changed, and it was all of a sudden full screen with no black bars.
I actually thought that something was wrong with the DVD 📀, and I had my mom or both of my parents (I don't remember if this was before or after they divorced) return it. And when I bought it again, and it did the same thing, and I just kind of left it. The special features were too good to pass up. But, now I'm older, and I understand why the aspect ratio changed in those specific scenes. They changed because they shot those scenes with IMAX cameras, specifically 70mm IMAX film cameras 🎞️ (they hadn't made a digital IMAX camera yet), and they want the experience on the DVD 📀 and the Blu-Ray 💿 to match that of how the movie would've been seen in an IMAX theater. This movie came out in 2009, one year after The Dark Knight was released, which was the first non-documentary Hollywood film to use IMAX cameras, albeit for select scenes since the IMAX cameras were very bulky and expensive, and couldn't actually be used to film the entire movie. Michael Bay was clearly inspired by what Christopher Nolan had done on The Dark Knight, and wanted in on the IMAX action, and filmed a couple action scenes in Revenge of the Fallen in IMAX.
The two scenes in the movie that were shot in IMAX were the forest battle 🌲 and the Devastator reveal scene, where the Constructicons from together to form Devastator, and Devastator starts sucking up everything in sight like an evil vacuum cleaner. Mudflap also gets sucked up by Devastator, which was a shot that was shown in the trailers. I'm sure everyone who hated Skids and Mudflap, and found them annoying, were hoping that Mudflap would die at that moment 😈. But, alas, he didn't, and he literally busts out of Devastator's head, and starts punching him in the face, making a fool out of him.
Transformers was my jam, it was one of my favorite things ever at the time, and I always kept looking forward to the next installment. The hype for the movie was definitely real, like when Revenge of the Fallen came out, it was a huge deal. When I saw this in the theater with my aunt and her family, it was packed. Several of the showings were sold out. It's really no wonder that the movie ended up grossing $836.5 million 💵 at the worldwide box office 🤑. I would say that it wasn't until years that this movie really became the laughing stock that it became, and when people just dismissed it as being one of the worst movies ever made. For being considered one of the worst movies ever made, it sure has cool stuff in it, no denying that.
That Shanghai fight and that forest fight 🌲 still kick ass even to this day. "New Divide," the Linkin Park song created specifically for this movie is still a bop. Even the CGI effects hold up pretty well. I know I say in this review or in the ones I wrote after that Revenge of the Fallen didn't have good CGI, or that the CGI wasn't as good as the first one or the third one, but after rewatching it, I take that back. It does have pretty good CGI. But, Dark of the Moon still has the best, that was the peak as far the CGI effects in these movies go.
The only thing I'm kind of unsure about, or take issue with it, besides Skids and Mudflap, the sort of main premise, the Ancient Aliens sort of plot of the Transformers being on Earth 🌎 since ancient times, and influencing humans to create the Pyramids of Giza or the Ed-Deir monastery in Petra. I mean, I don't have a problem necessarily with the movie going to Egypt 🇪🇬 and Jordan 🇯🇴, being set there. I mean, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire has a scene set in Egypt 🇪🇬. It's just that aspect of the plot of the Transformers being on Earth 🌎 and influencing the development of human civilization. Taking the ancient astronaut theory and adding Transformers into the mix. Revenge of the Fallen was the first movie in the franchise to do this, and The Last Knight took it way too far by ensuing that every important event and every important person throughout history had help from the Transformers. That Transformers guided human civilization since the very beginning.
You might say that I'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying that because I'm mostly fine with the MonsterVerse having the Hollow Earth 🌎 stuff, even though that's based on pseudoscience and a conspiracy theory just like the ancient astronaut stuff in Michael Bay's Transformers movies are. But, with the MonsterVerse and the Hollow Earth 🌎, it's a little bit easier to detach from reality and just view as fantasy, whereas the ancient astronaut stuff in these Transformers movies isn't since it does in involve actual history, and involve actual people who really existed. And it isn't likely going to reaffirm or influence anyone beliefs about the world or the universe.
No one actually believes that the Earth 🌎 is hollow. You're more likely to see someone believe the Earth 🌎 is flat than you are to see someone believe that the Earth 🌎 is hollow. While, there are people out there who do believe that aliens 👽 landed on Earth 🌍 thousands of years ago, and have influenced the development of human civilization, and have either had a hand in or were singlehandedly responsible for all of the humanity's greatest achievements, including the Pyramids. Some even believe that aliens 👽 created humanity, like we humans aren't the product of natural selection or even of a god or gods, but of genetic engineering 🧬 by extraterrestrials 👽. There are people out there who actually believe that stuff. My grandparents kind of sort of bought into that kind of stuff because they used to watch Ancient Aliens a lot on the History Channel, and while they do believe in God, to me, the ancient astronaut theory kind of felt like it was a theory/hypothesis for people who don't want to believe in God.
Like, it's for people who don't believe in God, but still want to believe in something, who want to believe in a higher power, but want something that's based a little bit in science and want to find scientific explanations for things that happen in the Bible or the Quran or Hindu texts 🕉️ or Buddhist texts ☸️. They take the biblical stories literally, and think they actually happened, but didn't involve gods, angels, or demons, but involved aliens 👽 instead. Or they think things in Greek mythology, or Roman mythology, or Ancient Egyptian mythology, or Sumerian mythology, or Aztec mythology actually happened and were real, but involved aliens 👽 instead of gods. It's for those kind of people. For those people who want all the stuff in the Bible to be true, but want it to be aliens 👽 since that to them is more believable than gods, or angels, or demons. I mean, it kind of is, but not really that much more believable. It's still pretty unbelievable.
I used to buy into this kind of stuff too, especially when I was all into aliens 👽 and UFOs 🛸, but I don't believe in it anymore, seeing it for what it really is. A crackpot theory dreamt up by crackpots, and also kind of racist…maybe? Like, it's racist because you're saying that these ancient people (these brown people in most instances) weren't capable of building these amazing monuments on their own, and had to have help from aliens 👽 or aliens 👽 did all for them. It's kind of crazy how low ancient astronaut theory think of ancient humans and their capacity to build and create, and how low they think of humans as a whole. We have no control or agency over our lives or the trajectory of our civilization, and we had to have help from aliens 👽 or we had to have aliens 👽 do it all for us. That's kind of offensive in a way.
I will say that the only movies in the franchise that kind of get away with this sort of thing of Transformers being Earth 🌎 for longer than we previously thought or being directly involved in a famous historical event is the first one and the third one. They didn't stretch it too far to where it was difficult to suspend your disbelief. And to be fair to this movie, and the people who made it, the behind-the-scenes documentary, none of the writers say that Ancient Aliens or the ancient astronaut theory had any influence on their decision to set the movie in Egypt 🇪🇬 and Jordan 🇯🇴, and tie the story to ancient history. The reason they gave for why they made that choice is that they felt the gravitas of the Transformers lore matched that of ancient history, and they wanted to show that by associating the two.
If that's the case, then why even tie the Transformers into ancient history? Why have them be involved in the Pyramids or Petra? Why not have them land in Egypt 🇪🇬 and have their fight there? If all you desire was to show the gravitas of the Transformers lore, then having them fight next to the Pyramids would be enough to convey that. But, I don't know, I wasn't there in the writer's room. Speaking of the writer's room, one thing that struck me about rewatching the behind-the-scenes stuff again is that they talk about how they didn't have a story in mind for the sequel, and didn't know where to go after the first one, and they had to scramble to come up with a story.
That tells me that they didn't plan to make sequels originally when they made the first one, and the sequels were a last minute decision after the first one was so successful. It wasn't one of those cases where they always had sequels in mind while making the first one, planned accordingly. It was more a spur of the moment thing, where it was like, "That movie was successful, let's another one to make more money 🤑." You often hear about how this movie was written during a writer's strike 🪧, and that they started filming without a finished script, and they were making it up as they were going along. While that sort of is apparent in the overall story or overall, it isn't that noticeable in the scene-to-scene scenarios or in the character interactions. Maybe because a lot of the dialogue was improvised (probably), who knows? We may never know completely what went down during the making of Revenge of the Fallen.
There is one funny anecdote or story that came from this movie in the behind-the-scenes stuff. Given that the second half of this movie is set in North Africa and the Middle East, in Egypt 🇪🇬 and Jordan 🇯🇴, they had do quite a bit of location shooting. That means getting permission of the governments of these countries to film in these ancient sites, some of which are tourist attractions. Well, it turns out that the only reason they got permission to shoot in Jordan 🇯🇴 in Petra was that the king of Jordan 🇯🇴, Abdullah II was a fan of the first movie. It was because he liked their movie that he allowed them to film parts of the sequel in his country.
They even got a Jordanian military 🇯🇴 escort to fly them to Petra, like they flew there to that location in a Jordanian military helicopter 🇯🇴, a Black Hawk since Jordan 🇯🇴 uses Black Hawk helicopters. And I believe one of the helicopters was flown by the Jordanian crown prince 🇯🇴, Hussein. So, there is a distinct possibility that if the Jordanian king 🇯🇴 didn't like the first Transformers, he wouldn't have allowed them to film in the country. However, Michael Bay did erroneously say that this movie, Revenge of the Fallen was the first movie to shot at Petra. But, that's not actually true. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation also filmed in Jordan 🇯🇴, Petra, at the Ed-Deir site 12 years before Revenge of the Fallen did.
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These are my thoughts on the 2009 sci-fi action film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, directed by Michael Bay, written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Ehren Kruger, and starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Ramon Rodriguez, Isabel Lucas, John Benjamin Hickery, Kevin Dunn, and Julie White. The movie is a sequel to the 2007 movie, Transformers, and is widely considered to be inferior to that film. In fact, just saying that might be an understatement because this movie was HATED when it was initially released back in 2009. People were not only calling it one of the worst movies of the year, but also one of the worst movies of all time. Even the filmmakers themselves didn’t seem to like it, as everyone from Michael Bay to some of the cast members like Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox bad mouthed it.
A lot of the film’s problems have been attributed to the 2007-2008 Writers’ Strike 🪧, which had huge ripple effects throughout all of Hollywood and negatively impacted many productions, both film and TV. Just like the current Writer and Actors’ Strike 🪧 is having now. So, they started filming without a finished or any script at all really, and everything was mostly being made up on the spot as it went along. That explains why the movie’s plot comes across as messy and all over the place.
One of the main things that Shia LaBeouf criticized about the movie in one of his press interviews for Transformers: Dark of the Moon was that the geography was all over the place. First, you’re in China 🇨🇳, then you’re in the US 🇺🇸, then you’re in Mexico 🇲🇽, then you’re back in the US 🇺🇸, then you’re in Egypt 🇪🇬, then you’re in Jordan 🇯🇴, and then you’re back in Egypt 🇪🇬 again. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know who’s fighting who and why, and you don’t know what the stakes are, or why should care about anything.
Certainly the plot is convoluted and doesn’t really make that much sense. First, you have Sam Witwicky getting visions from the Allspark fragment he had in his jacket, which he called the "Cube Sliver," seeing symbols that pertain to the location of the Matrix of Leadership and the Sun Harvester, a powerful machine capable of harvesting Energon from stars. It does it by either sucking the stars dry, or blowing them up, leaving that star system without a star. The original Primes (the same lineage that Optimus Prime is apart of) had a rule that they would only harvest Energon from stars in systems that didn’t have planets with life on them. Destroying a star in a system with planets with life on them was strictly forbidden, and one of the Primes tried to violate this rule by targeting the Sun ☀️, which no doubt would have wiped out all life on Earth 🌍. The Prime that tried to do this was then forever known as the Fallen.
Then you have the Decepticons stealing the other Allspark fragment called the “Shard” to revive Megatron, who’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Then, you have Megatron being revived, and going back to a derelict Decepticon ship that’s on one of the moons of Saturn 🪐. There are Decepticon hatchlings on the ship that are dying because they’re low on Energon. The Fallen turns out to be the “father” of the Decepticons (the very first one), and is Megatron’s master. He reveals that the only way they can get more Energon to supply to the hatchlings, and “save” the Cybertronian race is to activate the Sun Harvester on Earth 🌍, and the only way to find it and find the Matrix of the Leadership (the device that’s necessary to activate the Sun Harvester) is to retrieve the information that’s in Sam’s head. While the Fallen talks about wanting to save the Cybertronian race, his real motive for wanting to destroy the Sun ☀️ with the Sun Harvester is to get revenge on the other 12 original Primes, who he feels betrayed by. Destroying the world that they fought so hard to protect is the perfect way to do that in his eyes.
Then, Optimus Prime gets killed by Megatron during a battle to capture Sam. Then the Decepticons attack Earth 🌎, and threaten to destroy humanity unless Sam is turned over to them. Then, Sam and the gang meet back up with Simmons to find out what’s going on, and why he keeps seeing Cybertronian symbols in his head. Then, Simmons reveals that Transformers have been on Earth 🌍 far longer than anyone had realized, and had met humans long before the events of the first movie.
Then, they all go the Smithsonian to revive a dead Transformer named Jetfire, who knows what’s going on with the Fallen and the symbols in Sam’s head, and who turns out to be a Decepticon who switched sides to the Autobots. He teleports them all to Egypt 🇪🇬 where he reveals that everything is over this device called the Matrix of Leadership which is the only thing that can activate the Sun Harvester, and also revive Optimus. And they have to revive Optimus, and prevent the Decepticons from getting their hands on the Matrix because if they do, they'll use it to activate the Sun Harvester and destroy the Sun ☀️, causing a mass extinction the likes of which has never been seen before. Nearly all life on Earth 🌍 that relies on photosynthesis or relies on life forms that rely on photosynthesis would be wiped if there was no more Sun ☀️. That includes us humans. We'd all go extinct without the Sun ☀️.
But, the life that lives deep at the bottom of the ocean, where sunlight ☀️ can't penetrate and can't reach, and photosynthesis is irrelevant and unnecessary, they'd be alright. They'd survive this particular apocalypse, being completely unaffected by it. They search all over Egypt 🇪🇬 for the location of the Matrix until they ultimately find it in Jordan 🇯🇴. Then, they go back to Egypt 🇪🇬 to face the Decepticons in one final battle near the Pyramids of Giza. Then, Optimus is revived, is given an upgrade thanks to Jetfire sacrificing himself and giving him his parts, and he kills the Fallen and cripples Megatron; blowing off a huge chunk of his face, shooting him in the chest, and chopping one of his arms off.
The plot of the movie is super complicated, and a lot of has to do with the amount of mcguffins that are in the movie. First, there’s the Allspark fragments, one of which implants some information inside of Sam’s mind, so Sam’s a mcguffin too, and then you have the Matrix of Leadership, which is the ultimate mcguffin of the movie. Just as Cody of PointlessHub said, “Sam is a mcguffin to find a mcguffin, thanks to another mcguffin.” He also criticized how the movie’s built around the mystery surrounding the secret history of Transformers on Earth 🌍 during ancient times, and the mystery surrounding the Fallen and the Matrix, and yet, the answer to that mystery is answered within the opening prologue.
There’s also other writing problems like how when the Decepticons go down into that abyss to revive Megatron, they kill one of their own to scrap them for parts to use to repair Megatron’s broken body. But, when Megatron’s revived, the people on the submarine say there are 6 contacts coming up. But, one of the Constructicons is dead, they killed him to repair Megatron. So, it should still be 5 contacts coming up. And there’s also the issue of the Constructicons being clones with two of each one, like they all combine together to form Devastator, but are also still out there on the battlefield fighting the Autobots and NEST at the same time? Like, what?
There’s a lot of criticism towards the movie’s over reliance on sex jokes and even drug use. They have three different instances of humping throughout the movie, and a lot of dick and ball jokes. There’s a joke about pot brownies. And there’s also technical issues like how the movie not only reuses shots from the first movie, but also reuses shots from earlier on in the movie. Like, they reuse the same shot of Soundwave twice, and they reuse a shot of Optimus after he’s been revived twice (they just flipped it around).
There’s also the controversy surrounding the two Autobot characters, Skids and Mudflap (who are twins), and whether or not they were racist caricatures or not. But, I’m not going to get any of that because this description is already long enough. Even though was hated when it came out, even long after, I didn’t hate it. In fact, unlike other fans of the 2007 Transformers movie, I wasn’t disappointed by this movie at all when I saw it in theaters. I loved it 😍. Most of the people I knew in my daily life loved it 😍 as well. This movie had more robots, had more action, and had more jokes (a lot of which I found funny and still find funny to this day 😄), and I just ate it up.
Of course, looking back on it as an adult, it does have a ton of problems. There’s plot holes all over the place, there’s too much crass and sexual humor, and it’s way too long. But, I can still enjoy this movie as a guilty pleasure somewhat. There’s still some awesome action sequences. I really like the Shanghai battle at the beginning, I thought it was a great way to open the movie. I really like the forest battle 🌲, which is the one part of the movie that most people agree was well done.
And I really liked all the stuff with Devastator, like the combining/transformation sequence for him was beyond awesome, and stuff he did was really cool. Like, Devastator was just really impressive on a visual effects level because the effects artists at ILM crashed their computers several times trying to render him. He was so big, detailed, and intricate that he caused their computers to crash. It’s kind of a miracle that they were able to even get him done for the movie, even though I don’t actually believe in miracles. I also liked how the movie centered mostly around the Decepticons, whereas the first movie kind of mostly centered around the Autobots. The first one was the Autobots’ movie (hence why their logo was used in the trailers for that movie), and this one was the Decepticons’ movie (hence why their logo was used in the trailers for this movie).
I don’t even mind the Egyptian and Jordanian setting 🇪🇬🇯🇴, even if it means the plot kind of veers into Ancient Aliens 👽 territory a bit, and the final battle takes place in a dry drab desert, and looks a bit too much like the Scorponok battle in the first movie. They were shot in the same location, White Sands Missile Range; yes, the battle scenes in both this movie and Transformers (2007) were not actually shot in Egypt 🇪🇬 or Qatar 🇶🇦, but in my own state of New Mexico, USA 🇺🇸; they did actually shoot in Egypt 🇪🇬 for some scenes just to be clear, like all the Pyramid stuff, but none of the battle scenes were shot there. I think they even used the same set that for the final battle that they did for the Scorponok battle, they look that similar. And they reused footage from that battle too in the final battle of this movie.
There some really interesting and cool concepts in this movie, like I like the idea of NEST, this NATO-style military alliance between the humans and the Autobots that exists to hunt down the last remaining Decepticons on Earth 🌎, and defend the Earth 🌎 from further Decepticon incursions. It makes perfect sense why such an alliance exists, given the events of the first movie. I really liked the idea of Alice and the Pretenders, the idea of Transformers turning into humans, like that’s a really cool and scary idea.
Her American accent 🇺🇸 was really good in this movie, like you can’t even tell that she’s Australian 🇦🇺. She sounds like she’s from California, which is where the first half of the movie takes place; at least Sam’s portion of it. So far, this is the only time a Pretender has ever appeared in a live action Transformers film. They’ve done a lot with them in the comics, and in one of the animated series, but not much in the live action movies. Which is a shame because the Pretenders are a really cool concept.
The idea of having Transformers that could transform into organic beings is a really awesome idea with lots of potential. It would’ve been a perfect way to set up the Maximals, but Transformers: Rise of the Beasts went about introducing and portraying the Maximals in a much different way. In the tie-in comic for Revenge of the Fallen, they explain that Alice’s human form came from her scanning an animatronic of Alice from Alice in Wonderland at an amusement park, which I think is pretty weak.
How could she transform into a completely lifelike human that’s indistinguishable from a real human from scanning an animatronic? It doesn’t make any sense. It would’ve made a lot more sense if she scanned an actual person, like an actual human woman ♀︎. Or to truly set her apart from a normal Transformer, maybe she kills a human, and then licks their blood 🩸 to get a sample of their DNA 🧬 and she’s able to transform into that person. Kind of like what the T-X in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines to gather DNA samples 🧬 to locate her targets. Speaking of the T-X, that’s the closest thing I could compare this version of the Pretenders to. Alice is very T-X like, only she utilizes seduction 😍 way more than the T-X did.)
Even if it could argued that it was just an attempt to copy Terminator since Terminator Salvation came out the exact year as this movie, and Michael Bay and McG were having a dick measuring context on which of their robot movies was better. Like, “My robots are bigger than yours!” There’s even supposedly a little easter egg in this movie where one of the Decepticons had T-1000 (the name of the main villain Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) written on its body as a subtle dig at Terminator Salvation, and its director, McG. But, I could never find it, probably because all the Decepticons are all grey and black, and a complete indistinguishable mess of computer polygons.
But anyway, putting the Transformers/Terminator and Michael Bay/McG feud of 2009 aside, it’s a shame that they never did anything else with the Pretenders in this series. It’s such a promising idea, and yet, they never did anything with it except for this one movie, and this one subplot involving this one character, Alice. Part of Alice’s purpose in the movie was to increase the overall sexual energy and horniness of the movie; something that this movie has been criticized for repeatedly. They could bring back the Pretenders again in the reboot series, but I can’t really see the Pretenders working in that reboot series, at least the way that Alice was presented here. The Pretenders would have to be completely reimagined from their Bayverse counterpart.
On top of that, they’re the only Autobots that actually get killed off in this movie, and don’t get resurrected like Optimus did. Of all the Autobots they could’ve killed in this movie, they kill the girl ones ♀︎. So yeah, I’m glad we got a more G1-accurate version of her in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Even if her personality in that movie was a bit close to the Transformers: Prime version of her, but I’m okay with that because that was one of the better versions of Arcee.
One detail that I like about her design in the movie is that she has feet, like she can actually walk. But, she can change her feet into wheels from her motorcycle form 🏍️, and use them like roller skates; kind of like Sideswipe in Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Unlike her design in Revenge of the Fallen where she just had wheels and no feet at all. But, like in Revenge of the Fallen, she still turns into a motorcycle 🏍️. It seems like every modern interpretation of Arcee has her transform into a motorcycle 🏍️, even in the cartoons. I don’t even think she’s transformed into a car 🚗 since G1.)
And I even liked the Fallen, and his design, which a lot of people have unfavorable compared to the robots in Bionicle. An ancient Prime who betrayed his brethren to pursue his own plans of genocide and interstellar conquest, fought a war against them, and lost. And then formed the Decepticons, and now wants revenge for what the other Primes did to him by destroying the planet they fought tooth and nail to protect. That sounds interesting, that has potential. It’s just that not all of these ideas were executed all that well, in fact, a lot of the good ideas in this movie were executed poorly. And that unfortunately includes the Fallen, who comes across as an underwhelming villain, despite his awesome design and his cool voice (provided by Tony Todd, Candyman himself).
To be honest, when I first saw the title of the movie, Revenge of the Fallen, I thought that it referred to all of the dead Decepticons from the first movie. Like, I initially thought that the movie was going to be about all of the Decepticons that died in the first movie being revived, and then getting their revenge on the Autobots. The movie probably would’ve been better if it was about that, rather than it being about a character called the Fallen and involving Egypt 🇪🇬 and the Pyramids.
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Note (Sunday August 6, 2023):
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The Constructicons, in case you didn’t know, are a special team of Decepticons. As you can probably guess, they specialize in transforming into construction vehicles and equipment like tractors 🚜, bulldozers, cranes 🏗️, excavators, scrapers, cement trucks, loaders, you get the idea. They’re also Combiners, meaning that they can all combine their bodies together to form one bigger robot, in their case, Devastator; kind of like Voltron from Voltron or the Megazord from Power Rangers. The issue in the film is that there seemed to be two of each of Constructicon. Like one set of Constructicons went into that quarry and formed Devastator, while another set of Constructicons stayed in the final battle in Giza, Egypt 🇪🇬 fighting the Autobots and NEST. That’s why I say that the Constructicons are clones, or that they have clones of themselves.
And there’s that infamous scene that I mentioned in the original description where the Constructicons are sent by Soundwave to dive down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Laurentian Abyss, to resurrect Megatron with the Allspark Shard. The guys in that submarine say that there are 5 enemy contacts diving down. The little Decepticon doctor 🩺, Scalpel tells the Constructicons to kill one of their own to use their parts to repair Megatron before he stab him with the Shard. Then Mixmaster and Long Haul kill Scrapmetal, rip his body apart, and give his parts to Megatron. Then Scalpel sticks Megatron with the Shard, and revives him.
So, you would think that given that the Constructicons are short one, and Megatron’s alive, there would still be 5 contacts going up as there were going down. But no, the moment Megatron is brought back to life, and swims back up to the surface, the guys on the submarine say that there are 6 contacts coming up. How can that be if Scrapmetal died? It should still be 5 contacts. To make things even more confusing, there are Decepticons that aren’t Constructicons that also turn into construction equipment as was the case with Demolisher, the Decepticon from the Shanghai battle at the beginning. He wasn’t a Constructicon, he was just a regular Decepticon that just happened to turned into an excavator. And there’s a Constructicon that looks exactly like him called Scavenger. 😵💫
It’s like Michael Bay and his writers (Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Ehren Kruger) put no thought into any of this 😑. It’s like they wanted the Constructicons to form Devastator because who wouldn’t? Devastator’s awesome, and he’s the main reason why would even include the Constructicons in a Transformers story at all. But, they also wanted the Constructicons to be apart of the main final battle in Giza, and also wanted a Decepticon at the beginning of the movie to turn into a piece of heavy construction equipment without him being a Constructicon, even though he has the same exact body shape, body type, and body plan as a Constructicon who turns into a similar piece of construction equipment. So, they did all of those things without any regard to continuity, names, or character models. This is what you get when you start working on a movie without a finished script, or any script at all. They started pre-production and production on this movie with no script, according to Shia LaBeouf, and other people who worked on this film.
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Note (Monday August 14, 2023):
🎣
There’s something else I would like to mention about this film, that I couldn’t find a place for it anywhere else, so I’m just doing to write it here. This was the last Transformers movie to be co-produced and distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. Every Transformers movie after this, including the reboot ones, would be solely produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Now, in case, you didn’t know, DreamWorks was co-founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, hence why it used have those SKG initials below the logo and after the DreamWorks name in the credits of certain movies.
It was meant to be an independent film production and distribution company, where Spielberg and Katzenberg could make whatever kind of projects they wanted. That’s how we got things like Saving Private Ryan and DreamWorks Animation. Many of Spielberg’s other movies throughout the 2000s were also produced through DreamWorks such as Catch Me if You Can, Minority Report, The Terminal, and War of the Worlds (2005).
So, when Spielberg came onto Transformers, he did it through DreamWorks. DreamWorks produced the film, as well as distribute the film along with Paramount because the two companies had this partnership agreement. They would co-produce and co-distribute movies together, and that’s what they did with Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That’s why, at the beginning of both of those movies, you saw the DreamWorks logo as well as the Paramount logo.
You never saw the Hasbro logo curiously enough, even though they were based on a Hasbro property, and Hasbro did have a degree of involvement in the production of those movies, and all of the other Transformers movies after those ones. They showed the Hasbro logo in the G.I. Joe movies, but none of the Transformers movies, I don’t know why 🤷♂️. Anyway, this is also why in the credits of both movies, it said, “DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures Present,” as oppose to the later entries where it just said, “Paramount Pictures Presents.”
But, in 2008, DreamWorks officially ended their partnership with Paramount, meaning that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was one of the last movies to be co-produced and co-distributed by both companies. But, Paramount (and its parent company at the time, Viacom) got to keep the distribution rights to all of the movies they made under their partnership, including Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. DreamWorks then entered another agreement, this time with Disney, who distributed many of their films through their Touchstone Pictures label, until 2016; man I miss Touchstone 😞. Soon after, DreamWorks was officially bought out by Universal Pictures, and now the entire company is owned by Universal, and all of their films are distributed by Universal.
This even includes DreamWorks Animation, which still had their films distributed by Paramount, even after the partnership deal ended with DreamWorks Pictures in 2008, until 2012 when Paramount stopped distributing DreamWorks Animation movies and Twentieth Century Fox took up that mantle. They would distribute many of their movies until 2017 when the Disney merger was finalized, and Twentieth Century Fox became Twentieth Century Studios. Then, DreamWorks Animation was folded into DreamWorks Pictures at Universal, and now Universal distributes all of DreamWorks Animation’s movies.
But, anyway, back to Transformers. Even though DreamWorks’s involvement in the Transformers film franchise ended after Revenge of the Fallen, Steven Spielberg still remained on as an executive producer. Even he stayed on as executive producer on the reboot movies, Bumblebee 🐝 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. I guess once you’re on the Transformers franchise, you never leave. Not even Michael Bay apparently. He’s no longer in the director’s chair, and is now in the producer’s chair as he was one of the many producers on Rise of the Beasts; that movie has way too many producers.
And to think, Bay wouldn’t still be involved in the Transformers franchise at all even after directing the disastrous Transformers: The Last Knight, if he hadn’t reconsidered directing Transformers (2007) and still just said “No.” I mean, Stephen Sommers didn’t remain involved in the G.I. Joe franchise after G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, he just completely left, he’s free. All the more ironic when you consider that Transformers (2007) was originally supposed to be a G.I. Joe movie before they decide to make a Transformers movie instead after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq 🇺🇸🇮🇶 happened, and Hasbro felt that doing a G.I. Joe movie in the immediate wake of that invasion would be in poor taste.
But, apparently not in completely poor taste to make one after the success of Transformers (2007), when the Iraq War 🇮🇶 was still going on, and had already morphed into a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. If it had remained a G.I. Joe movie as originally planned, Bay would’ve been pretty well suited for it, given how much he likes military stuff; I mean, he put all kinds of military stuff in his Transformers movies, and used the conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons as a metaphor or an allegory for the War on Terror; I’m not even kidding with that last part, that’s kind of what he did; he inserted his own politics into the movies, and that had tremendous effects in how the Autobots and the Decepticons were portrayed, especially Optimus Prime; a kind-hearted, wise, diplomatic leader turned into a stone cold, and later, vengeful killer who murders his enemies with extreme prejudice and willingly executes prisoners because diplomacy and negotiation and humane treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) are for pussies; the only answer is violence and death.
He probably would’ve been better suited to make a G.I. Joe movie than a Transformers movie, and he probably would’ve been better suited to make a G.I. Joe movie than Steve was. I mean, as cool as it was to have the director of The Mummy (1999) directing a G.I. Joe movie, and to see Brendan Fraser, Arnold Vosloo, and Kevin J. O’Connor (three actors from The Mummy), in retrospect, from the results we got, he probably wasn’t the right guy for the job; even if I do get some entertainment value from The Rise of Cobra, and don’t think it’s as bad as it’s often made out to be.
Anyway, given how Rise of the Beasts turned out, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Michael Bay really didn’t any creative control or input in that movie whatsoever. I mean, Lorenzo di Bonaventura exerted more creative control over that movie than Bay did, and he didn’t really have bunch creative involvement either. The director, Steve Caple Jr. and the writers, Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber, and Jon Hoeber, kind of just did their own thing, and didn’t really listen to any of the input that di Bonaventura may have given them. But, they all still had to toe the line when it came time to promote the film.
And this brings back around to Steven Spielberg and his involvement in these movies. If you know anything about executive producers, you’ll know that Spielberg really didn’t have any involvement in the production of these Transformers movies. He mostly just oversaw everything, which is mostly what an executive producer does. The most involvement or input he had was on the 2007 movie was that he suggested that the movie be a more E.T.-esque story about “a boy ♂︎ and his car,” and use that as the human anchor for the story ⚓️.
That’s the why the first movie from 2007 feels the most Spielbergian out of all of them; Spielberg with Bay stylistic flourishes, or Spielberg meets Bayhem. Bumblebee 🐝 was very much the same, only it was a “girl ♀︎ and her car,” and it was even more like E.T. than Transformers (2007) was, since it actually took place in the 1980s, whereas Transformers (2007) was set in the then present day of 2007; Bumblebee 🐝 was kind of like Stranger Things meets Transformers because of the 80s setting, and all the in-your-face 80s references.
Oh, and Spielberg also may or may not have played a hand in getting Megan Fox fired on Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Michael Bay blamed him for the whole affair, but I’m not entirely sure if we should take Bay’s word for it. I mean, I could see Spielberg being the one that was pissed off 😡 about Megan Fox’s “Hitler” comment, and got her fired, since he’s Jewish ✡️, and likely doesn’t take comments about Hitler or the Nazis lightly; especially since he’s a huge World War II buff.
And also, Megan Fox would end up working on another Michael Bay produced project, the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies from 2014 and 2016; but Michael Bay didn’t direct those, he was just the producer, or one of the producers rather; what is it with these movies and having a shit ton of producers? But, it could easily be that Bay was the one was pissed 🤬 about what Megan Fox said about him, and fired her, and replaced her with a Victoria’s Secret model out of sheer pettiness. And he just blamed it on Spielberg because he’s the big producer, and he didn’t want to look like a little bitch.
He does a lot of things out of pettiness. Like, he gave TJ Miller’s character, Lucas a particularly gruesome death in Transformers: Age of Extinction because apparently TJ Miller was kind of an ass, and was obnoxious and a pain to work with. He replaced Hugo Weaving with Frank Welker as the voice of Galvatron and then Megatron in Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight because Hugo Weaving complained about the voice recording sessions, and how Michael Bay wasn’t there, and how the whole experience of doing voice acting for these movies was unfulfilling and kind of empty.
And I’m sure Shia LaBeouf bad mouthing Transformers on multiple occasions after the release of Dark of the Moon played a hand in him getting replaced with Mark Wahlberg in Age of Extinction and The Last Knight. As for Megan Fox, all I can say is at least he didn’t replace her with a pornstar. And I’m not surprised to hear that TJ Miller was an asshole on set, and no body really liked him, because he just seems like a really terrible person, and I’m not just saying that because of the sexual assault allegations against him. So, I’m not sure what to believe, or who’s really to blame for why Megan Fox was removed from Dark of the Moon, and replaced with Rosie Huntington-Whitley. Right now, it’s kind of a he said/he said kind of situation.
Oh, and one more thing ☝️, it’s got nothing to do Spielberg or DreamWorks, but Alex Kurtzman. During the lead-up to Revenge of the Fallen, apparently there was talk about changing the title of Transformers (2007), and adding a sub title to it. But, that idea was scrapped, and the title was just kept Transformers. But, Alex Kurtzman was asked in an interview what he would’ve made the sub title of the 2007 movie if he did one, and he said, More Than Meets the Eye. So, it would’ve been, Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. I actually like that. But, ultimately, I am glad they just kept the title as just Transformers. And since I mentioned The Mummy, I think it bares mentioning that Alex Kurtzman directed the 2017 Mummy movie, the one that starred Tom Cruise, and was supposed to launch the Dark Universe, after Dracula Untold floundered. It was his directorial debut, as he had only ever been a screenwriter before that.
Even though, some people think that movie was ghost directed by Tom Cruise himself, and Alex Kurtzman had very little creative control over the movie because of how much influence Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie had over the movie. Not sure if I believe Tom Cruise ghost directed the movie, but it is very obvious that him and Christopher McQuarrie exerted a lot of control over the movie’s story and overall direction, because this Mummy movie was basically turned into the Tom Cruise show. They turned a Mummy movie meant to launch a Universal Monsters cinematic universe into a star vehicle for Tom Cruise; something that we can see, in retrospect, was a really bad idea.
The fact that he was directing The Mummy (2017) might partially explain why he didn’t return to write Transformers: The Last Knight, not he returned to write Dark of the Moon or Age of Extinction either. Those ones were exclusively written by Ehren Kruger, the third wheel they brought onto Revenge of the Fallen just to try to get the script done before the Writers Strike 🪧. Neither Alex Kurtzman or Roberto Orci returned to the franchise after Revenge of the Fallen. Maybe, the bad experience writing that movie drove them away from it after that.
But, The Last Knight from what I can tell, had a lot of references to the 2007 Transformers movie, and even some references to Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, as a way of bringing the series full circle since this was going to be Michael Bay’s last Transformers movie. So, you’d think they’d try to bring back Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci back, since they were the guys that started it all. But no, they didn’t do that. They didn’t even bring back Ehren Kruger, the guy who took Alex and Bob’s place as the main writer of the Transformers movie. I guess that Romeo & Juliet law scene in Age of Extinction was bad enough to get Ehren Kruger booted from the franchise.
And I guess, if you’re Alex Kurtzman, and you had to choose between directing a Mummy movie or writing another Transformers movie, the choice is obvious. So, he left The Last Knight to Akiva Goldsman, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Ken Nolan (no relation to Christopher Nolan). And while The Mummy (2017) ended up being a complete disaster that everyone hated, and the Dark Universe crashed and burned before it even really took off, it’s safe to say Alex Kurtzman came out of it better than he would have if he had worked on The Last Knight.
I mean, The Mummy (2017) was bad, but The Last Knight was a straight up dumpster fire 🔥, and that tried to set a cinematic universe too, but failed. 2017 wasn’t a great year for movies, was it? Plus, Alex Kurtzman has all those Star Trek shows to keep him busy. He’s a huge Star Trek fan as well as being a Transformers fan. Speaking of things that Alex Kurtzman did instead of Transformers, he wrote The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which came out the same year as Age of Extinction. To top it off, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was another movie that tried to set up a cinematic universe, but failed so terribly that cinematic universe didn’t get off the ground.
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Note (Saturday August 19, 2023):
🦾
T-600s also operate these huge miniguns on their right arm, which also make them easy to spot. I mean, how are you going to miss a big lumbering hunk of metal wrapped in rubber skin that’s probably peeling off or has burnt off, and is wielding a gigantic machine gun that fires hundreds of rounds a second, something that just rains bullets? But anyway, I really like this poster a lot. There’s another version of this poster with Christian Bale and Sam Worthington posing in front of the T-600 as their characters, John Connor and Marcus Wright, but I don’t like that version, I like this version better with just the robot.)
Hey, you know how I mentioned that Terminator Salvation was released the same year as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Michael Bay and McG had a dick measuring contest with each other over the fact that they both had robot movies coming out that year, and wanted to one up each other and prove which of their movies was better? Well, I watched a reaction video to Terminator Salvation on YouTube (it was by the White Noise Reacts channel), and I watched it until the end. And I was thinking about it, and I realized that there is another similarity between these two movies that no body else probably realized. Both movies end with someone donating their heart 🫀 save the main hero’s life. In Terminator Salvation, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington’s character in that movie) gave his heart 🫀 to John Connor (who was played by Christian Bale in that movie) because Connor was dying after having been stabbed in the chest by the T-800 at the Skynet factory.
In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Jetfire rips out his spark, which is essentially a Transformer’s heart 🫀, to give his parts to Optimus Prime, so that he can be powerful enough to stop the Fallen. The Autobot, Jolt ⚡️ then transfers Jetfire’s parts over Optimus, and Optimus becomes a souped up swol version of himself that can now fly. Like, literally Jetfire’s entire body gets grafted onto Optimus’s body, and Optimus uses Jetfire’s jet parts as a jetpack to fly. When you think of it that way, it’s kind of gruesome. Like if we about that in human terms, that would be like someone ripping out their own heart 🫀, killing themselves, and then someone grafts their entire dead corpse, all of their flesh and bones, onto you, and you wear it like a suit of armor 😟; you’d look like that River God guy from that Neill Blomkamp directed short, Firebase 🔥; but because it’s robots, it’s a little bit less gross 🤮.
I know, it’s not exactly the same, but it is striking how similar the endings to these movies are. And the ending in Terminator Salvation was a rewrite. The script got leaked online, people didn’t like the original ending that was written down, so they had to change it, and that’s how we got the ending we got with Marcus giving his heart 🫀 to John. So, it’s kind of a funny coincidence that these movies both end with someone ripping out their hearts 🫀, and giving their lives to save the main hero’s life. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just took it a step further (not even a step further, several steps further) by having Jetfire donating his entire body to save Optimus, and give him an upgrade. They don’t even use his spark for anything, they just leave it lying on the ground.
All this time, I thought that they actually used his spark to transfer his parts over to Optimus. That’s why they needed Jolt ⚡️, I thought, because they needed him to use his electricity powers ⚡️ to harness the Energon from Jetfire’s spark to transfer his parts over to Optimus; because the spark is tied to a Transformer’s body, and they’re needed to do anything like transfer body parts from one Transformer to another, I thought. But, I rewatched that scene again recently, and no, they never use his spark for anything, and while Jolt ⚡️ does uses his electric powers ⚡️ to transfer Jetfire’s parts over to Optimus, the spark is never a factor in transferring the parts. He just hooks up some jumper cables to Optimus and Jetfire’s corpse, shoots them electricity ⚡️ into it, and Jetfire’s body just magically breaks down, and all the parts fly onto Optimus’s body. The way I originally thought it happened sounds way more interesting and has a bit more logic to it.
In the movie, it just happens. Ratchet just says “Jolt ⚡️, electrify ⚡️. Transplant those afterburners,” and then Jolt ⚡️ shoots Jetfire’s already rusting up corpse, and all of his parts just magically get transferred onto Optimus’s body, and after receiving this power-up, Optimus just says, “Let’s roll,” and flies over to the Pyramids using Jetfire’s jet engines to fly. And then after he destroys the Sun Harvester, kills the Fallen, and beats the hell out of Megatron (chopping one of his arms off, and shooting him in the face), he just drops Jetfire’s parts down on the ground next to the Sphinx, like they’re no use to him.
Dude, those used to be a part of an old man Transformer, who’s lived for thousands of years, who switched sides from the Decepticons to the Autobots, who helped Sam find the Matrix (you know, the thing that brought you back to life in the first place), and who gave his life and his body so you can defeat the bad guys. And yet, you tossed his parts aside like they were nothing. Like, “Eh, I have no use for these anymore,” and you just discarded them. You’re not very appreciative, Optimus.
Also, when we see Optimus again on the aircraft carrier, he’s fully back to being regular Optimus, all of the Jetfire parts are gone. Where did they go? Did Ratchet and Jolt ⚡️ help him remove them? Also, did Optimus and NEST use those Jetfire parts as a basis for creating the flight tech in Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Optimus’s flight tech in the movie looks a lot like the Jetfire parts, only they don’t look like SR-71 parts anymore, and look fully like alien Cybertronian tech. These are questions that will never be answered because the Bayverse is dead, and the writers didn’t really put that much thought into any of this. They just did it because they thought it would be cool.
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Note (Thursday August 24, 2023):
🇺🇸
There’s a slight correction I have to make on one of my previous notes. Remember in the DreamWorks note I said that none of the live action Transformers movies had the Hasbro logo in front of them? Well, it turns out, that’s only 99.9% true. You see, as it turned out, upon rewatching Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, I discovered that it did have Hasbro logo at the beginning. It is the first live action Transformers movie to have the Hasbro logo at the beginning. None of the Michael Bay Transformers movies had the Hasbro logo at the beginning, neither did Bumblebee 🐝 as far as I remember. But, Rise of the Beasts is the first one. It only took them 16 years to include that. G.I. Joe did it way better they did.
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