My Thoughts on "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"
Note:
This was originally written on Friday August 11, 2023. Just like the reviews for Armageddon ☄️ and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, this was taken from an excerpt from the description I wrote for the explosions compilation video 💥 that I did for this movie. You see, there was this YouTube channel that posted all kinds of compilation videos compiling clips from Michael Bay's filmography, showing all the explosions 💥 in his movies. Because if there's one thing Michael Bay is known for, it's explosions 💥.
You know, Michael Bay's known for explosions 💥, Quentin Tarantino is known for snappy dialogue and blood 🩸 (and also foot fetish shots 🦶), John Woo is known for dual-wielding pistols, slow mo gunfights, and doves 🕊️, Zack Snyder is known for slow mo even more than John Woo is and also director's cuts ("Release the Snyder Cut" became a meme for a reason) among other things, Shane Black is known for Christmas 🎄, and M. Night Shamalyan is known for plot twists. The quote, "What a twist!" quickly became associated with Shamalyan thanks to that Robot Chicken skit, which is where that quote comes from. Every director has their little quirks and things that they always like to include in their movies, and for Michael Bay it's explosions 💥.
There are other Michael Bay-isms that people associate with his work, such as him putting the American flag 🇺🇸 into as many shots as he can (just to show how patriotic he is), but for the most part, they just associate him with movie explosions 💥 because he likes to put a lot of explosions 💥 in his movies, especially these Transformers movies. The first Bad Boys movie (his directorial debut BTW) and Ambulance 🚑 more recently are probably two of his least explosive movies 💥, like they have the least amount of explosions 💥 of any movies in his career.
I apologize for not posting that much this month. Until now, my review of Dragon Wars: D-War 🐉 was the only thing that I had posted throughout the month of May. And that was because I was so preoccupied with doing forward/inverted edits of clips from two of Jet Li's movies in the early 2000s, Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave, as well as a clip from the Jason Statham movie, Crank, and the trailer to and a video compilation of clips from the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Knock Off. I also did a forward/inverted edit of the overview trailer to Princess Peach: Showtime!, a game that I've been wanting to play but can't right now because I don't have the money 💵 for it. I've been stuck playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which is a fun game, but I do want to play a different game. Something that I can kill time with, and take a break from my YouTube time on my laptop 💻.
Since you know, our Internet 🛜 got disconnected, and I'm down to using my Personal Hotspot for my online needs, and I can't watch movies or shows on streaming even though I want to. And there haven't exactly been that many exciting new Blu-Ray releases 💿 that have enticed me and made me want to buy. The Beekeeper 🐝 is the latest movie that I've bought on Blu-Ray 💿. Now, I'm just waiting for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire to come out on Blu-Ray 💿. It's out on digital now, but I don't know if it will be released on physical media. I hope it is, just so that I won't have to have an Internet connection 🛜 just to watch it. That's the big draw back about streaming, you need Internet 🛜 to do it, and if you don't have Internet 🛜, then you're fucked.
But, with physical media, you don't need Wi-Fi 🛜 to watch it. You can just plop it into a player, and then watch the movie. That's why I think physical media should still exist, even in the age of streaming. But, that aside, there's a lot of movies that I'll probably have to wait for them to come out on Blu-Ray 💿 or on streaming to watch them just because I don't have the means to go to see them in the theater. Like, Civil War 🇺🇸, Monkey Man 🇮🇳🐒, Boy Kills World, and probably Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes too. I haven't even seen War for the Planet of the Apes, so maybe that's a good thing. I just hope that I'll at least get to see Bad Boys: Ride or Die in theaters.
But, back to my point, since I have limited Internet access 🛜, and I can't watch streaming, nor do I have any Blu-Rays 💿 that I particularly feel like watching right now, my only option is video games. And I've been stuck playing the same one since I can't buy a new one due to the high cost. I can’t even buy the DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe—which was the main new addition to the game besides the HD remaster that Nintendo made when they ported it to the Switch—because I don’t have the money 💵 for that either. If only video games were cheaper. I'll probably have to wait until Princess Peach: Showtime! drops significantly in price. But by then, Nintendo will probably already start phasing out the Switch since this is supposedly the last year of the Switch before Nintendo unveils their new console. I just had to get a Switch when it was pretty much at the end of its life 😑.
But anyway, I finished all those, and while I do have other videos that I downloaded off of YouTube that I want to do forward/inverted edits of, I'm putting those aside for the time being to post this. Just so that I can have at least one other post for the month of May. I probably won't be seeing any movies in theaters for this month, so I won't be reviewing any new movies for the time being, so this is all I got right now. At least, until I review Knock Off, which I will watch and review at some point. People have uploaded the entire movie on YouTube, meaning that I can watch it and review it. I currently have it saved in my Watch Later list. I won't be reviewing Double Team, the other movie that Jean-Claude Van Damme did with director, Tsui Hark, which actually came one year before Knock Off. But, I will watch it, and I will watch it before I watch Knock Off, and I will tell you how I feel about it in my review for Knock Off and how it compares to that movie.
But, enough about Van Damme movies, let's discuss Transformers: Dark of the Moon for a moment, the reason we're all here right now. It's so funny how this movie has been redeemed in the eyes of so many people. Like, it was panned by critics when it first came out in 2011, so all said it was just as bad as, if not worse than Revenge of the Fallen, and the few who did say it was an improvement, only said that was it was a slight improvement. And most people kind of just agreed with that. The Internet was pretty much against Michael Bay and these Transformers movies he directed for most of the 2010s (the decade that the Millennials utterly dominated), saying that they were some of the worst things to come out of Hollywood, and that Michael Bay "ruined their childhood." Bunch of crybabies 🙄.
But now that the generation that grew up on these movies are adults now and can expect their opinions in a mostly articulate way, this movie has kind of gained a new lease on life. It's been fully redeemed within the pop culture zeitgeist. It's the point where people consider Dark of the Moon to be the second best Michael Bay Transformers movie next to the first one, and to be a satisfying finale to what some have called the "Witwicky trilogy" or the "Witwicky saga." As in, the movies that center around Sam Witwicky and have him as the main protagonist before they switched over to Cade Yeager in Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight.
I also like this movie a lot, and I also agree that it's a mostly satisfying finale to the Sam Witwicky films, the original trilogy. The only thing that's missing is Mikaela. We never truly got a proper conclusion to that relationship. Her and Sam just broke up in-between movies even though they made such a big deal about how much they loved each other in the previous movie. She was supposed to be in this movie, it was largely going to be about the progression of their relationship since the events of Revenge of the Fallen, culminating in Sam proposing to her 💍. But, because of real life drama, Megan Fox was fired and couldn't return to reprise her role as Mikaela Banes.
So, they replaced her with Rosie Huntington-Whitley, a former Victoria's Secret model who Michael Bay knew thanks to his time directing Victoria's Secret commercials. I’ve said this before, but at least he didn’t replace Megan Fox with a pornstar. Being replaced with a Victoria’s Secret model is a little bit less degrading and humiliating than being replaced with a pornstar, that’s for sure. Rosie Huntington-Whitley plays a new character named Carly. She doesn't have a last name, we never find out what her last name is, so she's just Carly.
Sam just fell in love with her 😍 after he saw her at the White House when he was accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President, who was actually Obama. They used the real president at the time. This wasn't one of those movies that used a fictional president, they used a real one. Sam just completely forgot about Mikaela and broke up with her. Or rather, she broke up with him according to Wheelie.
But other than that, Dark of the Moon is a great finale to this trilogy. I felt that way even back then, I first saw this in theaters. They probably should've just ended it here in retrospect. But, the movie made over a billion dollars 💵, they was no way that Paramount was just going to stop, and let this trilogy end. They to make more for more money 🤑. What can you do? Studios are going to do what studios do.
I do appreciate that it's getting the love and praise that it deserves. Even if most of that love and praise is mostly just for the second half of this movie, which is the Battle of Chicago. The entire second half of the movie is just one long battle sequence set in the middle of Chicago, which was taken over by the Decepticons after they "killed" the Autobots. They didn't actually kill them, but they thought they did, and they just moved into the city and occupied it. Turning the Windy City into a literal war zone. Now it really is Chiraq.
Indeed, this is an amazing final battle. Way better than the final battle in Revenge of the Fallen, which was still good, I still liked it, but this is a cut above even that. The fact that none of the live action Transformers movies after this one, including the two reboot movies were able to top this final battle says a lot about how good it truly was. I will say this final battle and this whole movie in general is the closest to feeling like a war movie. None of the Transformers movies before or after felt like war films, but this one does. It really drives home how dire of a situation this is, that the Decepticons came this close 🤏 to winning. I also like that this movie actually has more of a central theme, that theme being betrayal.
This movie is full of supposed good guys turning against their allies and working with the enemy. A lot of double crossing. Obviously, you have Sentinel Prime who betrayed the Autobots to make a deal with Megatron 🤝 to conquer the Earth 🌎 and enslave the human race to rebuild Cybertron. Then you have Patrick Dempsey's character, Dylan Gould, who betrayed all of humanity to work with the Decepticons, and aid them in their plan to conquer Earth 🌎 and enslave humanity. He's one of many Decepticon collaborators, in fact, he's kind of the ring leader of all of them. Even if Megatron ordered all of the other Decepticon collaborators' assassinations without his knowledge. BTW, did you know that Patrick Dempsey was voted "Sexiest Man Alive ♂︎" in People magazine last year in 2023? I guess was bit fitting for Cody to keep calling him Patrick Swayze in his Dark of the Moon review in a funny kind of way.
Speaking of Dark of the Moon, I don't know if anyone has ever brought this up before, but what is the deal with the title? Shouldn't it be Darkside of the Moon since it's about the dark side of the Moon 🌑 or the far side of the Moon 🌑 as astronomers call it? Well yeah, it should, but it isn't. Instead, the title is Dark of the Moon, which doesn't really make that much sense and doesn't sound completely right. The only way sounds right is if you add the Transformers part of the title, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. That's the only way it sounds right. I'm guessing the only reason why it wasn't called Darkside of the Moon is that it was trademarked™® due to the Pink Floyd album, which they do reference in this movie BTW. And they weren't allowed to use that title, so that they go with the slightly awkward sounding Dark of the Moon.
One last thing before I let you read the review, yes I did use the Ukrainian spelling 🇺🇦 for Chernobyl, Chornobyl. I did it to show solidarity with Ukraine 🇺🇦 since they're fighting a war against Russia 🇷🇺. The world is so distracted by Israel-Gaza 🇮🇱🇵🇸 that it seems that they've completely forgotten about Ukraine 🇺🇦, and stopped caring about it. But I for one haven't. I still care about Ukraine 🇺🇦, and I will continue supporting Ukraine 🇺🇦 so that they can defeat the Russians 🇷🇺 once and for all.
The world will be a much better place if Ukraine 🇺🇦 manages to defeat Russia 🇷🇺 and regains most of if not all of its territory from the Russians 🇷🇺. In fact, I think the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian War 🇷🇺🇺🇦 is far more important and consequential than the Israel-Hamas War 🇮🇱. Not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸, just the specific Israel-Hamas War 🇮🇱 in Gaza that everyone and their mom is focused and making a fuse about. The war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 will change the world no matter who wins, whereas the war in Gaza probably won't.
Plus, Chornobyl is a Ukrainian city 🇺🇦, a Ukrainian town 🇺🇦. It belongs to the Ukrainians 🇺🇦, not to the Russians 🇷🇺, as much as the Russians 🇷🇺 like to claim that it belongs to them. It used to belong to them back in the Soviet days ☭, but now it doesn't anymore. And even when the Russians had control over it, and were calling Chernobyl, they squandered their control by causing one of the worst nuclear disasters ☢️ in history. So, no, Chornobyl doesn't deserve to called by its old Russian name, Chernobyl.
It should be called by its proper Ukrainian name 🇺🇦, Chornobyl since the Soviets ☭ ruined the town by causing a nuclear reactor meltdown ☢️ and their Russian successors 🇷🇺 lost the right to call it by the Russian name. I mean, we don't call any other Ukrainian city 🇺🇦 by its Russian name, or use the Russian spelling 🇷🇺. Sure, some people still spell Kyiv, Kiev, and pronounce it Key-Ev, and not the proper K-Eve, but people have started to move past that ever since Russia 🇷🇺 invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦 back in 2022. Just like how they've moved past calling Ukraine 🇺🇦, the Ukraine 🇺🇦 since the invasion happened.
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These are my thoughts on the 2011 sci-fi action film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, directed by Michael Bay, written by Ehren Kruger, and starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whitley, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, Alan Tudyk, Kevin Dunn, and Julie White. This is the third film in the Michael Bay Transformers series (known collectively as “Bayformers” or the “Bayverse”), and is a direct follow-up to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It was originally supposed to be the last live action Transformers movie, at least by Michael Bay. This series was supposed to just be a trilogy, and this movie would’ve finally brought it to a close.
Michael Bay, and everyone else would just move onto other projects, looking back on these films as a fond memory. But, because the movie made so much money 💵 ($1.124 billion 💵 to be exact 🤑), Paramount and Hasbro decided to make more of these. So, they brought Michael Bay back on to direct Transformers: Age of Extinction, the arguably true start of the series’s decline in quality and decline in box office.
Which is a shame because this is actually a really good movie. I’d even go as far to say it’s as good as the first movie, or at least, it’s very close. Michael Bay and his cast and crew all knew that Revenge of the Fallen was a misfire, and could’ve been a whole lot better than it was. So, they decided to rectify all that by making this movie, and boy, did they. There are very few trilogies out there where the second movie is bad, and the third movie is a massive improvement. The story is a lot better than Revenge of the Fallen, the characters are better, the humor is better, and even the action is better. There are some really good action scenes and good jokes in Revenge of the Fallen, but they were kind of few and far between.
But, all the action scenes in this movie are top notch, and never waver for a second, especially all the stuff in Chicago. In fact, the entire Battle of Chicago is amazing. It’s the main reason why a lot of people like this one. It’s easily the best battle in the entire series. Sure beats the final battles in both Revenge of the Fallen and Age of Extinction; I can’t speak on The Last Knight’s final battle because I haven’t seen it. The geography has also been simplified from Revenge of the Fallen. The first half of this movie mostly takes place in Washington DC, with a few detours into Iran 🇮🇷 and Ukraine 🇺🇦 (Chornobyl), and the second half entirely takes place in Chicago. I’m sure Shia was happy about that 👍.
The only disappointing things in the movie are the absence of Megan Fox, and the limited screen time of Shockwave. It’s a shame that we never got to see the conclusion to Sam and Mikaela’s relationship in this movie, and all because Megan Fox called Michael Bay, “Hitler.” Instead, we got Rosie Huntington-Whitley (who used to be a Victoria’s Secret model before becoming an actress) as Carly. And apparently, Carly’s character arc in this movie is basically what Mikaela’s character arc was supposed to be, and she says the lines that Mikaela was supposed to say. I mean, the movie was supposed to end with Sam proposing Mikaela and asking her to marry him 💍. That would’ve been a perfect way to conclude their little love story ❤️. But, no, it was all ruined all because Megan Fox said something that Michael Bay and/or Steven Spielberg didn’t like.
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And Shockwave, while his design is cool, he doesn’t get much to do or say. Apparently, he was originally going to be the main villain of the movie, before they changed it to Sentinel Prime, and made the movie more of a story about betrayal and about people double-crossing one another and switching sides to the enemy team. It would’ve been so cool if Shockwave was the main bad guy of the movie, since he was the one Transformer I was the most excited to see be brought into live action; besides the Dinobots. But hey, at least, Driller was cool. That whole scene where the Driller wraps around that building with Sam and the gang inside, and causes it to snap in half and collapse is amazing.
And then there’s the issue of the original ending of the movie. The original ending of the movie was going to be that Optimus Prime and Megatron team up together to fight and kill Sentinel Prime, just like in the film. Only, it was supposed to be a more drawn out fight between the three Transformers that would’ve ended with Sentinel being killed in combat rather being executed like in the final film. Then Optimus and Megatron would broker a truce, which would see Megatron and the Decepticons ending all hostilities with the Autobots and the humans, and leaving Earth 🌎 to rebuild Cybertron. While the Autobots remain on Earth 🌎, and permanently adopt it as their new home.
This ending was kept in the novelization of the movie 📖 (since it was based off of an earlier draft of the script), but for whatever reason, it was changed in the movie. This ending sounds like it rocked, and I think they should’ve kept it in, so that we wouldn’t have so many people online saying that Optimus is a war criminal for executing both Megatron and Sentinel, even after both were no longer in any condition to fight. Plus, think of how different Age of Extinction and The Last Knight might’ve turned out if the original ending was kept. They probably wouldn’t have been made the same way if it was. The plot of Age of Extinction kind of relies on Megatron being killed at the end of this movie. I mean, he can’t exactly be reincarnated as Galvatron if he wasn’t dead beforehand.
With Megatron being alive, and being back on Cybertron, they would’ve had to come up with a completely different plot for Transformers 4 than the one they ultimately went with. Maybe, the plot could’ve dealt with some Autobots and Decepticons being unsatisfied with the truce, and threatening to break it and restart the war again, while Optimus and Megatron each try (and probably fail) to maintain the peace. Kind of like what The Matrix Online was about; it’s funny because of the Matrix of Leadership 😏; I just kept thinking of The Matrix movies every time I heard them talk about the Matrix of Leadership in both Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, especially since they had Hugo Weaving in these movies as the voice of Megatron (they replaced him with Frank Welker, the original voice of Megatron, in both Age of Extinction and The Last Knight), and he played Agent Smith in The Matrix trilogy (he was replaced with Jonathan Groff in The Matrix Resurrections), and they had him say “Matrix” in one scene; BTW, what happened to the Matrix of Leadership? It’s never brought up again after this movie; you’d think it’d be important given the events of both Age of Extinction and The Last Knight, but I guess not 🤷♂️.
Anyway, The Matrix Online was a continuation of the story from The Matrix trilogy, and was a direct follow-up of the events of The Matrix Revolutions, after Neo managed to broker a truce with the Machines, and end the war; in exchange for eliminating Smith and saving the Matrix from total destruction. The entire game was about people on both the human side and the machine side being unsatisfied with the end of the war, and trying everything they could to break the truce and restart the war. That’s what this ending reminds me of. That would’ve been a way more interesting direction to take the series, and would’ve been more true to the spirit of Transformers instead of what we ultimately got in Age of Extinction. All because they decided to change the ending. It just goes to show that an ending of a movie is arguably more important than a beginning because the ending determines where the sequels (if there are any) go from there.
Or maybe, they wanted to keep the fact that Sentinel Prime was the real main bad guy a secret until the movie came out, so they put Shockwave on all the posters, and made it seem like he was the main bad guy. But, anyway, I really like this design for Optimus. I really wish they stuck with it in Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight. I really like the detail they added on his chest. To show that he was repaired or patched up from what happened to him in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. These movies were good at continuity when they wanted to, and bad at it when they didn’t want to.)
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Note (Sunday August 13, 2023):
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You remember how I said that Transformers: Age of Extinction began the series’s true decline in quality, and decline in box office? Well, what I meant by that is that while Age of Extinction did still make a billion 💵, it made less than Dark of the Moon, pulling in just $1.104 billion 💵 compared to Dark of the Moon’s $1.124 billion 💵 box office take. This means that it was still the highest grossing movie of 2014, but didn’t quite make the same amount as Dark of the Moon or surpass it. Dark of the Moon still remains the highest grossing Transformers movie of all time. Transformers: The Last Knight, by comparison, is the lowest grossing Transformers movie (at least of the Michael Bay series) as we all know. That movie underperformed badly, only making $605.4 million 💵, not even getting close to reaching a billion 💵.
The franchise would never end up making this much money 💵 again, as the reboot films, Bumblebee 🐝 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts never reached the heights of the Michael Bay movies. Bumblebee 🐝 only grossed $468 million 💵, which was profitable considering its budget ($102 million-$135 million 💵), and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts made less, at about $433.8 million 💵. It’s debatable whether or not Rise of the Beasts was actually profitable because the budget was much higher than Bumblebee 🐝’s, at about $195 million-$200 million 💵. It seems like the conventional wisdom is that the movie was a box office disappointment.
Which doesn’t make much sense to me considering that Elemental came out the same month, and made close to the same amount on a similar budget; it had a $200 million budget 💵, and it grossed $480.1 million 💵. But, it’s considered a sleeper hit, whereas Rise of the Beasts is considered a box office disappointment despite making $439 million 💵. Why is Elemental considered a sleeper hit while Rise of the Beasts is considered a box office disappointment? $439 million 💵 is only $41.1 million 💵 less than $480.1 million 💵, it’s not that big of a difference. Shouldn’t they both be considered box office disappointments if they both had $200 million budgets 💵? Rise of the Beasts might’ve cost slightly less if the $195 million 💵 amount is to be believed, and not the $200 million 💵 amount.
Are people just that willing to give Pixar that much of a break that the bare minimum is considered success? I swear, Elemental is one of the most obnoxious and hatable blockbusters to come out of June 2023; utterly contemptible. The only other one that’s more obnoxious and hatable is The Flash (2023), but at least with that movie people are now starting to recognize how bad it actually is. Elemental is straight up getting a free pass even though it’s a painfully average or painfully by-the-numbers Pixar movie, only a million times more obnoxious 🤬; I’m really starting to hate Pixar 😤.
This is why box office performances are not an exact science, and are highly subjective. The numbers aren’t, but the way people interpret the numbers certainly is. One person’s success is another person’s failure or underperformance. It doesn’t make sense to me at all how Elemental could be viewed as a hit in anyway (even a sleeper hit), and while Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is considered a box office disappointment or an underperformance despite both movies making well over $400 million 💵 at the worldwide box office, and being having budgets of $200 million 💵 and $195 million-$200 million 💵 respectively.
This is also why people should’ve be quick to judge a movie’s box office performance only the early opening numbers. Everyone was saying Elemental was a box office bomb 💣 when it opened way below projections, and yet, it finished its theatrical run with $480.1 million 💵 and is considered by most box office analysts and film journalists to be a sleeper hit 🤦♂️. Regardless how much money 💵 Rise of the Beasts made or didn’t make, it is certainly the lowest grossing live action Transformers movie overall, even when you don’t factor in the Bay movies.
Maybe, the novelty of Transformers has worn off. A lot of people say that the only reason why the first movie from 2007 made so much money 💵 (about $709.7 million 💵 to be exact) was the novelty of seeing Transformers in live action for the first time ever. But, I also think it’s because all of the positive word of mouth from moviegoers and fans alike that propelled that movie to box office success 🤑; a lot of the people in my life saw that movie because I saw it and told them it that was good and that they should go see it too.
There was also repeat viewings, most people who saw Transformers (2007) in theaters, saw it multiple times; I don’t remember how many times I saw Transformers (2007), but I saw it a lot of times, like it might have been 4 or 5 times, maybe even 6 times; I saw that movie more times than I saw any other movie in 2007, and any other movie I see nowadays; for me, it was the movie event of 2007. About an estimated 46 million tickets were sold for this movie in the US 🇺🇸, which is pretty impressive 👍. BTW, in case you’re wondering, Transformers (2007) had a $150 million-$200 million budget 💵, so $709.7 million 💵 definitely was more than a good enough box office take, it’s fantastic 😁. Most movies in June of this year (2023) didn’t even get close to reaching that amount, not even Rise of the Beasts 😞.
Anyway, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out and outgrossed Transformers (2007), making $836.5 million 💵 🤑 against a $200 million-$210 million budget 💵, and becoming the fourth highest grossing movie of 2009 😁👍. How did it do that? Because of all the good will that was built from the first movie. People went to see Revenge of the Fallen because they liked Transformers (2007), like really liked it. Speaking anecdotally, I remember when Revenge of the Fallen came out, almost every showing was sold out, and even when I managed to get a ticket and see it (with my aunt and her family), the whole theater was packed. People were genuinely excited for that movie, and wanted to see what the filmmakers had in store for them with this sequel.
Of course, all know how it turned out, and the movie wasn’t received anywhere near as well as the first movie, despite making more money 💵 than the first movie, but that was a matter of expectation vs. reality; people went in expecting a great movie, and instead, what they got was a not-so great movie 😕; that’s not to say there weren’t anyone who liked Revenge of the Fallen and liked it as much as the first one, there were; I was one of them, I loved Revenge of the Fallen 😍 when it first came out, I saw it multiple times (but not as much as the first one), and I bought the DVD 📀 (Revenge of the Fallen was the best selling home media release of 2009, selling 11 million copies including DVD and Blu-Ray sales 📀💿), and watched it quite a few more times, and watched all the special features; of course, with 20/20 hindsight, I recognize that the movie isn’t that great, it has a lot of flaws, and it is inferior to the 2007 movie.
But, all of the good will towards this franchise has completely evaporated over the course of 10 years, after bad sequel after bad sequel. It can’t be stated enough how much damage the Michael Bay films did to Transformers brand on film, especially Transformers 4 and Transformers 5; and also Transformers 2, but I don’t count that one because people still came back in droves to see Transformers 3, and made it the most financially successful Transformers movie of all time so far 🤑, despite the overall disappointment of Transformers 2. People are just no longer excited to see a Transformers movie.
I remember in the year 2006, and the year 2007, everyone was excited to see the new Transformers movie. They pulled out all the stops when it came to the marketing of that film. It was everywhere, you couldn’t really escape it, even if you tried. Everything from the trailers, the posters, the commercial tie-ins, and the merchandise (namely the toys), it made people hyped to see the movie. And it paid off because Transformers (2007) was more successful than anyone could’ve imagined. It did pretty well for itself, becoming the fifth highest grossing movie of that year; in a year that had movies like Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (which was the highest grossing movie of 2007), and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Speaking of which, can you believe this is the first of two instances where a Transformers movie was released the same year as a Spider-Man movie? As Transformers: Age of Extinction would end up being released the same year as The Amazing Spider-Man 2. It also wouldn’t the last time a Transformers movie was released the same year as a Harry Potter movie and a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (to bring it back around to that) would end up being released the same year as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides; which BTW used to be the most expensive movie ever made with a $379 million budget 💵, until it was surpassed by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, with a $447 million budget 💵; Disney sure likes to spend a bajillion dollars 💵 on their movies don’t they?
Back to this poster specifically, I like how they covered up the Nazi flags with fire 🔥 so that the marketing team and the studio wouldn’t get in trouble. Like, “Don’t worry guys, this movie isn’t about Nazis, and doesn’t endorse Nazism.” Why anyone would think that upon looking at this poster is beyond me, but whatever 🤷♂️. The movie did actually get into controversy over those Nazi flags, because they filmed that scene at an historic British building 🇬🇧. That’s not actually a German building 🇩🇪 or any other European building 🇪🇺, that’s a British building 🇬🇧 in real life; I think it may belong to the Royal Family, or the British government 🇬🇧, I’m not sure. And there were people who got mad 😡 that they put Nazi flags over this historic British building 🇬🇧, even if it was just for a movie.)
Funnily enough too, Transformers: The Last Knight was released the same year as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man Tell No Tales, both movies were the fifth entries in their respective franchises, and both movies are considered to be the ones that killed their respective franchises. Though, to be fair, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales did make more movie than Transformers: The Last Knight, at around $795.9 million 💵, compared to The Last Knight’s measly $605.4 million 💵 gross.
But, Dead Men Tell No Tales did have a larger budget than The Last Knight, with a budget of $230 million-$320 million 💵, so make of that what you will. The Last Knight had a budget of $217 million-$260 million 💵 in case you’re wondering. Oh, and I just realized that both Bumblebee 🐝 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts were also each released the same year as a Spider-Man movie. Bumblebee 🐝 was released the same year as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Rise of the Beasts was released the same year as its sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; same month too.
Anyway, tangent aside, because of the bad sequels, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Transformers: The Last Knight, people now hate on the Transformers movies, and see them as nothing more than irredeemable garbage that’s only worth is to be mocked. No body has respect for the Transformers franchise anymore, not that they had much respect for it in the first place. Now, most people just avoid Transformers movies all together. Even when they hear that a good one came out, they still don’t really care, and don’t turn up to the theater to see it. You could say that this happens to every franchise that goes on for too long, and has way too many bad entries.
The same thing is kind of happening to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) right now with bad film after bad film, mediocre show after mediocre show. The MCU just hit its latest low with Secret Invasion, which many people consider to be the worst TV show that Marvel has ever produced, only being surpassed by things like Inhumans and Iron Fist; neither of which were considered canon to the MCU until Marvel decided to make them canon thanks to the multiverse 🙄. And I can’t imagine The Marvels will be any much better, like I highly doubt that it’ll be the movie that turns things around for Marvel as far as quality of content goes. The fact that the movie has been delayed so many times, and changed release dates repeatedly in the same year is kind of a red flag 🚩. As one YouTube comment I saw said, the MCU went from being the franchise that could do no wrong (seen as the only franchise that did the whole cinematic universe concept correctly) to being the franchise that can’t do anything right.
The same thing has also happened to The Fast and the Furious franchise. Going from a series about street racing to a series about heists, spies, global terrorism, doomsday super weapons, doomsday viruses 🦠, and cyborg supermen (I’m not kidding). I mean, F9: The Fast Saga has that infamous subplot where the characters from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift turn a car into a rocket ship 🚀, and Tyrese Gibson and Ludicrous’s characters shoot off into space and float around in Earth’s orbit 🌎 in their rocket ship car.
These movies became so unrealistic and so unbelievable that people were joking that they would go into space, and thus, the filmmakers decided to do it for real. That’s how we got Tyrese Gibson and Ludicrous flying to space in F9. The suspension of disbelief with these movies is completely gone. F9 BTW was the last Fast and the Furious movie I watched. I didn’t bother watching Fate of the Furious or Fast X. I didn’t even watch F9 seriously, I just watched it and made fun of it, laughing and making jokes about it while watching it.
BTW, Fate of the Furious came out the same year as Transformers: The Last Knight, and both have the same premise (kind of): the main hero of the series is brainwashed or tricked into becoming evil, and forced into betraying his family by a lady with dreads ♀︎. And ironically, Fate of the Furious did way more with that premise than Transformers: The Last Knight did, as Dom is evil for far longer in Fate of the Furious than Optimus is in Transformers: The Last Knight.
Transformers and Fast & Furious do actually have some things in common. They’re both about cars, or have to do with cars. Fast & Furious used to be about street racing and still features a lot of driving cars and car stunts (most of which is CGI anyway 😒), and Transformers is about alien robots that can turn into cars most of the time; they kind of started skimping out on the transformations in the later sequels, only showing them in either their robot modes or vehicle modes, but never transforming from one to the other. Like they’ll show them in their vehicle mode in one shot, and then in the next shot, they’re already in their robot mode, but they never show the transformation of how they went from their vehicle mode to their robot mode. They’re both very much steeped in the car culture of the 2000s, and featured highly customized and souped up cars.
It’s no coincidence that all of the Autobots and even some of the Decepticons in the Michael Bay Transformers movies turn into highly customized and expensive sports cars and luxury cars, as well as concept cars that aren’t available for sale to the public. Even the trucks that Optimus turns into are highly customized, and not like actual semi-trucks that you see driving on the road, on the highways and freeways. And both franchises are comprised entirely of big budget blockbuster films that most people say are completely mindless, and can only really be enjoyed if you turn your brain off 🧠. And both franchises got worse over time, with each new installment, finding new and unique ways to utterly shit the bed 💩. The only difference is that Fast & Furious is still making money 💵 whereas Transformers currently isn’t. Even if Fast X didn’t make a billion dollars 💵 like F9 did, it still did fairly well, grossing $719.1 million 💵 at the worldwide box office, against a massive budget of $340 million 💵.
Will Transformers ever get out of the box office rut it’s in right now? Will a Transformers movie ever reach a billion dollars 💵 again? Only time will tell. But, I do have high hopes, especially they keep this reboot series going on, and don’t try to tie it back into the Bayverse in anyway. The Bayverse is the only thing holding this franchise back, and if they let go of it completely, then it might find greater success. I know Michael Bay was a producer on Rise of the Beasts, and the other producer on the film, Lorenzo di Bonaventura keeps insisting that it’s a prequel to Transformers (2007) and that these movies are still in continuity with the Bayverse. But the directors of both Bumblebee 🐝 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Travis Knight and Steven Caple Jr. respectively, have made it clear that they made those movies with the idea that they’re complete hard reboots.
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Note (Friday August 25, 2023):
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You remember how in the main description I talked about the original ending for Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Well, it turns out that it wasn’t the only Transformers sequel had its ending altered at some point. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen also had a different ending than the one we got. And just like the original ending of Dark of the Moon, the majority of fans like the original ending of Revenge of the Fallen, and can read it in the novelization of the movie; which was based off an earlier draft of the script just like the novelization of Dark of the Moon. It’s not as drastically different as the original ending to Dark of the Moon was the final one we got in the movie, but there some slight differences. For one thing, Optimus Prime actually acknowledges Jetfire’s sacrifice, which is something I complained about in a note on the description I wrote about Revenge of the Fallen.
He basically says that Jetfire’s sacrifice shouldn’t be wasted, but they have no time to mourn or to praise, they have work to do; a typical Optimus response right there, always about the mission at hand. He also gives his consent to be augmented with Jetfire’s parts, which is nice. In the ending we got, Ratchet and Jolt ⚡️ just graft Jetfire’s parts onto Optimus, and he doesn’t have any time to give his consent or react in anyway.
It seems like Optimus has way more agency and is more talkative in this ending. In the ending we got, he barely talks at all after being revived. The most he says is, “Let’s roll,” and that’s it before we see the epilogue on the aircraft carrier where he gives his usual speech. We also get a little bit more banter with Ratchet before Optimus takes off to go face the Fallen and Megatron at the Pyramid, like Ratchet is self-congratulating his own handiwork, while Ironhide steps in tell him he missed a spot before Optimus takes off with Jetfire’s engines.
It just seems like with this ending, the robots on both sides have more lines than they did in the final ending we got in the movie. Ironhide doesn’t say anything at all after the airstrikes are conducted on the Decepticons in that Egyptian town/village 🇪🇬 where the entire final battle took place. And the only thing Ratchet says in this last stretch of the movie is, “Jolt ⚡️, electrify ⚡️. Transplant those afterburners.”
Once Optimus gets into the air, and flies toward the Pyramids though, that’s when most of the huge differences between the two endings can be see (or read since this was in a book 📖). For one thing, Devastator is still alive by this point in the movie, he’s still ripping up the Pyramid, exposing more and more of the Sun Harvester for the Fallen to use, and Simmons is still trying to coordinate and direct a US Navy 🇺🇸 strike to kill Devastator. We also get a short moment where Leo sees Simmons on top of the Pyramid, and is star struck by him 😲🤩, saying something “Woah, he is the Robo-Warrior.”
The US military 🇺🇸 and the Jordanian military 🇯🇴 shoots at the Fallen on the top of the Pyramid, and the Fallen lifts them all up with his telekinetic powers and violently drops them down just in the final ending, although I don’t know why specifically the Jordanian military 🇯🇴 is involved in this. This is Egypt 🇪🇬, the Pyramids are located in Egypt 🇪🇬, the entire final battle was in Egypt 🇪🇬, you’d think it’d be the Egyptian military 🇪🇬 responding to this, not the Jordanian military 🇯🇴; sure the Matrix was found in Jordan 🇯🇴, but that doesn’t mean that the Jordanians 🇯🇴 have to be involved. But, maybe that was just a goof on Theorymus (formally known as Trans Theories)’s part, and he meant to say the Egyptian military 🇪🇬. I don’t know why he didn’t just say NEST forces, I mean that’s what they are, this is a NEST operation; I probably would’ve said NEST forces if that were my video. It would’ve been a lot better than getting the nationality of the military fighting alongside the American military 🇺🇸 wrong.
I also forgot to mention that when the Fallen shows up to take the Matrix just after Optimus is revived, he actually takes it away from Sam, since he was the one holding it, and the Fallen actually acknowledges him. He basically just tells him that his planet will be dark forever, and then teleports away. Oh, and Ironhide and Sideswipe actually try to stop the Fallen from taking the Matrix, but he just pushes them away with his telekinesis. In the final ending we got, the other Autobots don’t even attempt to fight the Fallen, and the Fallen never fights any Autobots besides Optimus.
Devastator is then killed in much the same way he was in the film. He just gets shot by a railgun on a nearby US Navy destroyer 🇺🇸, and then tumbles down the Pyramid, breaking apart as he falls down and dies; taking all the Constructicons down with him, since his body was all made from their bodies. Simmons even says his infamous “I’m directly below the enemy scrotum” line while looking at Devastator’s dangling wrecking balls, but this time, he does it before it calling in the strike. But, in this original ending, Devastator’s actually alive long enough to spot Optimus coming towards the Pyramid, and then tries to swat him out of the sky just before he gets shot in the chest by the railgun, and dies. But, it doesn’t really matter anyway since Devastator served his purpose, and now enough of the Sun Harvester is exposed for the Fallen to use it.
Then, the scene plays out the same where the Fallen inserts the Matrix into the Sun Harvester, and activates it, only this time the Matrix starts glowing so bright the Fallen has to shield his eyes from it, and there’s a beam of light shooting into the sky from the Sun Harvester, indicating that it’s on and is getting ready to fire at the Sun ☀️. Yeah, Dark of the Moon wasn’t going to be the first Transformers movie to have a sky beam, this movie was also going to have one before they changed the ending; it’s so funny how sky beams became such a common and overused trope in modern-day blockbusters that people groan at, or even openly mock any movies that does it; you can blame Dark of the Moon and The Avengers for making sky beams so popular; speaking of The Avengers, there have been some that have suggested The Avengers actually ripped off Dark of the Moon’s final battle, only instead of it being in Chicago like Dark of the Moon, they set it in Manhattan, New York City; it is possible, Marvel Studios and Kevin Fiege have been known steal ideas from other blockbuster franchises, and then take credit for those ideas as if they came up with them themselves, and came up with them first 🙄.
Anyway, despite the Sun Harvester being on, it will still take 8 minutes for it to “work its magic” and destroy the Sun ☀️, draining any and all Energon from it. Giving Optimus more than enough time to destroy it. Which he does, and it’s pretty much the same as in the movie. Only instead of just shooting it, he rams into it, causing the machine to collapse in on itself, and to flicker energy that kills three nearby Decepticons. Even Megatron and Starscream get injured by the flickering bursts of energy as the Sun Harvester is destroyed, as their bodies start melting slightly, but not completely; they still survive to the end.
So, the Fallen and Optimus get into a one-on-one fight, just like in the movie, except the Fallen’s dialogue is slightly different. Instead of saying, “Die like your brothers!,” he says “You dare challenge me?!” I am a Prime!” And instead of Optimus saying, “They were your brothers too,” he says “You abandoned that name when you slaughtered your brothers. There is only one Prime now, and my ancestors will be avenged.” I do like this banter or back-and-front trash talk a lot more than what ended up in the movie. I like that Optimus actually acknowledges his Prime lineage, and his Prime ancestry.
Despite being a Prime, and despite it being emphasized that he’s the last one, Optimus feels so disconnected from the history of the Primes, specifically the original 13 Primes in the film. He doesn’t acknowledge them at all except for that “They were your brothers too” line that feels tacked on, and it feels as if he has no actually stake in this conflict; like he’s completely emotional distant from it. In the film, it just seems like the Fallen is just another bad guy that Optimus has shoot at and beat up, rather than being the traitor who killed his ancestors. But here, in this original ending, it is more personal because Optimus recognizes that the original Primes were his ancestors, and the Fallen betrayed them all and killed several of them. Then, the fight plays kind of the same, except it’s a bit more flashy and drawn out, like there’s one moment where Optimus uses some pieces of the destroyed Sun Harvester as clubs and beats the Fallen with them. That would’ve been cool to see, I wish it was in the film.
Then, come to the biggest difference from this ending and the one that ultimately ended up in the film. Megatron sees Optimus beating up the Fallen, and goes into help him, and when he does, he drops a major bombshell: the Fallen promised to make him a Prime, and that was the whole reason he working for him the whole time. He shouts at the Fallen, and says, “You promised, master! You promised me the power of a Prime!” So, Megatron wasn’t loyal to the Fallen til death, like he didn’t see him as a father figure or anything like that (which is what it comes across as in the film). He was only allied with him as a means to an end.
He only helped the Fallen, and did what he wanted him to do, so that he could get something out of it, and that something was to become a Prime himself; which the Fallen no doubt promised him in order to get him to work for him, but probably had no intention of actually fulfilling. Now, Megatron’s relationship with the Fallen makes way more sense, and is much more in character. It also makes the Fallen a much more evil, and treacherous character than he ultimately comes across as in the film. Optimus of course dashes Megatron’s dreams of becoming a Prime by saying, “Primes are born, and not made, Megatron! You were betrayed!”
Another major difference between this ending, and the final ending is that the Fallen actually attempts to flee, by creating a portal, but Optimus stops him in time, and keeps railing on him. The Fallen calls out for help from Megatron, but Megatron refuses, seeing that the Fallen lied to him about making him a Prime, and is in a weak state, and on the verge of defeat, and he can just continue the fight against the Autobots another day with a better plan (perhaps one he had on the back burner, that involves the Moon 🌕 😉). So, he just leaves him to his fate, which is to get killed by Optimus. Megatron and Starscream even escape through the same portal that the Fallen made for himself to escape in, just to add insult to injury.
Finally, Optimus kills the Fallen, only instead of ripping off his face, and then ripping out his spark, he stabs the Fallen in the head with a piece of the Star Harvester he ripped off; he ripped off the tip of the Star Harvester, and stabbed him with that. It’s still a pretty violent and gruesome death, not as gruesome as the one that one that ended up in the film, but still pretty gruesome. He basically killed him the same way that Finnish gold prospector guy 🇫🇮 killed that one Nazi in the Sisu movie; by stabbing him in the head. Optimus then takes the Matrix out of the Sun Harvester, and places it on his hip. And then rest of the ending plays out the same, with very little, if any difference. The only thing that we see the wounded soldiers from the battle being wheeled inside on the aircraft carrier for treatment, while Ratchet tends to the wounded Autobots, with the help of some humans.
Also, Sam mentions that the symbols he kept seeing his head throughout the entire movie are gone, and Optimus tells him the reason why is that all those symbols and all the information that Sam had absorbed from the Cube is now inside of the Matrix. Sam also tells Optimus about his near-death experience, and how he saw the original Primes, and they told him that he didn’t know the truth about his future, and then asks him he knows anything about his future. And Optimus just tells him, “All I know is that our species, our planets, united by a history long forgotten, yet to be discovered, and through it to the stars beyond.”
Then, we get another huge departure from the movie, in the form of an after credit scene or mid-credit scene. We see what happens to Megatron and Starscream after they escaped from Earth 🌎. They retreated to the Nemesis, the derelict Decepticon ship on one of the moons of Saturn 🪐, and they’re all beat up, and war-torn. But, despite this, Megatron begins planning his next move against the Autobots, while he heals and fixes his broken body. He still has a huge army at his disposal with all the Protoforms that are in stasis, and all the hatchlings still on the ship that will grow into more Protoforms; Protoforms BTW are Transformers without alternate modes and are just the base exoskeleton, they’re like the premature stage of a Transformer, a blank slate before they actually pick an alternate mode and become fully fledged Transformers; but an adult Transformer can chose stay as a Protoform and not assume an alternate mode, which is what a lot of Decepticons do, especially during the attack in Egypt 🇪🇬, and later the invasion and occupation of Chicago. He wakes up the adult Protoforms from stasis, and tells them to “Rise!”
Now, it’s not hard to see why a lot of fans like this ending a lot more than the one we ultimately got, even though it isn’t that much different, say for a few select moments. It focuses way more on the Transformers. It gives them a lot more screen time, gives them more lines, and fleshes out their characters. It resolves some of the big plot holes in the movie, such as the Fallen being Megatron’s master, despite Megatron saying “Even in death, there is no command but mine,” and whether or not Sam stopped seeing the Cybertronian symbols or not; something that was left unresolved by the end, despite it being the catalyst for the entire movie.
It also sounds like it would’ve been way more visually interesting, with how the Matrix glows super bright, the Sun Harvester emitting a sky beam when it’s turned on, and Optimus using pieces of the destroyed Sun Harvester to beat up and kill the Fallen. The ending we got in the final movie just seems rushed by comparison, and it left a lot of questions unanswered, or raised completely new ones. The only reason I can think of as to why this ending was scrapped is that it was too lengthy and dense. A lot of stuff happens in this original ending, and that would’ve meant an even longer runtime.
Michael Bay, and the writers, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Ehren Kruger, must’ve felt that the movie was already pretty long enough already, the effects artists at ILM bit off way more than they could chew, and they were running out of time and hit their deadline to reach that June 24, 2009 release date. And they didn’t want to extend the movie even further, and make their jobs even harder by having all of this other stuff happen. So, they just scrapped this ending, and wrote a new one to wrap up the movie a lot faster, give ILM less work to do to catch a break, and get the movie done and ready for its June release date, even if it came at the cost of storytelling and character development.
This is just yet another symptom of the Writers’ Strike 🪧, it caused the entire ending to be rushed and overall unsatisfying. Revenge of the Fallen definitely was one of the movies worst affected by the strike 🪧, its overall quality was affected, and everyone involved knows it; all the filmmakers and actors involved. Just as Shia LaBeouf said in one interview, they weren’t making a movie to be make a good movie, they were just trying to hit a date, and movies that are only made to hit a specific date usually aren’t good as ones that were made to be as good as possible.
But, putting the strike 🪧 aside, it also seems to me that Michael Bay didn’t really care about developing the Transformers as characters, only really seeing them as special effects or as ways to create more explosions 💥, and he only really cared about giving the human characters development. That’s why all the mid-credits scenes are all focused on the human characters, and none of the robot ones. But, even then, the way the human characters were developed or resolved was lame, especially Sam, who we never find out for sure if he stopped seeing the symbols in his head or not. The human characters get way better development and resolution in this original ending too, not just the robot characters.
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