FA+
Shop
Yeah yeah, ROTF. (also spoilers)
16 years ago
General
Actually, I went to see the movie Thursday. Meant to mention it before now, thinking I'd hold off until the death news quieted down, but celebrities just kept dropping like flies on Obama's jacket, so here goes.
Anyway, the best way to describe "Revenge of the Fallen" is that it's like the first film, but with a lot more in it. (mostly Baysplosions). Here's a few observations I've made:
* "The Fallen" appears as the Emperor Palpatine to Megatron's Darth Vader. Also much like the Emperor, it's damn hard to get close to him, but if one actually does lay a hand on him, he goes down like a bitch.
* I'm beginning to notice the most badass robot in the movie world is Bumblebee. Seriously, in two movies now he's never lost a fight. Now I understand why the writers keep him well away from Megatron or the Fallen - the outcome is already pre-ordained.
* I've heard a lot of people refer to the plo of the movie as 'incomprehensible' and similar words. Maybe it's the Transformer fan in me, but the story made sense to me - not a LOT of sense, mind you, but I could follow it.
* There's a very strong theme of robot face mutilation running through this film, damn near fetish levels.
* I notice the robots are 'juicier' this time around, spitting, drooling, spraying, what have you - and what the hell was that green jello found on the inside of (deboned) Ravage?
* Congrats to Starscream for actually growing a personality for this movie, even if his role was mostly that of punching bag for a pissed-off Megatron.
* Fun fact - in the original cartoon, Soundwave was Frank Welker doing the same voice as "Dr. Claw" from 'Inspector Gadget' with a heavy synth effect applied. It made Soundwave stand out as the only Transformer who really talked like a robot. I think they could have used more of that synth in the movie, because he ended up as "Dr. Claw who tentacle-rapes satellites".
* A lot has been made of 'the twins' and racial stereotypes (or 'dumbass white kids talkin street'). In any case, they were doing their level base to Jar-Jar up the movie. By contrast, I liked Wheelie, the little blue RC truck-bot.
* Also, Jetfire, AKA angry old Scot-bot, is a hoot.
* Contructicons (or just construction vehicle Decepticons) are apparently the reusable cannon fodder of the film. A clump of them form Devastator, while others fight battle elsewhere at the same time. Don't even get me started about the appearance of robots identical in appearance to ones killed in the first film. I guess if they can repaint toys, the same applies to CGI models.
* Sam's mom steals the show once again.
* The biggest failing with ROTF as I saw it is no action sequence or effect was left out, necessary or not. It seems almost like a brainstorming session where NO ideas were rejected.
- Girl unicycle-bots? IN!
- insectoid German doctor-bot? IN!
- slutty Terminator-esque Species-esque thing? IN!
- tiny insect robot that does nothing but get its head pulled off? IN!
- swarms of itty bitty ball-bearing robots? IN!
- paper-thin robot that can't be seen edge-on? IN! ALSO SAME THING AS THE BALL BEARINGS!
In spite of all this, I really enjoyed the movie. It's no master work by any means, but that's the expectations. What I notice is an incredible disconnect between those that enjoyed the film and those who criticize it. While there's not a damn thing wrong with disliking and/or criticizing this movie (believe me, I know there's plenty to talk about there), there's also the undertone of "if you liked it, there's something wrong with you. ". I can appreciate a loud, dumb movie for what it is, and I did. It's cinematic junk food.
Anyway, the best way to describe "Revenge of the Fallen" is that it's like the first film, but with a lot more in it. (mostly Baysplosions). Here's a few observations I've made:
* "The Fallen" appears as the Emperor Palpatine to Megatron's Darth Vader. Also much like the Emperor, it's damn hard to get close to him, but if one actually does lay a hand on him, he goes down like a bitch.
* I'm beginning to notice the most badass robot in the movie world is Bumblebee. Seriously, in two movies now he's never lost a fight. Now I understand why the writers keep him well away from Megatron or the Fallen - the outcome is already pre-ordained.
* I've heard a lot of people refer to the plo of the movie as 'incomprehensible' and similar words. Maybe it's the Transformer fan in me, but the story made sense to me - not a LOT of sense, mind you, but I could follow it.
* There's a very strong theme of robot face mutilation running through this film, damn near fetish levels.
* I notice the robots are 'juicier' this time around, spitting, drooling, spraying, what have you - and what the hell was that green jello found on the inside of (deboned) Ravage?
* Congrats to Starscream for actually growing a personality for this movie, even if his role was mostly that of punching bag for a pissed-off Megatron.
* Fun fact - in the original cartoon, Soundwave was Frank Welker doing the same voice as "Dr. Claw" from 'Inspector Gadget' with a heavy synth effect applied. It made Soundwave stand out as the only Transformer who really talked like a robot. I think they could have used more of that synth in the movie, because he ended up as "Dr. Claw who tentacle-rapes satellites".
* A lot has been made of 'the twins' and racial stereotypes (or 'dumbass white kids talkin street'). In any case, they were doing their level base to Jar-Jar up the movie. By contrast, I liked Wheelie, the little blue RC truck-bot.
* Also, Jetfire, AKA angry old Scot-bot, is a hoot.
* Contructicons (or just construction vehicle Decepticons) are apparently the reusable cannon fodder of the film. A clump of them form Devastator, while others fight battle elsewhere at the same time. Don't even get me started about the appearance of robots identical in appearance to ones killed in the first film. I guess if they can repaint toys, the same applies to CGI models.
* Sam's mom steals the show once again.
* The biggest failing with ROTF as I saw it is no action sequence or effect was left out, necessary or not. It seems almost like a brainstorming session where NO ideas were rejected.
- Girl unicycle-bots? IN!
- insectoid German doctor-bot? IN!
- slutty Terminator-esque Species-esque thing? IN!
- tiny insect robot that does nothing but get its head pulled off? IN!
- swarms of itty bitty ball-bearing robots? IN!
- paper-thin robot that can't be seen edge-on? IN! ALSO SAME THING AS THE BALL BEARINGS!
In spite of all this, I really enjoyed the movie. It's no master work by any means, but that's the expectations. What I notice is an incredible disconnect between those that enjoyed the film and those who criticize it. While there's not a damn thing wrong with disliking and/or criticizing this movie (believe me, I know there's plenty to talk about there), there's also the undertone of "if you liked it, there's something wrong with you. ". I can appreciate a loud, dumb movie for what it is, and I did. It's cinematic junk food.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
My only real beaf with the movie was that they over exposed the twins and didn't give Sideswipe a bigger part after that one scene in the beginning. Still, props to them for doing a kick ass job with Ravage and Soundwave and keeping them more or less true to their 80's roots.
Yeah...
That sucks!
I also was annoyed at how easy it's gotten for the armed forces to hold back the transformers with conventional weaponry. Although they can't seem to easily kill transformers, they can do basically everything up until that point. Consequently, battles have a heavy human element in them. Normally that's fine, but I came to see Transformers 2, not Armed Forces 2.
S'yeah, if I had influence over the movie, the personality of the current batch of Transformers would've been built on at the expense of screen time simple-minded mainstream humor and focusing on Sam's silly attempt to live a normal life. He'd embrace the fact that he's the fucking ambassador between our race and an alien one and spend his weekends chilling with the Autobots. The usefulness of the American armed forces would be downplayed, allowing for more roboty battles with characters that we suddenly actually give a shit about.
Of course I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge Transformers buff (Beast Wars is about all I have a memory of), but hey, those are the sorts of things I would've liked to see done differently, and/or rectified in a future installment.
And I think Soundwave liked molesting that satellite a bit TOO much. That was quite the orgiastic groan 'ahh' he lets out when he violates it. XD Speaking of which... he's gotta be HUGE. Ravage was about the size of a motorbike, eh? And he wasn't half the size of Soundwave's head when he was 'ejected' from the big guy's chest. So just how BIG is Soundwave anyway? He's gotta stand head and shoulders above Megatron...
They coulda done without a lot of the crude sexual references, but considering they put those in to replace the first movie's "Stupid Human Tricks"...I can deal with it.
I got the impression this movie was saying "Alright, now that the kids are happy, now onto the REAL stuff! Lock and Load!"
I agree with you on "I can appreciate a loud, dumb movie for what it is, and I did. It's cinematic junk food."
Its supposed to be just a fun feel-good movie. Not some mind blowing trip to the soul or something like that xD
The only major problem I had was the medical helicopter that was coming near the end. You could clearly see "White Sands Missile Range" on it xD (which is okay with me. seeing my home state advertised makes me happy. its just like the first one movie, theres a shot of the landscape thats supposed to be out in the middle east and then BOOM, in the background is Shiprock, NM xD)
Other than that I enjoyed it. : )
I did heard rumors that in the 3rd movie, they are planning on bring in the Dinobots and the Insecticons (again just a rumor). I wonder how they will pull it off?
As for Soundwave.. Orci said they were going to use the vocoder, so when I read that they didn't use it I was actually pretty annoyed. However when he appears on screen and I hear that Dr. Claw voice I stopped caring and thought it was bad ass, just because of how he looked. As for his orgasm while merging with that satellite, it DOES say on his toy bio that acquiring data of that magnitude gives him joy.
I absolutely loved Ravage. You can tell they studied big cats just from the way he moved, especially in the scenes where he's running towards the base after landing and then in the search for Sam, where you see him jump off a wall and lose his footing for a moment, scrambling to get back to his paws. And then as he walks by you see his "ears" flick back.
Going back to the voices I was actually pretty pleased with the fact they cut back on the whole modulation bit as a whole. Unlike the first movie when Starscream had his two lines, you could hardly understand him when he says "I live to serve you, Lord Megatron", this time around he was clear as day and they let Adler use his own G1 SS impression. It fit. Hell, when Megs had captured Sam, I swore it was Agent Smith doing to the "interrogation". Kinda creepy.
<
Warning Spoilers
>
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/vi.....ritic/8875-tf2
Real decepticons got ballz.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/.....6/#cid:6668013
Served with a side of deep-fried Kraft Singles!
But I also like Jar-Jar =P
There's a very strong theme of robot face mutilation running through this film, damn near fetish levels.
This. This is true.
Wheelie & Skids were voiced by Tom Kenny. AKA Spongebob Squarepants.
"Sari grew up...and she went DECEPITICON?!"
S'funny stuff Hollywood.
Remember that cinematic junk food will go right to your thighs.
Acronyms are fun.
Jetfire was awesome, though I could have done without Wheelie leg-humping Michaela.
I know it was a 150 minute toy commerical so they gotta sell a shit lot of toys, but seriously, most of the characters did bugger all and got very little screen time, like Sideways, I think he got maybe 90 seconds of screentime before Sideswipe killed him. And then there was Blackout, who was renamed Grindor so Hasbro could sell more toys of that mold, but at least Hasbro went and repainted it, in the movie, Grindor looks exactly the same as Blackout, and he wasn't even named. I thought it was Blackout, simply resurrected like they did with Megatron.
I did actually like how they handled the character of Alice (AKA The Terminatrix, AKA Deceptislut) since that was a nod to The Pretenders, and I thought that this was how the Pretenders should of been 20 years ago, not like in the comics where the Autobots disguise themselves as 30ft tall humans and the Decepticons who have disguised themselves as 30ft tall monsters are retarded enough to actually believe that they are 30ft tall humans. At least the Japanese G1 shows made the Pretender concept better then that.
Plus Jetfire, he was awesome and was probably the only newly introduced character in the whole flick I actually have a crap about, only for him to be killed at the end so Optimus Prime can use his corpse to pimp smack The Fallen around and then discard Jetfire's parts without a care in the world. It was Jazz all over again.
My biggest beef was The Matrix though. They pretty much turned it into a key to a doomsday weapon. I sat there thinking. "They've just ignored over 20 years of established continuity and made The Matrix into a key for a doomsday weapon?". Seriously, if they needed that, why not have referenced The Key to Vector Sigma or something? At least that was used by Megatron to turn the Earth into a new Cybertron in G1. They could have called it the Sigma Key or something, but The Matrix?
I hated:
Sterotypical Goverment pencil dick - Note he worked for Obama (read what you want into that but yeah, the world would be fucked)
Sterotypical relucant hero - If Optimus comes to you for help you DO NOT BLOW HIM OFF. Douche!
I liked:
I learned when we die, the PRimes are waiting for us. I guess Primes > The Force
Paper thin robot was cool. Wow, robots litke this shoudl always be adaptable IMO and that one took the show in that dept.
Green goo on Ravage's spine! Woo!! That robot was too cool for assaults but he got his coming too!
"GIVE ME YOUR FACE."
Far too much body related humor.
Frank Welker is pretty much a god.
Tom Kenny cursing on screen is amazing.
'Hey, I'm pretty sure that guy died in the last film...'
---
The list keeps going.
Optimus had a pretty awesome fight scene in the movie though!
BTW did anyone ever recall if they properly explained why only a Prime could defeat the Fallen? I don't remember hearing one mostly cause I was distracted at certain points by obnoxious kids and a veeeery full bladder during the film.
I heard about this from my instructor the other day, he was pretty well informed about alot of the TF2 movie.
I agree with you, the movie is not of master quality, but I did enjoy it for a chance to see the Transformers in theaters once more and too watch their animated transforming sequence.
Out of curiosity, did you find the fact that they gave Devistator some big ass iron balls on the border of humorous and unnecessary.