While it came as no surprise that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was a commercial success, it is just like any other live-action based on an anime, comic, or manga. In this case, it just happened to be based off of Takara’s Diaclone/Micro Change toy line. Every live-action movie in those categories suffers from the same flaw. Why then, was it a success?
A big budget – big enough to do the following:
1) Cast Shia LaBeouf as Samuel Witwicky, and one who doesn’t live up to the family name at that.
2) Cast Megan Fox as a useless human who did absolutely nothing compared to any other human in any iteration of Transformers.
3) Assign Bumblee’s, one of the weakest Cybertronians used as comic relief, disguise as a Chevrolet Camaro.
4) Amazing action scenes.
The flaws? The usual: lack of a decent story (deviating from pre-conceived plot lines generally doesn’t work) and bad, sometimes non-existant character development.
The more I watched the movie, the less anything made sense. One of the peculiar things if you’ve watched both movies is that Cybertron was stated to be destroyed, yet we’re getting closer to seeing Unicron with the arrival of The Fallen. This is very strong evidence that Primus and Cybertron are two separate entities in this iteration, or Primus is already dead. Canonically, Primus is the last line of defense against Unicron in all of the infinite, parallel universes. How this turns out will be interesting to see, assuming the third movie doesn’t end up being a “Let’s gather all of the AllSpark fragments/Mini-Cons/Cyber Keys/whatever” stalling fest.
The Matrix of Leadership in the movie was once held by the Primes, attributing evidence to the fact that it’s a fragment of Primus. Though the movie completely removes the idea that it holds the memories of all former Autobot leaders, it still retains the qualities needed to destroy Unicron.
A very disturbing statement made multiple times throughout the movie that Optimus Prime is the last Prime. This essentially makes Prima, Prime Nova, Sentinel Prime, and Vector Prime dead. Vector Prime, being a supreme badass, was often depicted as Ramjet or Galvatron’s opposition. Here’s to hoping we will get to see Galvatron no matter what.
Out of all of the characters introduced, Jetfire had perhaps the worse development. He was weak and feeble. The one peculiar thing about Jetfire is that he knows how to use space bridges. Since space bridges are Autobot technology, it doesn’t make sense for them to give such valuable technology to a mercenary…a mercenary who apparently wasn’t on the Autobot’s side for very long, considering he still has the Decepticon insignia. His only redeeming factor was ghetto-Powerlinking with Optimus into Jet Optimus, an attribute taken from Transformers: Armada. This isn’t really a powerlink, since only parts of a dead Jetfire were used.
Jetfire’s death brings about many anomalies. With his death (wtf?), there probably won’t be any mention of Sky Shadow. Well also won’t see an additional tri-powerlink with Overload into Magna Jet Convoy. Here’s to hoping that Jetfire’s brother, Overcast, actually makes an appearance. Maybe we’ll see Wing Saber powerlink with Optimus Prime into Sonic Wing Mode too.
One thing that was bugging me in both movies: I couldn’t recognize many of the Decepticons and a few Autobots! I saw a Decepticon that that looked eerily like Bulkhead (an Autobot). I laughed a little on the inside when I saw Ironhide beating the crap out of what looked to be like Bulkhead.
The Constructicons combining into Devastator was THE SHIT. Well, until he got one-shotted by a damn rail gun. I was actually expecting Omega Supreme to make an appearance and kick his ass for the one millionth time. Oh well; I guess we won’t see Omega Supreme either.
Optimus Prime is finally at his true power level, compared to his pansy ass in the first movie. However, he gets killed and comes back to life. I don’t know why this affected so many people, considering this marks his 18th death (correct me if I’m wrong), and I want to estimate it to be his 15th resurrection. He’s been killed and resurrected more than Superman AND the entire Justice League combined! This doesn’t even include the times he’s “died” but didn’t lose his spark, nor the many freezes and statis-locks. Hey, at least he didn’t turn grey and possibly crumble (no joke).
One of the twins (Mudflap and Skids) sounds like Bumblebee from Transformers: Animated, even though they’re different voice actors. I found that humorous as well.
So I learned to only watch this movie and any following movies solely for the action. Even the prequel comics and novel to the live-action movies aren’t on par with the other Transformers media. The one thing that really bugs me the most out of everything, however is the thirty minutes (bad estimate and slight exaggeration) of Megan Fox xx Shia Labeouf moments. Keep the irrelevant, long-winded face-sucking out of Transformers kicking each other’s asses please.