Transformers: Rise Of The Fallen

What is it?

 

This is the second entry in what appears to be a continuing series of Transformers live action/CGI movies. This one is set two years down the line from the original and sees the surviving Autobots from that film (plus some n00bs) working with a special unit of the US Armed Forces to track down and eradicate a growing Deceptacon presence on Earth.

 

What I liked

 

Optimus is BADASS - One of the things that I thought really sucked about the first film was how easily Megatron seemed to dominate Optimus Prime in battle In the cartoon Megatron and Optimus Prime were always almost perfectly evenly matched with most of their encounters resulting in a Deceptacon retreat more often than not, therefore to see the Autobot hero having seven shades of shit beat out of his chassis without much reply is quite disheartening. Happily they've redressed the balance in this one. One of the coolest action scenes in the film sees Optimus take on Megatron, Starscream and one other (unknown/unnamed) Deceptacon in a 3 on 1 bot match in which Optimus puts on a stunning display of battle prowess holding off all three Deceptacons while Sam escapes. I'll say no more on that lest it spoil the film. There's also a badass opening sequence in Shanghai which the Autobots take on several Deceptacons culminating in Optimus Prime taking out a Deceptacon about 10x his size - very cool.

 

More Bots - The original film featured quite a few familiar bots, this one brings more to the table including Arcee, Ravage, Soundwave and the Constructacons amongst others. Some of the new introductions match their predecessors well - the Constructacons (who actually go unnamed as far as I remember) are construction vehicles as before and Ravage is a big cat, although he doesn't transform into a cassette tape, while others have been 'tweaked' to match the rebooted series - Soundwave is a Satellite rather than a cassette player, and Devastator, the combined form of the constructacons resembles some sort of arachnid cement mixer rather than simply a large robot.

The Matrix is BACK - I didn't get this AllSpark thingy from the first film - I thought they'd simply fucked up on what The Matrtix was supposed to be, they didn't fuck up what The Matrix was supposed to be, they fucked up what Energon Cubes are supposed to be. Energon is the stuff Transformers power themselves with, it's stored in cubes, the movie version is a single cube that dispenses Energon and has the ability to bring machines "to life". The Matrix in the original was an energy source comparable to the films Allspark, able to grant life to machines, it was also the symbol of leadership for the Autobots and contained the wisdom of all its previous bearers, it did a lot of different shit depending on the version of Transformers. The film retains the Matrix as a badge of leadership, it also seems to have some sort of rejuvenation powers AND is used to power a machine that destroys suns and charges the AllSpark. Complicated, but it's cool to have it in there and fairly close to its original purpose.

 

What I didn't like

 

Infidelity - Yeah, I know this is a rebooted series and therefore unique and all previous Transformers cannon can be soundly ignored, but I don't get why. The existing Transformers cannon is old enough and niche enough that most people are probably completely ignorant of it - so why bother coming up with new shit that is, well, mostly shit. The general cannon is that the Transformers are millions of years old as a race and that the Earth-bound Autobots and Deceptacons are as individuals ancient - Optimus Prime and Megatron are both for, example of the order of millions of years old, Megatron being the first ever Deceptacon who instigated the war with everyone he deemed weak while Optimus Prime was originally a bot called Orion Pax who was destroyed by Megatron and rebuilt into the battle powerhouse that is Optimus Prime. Furthermore the Autobots and Deceptacons were originally supposed to have arrived on earth before humans even evolved, their ship getting stuck in a volcano and eventually being reawakened millennia later. Perfectly good story, instead we've got crap about "The Seven Primes" and "The Fallen" - this pretty much dumps on the original version of how the Deceptacon/Autobot war began. Another unwelcome alteration is the addition of "The Fallen" as Megatrons superior - Megatron has never had a true superior except for Unicron who transformed him into Galvatron and attempted to make him his slave - something Galvatron resisted almost to his demise, so the introduction of "The Fallen" character is a bit of a whatthefuck for me.

Unidentified Bots - As I pointed out there are a lot more bots this time around on both sides, but who many of these new bots are is a bit of a mystery, particularly on the Deceptacon end where very few of the new bots were introduced by name at all. The worst part was the end where 13 mostly random Deceptacons turn up and it's hard to tell what the fuck is going on. The confusion is partly the responsibility of how the new Transformers look - they're just all too similar looking in robot mode to tell apart - particularly the Deceptacons who all have a monotonous insectoid look in bot mode.

Too Much Human Stuff - This is no doubt down to time and budget given the expense and time consuming nature of creating good CGI on this scale, but the story is far too human-centric. >75% of the film is spent on madcap chase sequences or getaway sequences featuring Sam (Shia LeBouff) and Michaela (Megan Fox), and a lot of the end climax scenes is more US Army than Transformer. I paid to watch the Transformers battle it out, not to watch humans shoot at dust clouds in a desert. Ideally the next film would be set on Cybertron or feature Unicron, but I won't hold my breath.

Seymour Simmons - The special agent guy from the first film who insisted on calling Megatron NBE-1. He irritated the fuck out of me the first time and nothing changed on that score.

Closing

For all my bitching it is a reasonably decent film, certainly better than the first in my opinion, particularly the battle scenes with Optimus Prime, he pwns. I just wish major movie studios would just follow the story laid down for them already rather than reboot the fuck out of cool shit I like and turn it into lame shit I'm not as keen on, but we live in a time where everything has to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and if that means dressing Megan Fox up in the tightest or most revealing clothes they can find and make her run around a lot in the hot sweaty desert and focus the camera on her instead of doing something with the Transformers (the actual subject of the film) then that's what will be produced.

And they wonder why people pirate instead of buy.

Oh yeah, and MAKE A G1 TRANSFORMERS GAME YOU CUNTS

freedoms_stain, TRANSFORM AND ROLL OUT!

P.S the pic is my G1 Starscream reissue and an Optimus Prime movie keyring, the only Transformers stuff I have left :p