Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

[Ratman_tf]

In their defense, neither of the screenwriters claimed to like the movie when interviewed this past summer.

I read that. During the writers strike, Bay just kept on going and worked from the outline Orci and Kurtzman had done, instead of waiting for them to come back and write a real script. By the time the strike was over, I imagine the damage had been done.

[Slyfeind]

Sounds like TF2 was the Tabula Rasa of sci fi movies. BIZOW!

[HaemishM]

I started watching it last night, and I'm going to try to finish it. But holy fuck, it's bad. Hurtful bad. I could only stomach the first hour so far. I mean, I knew I'd hate it - I watch a movie like this so I can talk about how bad it is. But man, it was worse than I thought it could be. Dialogue (if you can call it that) written by methhead frat boys trumpeting being methhead frat boys. Military equipment knob polishing and overly dramatic music played over the knobbing. Megan Fox draped across the screen in the most suggestive poses possible just because. No reason, just because. I have no idea what this movie is about. The camera will not stop moving ever. That's the part that irritates me the most. It's just lazy filmmaking. We don't have anything interesting or sensible to say in this scene so we'll move the camera to give it some sort of action. Oh and EXPLOSION!!!! Shit just blows up for no reason.

This movie is Uwe Boll levels of bad.

[NowhereMan]

I now feel like I have to see this. Don't usually do watching movies on-line but there's no way I'm going to pay just to see how truly awful this is. Especially seeing as if it's as bad as people are saying I'm probably going to stop watching it 20 minutes in.

Edit: Ok I lasted almost half an hour. The military are riding around on trikes with missile launchers? The 'elite international task force' consists of having on British guy and a small union jack (importantly about half the size of the US flag) and reports directly to the Pentagon and White House? The whole fucking college bullshit with a roommate that has set up his on-line business in their palatial room? What the Fuck?

On top of all that it seems like there's only about 3 autobots that can do anything to Decepticons, what the hell is the point of having an elite task force costing probably billions when it's clear that those three are the only ones that can fucking do anything? This movie is horrible and based on this thread is only going to get worse.

[Ratman_tf]

Sounds like TF2 was the Tabula Rasa of sci fi movies. BIZOW!

TF2 made bank. Bay may suck at making movies, but he's pretty good at making money.

[Sir T]

Sounds like TF2 was the Tabula Rasa of sci fi movies. BIZOW!

Tabula Rasa had a decent script. It may have been a lot of things but they had some good writers. Some of it was laugh out loud funny, especially the never ending circular conversation between 2 guards about how hot it was standing beside a river of lava.

[Ironwood]

See, this is the thing;  I didn't mind the first movie at all.  It worked, even though it wasn't exactly high art.

This one is so shit that it totally ruins the idea of big robots hitting each other.  How the fuck do you ruin that ?

IT'S BIG ROBOTS HITTING EACH OTHER!!!

[Ratman_tf]

See, this is the thing;  I didn't mind the first movie at all.  It worked, even though it wasn't exactly high art.

This one is so shit that it totally ruins the idea of big robots hitting each other.  How the fuck do you ruin that ?

IT'S BIG ROBOTS HITTING EACH OTHER!!!

Jetfire in the movie said it best "Plot, pacing, story? Blah!" Revenge was a pure action movie. This is Big Robots Hitting Each Other. And it isn't that great after all.

[NowhereMan]

Big robots hitting each other with slightly better design so you could tell them apart and some (any) screen time devoted to developing their characters along with a plot that actually made some semblance of sense would have been awesome. I don't understand why every big action alien movie seems to need to have an hour of "America rah-rah-rah!" in it.

Ditch the humans beyond fringe figures, maybe include Sam as someone who gets to hang with the autobots but frankly we don't need to care about him all that much. Hell just give us some All-spark warrrglbarrrgl and then have the auto-bots debating what to do with him while the Decepticons try to grab him. There were big robots hittin each other but apart from Optimus and maybe Bumblebee the robots weren't really anything more than epic cool scenery or maybe cool weapons. Hell that fucking railgun got more screentime and plot importance than 99% of them. That (ridiculous plot fuckery and pointless racism aside) is why this movie was shit.

[HaemishM]

Big robots hitting each other might have been interesting. But I'm almost 2 hours into the movie now and there have been 2 scenes of big robots fighting each other. 2. The rest has been just gobs of nonsensical, unconnected scenes shot by a methhead, with dialogue that I don't think has one complete sentence among the lot. It's the cinematic equivalent of taking ants from one ant hill and throwing them in another ant hill and watching them fight, only less interesting. Big robots hitting each other would be an improvement on this. I really cannot fathom how anyone could look at the shooting script for this piece of shit and think they should have spent $200 million on it. Nor can I understand how anyone could like it or pay money to see it, much less so many people that it made its budget back and then some.

Among a sea of dumb movies, it takes the prize for dumb.

[Sir T]

Fuck I have a feeling I'm gonna see this over the weekend. this thread has piqued my curiosity.

[NowhereMan]

That's what it did to me and honestly I only watched the whole thing in the end because I kept being kinda bored. I did it in half hour increments with about an hour between each one because I just couldn't fucking face it anymore. Don't do it if there's anything at all short of staring at a wall that you might be able to do.

[Riggswolfe]

Nor can I understand how anyone could like it or pay money to see it, much less so many people that it made its budget back and then some.

That's the danger of big opening weekends. I'd bet this movie made a huge amount of its total money in that weekend, more than most movies do even. Alot of people were probably like me. Liked the first one and heard there would be more robot goodness in this one and went and were like "WTF?"

[WindupAtheist]

No. Like it or not, Transformers 2 had perfectly acceptable legs for the way it was sold. Compare it to Iron Man, a relatively recent front-loaded event picture that any sane human can agree was a much better movie. TF2 had an opening weekend only about $10m greater than Iron Man, but a total domestic gross around $80m greater and a worldwide gross about $250m greater than Iron Man. Sad as it may be, this was NOT a case of people being suckered by hype into seeing a movie they hated. TF2 did 75% of it's business after that first big weekend was over.

Oh, and here's the kicker. It wasn't just the domestic American box office. Check out where the grosses came from for these movies.

Iron Man: 54% domestic, 46% international
Dark Knight: 53% domestic, 47% international
TF2: 48% domestic, 52% international

[pxib]

If you spend enough money on quality special effects, everybody will watch.

[WindupAtheist]

To me it simply demonstrates that in the depths of summer during shitty economic times, people will happily pay money to sit in an air conditioned room and watch explosions for two and a half hours. Escapism sells, I guess, even if it isn't very good.

[Ratman_tf]

To me it simply demonstrates that in the depths of summer during shitty economic times, people will happily pay money to sit in an air conditioned room and watch explosions for two and a half hours. Escapism sells, I guess, even if it isn't very good.

The alternative is that there are a lot of people out there who thought this was a good movie.

I'm no cynic, but I'm not blind to how tasteless a lot of people can be.

[HaemishM]

My buddy at work loved TF2. He is an otherwise intelligent man. I do not understand.

I finished watching it and blogged my review. The fight between Bumblebee and the unnamed red Decepticon was decent. The rest of the movie was just a goddamn nightmare.

[Ratman_tf]

I finished watching it and blogged my review.

Sam goes off to college and his parents suffer empty nest syndrome, eat pot brownies and vacation in France, where we assume they are abducted by evil robots since they show up later in Egypt in the clutches of an evil bulldozer robot. We never actually see them be abducted.

Interesting. I caught the scene where the Decepticons abduct Sam's parents, but completely missed the pot brownie scene. I thought his mom was just crazy. I blame watching fatigue. There's no way anyone not on speed can follow this movie from start to finish.

[WindupAtheist]

This cracked me up, and I can't think of anywhere else for it.

What, this is a movie?!

[Merusk]

Following that entire series lead me to this.  How TF2 should have ended.

Nice series of vids from those guys, too.

[Oban]

This movie was so painful to watch on so many levels.

I had to stop after the submarine, on the surface, detected robots in the ocean.

[Bunk]

Subjected myself to watching a bit of the Spike TV Scream awards last night. Based on those, apparently the masses really don't care how bad this movie was. Best Actress - Megan Fox, Best Newcomer Actress - the blonde terminator ripoff chick that had three lines... 

They even nominated Bay for best director. JJ Abrahms saved us from the universe imploding there.

[angry.bob]

I had to stop after the submarine, on the surface, detected robots in the ocean.

Oh come on... that shit was great. If the sub hadn't been on the surface, we would have never gotten the cool Baysian OMG EMERGENCY DIVE!!!! stuff. The fact that they said Megatron was 9300 fathoms deep and that the 5 "contacts" could possibly be 5 deep sea recovery vehicles in the middle of the ocean randomly fucking around was just splendid. I especially loved that even though megatron was supposed to be almost twice as deep as the deepest part of the Marianas Trench, there were still lots of starfish and half a dozen octopi living in his mouth and neck. Maybe they were living on his residual energon!. Gentlemen, I'm going to pitch a script to Bay for Transformers 3: RISE OF TEH ENERGOCTOPONS. And yes, "teh" will be part of the actual title, it would really resonate with the target market.

[Sheepherder]

9300 Fathoms?  That's only what, 55 800 feet below the surface, around 24 552 psi?

[Cadaverine]

I can say with much pride that I will merrily go to my grave having never seen so much as a second of either movie outside of being subjected to the trailers.  The rest of you poor bastards have my sympathies, however.

[KallDrexx]

I think I enjoyed TF2 more than Alien Resurrection (which I just saw for the first time a few days ago).

[WindupAtheist]

TF1 was fun. Stupid, but fun. I don't have anything against stupid fun. Despite being just about the same length as TF2, it seemed way the hell shorter due to being at least reasonably well-paced.

[Merusk]

I think I enjoyed TF2 more than Alien Resurrection (which I just saw for the first time a few days ago).

Quite possible.  You have to really, REALLY be into the Alien series to even remotely enjoy the last ~45 mins or so of Resurrection, which destroy the entire rest of the movie.   TF2 is at least consistent in what it provides.

[Sir T]

Ok I caught the first 15 minutes of this on the plane before the pilot shut it off for landing...

(fuck spoiler tags)

The first fight I actually enjoyed. Then we get to the happy arguing families with gay dogs and the little Decepticons erupting from household appliances. Then the hero guy after doing the most lame "please don't leave me" scene on the planet (to the hooker that was draped over a motorbike) decides to fight the foot high robots with a fire extinguisher. Not doing something sensible like, you know, hitting them with the big metal fire extinguisher. No, by spraying them with CO2. The foot high robots, who were of course not really bothered by this, open fire on 6 foot good guy with real bullets at a range of about a foot. And completely miss. And then he calls on his pet Autobot to save the day (who doesn't have a voice due to them not hiring the actor again or something). The hooker did a striptease to put on a white dress and hold flowers for some reason. And then Soundwave hooked up to a big defense satellite without anyone noticing to listen in on the guys with the small union jack...

I was left with a great sense of the contribution this has made to the art of filmmaking, a sense that the tragedy of the story would have stayed with me forever, and the conviction that this film deserves an oscar. I can only imagine the delights that would have awaited me if I could have watched the rest of the film...

[Ironwood]

Brain Cancer.

[ghost]

Insipid. 

[stray]

I think I enjoyed TF2 more than Alien Resurrection (which I just saw for the first time a few days ago).

Quite possible.  You have to really, REALLY be into the Alien series to even remotely enjoy the last ~45 mins or so of Resurrection, which destroy the entire rest of the movie.   TF2 is at least consistent in what it provides.

I like Alien Resurrection. Not sure what you're referring to about the last 45 mins, but it's got a pretty good cast. It's got Ron Perlman and Brad Dourif.. that right there already is cool. Sigourney is still a cool bitch in it though, and Michael Wincott's always great. I've always been a Winona fanboy, so there's that too.


edit: Basically, I'm not picky about the "Alien" story. Aliens kill, people die. Those movies work or not for me if I can just get behind the characters (and that takes a good cast I guess). Same as any other horror. That's why 3 doesn't work. Can't get interested in a bunch of prisoners and a bald Ripley. The whole mood of that movie isn't frantic or fun either. Just bleak.

[Merusk]

The first part of the movie is fantastic and I dug it.  Everything after and including Ripley having sex with the alien?  Utter shit that ruins the first part of the movie for me.  Your mileage obviously varies.

[dusematic]

Can anyone find a clip of Shia cumming his pants in that opening classroom scene?  That was the best (and funniest) part of the movie.