With Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (TF:ROTF), director Michael Bay shows us more of the same stuff that made the first movie such a big hit, literally: chunks, slivers, and shards of metal flying every which way. 

Despite being roughly two and a half hours long, TF:ROTF entertains with a rush of so many action sequences. There’s rarely a moment’s pause, and even then it’s just barely enough time for you to catch your breath before the next big explosion.

A lot of things have and can be said about Bay, but you have to hand it to him when it comes to fast-paced action. The sight and sound of two-storey-tall robots battling to the death, metal clashing, circuits popping, and sparks flying, is something you just have to see to really enjoy. It’s a cybernetic ballet, a danse macabre in steel that’s absolutely breathtaking to watch.

Throw in a dash of melodrama, a bit of sexual tension, and one too many toilet humor schticks (NOT-SO-SPOILER ALERT: get ready to see Devastator’s balls!) and you’ve got a surefire action blockbuster.

An ancient evil awakens

In TF:ROTF, for the first time, we’re introduced to an evil entity that’s so menacing that even the great Megatron bows before it: the eponymous Fallen.

You see, throughout its many incarnations over the years, the Transformers has always had Megatron as the archnemesis of the Autobots; even when he is portrayed as the lackey of a much larger foe (such as the godlike Unicron in 1987’s animated Transformers: The Movie), it was always with no small amount of reluctance. So one can only imagine how terribly maligned an entity The Fallen is that a war freak-like Megatron makes humble obeisance to him.

In TF:ROTF, we see that The Fallen is an evil so ancient that it binds the Transformers’ past as well as our own future together under its chilling mantle. In this movie, we discover that the civilization of earth is much more deeply tied into that of the Transformers than anyone had previously realized. Indeed, as it turns out, both the history and ultimate fate of humankind and the Transformers themselves are inextricably intertwined. It makes for a grand, overarching plot to rival even the best space operas out there –yes, we’re talking about that story, which happened “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

Unanswered questions

TF:ROTF, being a sequel, was a rare chance to further develop the characters and the back story of the Transformers as an alien race. And that’s where it utterly fails to deliver.

What’s the Transformers’ raison d’etre? Do they fear death? What drives them to live? What brought them to fight a war that has raged for millions of years, spanning lightyears of space? Why, of all the countless worlds in the night sky, did they decide to bring their war here? Couldn’t they find some other star or planet to wreak havoc on? And why is Bumblebee, despite supposedly being a millennia-old battle-hardened warrior, such a crybaby? You certainly won’t find answers to any of these questions in this movie.

What you will find, though, are so many loopholes and inconsistencies that you eventually just give up counting them all. At which point, you either just give up on the movie entirely and walk out or start to enjoy it for what it really is: a shallow, albeit pleasurable, excuse for some wham-bam robot action.
 
A coaster ride of “summer fun?"

Of course, one might argue that that’s exactly the point. TF:ROTF is just a big roller coaster ride that you shouldn’t think too much about. After all, in an interview, Bay said of his work: “It’s called summer fun. It’s a robot movie.” And laughed. 

However, accepting this movie solely on those grounds is a huge insult to the movie’s writers and designers as well as to the intelligence of its viewers. Anyone who says that kids won’t appreciate –much less look for –character development certainly hasn’t learned any lessons from the very first time the Transformers hit the big screen way back in 1987.

There wasn’t a single child fan of the Transformers back then who wasn’t traumatized by the death of Optimus Prime in that movie, proving that it takes more than just blowing things up to make a good movie.

Not much more

While certainly satisfying on a visual level, TF:ROTF had so much more going for it than mere spectacle. What could have been a very memorable film instead became the victim of shortsighted directorial vision, and so devolved into what Michael Bay always wanted it to be: a summer blockbuster, neither more nor less.

So if you come into the theater looking for a fast-paced action movie, then expect to come away fully satisfied with TF:ROTF. Sadly, however, there’s not much more to it than meets the eye.