Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
The film really needed a much better structured script. The story premise was decent but the film was a mish mash of tones, and parts such as the army guys had such under developed roles. Ultimately the film didn't really end in a different place than the last one. It was just pumpped up, not taking the franchise along a story path.
I think the thing is, it's just ridiculous silly. There gets to a point where it's so silly it gets really entertaining and fun, and it's building to this and then the final act just drags on, and it loses the fun, the action just isn't as good as the first half and the whole section is really an incoherent mess. Surprising tame and not well structured action which is a let down from Bay. It's almost as if they just ran out of creative steam, and just wanted to put in some cool visuals around the pyramids.
I think you have to be prepared for it to be ridiculous, over the top in the humor and while the odd personalities of the robots is some what strange.. why'd a robot act like a retard?? If you can get over it, it's mainly popcorn fun, just drags on at the end, that it looses the fun the momentum had been building. I never expected to take the film seriously, and while the first one is just all round a much better film, story, character, direction wise, there is still fun with this one. The first one i personally just lapped up as perfectly executed popcorn, blockbuster entertainment. This one just is no where near as polished and well done to the perfection that made me really like the first film.
A thing to remember, this is a victim of the writers strike. That happened right when the script was to be written. The studio had a start date, pushing a head so Michael Bay knew the story and just worked and worked on the action and pre-production basically with out a script, with the writers only coming in to write the script and put it all together in a really short time before principle photography started. This does show in the film.
You can stop the review now or read to my nit picking rant. It is kind of spoilerish but not really. Also I say nit picking because thats what people will call it but it really isn't nit picking as it's about something so obviously and to the detriment of the film.
Now what also suffered from the end was the complete lack of real world geography. According to this film Petra is just in some mountains off to the side of the pyramids, not across the suez canal and the Sinai desert and the red sea, the 400 kms away it is in Jordan which doesnt share a land border with Egypt. Here it's a short drive.
Also apparently next to the border with Jordan is right next to the pyramids. This sort of ignorance was just bizarre. Having the soldiers fighting next to the pyramids and having the jordan army come in for back up was just odd. Why be so unrealistic and not just have the Egyptian army?
Also and this is spoiler, if they wanted to go to jordan and for pacing made it so close, why not use the teleporting?? get around this whole stupidity.
Then they insisted on sticking the pyramids in the background as much as possible during this scene with no regard to their orientation so you couldn't follow where things were or get a sense of the place. Sure it doesn't have to exactly match the area, i don't mind they shot stuff that's much further south in egypt as next to the pyramids, but the amount of liberties was just mind-numbingly astonishing!
Things such as shots of John Turturro and the transformers on Khafre's pyramid. It then cuts to an insert shot of John Turturro where you can see Khafre's pyramid untouched in the background.
And through out the whole act there were many similar shots with the pyramids untouched or jumping around on them. With each of the giza pyramids being distinctive looking, it was just an annoying detraction. These are the only landmarks to link the locations in this fantasy mix of Jordan and Egypt, would be nice to not have shots of people driving from the west when going to the east, and the constant mess of geography due to the only landmarks changing location and orientation.
It was just so poorly handled that it almost seemed like it had to be deliberate. A lot of time and effort goes into these and It really seemed that Bay decided, to **** with the real world or any of this making sense. To me this just kept taking me out of the scene, it bugged the hell out of me. If the action had been better with the military guys not just explosions and shit, it could have all worked. This whole section just shitted me, although there were some cool shit and i did still enjoy for the most part.
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