I think Revenge of the Fallen is much better! I mean it has the best scene in the history of movies which is the Forest Battle.

You may be onto something there. The action, the special effects, the emotion ("I'll take you ALL on!")... It's going to be hard to think of a better scene in a movie...

Wait, are we speaking of any and all movies?!

After looking through all the examples given, I still think this may be my #1. Actually, I think the closest rival to it for me would be the Mission City battle in the first movie...

 

I'm kind of a movie nut, and to part of my brain this almost seems like a challenge to find a better scene in a movie... somewhere.

 

Must... resist... urge... to... Get off topic!! ( :D )

Second movie was way better. More action faster pace makes it funner too watch.

The '07 film was better, and better by the WIDEST of margins.

 

There really was no comparison.

 

The only 3 things that 'saved' ROTF, IMO, were the forest fight scene (which was good, not GREAT); the formation of Devastator (which took seconds) and the portrayal of Starscream--which was spot-on, and truly nostalgic, easily the best parts of the entire movie. Too bad he didn't play an even bigger role.

 

The things that were sorta annoying but almost entertaining that I could actually focus past: The Doctor and Ron Witwicky (who actually had the lone moment of dignity in the Egypt fight scene-'We're ALL GOING TOGETHER!!!'), and the two get the 'Stiff-Upper Lip' Award for actually doing something--however small--to make the movie avoid being a complete FAIL.

 

The things that killed ROTF are nearly inumerable:

 

1) Jetfire edges out Wheelie, Lennox, Galloway, Leo, The Twins, Judy Witwicky and Mikaela for the coveted 'Most Fucking Annoying Character In A Michael Bay Film' Award. And the competition was tough. Stiff. Because each and every last one of these characters almost broke me, and had me inching towards the exit. But Jetfire actually had me ashamed to be in the theater nearly every time he was on-screen. And I'm not referring to his parachute-based flatulence. Just completely hackneyed, fugtastic, and over-the-top stupid. Jetfire edges out all of the others based on the fact that Wheelie and Leo had one good line apiece, Galloway was not on-screen enough AND he was an oft-used stock character (at this point, it's becoming an archetype) that was supposed to be annoying (but he was in the worst kind of way) and I'm not giving it to him based on that alone, giving it to the Twins would be validating Michael Bay, and I'm not sure WHY I'm not giving the award to Josh Duhamel or Meg Fox, but I'm not. Even though their especially piss-poor performances merited it. I'm ashamed for them.

 

2) THE FALLEN. This is not how you build up a monster, Part One: 'Only a Prime can defeat the Fallen?' It's more like: 'Only a Prime can mop the floor with me and beat my ass without breaking a sweat--completely no-selling me, and making the 7 Primes really look like crap.' You also managed to take a long, greasy crap on the history and mythology of ancient Egypt. I don't know how I would have written in the demise of The Fallen, but I'm reasonably sure that having Prime just stand toe-to-toe with him and beat him senseless--while also TALKING TRASH TO HIM--would not have been one of my courses of action.

 

3) MEGATRON. This is not how you build up a monster, Part the Second: I don't know what brand of Wheaties Prime scarfed down betwen the last movie and this one, but he was beating Megatron's ass from beginning to end in ROTF, no matter how much assistance Megs had in his corner, or what kind of advantage he had. So NOW the Bayverse has gone and no-sold Megatron, making him look every bit as ineffective and shopworn as can be humanely possible. It's MEGATRON. Not Thrust. Not Reflector. MEGATRON. Moreso than the fraudulent buildup of both The Fallen and Devastator, this particular gaffe is by FAR the most unforgivable...even by Michael Bay standards. When your top 3 villains are simply completely unworthy of respect, you've really got no movie.

 

4) DEVASTATOR. This is not how you build up a monster, Part the Third: This is completely ridiculous. The 'mighty' Devastator is ashed by HUMANS. What in the world did the Autobots need to do in this film? Over the course of films One and Two, humanity seemed to be doing just fine. It's like building up Goldberg just so he can go do the job (at Starrcade, no less) to Dean Malenko. Do you want me to buy his $100+ dollar toy or not? His 'testicles' were simply...you know: I'll be honest. I didn't even notice them. The beating this movie gave me rendered those moot and tame by Bay standards. Can't wait 'till I see a TF penis in the third movie, though.

 

5) Judy Witwicky: I wished a painful death for this base and annoying character every second she was on the screen. I mean that. Wholeheartedly. There's playing a part completely over the top, and then there's what she did in this movie. Which means more pain for me. Divorce is your friend, Ron Witwicky.

 

6) Frankie and Mojo: the fact that the mere seconds they were on-screen caused so much internal hemorrhaging on my part is pure testimony to the absolute ridiculousness of their inclusion in the film...they couldn't even muster the 'dignity' of Michaela's pop.

 

7) The Twins...were just honest-to-God stupid. The Twins were Stupidity personified. And I'm fine with a character(s) portraying a stupid role in a film, but their stupidity transcended the script and had me casting an askew glance (and plenty of expletives) at Bay and the 3-headed writing monster. Maybe Bay and his writers can be the new villains in the 3rd film. The twins didn't offend me at all, but my god...did they annoy. And they just didn't stop--not even when 'Bee cold-cocked them ( I've never cheered so much or so hard for the actions of one character).

 

8) The extra-pitiful Species subplot. Because I'm not calling Alice a Pretender. It would be both insulting to the original toyline and the band. It made no sense. It was simply gratuitous, and simply dumb. It was pure Bay. And it was shameful to boot...and by shameful, I mean Skyscraper shameful. Why did I pay good money to watch Mike Bay literally get himself off? Was Bay channelling Uwe Boll in this movie?

 

9) Leo Spitz. Why, exactly, was he in the movie? Sam knew Simmons. He didn't know where he was, or what he was doing, but the writers couldn't make that happen without the inclusion of ballast like Leo? Why did he tag along with them after Alices' attack? Why did he continue to tag along with them after each subsequent Decepticon attack? For comic-relief? I'll give him credit for this: watching him nearly wet himself in the car induced one chuckle. ONE. One more than the rest of the movie induced.

 

10) Wheelie. Let me see: your bosses are Starscream, Megatron...and The FALLEN. Jetfire's turn I can understand...he was dying anyway and he'd seen too much evil on the part of th Decepticons. But the cowardly Wheelie? Knowing what Decepticons DO to traitors? It took 3 people to write this. Stupidity. Stop humping Mikaela's leg, Wheelie. You'll catch something nasty.

 

11) The crass deposition of Optimus Prime's body. My god. Just set him down gently, with some pretense of respect...not just drop him from 30 feet like a sack of old potatoes. I'm sure it had a lot to do with Galloway, but no. No. No, no, no.

 

12) Mikaela: I've seen some bad acting in movies. I've seen Charles Huber in Skyscraper. I watched Lance Guest bore the nation to tears in Jaws: The Revenge, and I barely survived Henry Bal in Angry Joe Bass. And now, I've seen Megan Fox in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Which means that now, I've officially seen it all and I can die happy because I've seen some of the worst acting of all time. Michaela was absolutely ridiculous, and was every bit as offensive as people keep telling me the Twins are. The lips. The breast implants. The fake tan and her incredible inability to portray much of anything cement her place in movie infamy.

 

13) Galloway. Come on. I mean, really. Come on. I half-expected him to pull a Mayor Larry Vaughn at one point, and prevent the closing of the beaches.

 

14) Lennox. When I am eternally grateful for TYRESE GIBSON, of all people, for barely holding together a scene (which is an absolutely stretch here), you know you've given a truly Shatner-esque performance. Josh Duhamel has all the natural charisma and screen presence of Jeff Fahey. Michael Ontkean. David Heavener. He grated my senses and burned at my soul nearly every second he was on the screen. And I actually LIKED him in the first movie.

 

15) The Especially Fluid-Filled Nature of The Bayverse Transformers: Why are TFs crying--and crying a literal river, at that? Every other scene, a robot is coughing up phlegm. The words 'unnecessary' and 'A Michael Bay Film' really do go together. Just like peanut butter and jelly.

 

16) The Overbearing Human Subplots: I don't care about love in a TF movie (especially the fake, chlamydia-ridden love this movie brings to bear). I don't care about Sam's parents. I don't care about Sam. Tyrese Gibson. Josh Duhamel. Galloway. Spitz. Rainn Wilson's character. ANY of the humans in this movie. Because if ALL people acted this way, I'd either a) become a hermit and go live in the mountains ala Jeremiah Johnson or b) I'd take the Unibomber's approach to living with humanity. These are all just completely odious and odiferous human characters that populate the Bayverse and saturate the screen with their stink. It's like every human in the movie put it on auto-pilot, and their performances went back and to the left. Moreover, it gives Mike Bay too much room to really strut his stuff and give me what I really want, as he comes this close to giving us unabashed Red Shoe Diaries moments over and over and over again.

 

17) The Scaled-Down Robot Presence--Even Though There Are More of Them: Jolt is addressed by name ONCE in the movie. Now, I know who 'Jolt' is because I've got him on preorder at BBTS. The poor schmucks next to me, on the other hand, kept asking: 'who's the blue car?' over and over and over again. Would it have hurt to actually take about 10 seconds to introduce us to him? You know, instead of him, Ratchet and the 3 Weird Sisters teleporting into and out of every other scene they are in? How about the nameless, faceless Constructicon horde?

 

In sum, I'd have to state that this movie belongs with true refuse such as Hobgoblins; Battlefield Earth: A Saga of The Year 3000; Batman and Robin AND Batman Forever; Skyscraper; Manos: The Hands of Fate; Jaws: The Revenge; Exorcist 2: The Heretic; Pearl Harbor; Armageddon; Deep Impact; Bluebeard; Ancient Evil: Scream of The Mummy; Howard The Duck and, of course, the unstoppable, unrelenting scourge that is Gigli as just one of the worst movies ever made. The critics are not wrong. They are not being excessively dramatic or negative in their reviews of this movie.

 

Transformers owns Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in every conceivable fashion from storyline to acting to edits that don't make me feel like I'm about to have a seizure. Even the forest fight scene is owned by the Bonecrusher/Prime freeway battle in the first movie.

 

I fear the third film.

I tend to agree... the cons of movie 2 just far far outweight the pros. The 2007 movie was better. This poll started out in almost a 2:1 ratio of that -- looks like it's gotten much closer now. I'm surprised to see it this close.

^ Good posting overall, though I don't feel quite as strongly as you do...

 

Ron Witwicky (who actually had the lone moment of dignity in the Egypt fight scene-'We're ALL GOING TOGETHER!!!')

That was awesome.

 

I'm not sure WHY I'm not giving the award to Josh Duhamel or Meg Fox, but I'm not. Even though their especially piss-poor performances merited it. I'm ashamed for them.

Why so much hate for Lennox?

 

2) THE FALLEN. This is not how you build up a monster, Part One: 'Only a Prime can defeat the Fallen?' It's more like: 'Only a Prime can mop the floor with me and beat my ass without breaking a sweat

One argument could be that not only was Optimus a Prime, he's a newer "model" than the Fallen AND he's augmented with Jetfire's parts. But I agree that the Fallen should have been more powerful.

 

3) MEGATRON. This is not how you build up a monster, Part the Second: I don't know what brand of Wheaties Prime scarfed down betwen the last movie and this one, but he was beating Megatron's ass from beginning to end in ROTF

Maybe it was more a result of Megatron having to been put back together using parts from dead Transformers. But again I agree that I wish he was also more powerful.

 

Can't wait 'till I see a TF penis in the third movie, though.

Don't you remember the one kitchen bot with the cannon coming out of his groin? That was an early indication for me of things yet to come...

 

7) The Twins...And they just didn't stop--not even when 'Bee cold-cocked them ( I've never cheered so much or so hard for the actions of one character).

Yeah, I reached a new level of admiration for BB there.

 

8) The extra-pitiful Species subplot.

I liked Alice. It was neat concept: a Decepticon that tries to get close to Sam by transforming into a human.

 

9) Leo Spitz. I'll give him credit for this: watching him nearly wet himself in the car induced one chuckle. ONE. One more than the rest of the movie induced.

I burst out loud laughing when he tasered himself. Then that scene was ruined with another "nuts" joke...

 

Jolt is addressed by name ONCE in the movie. Now, I know who 'Jolt' is because I've got him on preorder at BBTS. The poor schmucks next to me, on the other hand, kept asking: 'who's the blue car?' over and over and over again.

I didn't even catch Ratchet's line the first time I saw it. When I did see Jolt earlier, I thought maybe he was the motorcycle sisters combined. It wasn't until after I read the forums here that I realized who it was.

 

 

You know, I somehow forgot all about Spitz tasering his own kibbles 'n' bits. So that = 2 chuckles (to be fair, his scene in the car was actually more of a guffaw-chuckle. But I still don't know why he was there. I'd have been on the first thing smoking. Giant, fighting alien robots, with GUNS? And they have my companions' face posted WORLDWIDE? Were I Spitz, Sam would have been on his own.

 

As far as Lennox goes...he was, for me, probably the most disappointing character in the film not named Megatron. I thought he was cool in the first movie. I didn't completely buy him as an officer in the Army (apparently, a major, no less this time around)...but I did kinda sorta buy him as an everyman. He lost that in ROTF, and became, literally, a cliche, tossing out cliched one-liners and committing cliched acts that I'm reasonably sure would have landed him or any other enlisted man in Ft. Leavenworth, suspension of disbelief or not. He became less of a character and more of a caricature, and lost me completely. He literally seemed like he phoned in his performance, and I'll be fair: he wasn't alone (Shia LaBeouf, I'm talking you).

 

I kind of thought the same as you: Optimus Prime representing the very latest in Prime technology with an upgrade (courtesy of Jetfire), putting him on equal footing with The Fallen. I considered it, and didn't buy it...for no other reason than that this would require me to mentally cover for the movies' mistakes. Well, that and: I'm not sure what incredible edge Jetfire's decrepit parts were supposed to give Prime, seeing as how they WERE decrepit and certainly weren't doing Jetfire any good. Granted, they still worked, but clearly did not work well...until the script needed them to.

 

And Alice...first off, I've got to say something here. If someone were to give me a job writing TF stories, be it IDW or Dreamworks/Paramount, the thing I would love to do the MOST (other than a Sunbow G1 Season 3 retcon) would be the Pretenders. And I hated the Pretenders toy line, and a good chunk of the characters. I hated it, but I thought the concept was--and is--amazing. Updated, its even cooler: Smaller, stealth TFs hiding in bioengineered/cloned human oraganic outer shells that are fully interactive with the TF core unit hidden inside. It's ingenious, and that's where you and I are in complete agreement. I absolutely have got to give Bay or whoever came up with their take on it a pat on the back for a job well done. Now that I've given someone credit, I have to play the role of Indian giver, and take it all away. Because I'm sorry: you're not worthy of credit when you are ripping off Species AND The Faculty for pity's sake. I seriously forgot which movie I was watching when Alice switched back to human mode offscreen and did her 'threatening walk' from the burning building. I thought I switched over to The Faculty. Also: each scene (and therefore, to me, the very premise) was TOO sex-driven--in the most puerile, crass and frat-boy fashion--and her actions before AND after Mikaela showed her face and caught them both 'in the act' are at direct odds with an organism acting in a presumably covert capacity.

^ Yeah, I see your points with Alice and I agree the movie was WAY too sex driven. I don't know if it was here I mentioned it, but I don't remember any other movie (other than a sex comedy) that used so many different words for "testicles," "scrotum," "nuts..." Those are just the ones I remember. Most action movies I see neveer refer to them.

 

Lennox got promoted in the Alliance prequel. Issue 3 I think it was...

 

i don't mind if it's sex driven, the more the marrier :tfpuke , this movie isn't aimed at kids anyway(they have animated for that).

 

oh and like ShellformerV1 said, the mom just went flat out crazy. in the first film i thought she was funny because she was intoxicated, but in the 2nd she was just out of her mind.

 

and i also think that the twins are waste of screen time... weak characters :tfevil

^ Yeah, I see your points with Alice and I agree the movie was WAY too sex driven. I don't know if it was here I mentioned it, but I don't remember any other movie (other than a sex comedy) that used so many different words for "testicles," "scrotum," "nuts..." Those are just the ones I remember. Most action movies I see neveer refer to them.

 

Excellent point. It's as if the movie wants to be Austin Powers or something half the time.

 

We get it---yeah---balls---right.

i don't mind if it's sex driven, the more the marrier :tfpuke , this movie isn't aimed at kids anyway(they have animated for that).

 

Coulda fooled me, that was the most juvenile use of sexual innuendo I've seen since Beavis and Butthead. At least Beavis and Butthead are satirical portrayals of horny, retarded teenagers.

 

I've got nothing against sex in cinema, so long as it's plot driven, and the participants have to deal with the morning-after repercussions; think Terminator, The Color of Night, Fatal Attraction. Even Species had a plot-based excuse for the sex. If I wanted to watch mindless, plotless sex, I'd rather watch a Sasha Grey video.

i don't mind if it's sex driven, the more the marrier :tfpuke , this movie isn't aimed at kids anyway(they have animated for that).

 

Coulda fooled me, that was the most juvenile use of sexual innuendo I've seen since Beavis and Butthead. At least Beavis and Butthead are satirical portrayals of horny, retarded teenagers.

 

I've got nothing against sex in cinema, so long as it's plot driven, and the participants have to deal with the morning-after repercussions; think Terminator, The Color of Night, Fatal Attraction. Even Species had a plot-based excuse for the sex. If I wanted to watch mindless, plotless sex, I'd rather watch a Sasha Grey video.

 

 

sexy characters are never a turn off. it was just another way to attract the attention of the customers/audience(think E3's booth babes). if anything i'd like to see Bay do differently, toning down of sex would not be on my list.

 

well, in the end, sex sells, period. was it a bad choice for transformers films? maybe. do i care? not at all :tfpwn