Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The big hit of the 2009 Summer Movie Season was meant to be Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sequel to the 2007 film, unfortunately despite strong action sequences it was somewhat disappointing.

Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg return respectively as director and executive producer, while Shia LaBeouf reprises the role of Sam Witwicky, the human caught in the war between Autobots and Decepticons.

In the film, dated two years after the original film, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and the Autobots join a secret military organization called NEST, a group that hunts down the remaining Decepticons hiding throughout the world. After the Autobots and NEST hunt down a decepticon they learn that "The Fallen is Coming."

While Witwicky (LaBeouf) discovers a piece of the Allspark, and like his great great grandfather, begins seeing Cybertronian symbols, symbols that lead to the location of the Matrix of Leadership, a Cybertronian artifact that powers the Sun Harvester, a device that the Fallen used to destroy suns for Energon.

The decepticons began to pursue Witwicky, in an attempt to acquire the symbols, which leads to an battle between NEST, the Autobots and Decepticons, a battle that includes with a shocking twist, and later an epic final battle between Optimus against Megatron and The Fallen.

The first movie brought me back to when I used to see the movie as a kid, it was awesome to see Optimus Prime on the silver screen and especially the fact that the voice of the cartoon Optimus Prime Peter Cullen reprised the role in both the first and second films. Also I was blown away by the action sequences, and of course, Megan Fox.

The second film, featured some new additions including Autobots Skids and Mudflap, twins who provided key comic relief throughout the film, and the news reports about the robots being racist is ridiculous.

The main cast like the first film, was strong in their performances from LaBeouf, Fox, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Unlike, any big action movie over the years, Transformers provided several memorable comedic moments, at times a bit childish, but still funny.

Honestly, I could have done without John Turturro's character. Turturro seemed to overact his performance in both the first film as a Sector 7 Agent, and in this film as a deli shop worker fired from Sector 7.

The action sequences were great, but unlike the first movie, several battle scenes had horror movie like endings, like Bumblebee ripping the spine out of one of the decepticons, good for adults, kids you got to wonder.

But does this movie really have to be 2 hours and 24 minutes long, in watching this movie twice, I easily trimmed 20 unnecessary minutes from the film. Why is it that these epic movies nowadays have to be over two hours, like Spider-Man 3, even though the acting was dreadful, the film was over two and half hours.

Anyway, despite some over the top humor, and the length of the film, I would recommend Transformers, but I don't feel the film is equivalent to the first film. I am still looking forward to the rumored third movie coming out in 2011.

DID YOU KNOW: Hugo Weaving voices the Decepticon leader Megatron in both films, Weaving is famous for his roles as Agent Smith in the Matrix franchise and V in V For Vendetta. Frank Welker was the original voice of Megatron in the animated series. Welker does provide the voice for both Soundwave and Devastator in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Now you've read my review here's what some fellow critics thought about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.