**Spoiler Warning**
The following article may contain plot spoilers. If you wish to remain spoiler free, please do not read any further.
It’s been quite a year in terms of cinema visits for me. Compared with last year where I went to the cinema to see one movie (albeit 4 times – it was The Dark Knight). I’ve been at least 5 times this year already if not a few more.
If I remember rightly I only went to the cinema once back in 2007 and that was to see Transformers. We ended up in the Cineworld in Castleford in one of the VIP screens and it was fantastic. The 7.1 surround system combined with there being only 12 or so seats in the little room at the back of the auditorium rocked!
Back on topic. We went to see Revenge of the Fallen on Friday night, it was a 23:10 showing so quite late on. I’d heard that there had been a few mixed/negative reviews but had purposefully avoided them. I was determined that I was going to enjoy the movie no matter what. I’d jokingly written I was going to watch Megan Fox, I remember joining a facebook group along the lines of “I went to see Transformers but all I saw was Megan Fox….” – She is gorgeous and has great acting ability but Megan aside as great as she is, the movie itself was great also. The second movie is no exception.
Basic plot surmise is that ancestors of the robots from Cybertron (the Primes) have visited earth before in the search for energon (an energy source, required by the robots). There was a rule that they would never harvest the energy from an inhabited system due to the process effectively killing the sun. One of the Primes (The Fallen) decides to go rogue and wants to set the harvesting machine going. The rest of the Primes take him out before sacrificing themselves and burying themselves and the key required to start the machine – the “Matrix”. The knowledge on where to find the key is inadvertently burned inside Sam’s head when he picks up a shard of the allspark that was in an old item of clothing. Sam struggles with the knowledge and goes into mental breakdown which is alleviated by him writing the symbols down. Later, Optimus Prime is killed and we learn that the Matrix may also be capable of resurrecting him. Thus ensues a race to find the Matrix between the Decepticons who want to blow up the planet and Sam and friends who want to save Prime. There are a bunch of subplots that I won’t give away here, it’s all great – go and see it!
From start to finish I was hooked, plenty of action, plenty of laughs and plenty of geek-goodness. In fact there was so much in the way of geekdom that I didn’t get most of it, it’s made me more interested in the franchise though and I’m really interested in getting hold of comics and original cartoons to catch up on some of the lore.
There were a lot of twists in the story, things I didn’t expect and a lot of humour. Right from the start with Sam’s mum and dad cavorting around before leaving for Uni and her eating the hash cake. Pure genius and it helped to break up the story a little bit. The bond between Shia and Megan is so beliveable I was almost at the stage of welling up and when he didn’t show up for the webcam chat, my heart broke. Poor thing! 
You really believed that these two were together and Megan has this amazing ability to convey so much emotion through her eyes.
Same with the bond between Sam and Bumblebee. To say that Shia was working with invisible robots, you really believe that you’ve got a boy and his best friend, the bond is strong and you really get the feeling of a strong, protection almost big brother type bond between the two.
It was interesting to see how things had progressed in the break between the two movies, the autobots working alongside NEST, finding and taking down decepticons was a pretty cool and well thought out concept, I had a giant grin on my face when Optimus Prime took out most of them single handedly in a fight before getting ripped in half by Megatron at which point I was almost crying again (you can imagine what a movie like Marley and Me would do to me, I think I’m getting a little over sensitive in my old age). Same thing when Bumblebee was kicking ass later in the film.
By far the best line for me was when Agent Simmons was on the pyramid under Devastator
I’m currently located beneath the enemy scrotum
Due to the noise going on in the movie at that precise moment I think most of the audience missed that line, I giggled. It was funny just how often the entire cinema laughed out loud though, I don’t remember the first film having as many laughs as this one did. I was hysterical when Sam was in Bumblebee with Alice and ‘Bee slammed her face against the front of the car. My only concern with that was – how did he not know she was a decepticon?
I’m guessing theres backstory/a reason for it, possibly her not emitting the same sort of radiation/masking that radiation.
Aside from a couple of niggly issues I really loved the film, it had a long running time but I never felt myself wishing for the end, quite the opposite, I knew we’d been in there a while and I didn’t want it to end – I knew there was a fair bit of story still to go and didn’t want it to finish. One thing that wasn’t explained – Sam’s great grandfather went crazy due to seeing the same thing/getting the same imprint of knowledge as Sam – as a result of Sam getting all the symbols written down, out of his head – does he avert this or is it a conveniently forgotten plot point?
The new autobots – especially the twins were fantastic. The little digs and putdowns they kept coming out with were great and the whole audience was in hysterics. When ‘Bee kicked them outside to shut them up later in the film I had to physically stop myself from shouting “wooo!”
Something I did notice was that they referred to the President by name and it was Obama – Its not often that you see movies doing this sort of thing, you either never get to see the presidential face or they create a fictional president for a fictional time. Orders were coming from President Obama though, very interesting indeed.
As with most Michael Bay films, it was jumping and bouncing all over the place. It’s something I’ve come to expect but when you combine that with the large screen I don’t get a chance to marvel at the detail on some of the robots. I’ll have to wait for the blu ray release for that oppertunity. I love the whole cinema experience, I just wish the picture was that little bit sharper!
I want to go and see it again, I probably will go and see it again in the next week or so, it depends what everyone is doing.
On a scale of 1-10 I’d give Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen a solid 8.5/10
Autobots….Roll Out!
