I saw Transformers: Rise of the Fallen, aka Transformers 2, in IMAX on Wednesday night. Oh, My Fuck! This movie is terrible, so terrible that it’s good in a bad way. I have tons of problems with the film. However, like Speed Racer, a film that totally embraced the “so bad it’s good genre,” Transformers: Rise of the Fallen is fun to watch.

I’m not concerned about spoiling this film because let’s face it Transformers 2 isn’t a complex drama full of twist and turns. In fact, you’d probably enjoy the movie more knowing all this beforehand, rather than trying to flux it from the pile of crap on screen. The movie opens with a standard Optimus Prime voiceover explaining the last two years — they hunted Decepticons with the help of the US military. Then it jumps to a flashback, showing The Fallen (more on him later). Then it jumps to a recap of the first movie. Then the second movie actually starts.

Apparently, Optimus Prime is a part of a long line of leaders/aristocrats in the Autobot society. He is the last living descendent. His ancestor, for the sake of argument I’ll say great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle, was the first Decepticon, simply known as The Fallen. (If you’re scratching your head don’t worry, Optimus didn’t know this in the movie either.) The Fallen attempted to destroy the Sun, but was stopped by his six brothers “millennia ago.” All six brothers died, but The Fallen lived and chilled out on Mars or whatever until now. 

Back to the present day, Megatron, who gets resurrected using a shard from the All Spark, is the first lieutenant of The Fallen. The Fallen has returned to Earth to activate an ancient device hidden in one of the pyramids of Egypt that will destroy the Sun by turning it into energon. (Note: Energon is never really explained in the movie, but from what I can remember of the TV show it’s the life blood of all Transformers and allows them to make new Transformers. And I mean make as in test tube babies.)

Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf, has a second shard from the All Spark, which puts all of the knowledge of their entire race into his head. The Fallen needs it, so Megatron and the Decepticons chase him. The Autobots and US military try to protect Sam, and in the process Optimus Prime dies. True fans will remember that this is Optimus’ second big screen death. Optimus also died in the 1986 animated feature of Transformers. The rest of the movie is a race to find The Matrix of Leadership. Sam, aided by Mikaela Banes, played by Megan Fox, run around with the Autobots to help them do various tasks. The Matrix of Leadership can bring Optimus Prime back to life, just like it did in the cartoon; or it can activate the sun-killing device and wipe out humanity.

Interestingly they never thought to use the shard to resurrect Optimus Prime. Instead they use the shard to bring back Jet Fire, in a subplot so perplexing I’d rather not think about it. In the end, the good guys win. If this summary was confusing, wait till you actually see it on screen. But a ridiculous plot is just the start of my issues with Transformers 2. 

The movie is 144 minutes long! Two hours and thirty minutes for a summer action flick is insane, and honestly could have been much shorter without losing any relevant content. And by relevant content I mean Autobots and Decepticons killing each other. Robot violence is what I paid for. I don’t care if Sam and Mikaela really love each other or not, and I’ll bet no one else does either.

There are SEVEN comic relief characters and three gratuitous humping shots: two of the dogs, Mojo and his new “friend” Frank, and one of a Transformer doing Megan Fox’s leg (I was a little jealous). Of the seven comic relief characters the most annoying are the twin Autobots, Mudflap and Skids, two small cars with urban accents. They also had a stylized look to them: neon lights and goofy faces. John Turturro returns as Agent Simmons, who is equally amusing the second time around. Not so charming were Judy Witwicky (Sam’s mom), played by Julie White, and Leo Spitz (Sam’s college roommate), played by Ramon Rodriguez; both characters are too extreme to carry off their roles. In a single scene Sam’s mom unknowingly eats a pot brownie she got from someone on Sam’s college campus and Leo introduces Sam to his computer-based get rich quick scheme. Individually the gags would have been funny, but they overlapped and canceled each other out. The mode continued through out the film and it was overwhelming. That’s not say the plucky bit parts were never funny; Agent Simmons has a wonderful testicle joke in act three that I will be quoting for the next year or so.

Megan Fox is talented, particularly her chest. She runs around a lot in slow motion wearing low cut tops and a sheen of oil — as a friend of mine said, “If I were running to save the world I’d want my boobs to look like that.” These scenes are short, but highly enjoyable.

If you’re a robot you can be resurrected, provided we can get enough energon. Apparently, any Transformer can be brought back to life at any time. It’s not like people where you have a very small window of say two minutes to return from the icy grasp of the Grim Reaper. A Transformer can die, and decades years later be brought back like it just woke up from a long nap. This voodoo mixed with the Primes plot line gave movie-goers like me a headache after the credits rolled. In this movie the age of Transformers ranges from several millennia to gestating test tubes. Okay, I get it. They’re families too, because the Primes have descendents. Now I’m a little lost. And there are generations of Transformers, more or less like computers. This makes no sense at all. And all of them seem to exist today in both resurrected and un-resurrected states. Oh, what the fuck! I’ve spent two days trying to unravel it and can’t grasp any logical conclusion other than Transformers naturally live for several centuries and there is some robot mating ritual that produces pregnancy and birth the “old fashioned way.” Additionally, there is a robot afterlife that interacts with the human version, but I’m ignoring it.

Let’s talk about Michael Bay for a moment — my opinion, he’s a mediocre director. In my opinion, his best directorial credit is The Rock (1996), a solid action movie with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage, and his worst film is probably Pearl Harbor. His average is probably Bad Boys 2. The movies he directs are generally watch-able action flicks featuring one or two major stars. Things don’t always make sense, the plots can be water thin or incomprehensible, and everything involves women running in slow motion or astounding amounts of explosives/special effects. Everything in Bay’s world is combustible: sand, trees, ancient rock walls, people, robots; if he can film it, flames can engulf it.

What baffles me most are the small things, which even a ten-year-old would be able to pick out as glaring errors, bordering on incompetence. For example, the opening of the movie takes place at roughly 10:15 pm in Shanghai, but it looks like dusk instead of nighttime. Small things like that continued to creep up throughout the film. But, I’m going to let it go because fact checking has no place in a Transformers film.

Most of us stumbled out of the IMAX Theater in a daze. I’ve been in that daze before, and will be again. It’s what happens when a movie sucks hard, but for other reasons you’ve decided to like it anyway. I grew up on Transformers. I have my original Optimus Prime on a bookshelf at my parents’ house. Despite all my film classes, all my literature classes, all my writing classes, and all my independent writing groups I’ve taken or joined to further my understanding of storytelling and writing, all of which tell me this film is utter crap unfit for human consumption — I liked this movie. And I’ll buy a ticket for every sequel. 

Transfomers 3 has already been announced and is scheduled for release in 2012. I can hardly wait. 

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