Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

All the same problems of the first. I had hoped they’d learn from their mistakes, but they have not. Are they planning on prolonging the agony with a third?

Climactic battles, but no character development to set them up. Prime dies? Really? I wish I cared. Every scene features a moving camera and dramatic music, but it’s all a cheat. That stuff is not a substitute for real drama.

Effects are good, but the robots all have the same voices (monster-like) and personalities (none) and dialogue (idiotic), and their robot forms are difficult to look at. All of the robots are similarly uninteresting. Even Soundwave, who had the most distinctive voice of them all, now has the generic monster voice. And then you have the transformations show so close-up that you can’t really tell what’s happening.

I wish it had the simplicity and character of the original cartoon series, and that the robots were a little more faithful to their original forms. Or at least give them different and conspicuously colored eyes (like in the original cartoon) so that we could see who is good and who is bad.

LaBeouf is pretty good as usual. Fox is hot, looking great without all her tattoos. Isabel Lucas is delicious.

This factoid is pretty amazing:

“A single IMAX shot in the movie (df250) would have taken almost 3 years to render on a top of the line home PC running nonstop. If you rendered the entire movie on a modern home PC, you would have had to start the renders 16,000 years ago (when cave paintings like the Hall of Bulls were being made) to finish for this year’s premiere.”