eddyfate

Before I begin on my attack commentary on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I need to set the stage.

During the week, I had a lot of trepidation about going to see this, to the point where jachilli flat asked why I was going to see a movie I expected to be bad. I didn't have an answer at the time, but it really comes down to the fact that I support the Transformers franchise. I've watched and read just about every version of Transformers -- maybe not every episode or issue, but I at least looked into it. I've been a fan for 25 years, and I expect I'll be a fan for 25 more. So I have a strong interest in seeing any version of Transformers succeed.

Further, I had heard so many bad things leading up to this that I had very low expectations. Living through the disappointment that was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull also killed off a chunk of my soul. I even read (and reposted on Twitter) io9's hilariously scathing review. I had resigned myself to trying to watch the movie as if it was just a movie about alien robots beating the shit out of each other. I set my opinions and emotional investment in the franchise aside. I also tried to get into the mindset of braindead appreciation that allowed me to (accidentally) appreciate Terminator Salvation as an entertaining movie.

So, keep that in mind: I'm a fan that wants to see the franchise succeed, but is willing to set that emotional investment aside and try to see the movie outside of my own nerdrage. And I recently was able to appreciate a movie that was criticized for many of the same flaws as this one. I'm not sure how much more sympathetic and biased I could be toward this movie.

And even then, I was still surprised at how fucking horrible this movie was.

( Spoilers. Though I'm not sure how to spoil this movie any more than it spoils itself. )

Note that I'm not even going into the plot holes, the bad acting, the CGI flubs or the terrible editing. Some of it, I'm sure, is because the writers basically handed over the first draft to film. I'm not sure if anyone in particular is to blame. However, this feels like a lot of people wanted the movie to be a lot of different things, and it ended up never being any of them. Regardless, even as much as I want to apologize for a lot of the problems with this movie, it's still just really, really bad, because no matter what you want out of this movie, it won't deliver on any meaningful level.