Transformers: Revenge of the fallen is still a mouthful of a title, but as robot sequels go (and that includes the lumbering Terminator Salvation pic that came out last month) - it's the mother of all robot war films. We're still trying to wrap our earthly brain cells around the film we saw last night at the exclusive Sydney premiere.
The film is best summed up as a ludicrously thrilling adventure, bent towards complete and utter craziness. The B-grade romance feels tacked on, while everything else is flawlessly Bay.
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW: More than meets the eye
It's really hard to accurately describe this film without taking into account the type of audience who are going to be seeing this. There are those diehard Transformer fans who will still believe that the original 80s cartoon series is better. And if that's the case, then forty foot Autobots firing rail guns possibly isn't your thing. But casual fans of the orginal are probably going to love it.
The script, if you could call it that, takes a backseat to the huge array of new robots in this film, as director Bay turns up the action quotient up to 11. More robot characters from the original cartoon series turn up, theres a pleasant homage to the original Transformers film of 1984 and of course, there is no shortage of visual eye candy: the CGI rendering is a big step-up from the last film and it seamlessly blends from one shot to another.
But its not all chocolates and roses.
The GM vechiles are starting to look a little tired by the second film. Nobody expected miracles with these fine products of American manufacturing, but the recent GM restructuring is going to make some of the autobots wish they originally landed in Italy or Germany.
We actually started to feel bad for the autobots. Design styling certainly wasn't their strong point. Where are the Ferrari and BMW transformer models when you need them?
And, remember when fanboys complained about the lack of action in the original film? If Michael Bay had added any more three-second shots to this film, they would of required one of those dire warnings you see on theme park rides.
The pounding relentless ferocity of the action gets so much at times, that our heads started to hurt. And this comes at the expense of a better story and characters unfortunately.
Truth be told, the audience was warned from the start of the film by Aussie starlet Isabel Lucas to 'strap in'. And right she was. If you enjoyed the first, you'll probably hoot and holla for the second. This is Michael Bay's Top Gun meets the Road Warrior and we swear that as a huge compliment to director George Miller. Thats if you can imagine Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson getting chased around by giant robots.
The bass roars, the explosions are ear piercing and half of Egypt ends up destroyed by the end. But the pyramids have never looked better than in a Bay sunset. Seriously, Tourism Austalia needs Michael Bay to do their next campiagn.
In fact, barely a moment goes by when something isn't blowing up, smashed apart or hacked into tiny robot pieces. And hardly a nanosecond passes when the hero Sam (played by Shia LaBeouf) isn't yelling, puffing or running away from something shooting at him.
Megan Fox does her best to play Megan Fox, but that isn't saying much - her acting ability is on par with most of the souped up military hardware on display (it felt like the whole US Army was on screen), and if we ever see another slow-mo shot of her racing through the sands of Giza, it won't be too late.
Fortunately, Isabel Lucas does a decent job playing a sexy Deceptacon with the ability to morph into a college-aged femme fatale. Her 6 foot long robot tongue isn't the least of this films worries or surprises - but it's definitely one of the stranger bits.
As a kind of a sassy Terminatrix, Lucas' character is half machine, half Natasha Hentridge from 1995's Spieces.
However, if Transformers could disguise themselves as sexy humanoids, it makes you wonder why other sneaky deceptacons didn't try that trick before to get at the good guys. It's one of those scriptwriter moments that suddenly 'jumps the shark' in a kind of "Hey guys, let's makes one of the bad robot warriors turn into a hot chick. Brilliant!"
Speaking of screenwriting brain freezes, most of the film could have done without the incessant backstory.
Memo to Screenwriters: We understand you want this to feel huge and epic. We get it. We know you wanted to kill Optimus to make us feel sad and behave like eight year olds as though its 1984 all over again. And we know you want us to weep like babies when Sam is shot and killed, only to be shortly returned to life by a bunch of Transformer deities in some form of meandering Obi Wan mentor sequence.
But we don't need to be told over and over again how somebody stole the Matrix key or that Optimus is the very last of the Primes or that so and so is the only way out and hope for survival. We heard it the first time. It's not a Bond film; and you aren't Blofield telling us your evil plans. Although it felt like it at times, with its endless narration on the history and existence of transformers.
Through the talking and gabbering on, we actually missed the classic Bayisms and those glorious close-ups at sunset. Bay was clearly in control, but his writers were leading us further astray. It would take a rail gun and a squadren of tanks and ships to get us back on side again.
Even so, some Transformers are solely introduced to chit chat or just for a sitcom style laugh - a tired device to fill in the blanks, while describing long passages of dense and heavy Transformers mythology.
Quick, get to the cool part where a transformer shoots something! It feels like Bay and his writers saw the Star Wars prequels and wanted the Transformers to share the same sense of mycological pathos. But after a while, it was the audience sharing the pathos...of boredom. Oh dear. You know you're in trouble when the audience just wants to see more cool explosions.
In fact, the only thing missing Bay's take on the Lucas paradigm are robot Jedis, though the presence of Transformer angels (yes, angels!) and annoying jive-talking Autobots (in the guise of comic relief, ala R2D2 and C3P0), had us wondering whether the script was just an excuse to lead us to the bits where robots go BOOM! And boom they do.
But as robot war films go, Michael Bay's Bot spectacular is a balls-to-the-wall, visually intense action flick that will either make you shed a tear for the more delicate character driven original (if there could be such a way to describe that film) or cheer on the action pounding sequel.
Either way, at over 2hours and 20 minutes long, this is one film to dazzle and exhaust the senses, though for some, thats already far too much. Autobots, roll out!