The Movie

Michael Bay did a surprisingly good job with Transformers two years before this sequel. It took the concept of discovery and blended it perfectly with action, humor, and heroism. On the surface, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would appear to be the same. It has lots of giant robot battles, some funny moments, and a few great acts of valor. However, these elements are now placed in a different context. This film takes the next logical thematic step, addressing a young man's coming-of-age, yet the rest of the film is basically the same as the first, and these held-over elements do not fit as well. Essentially, in Revenge of the Fallen Bay is relying on the same strategies to win a different game. While these strategies have the capability to provide choice moments of greatness, they don't quite mesh, resulting in a film that too often is forced to try to convince us that it is important.

Every Transformers TV show and movie has the good Transformers, the Autobots, fighting the bad ones, the Decepticons, while the latter try to take over the Earth. In the first film of this series, the two races destroyed their own planet while fighting over the AllSpark, a cube with the power to grant nonliving things life, which would basically give its wielder cosmic power. The AllSpark was lost in the battle, flew across the galaxy, and ended up on Earth, where the battle resumed and a young man named Sam Witwicky got caught in the fray. Now, the AllSpark has been destroyed, but a few fragments of it remain, containing the secret to a weapon which was hidden on Earth millennia ago by the Decepticons and which, if activated, would destroy our sun so as to convert it to Energon, a type of energy needed to sustain the propagation of the Transformers. Needless to say, the Decepticons are out to retrieve one of the fragments. Sam, now involved in his first serious relationship and headed off to college, once again gets pulled into the mix, and he's going to play a vital role in saving Earth from the Decepticons.

The love relationship and the college experience lay out nicely the theme of maturation. In both of these experiences, Sam encounters some problems. In his relationship with Mikaela, he is struggling to bring himself to say the L-word to her. At college, he is struggling to adjust to the newfound freedom as well as to his borderline-neurotic roommate, Leo. It's not long, though, before he has much bigger problems to deal with. With the Autobots on the verge of being outcast by the United States government, their leader, Optimus Prime, comes to ask Sam for help. Sam is at first reluctant to take on this great responsibility, but soon after he puts it off, the situation goes beyond a matter of choice, and he is forced to deal with the problems that face him and Earth. These challenges were going to find him regardless of whether he chose to accept them. The only decision that was his to make was whether to be prepared.

With this theme, the movie has a strong foundation, but it begins veering in another direction and loses some potency for a good portion of its runtime. After it sets itself up, the plot becomes preoccupied with arcane fantasy-like elements. Sam, Mikaela, Leo, and Agent Simmons from the first film eventually find themselves searching for an ancient Transformer in order to wake him to get some help reading symbols. Then they have to find something called the Matrix of Leadership in order to revive a fallen comrade. There is also some back story about the Prime ancestry and later, in the film's worst offense, a brief and absurd out-of-body experience. It all becomes a bit too contrived; it basically amounts to the writers adding in some arbitrary elements (some of which, granted, have been established in older Transformers storylines) so that there is something important and perilous for Sam to do. What results is the feeling that the story views its mythology as more important than the elements that the viewer can actually relate to, such as the Earth and humankind.

What we have with Revenge of the Fallen is a good idea, a good franchise, and a story that loses its way about halfway in. I think director Michael Bay and his writers were trying too hard to make a summer blockbuster and forgot the need to craft a good story. It has too many artificial components trying to scream "This is epic!" and too few genuine elements that connect the film to the human experience. With the action mostly consisting of a lot of pounding and tossing, there is not much that is particularly original here, either. There is some awesomeness to be found, for sure, but overall it is outweighed by stuff that just is not engaging.

Click here for our full review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The Extras

• Director/Writer Commentary
• The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen
• A Day with Bay: Tokyo Premiere
• 25 Years of Transformers
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub
• Deconstructing Visual Bayhem
• Deleted/Alternate Scenes
• The Optimus Prime Experience
• Linkin Park - New Divide (music video)
• Theatrical Trailer

There are not a ton of extras on these discs, but they are of generally high quality. There is one commentary featuring Michael Bay intercut with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Most of the information they provide is interesting, particularly if you don't like the movie. In fact, the commentary is better than the movie itself.

Bay occasionally comes across as pompous (he begins by bragging about his career and the movie's financial success), but he is still somehow fun to listen to (I should note here that I am not a Michael Bay fan). What is most interesting about his commentary is that he is never afraid to call out actors and crew members on mistakes they made or problems they had during the filming, but it is always in a friendly kind of way, and it's not overly done. Most notably, he emphasizes that Isabel Lucas (in the role of Alice), who is something of burgeoning actress, had great difficulty filming her more intense and bizarre scenes and had to re-shoot them numerous times. He then quickly and almost humorously softens his criticism by mentioning that she had a difficult role and will probably go on to have a good career. It is easy to be put-off by a director talking about his cast and crew's flaws, but it's a welcome, candid change from the vast majority of directors who do nothing in their commentaries but gush about how perfect everyone was. For the rest of his commentary, Bay discusses typical director stuff, and just about everything he says is informative. He even admits that he wishes he had had more time to finish editing the film.

For Kurtzman and Orci's part, they talk about the film from their perspective as writers. They, like Bay, are not afraid to bring up (mostly minor) problems they had, most notably the things Bay added to the script against their advice. They are far from derisive, though, often saying that Bay's ideas ultimately helped broaden the movie's appeal. Another difficulty they note is the limited amount of time they had to write the movie. There is nothing shocking here, but the writers do begin to unintentionally illuminate the nature of some of the film's basic problems. No one ever admits that the film was bad, but between their comments and those of Bay, it becomes clear that there are two main reasons the movie did not turn out well. First of all, the script was too much of a compromise, often jumping back and forth between what Bay wanted and what his writers wanted in an attempt to please every possible type of viewer. Second, there was simply not enough time either for the writers to iron out all the remaining problems with the script or for Bay and his editors to shape the film into a solid final form. What this movie needed was more time. This becomes especially interesting, if not worrisome, when you consider that the third film is due out in less than two years from now.

"The Human Factor" is a two-hour-plus "making of" feature covering development, design, production, U.S. military involvement in the film, editing, visual effects, and post-production. This feature is at least as informative as the commentary and is especially interesting as it provides a detailed look at Bay's fast-paced shooting style. Say what you will about his movies, this guy has a heck of a work ethic, and it's fun to watch him in action, even if you're a contemptuous critic.

"A Day with Bay" is a short featurette following Bay through interviews and press conferences conducted for the film's premiere in Tokyo.

"25 Years of Transformers" is another short featurette, this one focusing on Hasbro's Transformers toys. It gets a bit promotional at times, especially at the beginning when Hasbro's senior marketing director makes the laughable claim that Transformers have remained "relevant" for the twenty-five years since their creation, but overall this supplement is still pretty cool. It briefly goes over the difficulty of designing (and even playing with) the toys as well as how Hasbro continues creating new but recognizable versions of the same characters throughout the years.

"NEST: Transformer Data-Hub" is a little section with Transformer bios and RPG-like ability ratings (intelligence points, strength points, etc., on a one-to-ten scale). There are also image galleries for each of the main Transformers.

"Deconstructing Visual Bayhem" plays a number of computer-rendered previsualization sequences with some commentary explaining how they were useful during production in order to understand how scenes should look. It's fun to watch the crude computer animation, but what's most interesting is how closely the final shots stuck to the previsualizations.

There are only a handful of deleted and alternate scenes. There are no surprises, and most of what was omitted or altered was clearly done for a good reason: it's boring.

"The Optimus Prime Experience" is a feature accessed via computer. It involves visiting www.transformersmovie.com/optimus and holding your DVD case up to your webcam. Doing so unlocks an interactive Optimus Prime on the website. As a DVD insert states, "Solve a puzzle to rebuild part of the AllSpark, view Optimus Prime's weapons in detail, battle the Decepticons alongside Optimus Prime." It seems this feature needs a bit of tweaking, though, as we were unable to access it on either of two computers, trying Internet Explorer and Firefox on both.

The rest of the features speak for themselves. The Linkin Park music video is just that, and the movie trailer is a movie trailer.

Video/Audio

This transfer has some problems. The biggest problem is the grain, some of which appears to be on purpose but most of which does not. Either way, the grain at times gets so bad that it turns into artifacts. Aside from this, lines are occasionally much softer than they should be, even borderline blurry. The more discerning viewers will notice thin halos below and above the top and bottom black bars. You would think a movie that relies so heavily on visual effects would get better treatment than this.

The sound is okay. It comes in Dolby Digital 5.1 with sound effects present, but not astounding, in the rear channels. The bass is heavy when ambient but lacks oomph on the sound effects. Dialog comes through well over the action.

Packaging/Menus

The two DVDs are packaged efficiently on each side of a standard-sized translucent DVD case. The case comes in a textured cardboard covering with a metallic, glossy finish.

The menus are nothing fancy, but they look good with Transformers-esque visuals. There is one slight problem with the NEST feature, however. Once you enter the image gallery for any given character, the only way to get back to the menu is to manually cycle through the dozens of pictures provided. This is a bit annoying, but overall the menus are fine.

Conclusion

While both the picture quality and the movie itself leave something to be desired, the commentary and two-hour behind-the-scenes feature on this release are so revealing that they almost make it worth the purchase, or at least a rental. Most discerning movie fans are not fond of the bulk of Michael Bay's work, and this movie only reinforces those sentiments. However, the writers' commentary on the script and the footage of Bay shooting the film provide enough insight into the film's production and shortcomings to make this DVD worth a watch, even if (or perhaps especially if) you don't like the movie.