Action, Sci-fi / Movie / English dub.
Viewed a midnight showing.
Parental Warning: Tons of violence. Tons of implied death. Occasional adult language and one or two extremely awkward adult situations.
WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS STORY SPOILERS. (If you care about preserving the integrity of the story until you see it for yourself, stop reading. If you are seeing this movie for the story... well I really don't know what to say about that.)
Plot Synopsis: Dumping the dead Decepticons into the ocean at the end of the first movie was in fact a stupid idea, as any rational person could have told the writers of the script. Since then the Autobots have teamed with those air force commando guys in the first movie and created what appears to be an international strike force that hunts down and kills Decepticons in hiding... of course this strike force is top secret and the alien robot presence is classified. Anyone who watched the trailers knows that things escalate into all out war and that's when the fun starts.
Story and Pacing: 6
There is a story in the sense that there is a script and the characters are doing interesting things that cause more interesting things to happen which leads to an interesting conclusion. If you see a lot of movies you'll know all the major plot points about thirty minutes into Transformers 2. Is the story bad? No. I don't think predictable is bad if they make up for it in execution.
This movie is big chunks of awesomeness strung together with excuses for the explosions and robot on robot violence. Between massive fights and high speed chases you're fed a lot of comic relief and sometimes interesting bits of information about the Autobots/Decepticons and their history.
This is the definition of a fun movie, average viewers will love it and reviewers (most of who wouldn't know a good action movie if it blew up their house) will hate it.
Characters: 7
The characters in this movie are much better developed and portrayed than they were in the last but that's not a high mark to beat... but what they lack in development they gain back in personality. The comic relief characters this time around aren't nearly as annoying as they were in the first and I never found myself wishing death upon a character so I'd no longer have to suffer their presence. Once again the villains do evil things but their motives for such acts are never really explained... but this time around their presence on Earth is explained however without a real motive we're trapped in some repeating cycle that makes no sense.
Acting: 8
No one seemed unconvincing. The voice acting for the robots was excellent. The comic relief looked like a disaster waiting to happen in that you get the super cowardly nerd, that small Decepticon thing that turns itself into phones and remote control trucks and stuff, the crazy sector 7 guy, and two Autobots who sound and act a whole lot like Chris Tucker in the Rush Hour movies all traveling together for a significant portion of the movie yet somehow it doesn't become a comedic disaster so big points for that.
Animation: 9
The animation is excellent but then again the movie did have an epic budget and very powerful Hollywood people behind it. Everything is believable except for one scene that gets a little too surreal. I think you'll know which scene I'm talking about when you view the film.
Production Value: 10
They spared no expense making sure everything was in its place. They might not have been too imaginative but there is so much polish on the various things that made it into the movie you hardly notice the stuff that got left out (like a less predictable plot).
Final Grade: 8.0
Personal Bias: 3
The trailers for this really had me worried. I was expecting a movie where humanity gets its butt kicked for two and a half hours making stupid decision after stupid decision which seems to be all the rage these days in Hollywood but they manage to stick with the winning balance of power formula they had in the first movie so you never quite feel like the human race is just a convenient punching bag that gets stuck between high powered factions battling each other.
What I Loved Most: WARNING: PLOT SPOILERS.
Optimus Prime learned to fight. Remember how in the first movie he uses that sword we didn't know about to basically murder a Decepticon in five seconds? Remember how after he used it we didn't see it again even when he really could have used it in his fight against Megatron? Well now he has two of those, and he is not afraid to use them. The best action scenes in the movie involve Optimus in 1vs10 type battles where he shows us why he's the leader. He is a vicious fighter and if the stuff we saw him do had been human on human violence this would have been one of the most gruesome movies of all time... but since they're robots it's no big deal.
That battleship had a what gun? At one point in the movie Optimus Prime is asked why he won't share the Autobot's weapons technology with the human race (Obama was kind of a warmonger) and he gives the obvious generic answer involving humanities capacity for violence. Well late in the movie the United States Military rolls out some experimental weaponry that made me wonder why they'd want to downgrade to the stuff the robots have.
Specific time and place. There are things mentioned in the movie (such as the President being Obama) that put this movie in a specific time and place rather than a generic planet Earth.
What I Hated Most:
I hear the Canadians are recruiting. At one point in the movie Optimus Prime is asked by a man speaking for President Obama if he and the other Autobots would leave planet Earth peacefully if they were asked. Optimus said they would because freedom is important... but with the world at stake why would he allow one nation to choose the fate for the rest of the world? If the Autobots suddenly found themselves unwelcome in the United States I'm sure Canada or Russia, or any other nation on the planet would grant them asylum in exchange for their assistance and technology... and I doubt that is something the United States would be willing to risk.
Something for the men out there. There is an abundance of slow motion run sequences that seem focused entirely on Megan Fox's chest. Normally I'm not bothered by stuff like this but at times it is so shamelessly blatant I started laughing out loud by the third clip. I guess if you're a guy this might go in the “loved” category....But what about the ladies? All the men who get the most time on screen are either comic relief, old, or creepy as hell...... oh well, at least the robots had big guns.
If it worked on Megatron... why wouldn't it work on Optimus? We learn in this movie how easy it is for slain Decepticons to be brought back to life but as soon as an Autobot needs a quick resurrection it becomes the most insanely complicated process ever. I thought they were going to call in Billy Witch Doctor to help at one point. I had to bite my tongue to keep from chanting "Chicken arise, arise chicken arise."
If at first you don't succeed... so in the final seconds of the movie you see the survivors standing on an aircraft carrier. You don't see any clips of robots being dumped in the ocean but I think the ending implies that they might have been dumped off camera. I'm hoping the Autobots and Americans aren't stupid enough to do that a second time but I still feel the need to mention this just in case.
If you like this you might also like Transformers and Star Trek.
Closing Comments: Transformers 2 may not be as good as the recent Star Trek movie but it's almost as fun and definitely progress over the first Transformers.
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