Plot summary (with possible spoilers): After the events of the first Transformers film, the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, were invited to remain on Earth to help protect the planet from any future Decepticon shenanigans. The Autobots worked closely with a top-secret military group called NEST to respond to Decepticon problems around the world. After a recent mission, a dying Decepticon utters the cryptic message, “The Fallen shall rise again.” Apparently, Prime knows exactly what this means — and it’s not good.
Meanwhile, Sam Witwicky (played by Shia LaBeouf) is preparing to head off to college. He’s looking forward to a chance at leading a normal life now that his Autobot adventures are behind him. To be sure, he still keeps Bumblebee in his garage, but freshman aren’t allowed to have cars on campus, so he’ll be entirely on his own. He’s still with Mikaela (Megan Fox), though the two will have to attempt a long-distance relationship during the first year.
Of course, nothing goes as planned. The problem begins when Sam finds a piece of the AllSpark at his house. He’s not really sure what it is, but he hands it over to Mikaela for safekeeping after a bunch of hidden Decepticons try to attack him for it. After that, Sam starts having seizures and writes strange characters everywhere — most likely as a result of having come into direct contact with the AllSpark. This freaks out new roommate Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez), who is all about aliens, government cover-ups, and conspiracy theories.
It turns out that Sam’s mind has been injected with all the knowledge from the All-Spark, making him a valuable commodity to the Decepticons. They’re sent on a mission to capture him. Once they get their hands on him, however, Bumblebee and Optimus arrive in the nick of time to save Sam. Unfortunately, Prime is killed during the battle, giving Megatron the opening he needs to order an all-out Decepticon assault on Earth.
From there, Sam, Mikaela, and Leo discover that there’s a chance to revive Prime and thwart the Decepticon attack. With the help of Agent Simmons (John Turturro) and a few Autobots, the group race off to Egypt to find a secret tomb of the Primes, where a magic Matrix can bring Prime back to life. The group succeeds in their hunt, Sam resurrects Optimus, and the Decepticons are defeated again.
My Reaction: Even though I just got back from seeing the film, I had to read the summary on Wikipedia to sort out the details of what happened. It was damn near impossible for me to keep track of all that while I was watching! Admittedly, I’m not any sort of fangirl, so I don’t know the whole Transformers lore, which might have something to do with why I was kind of clueless about what was going on in the film. But seriously — it seemed like the movie was just a series of loooong action sequences with no plot in sight.
The lack of a genuine plot was just one of the problems with this film. Another was the fact that the robots dominated far too much of the screen time. I know this is called Transformers, which would lead you to believe that they’re the main characters, but it’s just not all that interesting watching robots battle each other. The human-robot interactions helped make the first film as fun as it was. But the fun was definitely lacking in this installment.
Also, the action sequences were often undecipherable as well. There were so many close-ups and tight shots that it was hard to tell what was going on. And they just went on and on and on, with plenty of loud noises, but not much else of note. I ended up with a headache from all that crap.
And there were just so many other cheesy, cringe-worthy moments in this film that I couldn’t believe it. For instance, that first shot of Megan Fox, where she’s sprawled out on top of a motorcycle, practically dry-humping it… OMG, that was so incredibly stupid!! I never notice these types of stupid poses, but Michael Bay was just so obvious with this one that I couldn’t help it. Who the hell lies on top of a bike to do detail work like that??? Utterly ridiculous! Yeah, Megan Fox is amazingly hot, but there are more natural ways to showcase her body.
Overall, I was quite disappointed with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The first one was a surprise hit for me, as I ended up enjoying it far more than I ever expected. I was hoping this one would be just as much fun, but that wasn’t the case at all. What a waste of time and money. I give it 2 stars out of 5.