Trans­form­ers 2 is a sequel that builds on its pre­de­ces­sor in every way; more robots, more humor, more action, more sex­i­ness, bet­ter effects, more explo­sions and more char­ac­ters. As a pop­corn fueled block­buster it suc­ceeds in being fun and ridicu­lous, a two and a half hour escape from real­ity to a world of 30ft robots and insecticons.

As a fan I spent time spot­ting the indi­vid­ual robots and all the new­com­ers, espe­cially the ones I’ve seen as toys — yet ulti­mately I left want­ing more, lots more. The excite­ment at see­ing the new char­ac­ters quickly dwin­dles as they dis­ap­pear ten sec­onds later, with the off chance of another appear­ance slightly later. Side­swipe, Arcee, Dev­as­ta­tor, Jolt, Side­ways, all con­struc­ti­cons, The Fallen, Grindor and Sound­wave are momen­tary plot ele­ments, each are a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing in their own way — you could blink and miss them for the most part. How­ever, the new char­ac­ters that have plot invested in them — Jet­fire, Rav­age, Wheelie, Skids and Mud­flap are all superb and valu­able addi­tions. Alice is an odd plot point, inter­est­ing but an idea still not fully explored.

The hype about Side­ways, Arcee and Demol­ishor, spurred on by the super­bowl teaser, make up the open­ing action sequence, includ­ing the NEST bonus footage. It’s all over in a flash — Arcee is seen chas­ing Side­ways as briefly as in the TV spots, the twins — cur­rently as an ice cream truck, attempt to help but curb badly and fall apart. The rumored scene show­ing the truck split­ting in two and then reform­ing, past some bewil­dered kids (as read in the Beth­le­hem Steel call sheet) isn’t there. The motor­cy­cles drop away and Sergeant Epps calls in Side­swipe — a kick, a slide and a flip and a huge sword slices the Audi R8 clean in two. Mean­while Demol­isher is run­ning amok in Shang­hai, tak­ing out heli­copters and gen­er­ally destroy­ing every­thing he comes across on those enor­mous great wheels. Opti­mus Prime drops in via para­chute, speeds along the bridge and leaps onto his head, cre­at­ing that spec­tac­u­lar explo­sion as seen in the teaser and filmed at Long Beach. A swift blow to the head and Prime takes him out — easy as you like, but not before he can mut­ter some­thing about The Fallen returning.

Cut to Sam’s par­ents house and Sam Witwicky is leav­ing home for col­lege, his mom, one of the piv­otal com­edy ele­ments, is mak­ing a scene. Pack­ing for col­lege, Sam uncov­ers a shard of the AllSpark, it burns through the floor and sets the kitchen abuzz with lit­tle ter­ror­iz­ing robots — out to attack Sam. Bum­ble­bee is called in to save the day, but his weapons destroy the house and dejected he’s sent back to the garage. Cue the “I’m so excited” ShoW­est footage and Sam leav­ing home and Mikaela.

The ever so sin­is­ter Sound­wave is the over­seer, keep­ing watch on all human activ­i­ties. He sends in Wheelie to steal the shard from Mikaela and lis­tens in on a debate at the auto­bot hangar. Here a gov­ern­ment big­wig is moan­ing about the oper­a­tion, and over a live video feed reveals Mega­tron and the AllSpark’s loca­tion to the decep­ti­cons. If you’re watch­ing this scene in the glo­ri­ous full screen IMAX expe­ri­ence, Opti­mus Prime will be actual size as he stands tall — it’s spec­tac­u­lar to imagine.

Rav­age falls to earth, his mis­sion — to retake the AllSpark parts. Every­thing about Rav­age is bril­liant, the way he sneaks and prowls is per­fectly ani­mated, it’s mes­mer­iz­ing. The ball bear­ing bots are released into a secu­rity bunker, where inside they form a tall slither of a robot which steals the cube, Rav­age pro­vid­ing cover fire with his hind mounted turrets.

Back at col­lege, Sam is mov­ing in and his par­ents are help­ing — his mom describes the dorms as Hog­warts before get­ting stoned on hash brown­ies — hilar­ity shortly ensues. We also meet Ramon Rodriguez’s Leo Spitz — a spunky but cow­ardice con­spir­acy the­o­rist. Leo points out the sul­try Alice, played by Isabel Lucas, and she’s already mak­ing eyes at Sam. At the stu­dent party Alice comes onto Sam, and when Bum­ble­bee turns up she forces her way into the car for the ride. To the car radio and lyric “your cheat­ing heart”, Bum­ble­bee makes a nui­sance of him­self, and as seen at Prince­ton, Alice ends up cov­ered in green goo, storm­ing off into the night. All the while, Mikaela sits at home, miss­ing out on their first web­cam date.

The dev­as­tat­ing Decep­ti­con news is bro­ken to Sam at the cemetary by Prime, “It’s not my war”, and all that lark about lead­ing a nor­mal col­lege life. Now the sym­bols start appear­ing and Witwicky Jr. can’t stop draw­ing them every­where — includ­ing an episode in Astron­omy 101.

With Megatron’s co-ordinates, the enor­mous Long Haul, Rav­age and con­struc­ti­cons descend into the watery depths to res­ur­rect their leader, sac­ri­fic­ing one of them­selves so that the (Ger­man) doc­tor can piece him back together — in an instant it seems. With new life it’s up and away, as a jet and into space, to con­front Starscream and receive orders from his mas­ter, The Fallen.

Next up, the sec­ond of the three BD Live sequences, Wheelie attempts to steal the AllSpark shard from Mikaela, and we know how that turns out. Wheelie’s char­ac­ter is filled with crude lad­dish humor and his on screen moments are always enter­tain­ing — maybe with the excep­tion of the leg hump­ing one which is just plain odd. With Sam hav­ing a men­tal break­down (brought about by sym­bols), Mikaela flies out to meet him, walk­ing in on him and Alice seem­ingly mak­ing out.

“That kiss tasted like diesel”, Alice trans­forms into a spindly Decep­ti­con and attempts to choke Sam with her huge mechan­i­cal tongue as Mikaela fends her off. Hot wiring the Sat­urn Astra, the three, Leo in tow, set off with Alice on the bon­net, akin to a famous Ter­mi­na­tor 2 scene. Her life ends pre­ma­turely as she is crushed against a lamp­post — a shame as the char­ac­ter had poten­tial (you could make a whole movie about a sin­gle robot dis­guised as a human, hunt­ing a boy, maybe the boy would be named John). Shortly there­after we get the third BD live sequence; Grindor swoops in and car­ries the trio off to Starscream and Mega­tron — the fall should surely kill them but they mirac­u­lously escape unharmed. “I am zee doc­tor!” screeches the spindly mechanoid examining/torturing Sam, beneath Megatron’s huge claw.

The next action scene shows how much the spe­cial effects have devel­oped in just two years — Prime and the auto­bots flood in to save the humans, lead­ing to an escape sequence and a for­rest fight we’ve seen snip­pets of in the TV spots. This fight is awe­some, the effects are per­fect and sud­denly Opti­mus Prime is kick­ing all sorts of ass (swords and all) as he takes on Mega­tron, Starscream and Grindor all at once, all expertly chore­o­graphed with the token Michael Bay slow-mo death scenes. This is the adren­a­line kick we’d hoped for. Ulti­mately it’s all too much for prime and Mega­tron destroys him, lit­er­ally stab­bing him in the back and explod­ing his chest cav­ity. With their leader gone, it’s time for the Decep­ti­cons to mobilize.

From hereon the slower sec­ond half some­what fails to match up to the first — many proto­forms are seen falling to earth, destroy­ing Paris, air­craft car­ri­ers, etc., and amidst the car­rier destruc­tion the rein­vig­o­rated Fallen arrives on earth — through a hacked satel­lite net­work he issues a global broad­cast look­ing for Sam Witwicky, he wants what’s in his head. This appar­ent global Decep­ti­con attack never mate­ri­al­izes on film — you’d expect some mon­tage of world­wide robot destruc­tion. NEST gets shut­down in the process.

Instead we cut to the unfold­ing mys­tery of Sam’s sym­bol obses­sion — which for no dis­cernible rea­son has implanted itself in Sam’s head; ‘it’s his fate’ is the best expla­na­tion we’ll get. There’s a short and improb­a­ble chain towards explain­ing the sym­bols — Leo hap­pens to know the guy that runs Big­Eff­in­gRo­bots, who hap­pens to have seen the sym­bols and hap­pens to be Agent Sim­mons — (now work­ing in a Deli after the shut­down of sec­tor 7), here he has details of ancient prophe­cies and Trans­form­ers on earth. Wheelie reads said details (whilst on a leash) and points the four to the Smith­son­ian museum, where­upon they stum­ble on Jet­fire, a bum­bling old British fool with a cane — the Black­bird SR-71 and for­mer Decepticon.

Jetfire’s ram­bles are a charm­ing non­cha­lant back­drop to the Trans­form­ers mythol­ogy; he quite ran­domly ends up tele­port­ing all par­ties (Skids, Mud­flap and Bum­ble­bee included) to Egypt, via the Space Bridge — Sam hap­pens to dam­age his arm in the process. Now begins the unnec­es­sar­ily long ‘mys­tery’, with an aim to res­ur­rect Opti­mus Prime — fol­low­ing lame clues to find the Tomb of the Primes and the Matrix of Lead­er­ship, which breaks into dust on touch. Mean­while, Sim­mons has con­tacted the NEST crew and, with Primes’ body, Auto­bots and rein­force­ments, they set off for Egypt. All very slow and drawn out.

The action kicks in again near the pyra­mids, or more pre­cisely, in White Sands, New Mex­ico. NEST’s arrival coin­cides with Starscream’s swoop­ing attack on Bum­ble­bee and the twins, split­ting the group in two and send­ing Sam and Mikaela run­ning towards NEST; leav­ing the twins, Sim­mons and Spitz to con­front what­ever the build­ing site throws at them.

The next big robot bat­tle com­mences, although with­out the chore­og­ra­phy, urgency or adren­a­line of the for­rest fight. As NEST and the auto­bots fend off Mega­tron, con­struc­ti­cons (Scrap­per, Long Haul, Scav­enger), Rav­age and numer­ous char­ac­ter­less repaints, the twins find them­selves fac­ing the vac­uum suck­ing behe­moth Dev­as­ta­tor (some­how made of the same con­struc­ti­con mod­els already bat­tling else­where — slightly con­fus­ing for fans).

We don’t see much of Devastator’s con­stituent parts (noth­ing more than the footage seen in the TV Spots) and there’s no expla­na­tion for their pres­ence. Mud­flap gets sucked into Devastator’s vor­tex before attack­ing him from the inside and being spat back out, and as the humans stand beneath the slow mov­ing giant for safety, it begins its climb up the pyra­mid. Dev­as­ta­tor is entirely dis­ap­point­ing with it’s giant demol­ish­ing balls clang­ing above Sim­mons as he sends in the order for the top secret rail gun — an attack that takes the giant out in one fell swoop. No bat­tles, no clever auto­bot team up to take him down, no aggres­sion or per­son­al­ity; might as well have been one giant snail with a Dyson.

Mean­while, the tanks and guns that strug­gled to take out Decep­ti­cons in the first movie, take out attack­ing robots with rel­a­tive ease. And as Sam and Mikaela des­per­ately run from more giant robots, the Decep­ti­cons can’t catch up or shoot straight, crazy. The high­light of this seg­ment comes in Bumblebee’s han­dling of Sam’s parent’s hostage sit­u­a­tion; launch­ing on Scrap­per from above and exe­cut­ing him with expert style, before rum­bling with Rav­age and rip­ping his spine out in slow motion. We see Arcee for another split sec­ond before she gets destroyed by a mis­sile, I think she utters a cou­ple of words; no mis­in­for­ma­tion from Bay this time around. Side­swipe makes an appear­ance, com­mand­ing some men, whilst Ratchet and Iron­hide are rel­e­gated to minor battles.

As bat­tle draws to a close, one last gasp mis­sile from Mega­tron catches Sam, knock­ing him down, where for a few moments we are led to believe he might be dead. “Am I dead? Where am I?” Sam asks, as the scene cuts to auto­bot heaven and the ghosts of the primes with their mes­sages of fate and lead­er­ship. The Matrix of Lead­er­ship re-materializes and Sam uses it to bring Opti­mus Prime back to life, but not before announc­ing his love for Mikaela.

With­out warn­ing, The Fallen, in his brief third appear­ance, tele­ports in, steals the Matrix and tele­ports back out to the top of the pyra­mid, to begin acti­va­tion of the sun har­vester. In response, Jet­fire sac­ri­fices him­self to heal Prime’s bro­ken parts (as the only decent thing he’s ever done) and aug­ment his pow­ers — here comes Jolt’s ten sec­onds of star­dom — his robot mode and elec­tri­cal pow­ers are called upon to facil­i­tate. Prime now flies off to bat­tle The Fallen and Mega­tron simul­ta­ne­ously atop the pyra­mids, and again he kicks all sorts of metal rear; heav­ily dam­ag­ing Mega­tron (who cow­ardly flees to fight another day), and behead­ing The Fallen in a bru­tal attack, sadly it’s all over quite quickly. Where all the other Decep­ti­cons have gone isn’t clear, Starscream could aid but doesn’t. Opti­mus Prime is vic­to­ri­ous and the movie ends shortly after with Sam and Prime stand­ing aboard the John Sten­nis air­craft car­rier, once again await­ing what­ever the future may bring. New Divide plays us out and there’s no extra scene at the end of the credits.

Roll on Trans­form­ers 3.

We’ll be host­ing a blow by blow live Twit­ter event from a British IMAX (the proper type) screen­ing of Revenge of the Fallen at 5:30pm BST (9:30am PDT, 12:30am EDT). It is sure to include a whole host of spoil­ers. If it didn’t con­sti­tute as piracy there would be pic­tures too. Fol­low us on Twit­ter as we report on the Trans­form­ers 2 movie as it unfolds in front of us.

I’ve embed­ded our tweets below for a preview!

This TV Spot con­tains some spoil­ers as to one character’s des­tiny — how­ever it also intro­duces Side­swipe, show­ing his trans­for­ma­tion from the Corvette and his slip and slide tech­nique in full. Embed­ding on the video is dis­abled, but you can catch it in HD on YouTube.

A set of new images has recently been released to the press, here’s a quick run down of them from a vari­ety of sources. Prime stand­ing in front of the Sphinx looks awe­some, as do the twins cov­ered in sand whilst look­ing aghast.

From USA Today

From GM’s Autobot’s site

Another round up of the inter­views, press arti­cles and what­not that keep­ing pop­ping up here there and everywhere.

Michael Bay’s Film Weekly Podcast

This inter­view comes from The Guardian’s “Film weekly” inter­view with Michael Bay and was posted to the offi­cial Michael Bay site.

Bay is not quit­ting Transformers

Some inter­views recently spun the “I’m tak­ing a break” stance Michael Bay has on Trans­form­ers 3 to give the impres­sion he was quit­ting the fran­chise alto­gether. This is not the case and in all like­li­hoods Michael Bay shall direct Trans­form­ers 3, due for release in 2012.

GM pro­vided 67 vehi­cles for Trans­form­ers 2

USA Today have a short arti­cle on the Transformers/GM rela­tion­ship and an inter­view with Michael Bay.

“They were respon­si­ble for build­ing the cars, and I was try­ing to get my check because we built the cars, fronted them the money, and they were late on pay­ing us,” Bay says. “I was like, ‘We bet­ter get our check fast before they go bankrupt.’

Chevy won’t reveal what it cost to pro­vide cars, but spokesman Steve Janisse says 67 vehi­cles were used, and 52 of those were “non-salable,” spe­cially built pro­to­types used for test­ing, engi­neer­ing and display.

[…]

Bay says the cars them­selves become like celebri­ties, some­thing he wit­nessed while shoot­ing in a remote part of the Mid­dle East. “The money they spend is pen­nies for the amount of good­will. Bum­ble­bee is one of the most famous cars in the world,” the direc­tor says. “Lit­er­ally, we’re in this poor lit­tle town in Jor­dan, and all these kids sur­rounded (the car). They all knew Bumblebee’s name.”

Nascar 18 wrapped in M&Ms and autobots

Num­ber 18 has been cov­ered in an M&Ms and Trans­form­ers themed coat — full gallery avail­able at Joe Gibbs.

Shia has “The Touch”

Shia per­forms a ren­di­tion of Stan Bush’s “The Touch” to much amuse­ment and pain.

Obama in Revenge of the Fallen

The movie in some way includes Obama, to which Bay com­ments, via Dig­i­tal Spy,

Bay said: “The Obama thing? I met him in an air­port where he was car­ry­ing his bag by him­self and we talked about movies and appar­ently he likes my movies. So I fig­ured we’ll just put him in.”

The direc­tor joked that he was able to include the up-to-date ref­er­ence because he had only com­pleted mak­ing the film last Wednes­day [June 10th].

Michael Bay in Gui­ness Book of World Records

Michael Bay is now in the record books for the largest explo­sion filmed whilst actors are present. It was shot in New Mex­ico. The NZ Her­ald, from whence this news came, offer up and expan­sive overview of Trans­form­ers 2 and have some tid­bit inter­view com­ments from Megan Fox and Shia as well,

“If Michael Bay can make me look that good in shorts, then I don’t mind if peo­ple think I’m being exploited. And it gives me an advan­tage because even if I do a mediocre per­for­mance, peo­ple don’t expect any­thing of me, so they’re impressed.” And inci­den­tally, although she is adorned with tat­toos, claims to be bisex­ual, and does her best to come across as “dan­ger­ous and dark” à la Jolie, she insists it is not cal­cu­lated. “It’s more of a curse than a bless­ing to look like Angelina,” she says, straight-faced. “Seri­ously, there are a lot of films I’ve had to pass on because I don’t want peo­ple to think I’m try­ing to emu­late her.” (Appar­ently she was offered the next Tomb Raider but turned it down for this rea­son.) As for Lebeouf, an edgy lead­ing man and an exam­ple of the core audi­ence of a film like this, says, “Trans­form­ers is escapism in the same way Star Wars was for its gen­er­a­tion. If you want magic tricks, theme park rides, the roller coaster vibe, Trans­form­ers is for you.“

Film Jour­nal talks with Orci and Kurtzman

After recov­er­ing from the Star Trek press tour, Orci and Kurtz­man answered some ques­tions from the folks at Film Jour­nal. Points include the story’s emo­tional core, the strike and the inspi­ra­tion for the sequel.

“For us, the action always emerges from the char­ac­ters; the audi­ence tunes out ran­dom action scenes that don’t move the plot for­ward or take the char­ac­ters in some new direc­tion,” Kurtz­man says. “So in Revenge of the Fallen, there are sev­eral sequences that we pitched to Michael in detail as part of the char­ac­ters’ sto­ries and he ended up shoot­ing them almost exactly as we pitched them. Of course, he also comes up with great ways to embell­ish the sequences and no one is bet­ter at that than he is.”

That infor­ma­tion will come in handy as the duo makes their long-planned tran­si­tion to direct­ing. “The plan is to find the right film for us to direct in the next cou­ple of years,” Orci reveals. “We’re happy being the guys that write the words, but we want to try every­thing. It’s pos­si­ble that we’ll each direct our own projects, but we might be too jeal­ous of what the other is doing and so we’ll both have to do it!” While nei­ther claims to have a dream project right now, there is one fran­chise that Orci says he’s hop­ing to see real­ized on the big screen some­day. “I’d love to see [Nintendo’s] The Leg­end of Zelda done right.”

Film Jour­nal

Video game pre­views and walkthroughs

More Revenge of the Fallen video game pre­views have sur­faced at Game Trail­ers, includ­ing Art Direc­tor and Pro­ducer inter­views, a Side­ways and Dev­as­ta­tor walk­through and an Opti­mus Prime down­town walk­through. Fol­low­ing these there are tow YouTube videos, includ­ing the open­ing scenes and a Break­away train­ing routine.

Human Alliance video review

Not strictly press, but not really big enough for its own post, another Human Alliance video review:

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll be host­ing a blow by blow live Twit­ter event from a British IMAX (the proper type) screen­ing of Revenge of the Fallen at 5:30pm BST (9:30am PDT, 12:30am EDT). It is sure to include a whole host of spoil­ers. If it didn’t con­sti­tute as piracy there would be pic­tures too. Fol­low us on Twit­ter as we report on the Trans­form­ers 2 movie as it unfolds in front of us.

Chief robot spot­ter Daan con­tacted us to tell us about a new robot spot­ting in Eng­land. The video below may shock you. Scum British teenagers steal a scooter and mess around with it, before receiv­ing an abrupt sur­prise when they try and set fire to it. Best viral video so far.

Real Eff­ing Deal

Kelv rag­ging this scooter we nicked. Well funny hes show­ing off to the girls. But WTF hap­pened when we tried to torch it! Havent seen Kelv since. Sucker. But checkit!

Dan­ger­ous toys

Another viral video, in French this time, love this one as well.
Real Eff­ing Deal

Robot in Egypt

Real Eff­ing Deal
Can you spot the robot’s shadow? Click the image for full screen.

Rooftop Robot

This next scoop comes via Giant­Eff­in­gRo­bots, “Rooftop Robot Spotted”

Ancient Power

I’d con­sider this one a bit spoi­ler­ish. Side­swipe attack­ing Side­ways quite viciously, “they’ve been here a long time”, Mega­tron on the pyramids.

Every­thing

Lit­tle new snip­pet of The Fallen in this one. “Don’t freak out!”

Bum­ble­bee

Lots more of Devastator’s transformation.