Be Excellent To Each Other

A bit on the long side but otherwise pretty good. Not a patch on the first one though.

I very much enjoyed the first one, so I'm looking forward to this. I can't understand the hate in people's hearts for what I thought was an entertaining, funny, knock-about adventure. I mean, whut, they wanted 'teh darkness' and a brooding story? Garn!

Me want big US army landbattle against Decepticons. They give me that, and I'll be happy.

There is loads of action but the story just seemed a bit of an excuse to appeal to the fan boys who slated the first one.

I slated the first one not out of any fanboyism, but because it was kinda boring, and I didn't like the special effects. There was no reason for me to care about any of the transformers, who were largely indistinguishable from each other, and the fight scenes were just a blur.

And that's from someone who generally loves entertaining knock-about adventure things.

ARGH. I'm worried now! NEVER APPEAL TO THE FANBOYS. It's the worst thing you can do, they'll never love you for it and you'll hamper your story something awful. Look what happened to Spiderman 3. I still haven't forgiven the fanboy bleating for Venom, tempting executives into twisting Rami's arm and including him when he didn't want him.

I liked it quite a bit at the cinema yet when I came back to it later it seemed shockingly bad. Part of the problem is Megan Fox I think. She's horrid. There is a difference though between knock about adventure and agonisingly stupid. I didn't necessarily want darkness and brooding. Just not utter stupidity. I'd rather watch Transformer the [Animated] Movie.

Take the Rock's movies Walking Tall and Welcome to the Jungle which are knockabout fun but get it over with much quicker and without insulting my intelligence.

Mark Kermode, who despite looking like he's just escaped from 1992, is as spot on as ever. Hmm, never see him and (Linda Barker - Ed) in the same room do you?

Damn, I've already had to finish my initially top night out on a shoulder-to-cry-on downer, now you're all telling me that what I expect to be enjoyable hokum to be... in fact... a bit shit?

The first one didn't do anything for me, and yet I might go and see this one out of curiosity. There's still enough nostalgia in me to at least consider seeing it. I'll take some paracetamol before I go.

Thing is, I don't get why everyone I've spoken to about the first movie are almost offended when I suggest that I didn't like it. There must be something there if people are so emotionally engaged in it.

Then again, that's odd seeing as Mr Bay managed to give the real life transformers less character than the original cartoon. Which is quite a feat when you think about it. Pearl Harbour for children of the 80s.

It's time for my "if Michael Bay made cereal commercials" clip:

People seem surprised that I've not seen the first one and have no desire to see the second either. There's a big poster advertising the second film that I walk past daily and it hardly inspires me to go and see it. Something like this -

Obviously I wouldn't expect the bright primary colours of the cartoon but still...

That's all I want from a Transformers film. Fuck you Kermode, you wouldn't know a decent movie if it cut off your teeny tiny penis and served it to you fried in butter.

First film was much better.

Second one had a shit story



was visually confusing



was overly long, still had that hateful girl in it and all the new Autobots were either gash or, in one case underused.

.

Fuck knows what was happening on the screen at the end, my eyes were protesting by that point.

Still miles better than Terminator 4 tho.

The first one was shit, though. Like really, really shit.

If my memory doesn't serve me, I'll settle down and rewatch it later, as I think I've got it on DVD here.

That. I still like the 80s movie in a cheesy kind of way, and I loved playing with the toys as a child, but neither of the film trailers have inspired me to want to watch the new films.

I've just picked up the first two Jurassic Park films to rewatch. You know what we need now? Robots fighting with dinosaurs. Why hasn't this been done? Box office gold there. I'm not sure we need a story, but if it's a must, then we can build in something about skynet and time travel gone wrong. Christian Bale can get sat on by a newly 50% lighter apatosaurus.

ZOIDS!

Godzilla isn't a dinosaur, you fool.

Crikey, despite looking like a large lizard, it's a combination of the words "gorilla" and "whale".

Everyday's a schoolday.

Actually, fuck it - I want a film about this

It shows. Otherwise though, it was a halfway to brilliant Transformers film. Most of the things that annoyed me though were the things I must accept have been brought over from the cartoon, as it should/must/inevitably will be. Like the comedy Autobots. Sideswipe and Arcee were underused.

Aside form the bad, there's more than enough good stuff in here to warrant a decent edition DVD purchase as I did with the first. The first was just big robots knocking the shit out of each other, and us. This is bigger robots doing the same. There were little children in the pictures and they made it through what was some awesome violence. I think Bay here has raised the destruction bar so high with the two movies we aren't taking it all in, and we are desensitised.

If there's any kind of trilogy at work here, this will represent a suitably fun, awkward middle section.

Looking at the review round up in yesterday's graunaid, it got an average of 1.7, Overall 2.

1

4

1

4

1

1

0

So I'm not going to bother, but i'll probably laugh at the fanbois saying "But you don't understand Transformers, dude". neither, it seems, does Michael Bay.

If I was involved in the film, I introduce new transformers just to piss off the toymakers.

Introducing 'Ted' - he transforms from robot to tank to ashtray to bouncy castle to goldfish to mobile phone to gherkin.

Available in all good miracle-working toy shops

I want Ted.

Anyway, I'll probably be seeing this tomorrow. Not because I hold out any hope now of it being any good, but because I have a cinema card. AND MUST USE IT. I'm so fully expecting a miserable time that it shall completely revoke any goodwill Bay built up with me after the first one. (This is of course a manifestation of a secret plan to walk in not expecting anything, and thus hopefully be entertained. I expect a fail on this point.)

I liked the first, but the decepticons were a mass of indistinguishable metallic grey, which means Megatron was also a bit crap. Besides that, it was good fun, and i rarely like modern action movies.

1: The robots knock shit out of each other

2: The final half hour's action montage is repeatedly punctuated with Megan's 'running tits', which is nothing short of magical and amazing.

3: Optimus Prime

If these three things work for you, the film is well worth it. If they don't, it isn't.

Before I hit send I just want to reiterate: Megan Fox's tits. Boingy boingy boingy.

The ones from the first film remain so and Soundwave to a certain extent (worst part of the film being his voice isn't from the original cartoon as his and Prime's should be). Some other decepticons are much better, the constructicons especialy. To convey a living robot species in a real-world based film, they've done alright.

Booking tickets.

Correction: Frank Welker does soundwave in the movies and cartoon. Nonetheless, his voice is shit in the film compared to the heavily processed cartoon version.

Probably off to see Transformers 2 tonight, God help me. Meanwhile, ouch is delivered in the form of a review by Devin from Chud.com:

I have just seen Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

It is now officially, along with Miss Potter and The Day the Earth Stood Still, one of the top three worst films I have ever seen.

It is a monstrous, bloated, pile of shit. Review to come.

Are you insane? This was fucking awful!

I'm off to bed now, scowling like Gordon Brown with lockjaw, my review can wait until tomorrow.

Ooh, this is going to be good.

This really seems to be one of the worst reviewed blockbuster film of all time. Rarely has there been such hatred toward such a major film.

I saw this film with Nervous Pete last night. We both concurred on the fact that it was complete and utter horseshit.

The only part that I liked was Autobot Heaven. That made me laugh, but for all the wrong reasons. And Megan Fox obv.

Where the hell is Pete's review?!

In other news, Pete, if you ever fall on hard times, I'd be happy to pay for your cinema unlimited card for you. I would only have two stipulations: you'd have to see two films a month of my choosing and write a minimum of 500 words on each.

B'oh!

Sorry, internet router went down and it was locked in housemate's bedroom. He's only just come back and fixed it. Review to come tomorrow morning, as I have tomorrow off happily.

MY 2672 WORD REVIEW:

Mankind has a history of looking to the stars and wondering if he is alone in the universe, if there are strange and wonderful life-forms out there, and better yet intelligences not dissimilar to his own. It is the natural way of things, no one likes to think of themselves as being alone.

Transformers 2 is the surest cure for that yearning. Why?

Because it posits that the only other intelligent life-form out there is a fucking annoying one with zero personality. If the administrators of SETI saw this film, I bet they'd be itching to pull the plug, just to be sure. Aliens haven't been this annoying since the wonderful pulp novel 'Martians Go Home', where indestructible green little men who look like Larry David teleport around and ruin the lives of all earth folk by pointing and laughing when they're having sex. The chief Decepticons, whilst working to destroy all other life forms at least have a sort of spark. The Autobots on the other hand are the most shallow, boring creatures I have ever encountered on film. If one of them isn't jawing on about destinies and leadership and protecting life, then the other is cracking jive talk or barking simple dimwitted commands. At one point Prime dies, and I was surprised to see the soldiers looking glum, personally I would have hi-fived.

As for humanity, if the radio waves eventually bear the foul fruit of Transformers 2 across the void to another advanced planet, I bet they'd be decommissioning their own exploratory efforts pronto on account of how humanity is represented here. The women are universally sluts. Really, without exception. The men are equally sex-obsessed meat-heads, venal or insane. Humanity hasn't looked this bad in a film since Nil by Mouth.

So that's the characters fucked and any real emotion investment with it. Now usually for a film I really hate I'd do a blow by blow run down of each scene, dripping with venom, but frankly its getting increasingly hard to discern what came when in this unholy mess. Let's look at this simple charge sheet against Michael Bay instead shall we?

Crime One: Comedy.

Michael Bay's sense of humour is quite possibly the most retarded it is possible to be without smearing faeces on faces, but even then at one point a robot basically pisses on a girl's face. (But she later turns out to be a Decepticon, so that's alright, right kids?) Did you like the comedy parents from the first film? I actually quite enjoyed the scenes between LaBeouf and them in the first film. It was hardly sophisticated, but it was lively and they were kinda likeable. In this film I'd like to take a lawnmower and strip the flesh from their faces to shut them the fuck up. They rabbit along almost in a fever, in shit quipping routines that don't make any sense. The wife is the worst, now represented as a materially obsessed woman who makes ho-ho hilariously inappropriate references to fucking. She deserves a bullet in the back of the head. The husband is little better, constantly whining and cracking wise. They're taking their son to college, and with this tiny fragment of plot comes around twenty fucking minutes of shite 'embarrassed by parents' comedy culminating in a scene where the mum gets high on space-brownies in a completely retarded way. Basically she's painted to be a sluttish moron, which is par for the course in Bay's world.

It's cringe inducing humour, and it doesn't get any better. Dogs hump each other, not once but twice. Everyone has verbal diarrhoea. People quip about any thing that fucking moves – well, I say quip, if you can call babbling when Deep Roy (as an Egyptian border officer!) approaches the car the words, “Be careful! Short people are angry!” Nearly every single line of supposed comedy is either a display of venal lust or alpha-male territorial aggression. Everybody is constantly pissing on each other's chips, belittling each other, bragging and calling one another a 'pussy'. (Man, do they use that word a lot in this film.) It's relentlessly obnoxious and not-fucking-funny.

So the comedy is shit. Now you may be saying, “But hey, Pete! I'm going to see this film for the cool explosions and robot-fighting, not comedy, relax man.” Fair enough, but consider this. Nearly almost everything not pertaining to explosions involves this terrible, terrible comedy. Not only groan inducing but own face-punch-inducing. And it goes on FOREVER. Most of the mid section of the film, a good hour that need not be there, revolves around this fucking awful comedy. It's shit, okay?

Two: Racism & Misogyny.

Bay is a racist and misogynistic arsehole. This used to not be a problem in his earlier films, indeed, reined in by Bruckheimer and other producers the stuff that slipped through the net was unintentionally hilarious and contributed to the Team America hi-jinks we all know and love. Sure it was a little troubling if you thought about it, but who'd be doing any thinking during a Bay film eh? Transformers 2 is so bad that the mind pretty much claws at the insides of the skull to escape, and wander – and the wandering mind inevitably falls upon what a racist douche-bag Michael Bay is. It starts off sort of funny, with Shia's irritating parents shown in Paris enjoying their holiday. Well, I say 'enjoying', they're still taking shit a mile a minute, and then – what's this? Oh ho! A French mime-artist pops up at their table and starts miming away. Papa Shia responds by alpha-male aggression. Fortunately explosions quickly happen which stop any further damage from being done.

Then we have the Egyptians. They have Deep Roy for a border officer, who squeals “Yankeeeees!” and inexplicably let our wacky heroes through. The US elite international strike force team have to be told before parachuting in that the villagers below are 'friendlies'. OF COURSE THEIR FUCKING FRIENDLIES, YOU CUNTS, SINCE WHEN WERE YOU AT WAR WITH EGYPT? Later battling with Decepticons they are pleased to find Jordanian reinforcements coming. In Egypt, just outside Cairo... yes, I know. Look at this point I was just hoping for things to be reversed and to get to see some cool humanity teams up and allies fight together stuff. I didn't get it. They approach in battered old helicopters and are all killed before they even get to land. They are not mentioned again.

Early in Shanghai a robot tears through a building. The wife dives for cover. A mere foot from metal death, venerable old Chinese man keeps comically eating his noodles in 'Ah-so' way. Fuck you, Michael Bay.

The robots. Jesus are the robots racist. The Decepticons have this little scientist robot who has big eyes behind spectacles, two buck-teeth and talks in Nipponesque gibberish. Then there's the two infamous 'Sambots', twins who speak in crass, snivelling worst-stereotype ghetto style. At this point I was fantasising about Bay getting skull-fucked by the cast of The Wire. One of them has a wonky great big gold tooth, both have rubber lips and crazy crack-eyes and neither can 'read too good' and both relentlessly go on about pussy and bitches and how others are pussies and bitches and how they'd like to get hold of some pussy and bitches AND YOUR FUCKING ROBOTS FROM OUT OF SPACE. Jesus. You're a machine intelligence that's travelled light years and you're this fucking shallow? You choose the worst denigrating stereotype around today to model yourself after? I wouldn't be so insulted if they didn't feature in the bulk of the film, jibber-jabbering away like crazy foo's for the majority of the run-time. At one gleeful point myself and Lord Rixondale, my partner in cinematic masochism, breathed a 'thank fuck' as one of them was eaten by a robot. Annoyingly, he not only survives but they defeat it, whilst calling it a pussy, natch.

I've already mentioned how women are sluts in Bay's world. I can't really expand on that at all. There's only three female characters. One is Shia's mum, she's a ditzy slut. Another is a female Decepticon who can disguise herself in flesh-form, which is an ability I wasn't aware they had – in fact, they just throw it into the mix and never reference to it again. Personally I'd have been seriously fucking paranoid, but no, I guess she's the only one who can do that. Anyway, she's a slut. But that's okay, because she gets beat by Megan Fox, Shia's steady-slut, who rams a car into her. Now Megan is easy on the eye. The early lingering shots on are breathtakingly audience-baitingly audacious in their soft-porn-for-mass-market-popcorn quality. She never appears without a layer of grease and glistening sweat upon her, without panda made-up eyes and short crop tops and short short shorts. But Bay doesn't know when to stop. He basically fucks her with the camera every time she's on screen. It reminds you of the great Bill Hicks “What are these titties gonna do?” “I dunno, jiggle?” Hollywood producer routine. And it gets... you know... creepy after a while. You can't help but picture Bay there rubbing his thighs again and again and again, drooling. She does almost precisely nothing in the film, by the way. The only thing she achieves is enslaves a little Steve Buscemi style Decepticon that has this slave/mistress thing going with her and humps her leg. She's only there for camera porn, which is great news to young pubescent males and less so for young girls hoping for a decent role model. Bad role-model, Megan! Bad!

She's a terrible actress by the way.

There's at least twenty minutes of Shia at college in this film. No really. All the women perceptible are sluts, all the men drooling over said sluts.

Three: Plot

There isn't one. Seriously. Stuff just happens and leads on to other stuff.

At one point the heroes go to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, they leave by the back door and they're in an aircraft graveyard seemingly in Arizona.

There's a rail gun that can solve everyone's problems and destroy with a second shot the apocalypse device. It is used once and then put away without explanation.

Everybody is as thick as pig-shit. The Decepticons could have destroyed the world's anti-robot shit in sneak attacks at will, as they know where it all is thanks to hacking into a satellite. Instead they wait to be attacked, every time. The Autobots... I can't even begin to describe how moronic they are. Can Optimus think of a plan that doesn't involve him sacrificing himself whilst leaving the Decepticons completely unbeaten? Apparently not.

Four: Script

When not territorially pissing on each other, or slobbering or belittling other cultures, the film offers up Autobots talking in a pompous, slow, exposition-ridden manner. Optimus doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. He's the most boring creation in the universe. He can't work that clanking great cake hole without the words 'destiny', 'lifeforms' or a sodding long history of the robot war chundering out. How Shia could ever get emotionally attached to this arsehole is anyone's guess. He does however contribute to one of the only two laughs in this film, both unintentional. Optimus is dead. A Chinook carries him in a net to the airfield, as upset marines gather round to sombrely watch their fallen comrade carried to be laid to rest on the tarmac as last taps plays. The Chinook with a shrug of its rotors drops him on the floor with a dull thud and flies off. It's hilarious. The other hilarious bit is where Shia goes to robot-heaven. It's stupid. He meets the original Primes there, and they jaw on like they do, and then one says, I kid you not, “All your life has been leading up to this moment Sam, it is your destiny.” I actually whimpered the word, “No!”

So yes, the entire script is shit. Obama is portrayed as a pussy by the way, 'cos Bay doesn't like Democrats as they don't fund all this cool military shit so much or start as many wars.

Five: Complete lack of tension

Curious thing! When you don't give a shit about any of the characters, you don't feel even remotely tense, or indeed interested in what's coming next. Amazing! The film offers dilemmas that would ordinarily have you a wee bit nervous, like Shia being caught by Megatron, or Optimus dying. (Well, not really, everyone keeps dying and being brought back to life once some crass emotion has been milked in this film – it's their shtick.) But you don't care, you only care about how slowly the minutes are ticking by. At one point an aircraft carrier gets sliced in half, alongside other attacks around the world. Breathless news reporters state that over 7,000 have died around the world in “the greatest attacks ever seen in history.” A little while later our heroes are in New York. No one seems to give a shit, even when Megatron has just been on TV announcing that aliens live among them and that's he going to fuck their shit up. Shia toddles off to the deli to meet John Turturro – no one else is even TALKING about the events of the day in the deli, instead their doing their territorial pissing. I want to physically attack this film with a crowbar. The one opportunity of some tense, oppressive, apocalypse-coming scene setting that will fuel the final third and they don't even bother.


Six: Underwhelming action

Yes. The big charge. If I go to see a film about robots hitting each other, I expect a good time. Naturally. But I don't get one. Not only is this film MORE visually confused than the first one, but it ups its game by throwing in a load of new robots and failing to introduce them. So you have no real idea who's a Decepticon and who's an Autobot in the final forty-five minute long fight. You just have a load of machines shooting at each other. Apart from a few slow-motion fisticuff moments you rapidly grow numb to the spectacle, because there's no invention, no cleverness, no use of anything beyond basic fists and pew-pewing. It's simple shooting and slugging in the main, with lunking great robots that tramp around. There's none of the grace of John Woo, none of the flair of Bay's earlier movies – it's just tedious pummelling. And again, I was so disassociated that by the time an aircraft carrier was cut in half I was even bored witnessing that. BORED BY AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER BEING CUT IN HALF. The explosions become too much, the whirl of metal on metal a dull grind. It's tedious. Your eyes begin to hurt. It's at least an hour too long. God, it's appalling.

Verdict:

It has become clear to me in writing this review that this film has passed both Miss Potter and The Day the Earth Stood Still remake in sheer awfulness. The previous two films at least had a few ideas, a couple of decent scenes, some good scenery in the midst of the horror. This film has nothing but ugliness of vision, spirit, thought and manners. I hate it. I utterly hate it. I couldn't have hated it more if I gave a shit about the Transformers franchise. It's so bad, I can't even watch the first one that I rather liked any more, as all it would do would bring the memories flooding back and remind me how I hold everyone involved in this film with utter contempt.

The worst film I have ever seen. Get to fucking fuck, Michael Bay, you fucking cunt.

tl;dr

I'm hoping they use this quote for the back of the DVD case.

Thank you. An alternative could be:

"I damn you all the way to Hell, Michael Bay! Then I commit rape, murder and incest so I can join you there for the pleasure of personally damning you some more!"

I wish to subscribe to NervousPetes newsletter.

Fuck it, start a religion. I'm in.

Genius.

I was given a first Transformers Movie calendar, which I hung so it wouldn't just go to waste.

The robots just look wrong. Instead of looking like, you know, a car that's rotated some parts around to make itself into a robot... they look like hideous organic things (that are rendered to look complicated just because their CGI equipment is capable of rendering them that way) with the odd door or fender stuck on them.

And the blur-o-vision thing is something that really irritates me. They had some really cool LOOKING stunts in The Quantum of Bollocks - but you couldn't tell what was happening because of the shakey-cam-blur-o-vision. Is it any wonder old action movies are still held in such high regard? For one thing, you can actually tell what's happening!

Megan Fox is alright, but she'd better get her cans out for top marks. A shame that she's intent on covering herself in tattoos.

Really, the last good action movie was probably Terminator 2 or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (which one came last??)



Megan Fox is the hottest actress since Jennifer Connelly. As much as i loved the Transformers cartoons she might help me watch this

Ace review pete.

I could help thinking about two things whist reading it.

1. That no matter how bad Dr Who gets - i'm still glad it exists, to counteract that 'ethos.'
2. Batteries not included.

Pretty sure it was Terminator 2.



Jennifer Connelly got her cans out, and therefore wins.

I'm puzzled as to how "slut" is a negative thing for a woman to be, however.