The only things I remember about the first Transformers, which I saw way back in 2007 when it came out, are (1) John Turturro's bizarrely slapstick performance, which was way discordant with the rest of the film, (2) the robot special effects being genuinely impressive, and (3) the final shot of the movie, which was a medium-long pullback of Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox making out on the hood of a brand-new Camero while Optimus Prime in "giant robot" form watched over them. I remember that shot specifically because it plays like a hilariously literal envisionment of the fantasies of a 15-year old boy: hot girl! sports car! robot protector! simultaneously! Fortunately, I think that these three recollections are pretty much the critical Rosetta Stone for understanding the sequel.
Given that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (hereafter to be referred to as simply Transformers 2, like it should have be entitled in the first fucking place) has a metacritic score of 35 and is by any measure an incomprehensible mess of a film, it falls to me to explain to you the cultural and artistic significance of Transformers 2 without actually recommending that you see the movie (don't). Here goes: Transformers 2 is a bold declaration of war against the idea that blockbuster filmmaking and regular plane-Jane filmmaking have anything at all in common. There's always been a nebulous, but widely-acknowledged, gap between the expectations viewers bring to an effects-driven summer movie relative to a character-driven comedy or drama. Transformers 2 takes this gap and turns it into the artistic equivalent of the Korean DMZ.
Remember how I said that the final shot of Transformers 1 felt like the exposed fantasies of a 15-year old boy brought to life? Imagine that 15-year old boy has a neighborhood friend his age who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and unmedicated ADHD. Transformers 2 is his movie. And when I say that, I don't mean "a movie made to pander to him" - I mean that boy would literally write, film, and produce THIS EXACT MOVIE if he had the opportunity. Transformers 2 actively rebels against any sort of narrative cohesion, sense of place, or logical construction. For one example: early on in the film, Shia LaBeouf's character Sam goes to a frat party at his new, fancy East Coast college. The background in shots of this party reveal it to consist of 3-4 model types dancing to techno in rave lighting and a bartender polishing beer glasses. You don't even have to have gone to college to know that's completely off; you just have to have seen Animal House or one of the myriad Animal House clones of the past twenty years.
In the grand scheme of things, that's a minor nitpick, but believe me, the flagrant disregard for coherence it reflects runs rampant throughout Transformers 2. John Turturro's back for the sequel, and his performance fits right in now, despite the fact that if anything, it's more manic and slapsticky than in the first movie. It's just that this time out, everything is that much farther over the top. To wit: Transformers 2 introduces Mudflap and Skids, two bumbling good-guy robot stereotypes that make Jar Jar Binks look like he was modeled after W.E.B. DuBois; one of them has a gold tooth (!), they crack jokes about "popping a cap in your ass." The heroes resurrect an old Decepticon from an SR-71 in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum who in his transformed form, walks with a cane and at one point farts out a parachute. The movie opens with a 2001-style tableau set in the distant past in which an improbably racially diverse tribe of cavemen battle robots with spears. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Like with the first, the look of the film and the visual effects are pretty incredible. There's many more Transformers that are on screen for much more of the running time as compared to the first one, and they're still convincingly integrated with the live-action footage. I've never fully understood the bewilderment of cinephiles at Michael Bay's continued success in Hollywood; simply put, no other blockbuster director puts as much of their budget on the screen as he does. According to this list, Transformers 2 had a budget that was $15 million higher than that of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Bay's movie has dozens of photorealistic robots engaging in all-out warfare approximately every 15 minutes of a two and a half hour film. Spielberg's has Harrison Ford riding on the back of a motorcycle and a bunch of fake CGI fire-ants.
In the end, the extreme contrast between the obvious technical mastery involved in Transformers 2 and the astounding narrative poverty and inexplicably buffoonish characterization of the finished product gives the impression that Michael Bay absconded with $200 million and a film crew and refused any outside creative input. Despite the fact that it's a huge movie, Transformers 2 doesn't really feel like a soulless corporate product. If anything, it feels like the most expensive surrealist film ever made, the blockbuster Un Chien Andalou. It isn't, of course. Not even close. But if you choose to see it (or are forced to) you'd probably enjoy it more if you keep that perspective in mind.
