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Sunday, December 20, 2009
BD impressions: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
11:38 AM / BD Impressions / 
28 Comments
I'm not sure what else I expected, really.
I won't be so presumptuous as to claim that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade. What I do feel fairly confident in stating is that, with less than two weeks to go before we hit 2010, I am unlikely to see a worse film than it before the decade ends. The first Transformers was a heap of shit, but it was a semi-entertaining heap of shit, albeit in the sort of "so bad it's good" way that leaves you feeling somewhat guilty for getting any pleasure out of it. The sequel amplifies everything that was wrong with the first outing tenfold. Puerile humour that would embarrass a thirteen-year-old boy? Check. (Our reintroduction to the Witwicky family begins with a shot of the family dogs humping. Later in the movie, Bay one-ups himself by having a robot hump Megan Fox's leg.) Comedy ethnic stereotypes that would make Bernard Manning blush? Check. Bimbo women whose sole purpose in the film is so the audience can watch their tits jiggle in slow motion as they run away from explosions? Check. Robots that are so over-designed they don't even read on the screen? Check. Case in point: this is actually meant to be a face. (Actually, even the bloody logo is an over-designed piece of incomprehensible guff.) Grossly overinflated running time with a first hour that consists of nothing but padding? Check. Shameless and prolonged masturbation to military technology? You bet your ass that's a check. To quote a film critic whose name I've long since forgotten, "There is simply too much of everything."
I don't even feel I should be blaming the writers. I'm sure they just delivered what Bay asked them to - a couple of hundred pages of drivel aimed at the lowest common denominator with a story that serves no purpose other than to provide Industrial Light & Magic with ample opportunities to pad out their CGI effects demo reel. Even if you're a Transformers fan (I'm not), I can't imagine there'll be much to engage you here, as the robots themselves are effectively relegated to supporting roles in what it supposedly their own movie.
At this moment in time, I plan never to watch a Michael Bay film again. He seems to have only had one good movie in him - The Rock - and if rumours are to be believed the only reason it turned out any good was because Sean Connery decided the script was shit and insisted on it being rewritten by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. As it stands, I'd rather have a root canal than entrust this sorry excuse for a filmmaker with another two and a half hours of my life.
Image quality: Not the reference material we were led to believe. (Oh, quelle shocker!) As my brother put it, Michael Bay has managed to overload Cinema Craft. The film is such a shit-storm of explosions, grain, jittery camera movement and stupidly over-detailed robot men that I'm not surprised Paramount decided to low pass filter the whole thing. Ringing is visible around the letterbox bars from beginning to end, and can also be seen around high contrast edges in the picture area itself (such as the telegraph pole wires in Example 6 or the wires in Example 20). Even so, the encoder still chokes at times, with mosquito noise around actors' and robots' heads and bodies being by far the most common complaint. There's a decent amount of detail present, particularly in the scenes that were shot in 70mm for IMAX screenings, but on the whole this is a singularly unattractive film with its overly "busy" monster designs, baked orange flesh tones and frequent problems with focus - resulting, I'm assuming, from the decision to shoot such a chaotic production with anamorphic lenses, which are notoriously tricky when it comes to focus. 8/10
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
studio: Paramount; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 44.4 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 42.45 Mbit/sec
28 Comments
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1. MCP said:
Bad design reigns here: Transformers were meant to be *simple* and coloured cars-to-robots mechs. They were such in the original cartoons. They were such in following anime style series. They were conceived to sell real toys, after all.
What's this ultradetailed, brownish'n'dark look? So you want apply Shinya Tsukamoto's aestethics (as in "Tetsuo") to such a script and hope to get away with it? No way man!
(Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 2:31 PM)