Still giving away yummy feature spots to anyone who comments here and hasn't gotten one yet, BTW.

I also noticed that I'm approaching the ol' 10,000 on my pageviews... the person who can snap the closest to it, I'll write you a short story or draw you a sketch, pixel stamp, or pixel sprite.

Anyhoo. On with the movie critiquing.


(As if anyone who'd read this hasn't seen it already, right?)

The movie had some fun character moments and a majorly epic fight scene sitting in the center of a wrap of too much juvenile humor, too much focus on the crappy Autobots instead of on the good ones, wimpy Decepticons, and literal deus ex machinas. If you like seeing hot babes, robots kicking the crap out of each other, and stuff blowing up good, you'll probably get a kick out of it. Otherwise, I found it rather mediocre compared to the first film.


First off, as much as it feels kind of weird for me saying this, considering, there were too many dithering human moments in this film.

I mean, while I actually like Sam's parents (especially his mom, who's awesome in a totally weird sort of way), did we really need the college scenes to drag on quite that long, especially the bit with the brownies? And the whole rave and Alice subplot served absolutely no purpose, seriously, not to mention being disturbing on all manner of levels. (Metal tentacles? A prehensile thing coming out of her mouth that still has an organic tongue on the end of it? ) And what was with the whole kitchenbot scene? Reminding the audience that the Allspark shard can bring things to life, I guess? And the whole scene with the black guy in the deli ranting about his teeth... *facepalms*

We also have Leo, who and I decided ended up coming off as the undignified love child of Raoul and Hunter. I guess he was needed to get Simmons in the picture and provide a contrast of a normal shell-shocked human vs. Sam, Mikaela, and Simmons being veterans by now, but... bleh. Kind of a waste of such a cute actor on a kind of lame character who's not even properly adorkable except for a few scattered moments.

I mean, in the first film, even things like the scene hiding around Sam's house and the masturbation talk felt like natural flowing segues in the plot, with Glenn being the only glaringly superfluous part. Here, it seems like there's a lot of things you could cut and not miss at all in terms of narrative structure or fun scenes.

And with the time we save there, we could have time for other things, like actually getting to show the Autobots more. It's kind of ironic that, while we actually get more Decepticon characterization this time around in the form of Megatron/Starscream interaction and The Fallen, we barely get any of the Autobots. I would have liked to have seen more scenes and development on how NEST and the Autobots had been working together. And for pity's sake, do the Autobots really spend their off time just sitting around in the hangar doing nothing? I know they're trying to stay undercover, but come on. -_-

And then there's the things I wish had been done differently. The Twins are pretty awful... unfunny and annoying. I would have much rather had, say, Arcee and Sideswipe tagging along with the humans among the new faces. Not only would they have been much more interesting, but it would have alleviated the fact that most of the new Autobots were pretty much "hi and bye". The fact that Arcee was a great character in IDW's Reign of Starscream and Destiny comics just makes it that more annoying.

And, man, apparently being stuck without Megatron for two years was not kind to the Decepticons. I mean, they were so wimpy! I'm all for good guys kicking butt, don't get me wrong, but there's a big difference between a butt-kicking and a floor-wiping. The bad guys should be a threat, not a speedbump. The final battle with The Fallen was particularly anti-climatic, even with the power boost from Jetfire.

And then there's Prime coming off as so cruelly bloodthirsty, and the Prime gods resurrecting Sam... meh.

So, you're probably wondering, was there anything I actually liked about this movie? Well, yes. It wasn't a total crapfest.

Like I said, I do like Sam's parents. You can really picture Sam as being a product of his folks, and that they're a weird family that's a bit dysfunctional but loves each other anyway. Sam's mom in particular is indeed entertainingly awesome, especially at the end. For that matter, I like Sam too... he just has a delightful sort of Nerd Hero charm. And I have to commend Shia's acting during the scenes wherever Sam started getting signals from the Allspark... it actually came off as rather creepy, and you could get a sense of this kid being overwhelmed by and going crazy from this alien stuff going on in his brain.

Mikaela comes off better in this film... even though she still pretty much exists to be eye candy, you get the feeling she's got more than just that in her, too. Simmons, too, is a much more enjoyable balance between his loopiness and his competence. (Even if the movie writers were spending way too much time seeming like they were actively trying to get wacky fangirls to create Simmons/Leo slash...)

The forest battle was definitely epic action. If only the finale battle had been that awesome...

Jetfire is all manner of win. All of his scenes were among the few moments in the movie where I was unabashedly enjoying myself. His crochety ranting and insulting was a wonderful hoot to watch, his accent was delightful, and I'm rather sorry he got killed off, as I'd have loved to see more of him. Well, the least Hasbro can do is give us a Scrounge action figure, to fit with Jetfire's father being an "honorable wheel".

What little we did get to see of Ironhide, Sideswipe, Arcee, and NEST was cool. And as weird as it is to say this, Wheelie was actually kind of cool. I could have done without the leg humping and with less swearing, but overall the character's attitude was a lot of fun. Soundwave was creepily awesome for being stuck in sattelite mode the whole time. And it indeed was good to see Megatron and Starscream get some decent screen time, even if I miss the tougher, less cowardly Starscream from Reign of Starscream/Destiny.

I dunno. The first movie I thought was great... it really drew me into all of the characters, had several memorable action sequences, and turned me from feeling dubious about the whole matter to wanting to learn more about Transformers. But this movie seemed to be missing a lot of the soul and spectacle. :/ It had some fun parts, but overall I was kinda disappointed.