I’m not going to lie to you people, this is going to be difficult. I’m not saying it’s difficult to find stupidity in Transformers 2, believe me there is. What will be difficult to express is that this movie is completely stupid regardless of the fact that it’s about alien robots that turn into cars.

Megatron always ends up laughing first. He sucks at this game!

When we were younger, we grew up believing in this. It filled our minds on the weekends and stayed in our hearts throughout the week. But as time goes on and our minds demand more reason, the experience for most begins to fade. Still you have people out there who will try to apply scientific reasoning, which is just ridiculous. Books and websites are full explanative histories of each event and facet all trying to make sense of something that unfortunately by its very nature is a silly fantasy. But enough about Intelligent Design, let’s talk robots!

So the story goes that long ago the Transformers landed on Earth and tried to harvest Energon through a process which can only be accomplished by blowing up the sun. The transformers had an agreement to not blow up any planets that have life. It didn’t stop them from building the machine that does it, and then leaving the key in the ignition, but let’s skip that bit for now. This went on until one of the transformers decided that it was super important to blow up our sun regardless of the humans populating one of its satellites. I don’t know why he found it necessary; maybe there is a shortage on stars.

to boldy go where no transformer bothers looking!

Or maybe our sun makes Energon that tastes like tiramisu, in which case I say light it up, because I love me some fucking `misu. This starts a rift between the transformers and thus the initial division of Decepticons and Autobots. You can tell the difference between a Decepticon and an Autobots because Autobots are the good guys, and Decepticons are the ones that turn into vehicles that are actually useful when waging a civil war.

Sam Witwicky had (in the prior film) been established as the descendant of an explorer who had stumbled upon the frozen form of Megatron. Apparently Megatron shuts down when it’s chilly, allowing us to assume that the vacuum of space which he traveled through, stays at a balmy 72 degrees year round. Megatron was looking for the All Spark; the power source that gives all robots life.  This happened to also be on our planet, which I must again assume is because the choices for a sentient race of robots that don’t need atmospheres to survive are limited.

me again

With me so far? Good, let’s continue. So this machine which became a point of contention between transformers was left in perfect working order by the robots who swore to protect it (rather than dismantling it). Then all of the original transformers gave up their lives (instead of just killing the single one of them that turned) to form a nice little secretive house around the key to the machine. You know, instead of just burying it, or something.

You’d figure at the very least the 4^th Robot Prime would have said “You know… this is a pretty small key.  I think we can get by with making a 3 robot sized tomb.”  The key, which conveniently fits a in a human hand while being designed by giant robots, is being sought out by both factions, in order to either blow up or save the world.

In the prior movie, the All spark was destroyed by shoving it into Megatron’s chest. Whoops!  Sucks that he left his one weak spot unprotected and in the center of his chest. The All Spark was all but destroyed, with the exception of two small slivers. One was kept in a secret government facility constantly monitored and maintained in a stasis field. The other sliver which constantly radiates data and energy to the degree that its duplicate must be contained in the already mentioned stasis field went unnoticed in Sam’s hoody. When touching the sliver (Even though you could say he already touched it when he football carried the damn thing 20 city blocks in the first movie.) he was filled with Transformer knowledge. This knowledge includes information to disprove Einstein’s theories, the ability to read an entire book by flipping from the first page straight to the last (skipping everything in between), and knowledge of where the Matrix (any time you need something to sound cool, you should call it the matrix) could be found.  With this information, and a ragtag team of friends, he sets off on a journey around the world.  The team consists of people you would normally hang out with, like the hot girl who is into rebuilding cars and hanging out with the less popular guys, the stereotypical (if we were still in the late 90’s) college techno genius internet upstart, and the disgraced secret intelligence officer who works his momma’s butcher shop.

Their first stop is to visit an ancient prime who is so old that he uses a cane.  Apparently an advanced technological race of sentient robots has no better cure for the rickets than by propping someone up on a stick.  From there it’s a quick jump over to Egypt in search of the matrix.  Surprisingly the matrix and the Holy Grail are housed in the same building.  It all makes sense now.  Jesus was an Autobot, and he died for our robo-sins.     En transformine patris et filli et spiritus rollouticus.

Also available for nazi invasion, mortal combats, and bar/bat mitzvah rental

They find the matrix in the tomb of primes behind a thin wall, that was fortunately destroyed by the twins (A pare of robots who are such racist stereotypes that Reverend Wright finds the depiction offensive).   I guess the sacrifice of the primes was even more unnecessary by the resourcefulness of an ancient spackler.  His work may not have been necessary if their sacrifice hadn’t left large human sized gaps to walk through.  Upon touching the matrix it turns to dust.  Later we find out that it was only a temporary problem, and that the only way to get the matrix,…is to earn the matrix.  Which again, makes me wonder why the fallen would have access to it, or why the whole “let’s form ourselves into a protective cube” plan was necessary.  It also fails to explain why the matrix couldn’t be used to recover any of the ancient primes that were conveniently found encompassing the matrix.

The team then makes an unprotected dash through a hostile war in the desert all the while being chased by dozens of large robots armed with missiles.  He finally reaches Optimus and is able to recover him using the matrix, which is accomplished by jamming it into his chest.   I find it amazing that the primary method of bringing life and death to a Transformer is through chest rape.  Like Sam Beckett, Optimus immediately gets to work making right what once went wrong, fighting off both Megatron and the Fallen even though in the first movie he could barely handle Megatron by himself.   The sun blower upper is destroyed, the humans are rejoicing, and the twins are still an amalgamation of every racist stereotype you can think of.  Oh but that crafty Megatron! Looks like the extremely large and angry robot was able to sneak away again, without calling himself to attention from the army of humans and Autobots.   It’s a good thing too because I don’t believe the complexities of the story were properly conveyed in only 2 movies.

Transformers 2 commits the sin of assigning our shitty little planet more importance than its worth.  Why would all of the most important technologies of an entire population be housed here?  Why would the destruction of this place be so important?  I know “The Fallen” allegory for the fall of Satan, but honestly are you really going to try and sell that pitch when you’re talking about robots that turn into fucking cars?  Do we really need to bring the bible into a movie that is no more than a supped up commercial for our failing auto industry?  We’re not that important and if we were, then the transformers should have just taken the shit off our planet so we wouldn’t keep getting dicked by future robots.

Why is it that every robot the All Spark creates is a dick.  Every time a robot is birthed, there is always this scene from the Gremlins that has to take place.  If sentient robots have a choice to be either good or bad, then why is it every time a toaster becomes a robot it decides to shoot burning bread at you rather then make you a delicious breakfast. What exactly is a mortal wound for a robot?  In the last movie Bumble Bee lost the lower half of his body, but in this movie Jetfire dies from a gut wound.  Why was sector 7, an organization given full governmental backing, terminated when they were the most qualified and knowledgeable government organization on the subject of alien robots?  Why worry about the matrix when you have a sliver of the All Spark?  If it was enough to bring Megatron back to life, why not Optimus?   And what late teen male in his right fucking mind would decide that when going to college he doesn’t want his secret robot brand new fucking Camaro with him?

In short a person is hard pressed to find a moment of this movie without being bludgeoned over the head with its unnecessary stupidity, and plot holes large enough that a transforming truck to walk through.

4 Comments »

1. Couldn’t agree more. Just stumbled upon this site from MS Paint Adventures – best ad I have ever clicked on.
   Keep up the good work.

   Comment by urmom — December 27, 2009 @ 12:35 am

2. Great review, one point of contention though. You pointed out that megatron should have shut down while going though space because it’s cold? But space isn’t cold, look it up it’s science. But couldn’t agree with you more on the rest of it.

   Comment by Odolowa — December 29, 2009 @ 7:24 pm

3. Hi! Thanks for stopping by the site and promising to return. I’m actually interested in your point about space not being cold.

   I only did a cursory search at first, and all things pointed to spaces “temperature” being at just above Kelvin. Finally NASA’s website suggested otherwise.

   I may have misread it but the suggestion was that while space itself has no temperature, object in space do. And those temperatures are directly affected by the presence of radiation, say from a star. So the temperature of an object in space quite regularly dips between low and high.

   But to suggest that a trip through space would be no colder than a near surface area temperature on earth seemed to me a bit silly. Again I could be wrong, but it would seem to me, that a Being able to travel through the cosmos should be able to survive a New Jersey blizzard.

   edit: But i guess an object traveling in a set direction could just as likely shut down and start up again as it dips and rises between varying fluctuations of it’s own temperature. So an object sent forth in space, provided that it already accounted for things such as gravitational pulls, collisions, and what have you, may have planned the occasional shut down ahead of time. Damn you for making me try to justify this!

   Comment by Bebarce — December 29, 2009 @ 9:49 pm

4. “the army of humans and Autobot’s”

   FFUUUUUUUUUUUU-

   Comment by ??? — January 5, 2010 @ 2:44 pm

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