Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Part 2: On the Army)
Note: I'll try to avoid as many spoilers as I can. There's one major one that won't be disclosed, but everything else seemed fairly predictable. I'm not even sure I'll get to a full-fledged review, there's so many things wrong with this movie that I need to go through it all.
First off, "TJCrizzle" on Twitter, who I have never met or talked to before, sent me a tweet saying "dude the movie was amazing dont be one of those people who dis on it cause everyone likes it. dont do that" and I assure you, as big of a hater that I am, I tried to watch this movie in good spirits. I can see why some people might like the film, because it is a visual feast. It rapes your eyes and sodomizes your ears, and if you are brave enough to see this in an IMAX theatre, it'll gang rape your eyes and run a train on your ears. But, if you look beyond, and you don't have to look far to do this, you'll notice that this movie really, really sucks. I don't expect greatness from a summer blockbuster, but, it at least has to be fun to watch and recycling jokes is so lame. Especially when it's not really delivered well most of the time.
There was one unsettling thing about the movie though and it's in their portrayal of the U.S. military. They're everywhere, and if they're not there, they can bring their army there in six hours and turn that place into a war zone. Calls are placed and within minutes, something is getting bombed or shot at, and with another quick call, a nearby vessel is able to use its top secret rail gun to shoot at something. It's like the world is at their disposal. This is explained through some secret treaty that is signed with the world that apparently gives the U.S. Army free reign to do whatever they want, wherever they want, in "pursuit of Decepticons." Sound vageuly familiar? This new "War on Terror" basically gave the U.S. a pretty strong bargaining chip because they managed to get the world to sign over their sovereignty to the U.S. It's ludicrous! Countries are signing over their sovereignty! It's a movie about how the Transformers helped America take over the world, because lord knows that other weapons are useless against Decepticons, and the Autobots only speak American.
Thus, with this view, I didn't find it very surprising that along with America, the two other countries that featured huge battles were China and Jordan (their superpower arch nemesis and an Arab country). I guess the opportunity to shit on these two countries were too great. I don't see a fight in England or Canada anytime soon.
China appears first and people are running away from a "toxic gas leak" which I guess must be true since Chinese factories like to lace their toys with arsenic, lead and weapons grade plutonium. I like how we must be reminded how dangerous Chinese factories are, I'm just glad I didn't see any children running away from the factories, then again, maybe they couldn't find any Chinese children for extras because they were all busy in their sweatshops or something.
Next up is Egypt, which at first is mistaken for Las Vegas, but that is quickly clarified with some camels. The Egyptian/Jordan border is apparently a shack on stilts, led by a midget (no seriously, it's the guy who played the Oompa Loompas in the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Despite what looks like a backwater, piss poor, complete not-state-of-the-art Border police, their cameras are still hooked up with some fancy face recognition software so in case the people are the border are too incompetent (which they are), the camera will do all the work for them. Problem is it's not even hooked up to the shack itself, the camera sends the information to some place else far from where the information might prove useful (like...at the border), which, surprise, surprise, allows the protagonists to get a head start on the people chasing them.
Ugh, and this is only two small aspects of the film. It's a two and a half hour film, and just to let you guys know, I'm not done hating it yet.