Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Movie: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I saw it on: July 2, 2009

Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fix, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson John Turturro

Genres: Action, SciFi

Synopsis: This is the 2^nd Transformers installment.  Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf ) is off to college where he is soon drawn back into the Decepticon vs. Transformers and the rest of humanity.

My two cents: Shia always fun to watch.  The actions sequences were pretty good.  Here comes the big old BUT.

I had two major complaints:

1) The length of the movie.  They wasted a lot of time on stuff that did little or nothing to contribute to the movie.  The movie could easily have been edited down to under two hours without losing anything of significance.

2) Without giving away anything  – the ending was visually OK, but when the credits rolled; all I could thinks is “wait a minute, who made all this stuff” (you have to see it to know what I mean by “stuff”.  Virtually NOTHING is explained.  I am willing to take a lot of things on faith, but the movie makes almost no attempt to explain the ending – and who or what made the devices that made it possible to almost destroy, but then save, the world.  It would have been easier for me to accept if “Q” from Star Trek: The Next Generation had suddenly appeared as the power behind everything.  It was as if the screenplay writer had some ideas for some really great gimmicks – but just had them appear out of thin air and forgot to get around to explaining where they came from.  Without wanting to beat a dead horse . . . think of Harry Potter and his magic wand – but no one bothers to tell you that it is a magic wand or that Harry is a magician.  All you see is some guy pointing a stick and weird things happening.