Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen & Dark of the Moon

[Digital Drift 2014]

0m: Our road trip with the autobots continues. We hit a bumpy road as the writer’s strike of 2007 looms. Fortunately this movie proved that you apparently don’t even NEED writers and that a triple-A blockbuster action movie could be sloppily thrown together without discernible structure or coherence and still rake in more than its predecessor. Just cast your eyes over the image I’ve used for this week’s podcast. Ask yourself “A: What the hell were they thinking? and B: Why did everybody let them get away with it?” And that character and his brother are just two of the issues that slaughter any enjoyment and engagement you might have felt. This is not a movie for watching, it’s a movie for laying down and avoiding. It’s a terrible experience from beginning to end. Even fans of the original tend to dislike this one. However we’re out to establish WHY it’s so awful.

1h 4m: Our road trip with the autobots veers off the beaten track and onto a superhighway full of exploding guns and alien car invasion. In a series defined by its crapulence this may actually be its lowest point. Billed by some as a return to form on its release in 2011, which prompted the question from others; “What form?” and from still others “What form will our destructor take?” We’ll tell you what form in this very podcast. If we sounded like we were in pain on the last episode we can assure you it was just the preliminary wave of agony. This one actually made my heart hurt as well as my brain. 

As for plot? The moon landing in 1969 was in fact a secret plot to find a thing and… weird, CGI Kennedy face. I can’t even carry on beyond that first minute. Spock is in this. A robot Spock. A robot Spock that actually manageress to defile and spin on its axis one of the greatest lines and greatest sentiments of one of the greatest sci fi movements of all time. Optimus is not only laid low in this, he is in fact unwittingly depicted as John Rambo in First Blood, only in a context far closer to Rambo III. His obvious post-traumatic stress disorder sidelined and ignored in favour of robot carnage and the American flag. A violent juxtaposition of lost themes and soulless jingoism. It would be churlish to call this film “Evil”, it would also fall somewhat short of the mark in describing what a blight upon the world it is. 

Guests:

Neil Taylor of TheKidDogg

Mike Hearn of Walter the Wicked