Transformers 2 review

In my attempt to be relatively spoiler-free, some of my complaining will make more sense if you've seen the movie. I'm not sure if I succeeded on being spoiler-free or clear, but I tried.

Molly and I (and about 40 other people I work with) went to see Transformers 2 in IMAX yesterday. Really, not an awesome experience. The action was definitely good, I'll say that. Lots of stuff blowing up, lots of awesome cars. I totally want a Camaro (which actually isn't that expensive...they start at $22,000, FYI). But the story was absolutely ridiculous. I'll do my best to complain about things that were ridiculous in a bulleted list:

• 2:30 is too long. It really dragged out for far longer than it should have.


• I'm not sure if it was a function of seeing the movie in IMAX or not, but it was really hard to follow the action. The Transformer robots are SO detailed, there's just so much stuff going on in the action sequences that it was hard to tell what was going on. Probably it was made worse due to the immensitude of the IMAX screen, but regardless.


• Megan Fox was totally unneeded for the last hour of the movie. It's hard to complain about Megan Fox, I'm not gonna lie. But she really had no point in being in the last hour, except for being really hot (which she's quite good at).


• The ending. In the climactic scene, Molly and I rolled our eyes at each other in disbelief, as the movie totally jumped the shark. In a Twitter post I compared it with Mission to Mars, which is not a compliment. I won't spoil it here, but it's pretty miserable.


• Optimus Prime, for being the leader of the Autobots, was pretty lame for 80% of the movie.


• Sam's parents were obviously in the movie only for comic relief. Despite being annoying, and the weed brownie scene unnecessary, I was okay with them. But then you put them in the ending, where they totally don't fit in, and use the lamest, cheesiest, most overused device in the history of action movies with their kidnapping? Really, that's all you guys could come up with? Then you bail out of that whole kidnapping plot element in about 60 seconds? FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!


• Decipticons are apparently stupid, or really lazy. So the US government has been fending them off for a while, and they just now realized they should tap into the communications satellite? I know, it's a movie, but I feel like a giant robot instantly overtaking a "top secret" communications satellite to find the location of the world's most powerful hunk of cube is a HUGE cop-out.


• And along with that last point, really, nobody could find this magical key that's been lost for 17,000 years? It was behind one like inch think chunk of wall, just sitting there. Never crossed anybody's mind to look there eh? Good work. Sam Witwicky found it pretty easily. Also, I know it's just a movie, but I think this was a cheap cop-out too (especially in a 2.5 hour movie).

That's all I can think of to complain about at the moment. All that said, it's actually not a terrible movie to see in the theatre just for the high-octane action elements. But be forewarned, the story makes it rather painful.

(And was it just me, or did they play the Linkin Park song through about half of the movie? I feel today like I've heard it a million times...)