From its humble beginnings as a toy line in the 1980s to evolving into a multi-billion-dollar film franchise, Transformers has endured for generations. Much of its success can be attributed to the popular Marvel-produced animated series and comic books, which created a mythology that exceeded promotional tie-in aspects to increase toy sales. Once Hollywood came calling for the Autobots and the Decepticons, it was so important to make a monumental blockbuster to rival the epic scale of Star Wars and Jurassic Park.
The original Transformers movie in 2007 delivered on virtually all expectations thanks to the behind-the-scenes gravitas of producer Steven Spielberg and director Michael Bay. However, the 2009 sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, marked a sharp decline in quality that the series never recovered from. The need to pump out a quick follow-up for the sake of striking while the iron’s hot proved disastrous with critics. They were not the only ones who felt the second Transformers installment was a mess. The master of Bayhem even considers Revenge of the Fallen to be “crap.”
Michael Bay Blames the Writers’ Strike for the ‘Transformers’ Sequel’s Low Quality
Bay’s cinematic track record has been filled with explosive blockbusters that made a killing at the box office despite mixed to negative reviews. Part of his success is not just his hyper-stylized camera work and editing but also having good producers like Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer around to curb his worst instincts. This was not the case in Revenge of the Fallen, however, as Bay had to contend with the WGA strike in 2008, explaining to Empire Magazine (via THR) during the release of Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 2011:
“The real fault with [Transformers 2] is that it ran into a mystical world. When I look back at it, that was crap. The writers’ strike was coming hard and fast. It was just terrible to do a movie where you’ve got to have a story in three weeks. I was prepping a movie for months where I only had 14 pages of some idea of what the movie was. It’s a BS way to make a movie…”
Though the writers’ strike certainly had an impact on the project that had to rely heavily on a story treatment, there were far bigger issues at hand. Paramount and DreamWorks were eager to get the Transformers sequel out in theaters following the original’s $708 million worldwide gross. Where popular cinematic franchises like Batman and Jurassic Park take anywhere between three and four years to secure a solid script, talent, and extensive pre-production, Fallen’s gap with the original Transformers was only two years. That is barely enough time to improve on the visual effects and crack a worthwhile story for what was the most anticipated sequel of the day.
‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ Was Dumbed Down to Appease Teenage Boys
As Transformers was treated as a simple boy-and-his-first-car tale, Revenge of the Fallen expanded the story with a college-bound Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and girlfriend Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) globe-trotting with the Autobots to locate the Matrix of Leadership to resurrect a slain Optimus Prime. While the concept managed to narrow down its human characters to Sam, Mikaela, and the special forces team led by Col. Lennox (Josh Duhamel), it’s the Transformers themselves who suffer from Bay’s worst instincts as a storyteller.
With Prime missing for a good part of the second and third acts, much of the focus is put on Sam riding around with the mute Bumblebee alongside twins Mudflap and Skids. The latter two were the most offensive Transformers creations based on the stereotypical manner in which they speak and behave like ridiculous caricatures. Additionally, fan favorites like the Decepticon giant Devastator are reduced to a joke at the hands of Agent Simmons (John Turturro), while lone Autobot female Arcee is reduced to a background role.
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“It’s time to put the Boogeyman to bed.”
Aiming primarily at teenage boys rather than hardcore fans of the robots in disguise, Bay doubled down on potty humor, mischaracterizations of popular Transformers characters, and excessive eye candy shots of Fox. Even potentially hilarious moments, such as Sam’s mother (Julie White) getting high on ganja cake on the college campus, are so padded that they take up more screen time than necessary. Other aspects of the sequel seem to play up Bay’s love for commercialism, specifically the inclusion of a human Decepticon pretender looking to seduce Sam, played by Australian supermodel Isabel Lucas.
Though Revenge of the Fallen managed to pull in over $836 million worldwide, critical reception was largely negative, landing a 19% rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The franchise soldiered on without the same production issues as Fallen, with critically praised installments such as Bumblebee, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and the animated Transformers One. Yet, each one suffered financially from the fatigue that began with a sequel cursed from the start.
