Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (film)

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the first of two planned sequels to Transformers. It was released in North America on June 24, 2009.

Revenge is mine!The Fallen, Revenge of the Fallen

Japanese title: Transformers Revenge

French title: Transformers 2: La Revanche (Transformers 2: The Revenge)

German title: Transformers: Die Rache (Transformers: The Revenge)

Polish title: Transformers: Zemsta Upadłych

Italian title: Transformers 2: La Vendetta Del Caduto (Transformers 2: The Revenge Of The Fallen)

Main cast

Plot details for Revenge of the Fallen (film) follow. Spoilers have expired, you may remove this tag

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Autobots	Decepticons	Humans
Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) Bumblebee Skids (Tom Kenny) Mudflap (Reno Wilson) Jetfire (Mark Ryan) Ironhide (Jess Harnell) Sideswipe (André Sogliuzzo) Ratchet (Robert Foxworth) Jolt Arcee (Grey DeLisle)	Megatron (Hugo Weaving) Starscream (Charlie Adler) The Fallen (Tony Todd) Ravage Alice (Isabel Lucas) Grindor Wheelie (Tom Kenny) Scalpel (John Di Crosta) Reedman (Frank Welker) Sideways Scorponok Soundwave (Frank Welker) A Bonecrusher lookalike Constructicons Devastator (Frank Welker) Demolishor (Calvin Wimmer) Rampage (Kevin Michael Richardson) Mixmaster Long Haul Scrapper Hightower Overload	Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) Mikaela Banes (Megan Fox) William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson) Leo Spitz (Ramon Rodriguez) Seymour Simmons (John Turturro) Theodore Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey) Judy Witwicky (Julie White) Ron Witwicky (Kevin Dunn) General Morshower (Glenn Morshower) Professor Colan (Rainn Wilson)

Short synopsis

For dry, red eyes, the difference is clear: Clear Eyes.

The Autobots have found a home in "NEST", a secret military unit created to seek out and eliminate the remaining Decepticons. All is not well, however. Unbeknownst to them, Soundwave is in orbit, coordinating the Decepticon counterstrike. After Ravage steals the Allspark shard from NEST, a team of Constructicons and The Doctor journey to the bottom of the ocean and use it revive Megatron. The Decepticon leader journeys to the crashed Nemesis, rebukes Starscream, and meets with his master, The Fallen.

The Fallen explains that he had constructed a Solar Harvester on Earth, in violation of the Primes' code to never harm an inhabited planet. The Primes turned on him, banished and imprisoned him. However the Harvester still stands, and only one Prime remains. If Megatron destroys Optimus Prime, The Fallen will be freed to activate the Harvester, which will kill off the humans and provide the Decepticons with enough energon to raise an army. Megatron eagerly agrees, and returns to Earth with a vengeance.

It transpires that the location of the Harvester is hidden within Sam Witwicky, who absorbed the knowledge from another Allspark fragment. The Decepticons begin an all-out war across the Earth as they hunt down the human, and the Autobots and NEST are blamed for the ensuing carnage. Witwicky goes to ground, and must turn to unlikely allies in the race to find a solution. Ultimately, the last of the Primes defeats The Fallen, destroys the Harvester, and proves the Transformers' greatest power is found in their unexpectedly-ancient alliance with the humans.

Quotes

"I need spare parts. Kill the little one!"

— Scalpel instructs the Constructicons to kill one of their own, which they so happily oblige.

"I know you’re pissed-I know you’re pissed, I tried to kill you, right? It’s totally understandable. I mean, if you tried to kill me, I’d be pissed, too."

— Sam Witwicky tries to relate with Megatron.

"Is the fate of our race not worth one human life?"
"You'd never stop at just one. I'll take you all on!"

— Megatron tries to justify killing Sam. Optimus Prime disapproves. Beatdown ensues.

"Beginning. Middle. End. Facts. Details. Condense. Plot. Tell it."

— Simmons demands more coherent exposition from Jetfire.

"Lemme show ya how we brought the pain in my day!!"

—Jetfire enters the fray to show us young whippersnappers how it's really done.

"GIVE ME YOUR FACE."

—Optimus Prime warns The Fallen of his violent fetish.

"Not to call you a coward, master, but, sometimes, cowards do survive."

— Starscream pitches his usual battle plan to an unusually receptive Megatron.

Production staff

• Writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman recruited Ehren Kruger to help them write the screenplay. Michael Bay and producers Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto, and Lorenzo di Bonaventura also returned.

Prequel material

Titan Magazines Transformers movie comics

While the Decepticons were disgusted with the pro-Autobot propaganda of Bay's first documentary #13's Star Screams, they're quite optimistic about the second film. Starscream has taken a strong interest in it, going to the trouble of personally convincing Soundwave to be in the film 15's Star Screams.

The Decepticons promise this new documentary will show a glorious Decepticon victory #10's Star Screams - whether it's in the script or not. #18's Star Screams

Shockingly, even they are under a non-disclosure agreement regarding the script; Starscream fearfully refers to a greater power keeping him quiet. #22's Star Screams Talking about it could even undermine the Decepticon war effort! #23's Star Screams

In the same week the film came out, the Decepticons suddenly became unhappy with it and the detente period ended. Bay, Kurtzman, and Orci are once again marked for extermination for their propaganda films. #1's Law and Disorder

Adaptations

Main article: Revenge of the Fallen Movie Adaptation

Soundtrack

Main article: Revenge of the Fallen: The Soundtrack

Score

Main article: Revenge of the Fallen: The Score

• Linkin Park and Hans Zimmer worked with Steve Jablonsky on the score of the movie. Linkin Park also wrote a song, called "New Divide". It was one of the theme songs for the movie, and they did several interpretations on that theme.

Reception

Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that's because people don't understand that this isn't a movie, in the conventional sense.Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, Charlie Jane Anders, i09.com June 24 2009

I bet you'd love to criticize that, critics, but you can't! It's not for you!Penny Arcade, March 24, 2004 [2]

In the week leading up to the United States release, while the film had been released in Japan and the United Kingdom, Revenge of the Fallen was ranking 38% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.com. As American reviews were added into the ranking on June 24, the movie's freshness slipped slowly to 22%. RottenTomatoes.com's consensus was that "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch." Roger Ebert, who gave the movie one star, remarked that "if you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together." Todd Gilchrist of Cinematical.com said Michael Bay "has exceeded even the possibilities of sequel-driven 'moreness,' combining his own muscular, high-gloss sensibility with the conventions of blockbusters past, present, and probably future to create a monolithic action masterpiece that feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time." Michael Phillips from the Chicago Tribune said "the first, comparatively lucid Transformers was a headache, but I sort of enjoyed it....Revenge of the Fallen is more like listening to rocks in a clothes dryer for 2½ hours." Roger Ebert went back for more in a second article, declaring not only that Revenge of the Fallen was awful, but that it'd ruined action films FOREVER.

Despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews, Revenge of the Fallen poised itself quickly as a blockbuster maelstrom. It grossed $16 million in its opening midnight showings alone, an all-time record for Wednesday openings and a second-best for openings on any day of the week behind The Dark Knight. After the full Wednesday was over, Revenge of the Fallen had grossed $55 million in domestic ticket sales, surpassing the previous Wednesday release record, held by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by over $10 million.

Trivia

• The official title of the film is Revenge of the Fallen (with a lower-case "t" in "the") even though it is apparently referring to The Fallen (with a capital "T" in "The").
• Leo's room containing the servers has a Naruto poster, a Cloverfield poster, and a Bad Boys 2 poster whose movie was also directed by Michael Bay.

Development details

• In an interview with BANG! Showbiz, Shia LeBouf stated that the injuries he suffered in his recent vehicular collision were written into the script and did not adversely affect the filming schedule.
• Also on January 29, 2009, Simon Furman commented on MTV Movie Blog about how the Dinobots wouldn't fit very well into the movie's universe, and that he is glad they were dropped from the cast very early in development.
• Michael Bay stated in interview with The Collider the he obtained permission to film in Egypt by contacting Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's council of antiquities, who turned out to be a fan of the 2007 Transformers movie.
• In an interview with Sci Fi Wire on March 31st, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they had looked through the comics and cartoons for the "most elemental bad guy" that "jumped off the material" and found that in the Fallen. They also stated that due to production necessities (Hasbro and Bay needing characters for scenes and design to begin as soon as possible) and the 2008-2009 Writers Strike, some characters were in their initial treatment while others were designed specifically for the movie production, and that due to the overall numbers of robots, the audience would not get to know all of the Transformers closely. Indeed, Orci and Kurtzman referred to some characters via descriptors such "Volt" (Jolt) and "Wheelbot" (Demolishor). They also confirmed that Nimoy was open to playing the Fallen if the role was offered, and that they were in the middle of hashing it out with Frank Welker over a role in the movie, but the final decision was down to Bay.
• On the MTV Movies blog, Michael Bay reported that they were still doing for the voices for the film, and that he was (jokingly) nervous of asking his relative Leonard Nimoy if he wanted to voice The Fallen in the movie for fear of offending him with the relatively low pay allotted to voice actors.
• In a June 22nd article in Forbes (released online on June 4th), Michael Bay talked about his philosphy in movie-making, his demand of part-ownership of movies he makes, and the revelation that he receives an 8% cut of all toy sales from the Transformers movies.
• On June 8th, 2009, the movie had its world premiere in Japan. Michael Bay, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Isabel Lucas and Ramon Rodriguez attended.. Other countries such as South Korea, the United Kingdom and Germany followed over the course of the next few days.

Disinformation

• Michael Bay has claimed that the studio is putting out deliberate misinformation, to obscure real leaks. (Like our jobs weren't hard enough.)
• During San Diego Comic-Con 2008, in an interview on July 25th, Simon Furman claimed that the film would feature a character called The Fallen, which was a character they created for Dreamwave's The War Within: The Dark Ages Three days later, IDW Publishing writer Chris Mowry corroborated the claim in an interview with MTV Splash Page, calling "The Fallen" the main villain of Revenge (Arcee was also confirmed in the same interview, but the reference to her was mysteriously removed shortly after publication). Less than a week after this, however, Michael Bay reiterated that everything leaked thus far is part of their misinformation campaign and that only a handful of people involved with the production of Revenge have seen the script, contradicting IDW's interviews where their representatives confirm that they have the script. Additionally, Bay claimed the only truth about the film was Sam going to college. Curiously, on August 5th 2008, after a fan posted on Michael Bay's forum pointing out the contradiction, all references to the Fallen were removed from the aforementioned interviews, as well as any references to IDW Publishing having the script.
• Empire magazine's February 2009 issue features information on the role of the Egyptian Pyramids in the Movieverse's backstory. Michael Bay also confirmed The Fallen and denied Megatron would be resurrected (this later turned out to be untrue). Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics resembling helicopters will be revealed to be depictions of Transformers who visited Earth before the pyramids were built.
• After a short and poorly excuted "misinformation campaign" on the part of Michael Bay, Paramount and their licensees where they claimed that Megatron was not in the movie despite all officially released evidence to the contrary (including Megatron's brief appearance in the February 1 Superbowl tv spot and the February teaser trailer), Roberto Orci confirmed that Megatron does indeed return.
• On March 6, due to the reports of Weaving's return, Michael Bay finally admitted Megatron was back, but claimed that Megatron would only appear briefly in a flashback to the past, despite the fact Megatron can be seen pinning Sam Witwicky to the ground in Revenge's tv spot and teaser trailer. One can assume that the director was trying to salvage some form of audience surprise in seeing Megatron return in the movie. In other news of a presumably legitimate kind, Bay said that the movie would go into the distant past and explain the history of the Primes.

Transformers sequel and the 2007-2008 Writers Strike

In late 2007, during preproduction for then-untitled Transformers sequel, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. At the time, Roberto Orci stated that the strike could likely delay Transformers 2's release. However, Michael Bay refuted this, claiming the movie was still on schedule. The reason behind Bay's confidence was discovered by Orci shortly after the strike ended. The director had apparently taken the outline the writers had handed in the night before the strike, and begun movie prep based on it.

Errors

• Bumblebee picks up Sam at a frat party in the evening. He then takes him to a graveyard where it's daytime.
• Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, outside of Dulles International Airport is incorrectly identified as the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which is located 25 miles away.
• Wheelie disappeared inexplicably in the third act. What the hell, man?
• Mudflap and Skids are not seen again after facing off against Devastator.

Not actually an error

• When Jetfire is activated at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (actually the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) in Washington, he leaves the exhibition center and exits into the desert location of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (aka The Boneyard), which is in Tuscon, Arizona. When Jetfire breaks out of the building, we can see a composited image of the Boneyard's rows of planes, so it's probable that in this universe the Udvar Hazy Center has a massive field of old planes next to it. However, the abrupt change in scenery, climate and terrain is still very jarring.

External links

• Dreamworks/Paramount's Transformers Movie website
• Hasbro's Transformers homepage
• Interview with Michael Bay 02/09/2009 — Collider.com