YMMV / Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen

• Angst? What Angst?: None of the humans or Autobots seem to have a big reaction seeing Megatron Back from the Dead.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Fallen was over 20,000 years old, at least as old as Jetfire (who was falling apart), and would not come to Earth until Optimus was dead, implying that he was somewhat afraid of Optimus, so it is somewhat justified within the movie. Still, it was quite a disappointment to see the guy the comics have always presented as about midway between Megs and Unicron on the Oh, Crap!-ometer go down so easily.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Autobots and N.E.S.T. hunting Decepticons in Shanghai. Questionable persecution because the Decepticons there were minding their own business at the time, or justified on the grounds that it's the equivalent of hunting down members of a terrorist organization after they endangered countless lives by attacking a U.S. Army base and a populated city in the last film?
• Ass Pull:
  • Sam only just finding a shard of the AllSpark attached to his shirt a full two years after killing Megatron.
  • Simmons just happening to know of a weapon that could take down Devastator, which just happens to be on a nearby warship.
  • Scorponok just happening to show up during the battle in Egypt where he mauls Jetfire before he's unceremoniously disposed of, having apparently managed to avoid detection for two years after his defeat in Qatar. Eagle-eyed viewers would have noticed Blackout had the helicopter bits Scorponok formed back during the climax of the previous movie, suggesting Scorponok had reunited with him offscreen and died alongside his master, but this film suggests that to not be the case.
  • The infamous sequence where the Primes resurrect Sam and repair the Matrix comes completely out of nowhere.
  • The ability of the Transformers to teleport, which we see from both Jetfire and the Fallen is not explained or an ability seen from equally powerful cybertronians like Optimus or Megatron.
• Awesome Music: The video-game's soundtrack is composed by beloved industrial band Julien-K, so this is a given.
• Badass Decay: Megatron got this slightly; while still very powerful, he's now The Fallen's Yes-Man and is not quite as unstoppable as before. Starscream, on the other hand, was the character who definitely got this, becoming a complete Dirty Coward.
• Base-Breaking Character: Optimus fell into this. He remained the most popular Transformer in the series and is one of the biggest badasses in the movie, but quite a few fans took issue with his more savage battle tendencies introduced in this movie, which contradict the relatively pacifistic nature of the Optimus Prime character in most media. A third group of fans liked this incarnation more, happy that the movies were willing to make some changes with the usually infallible role that Optimus usually takes.
  • Some fans think Jetfire is a pretty faithful update of the classic G1 character, an excellent performance from Mark Ryan, and an entertaining, funny character, while others think he's not faithful enough, ugly, a hackneyed walking "old man" joke, and that him dying was a big waste of potential and an insult to the Armada version of the character, who didn't have to die in order to combine with Optimus and could decombine when he needed to. About the only thing the whole fanbase agrees on is that his alt-mode is cool, and even then some think it'd be a better fit for someone like Silverbolt.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The scene with the Allspark fragment from the first film falling into the kitchen, turning his kitchen appliances into destructive feral Transformers, a fight ensues, the house is destroyed. Afterwards, this scene is never mentioned again, despite likely being used to establish the power of just one Allspark fragment.
  • Even worse, after the scene Sam goes right back to insisting he doesn't need Bumblebee's protection anymore.
  • When Simmons climbs up to Devastator, he sees that he has two wrecking balls hanging from his crotch to resemble two testicles. None of the components of Devastator were shown to have wrecking balls, and it ultimately serves no plot relevance outside of a quick bit of Vulgar Humor.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Critic-Proof: Despite a 20% Rotten Tomatoes score and extreme hatred toward the film on various movie sites, the film still grossed over $800 million worldwide, and (with only a 2D release, no less) ranks among the few movies to make over $400 million in the U.S./Canada market; indeed, it was the 2nd highest grossing film of 2009 (behind Avatar), in the United States, and the 4th highest worldwide, and adjusted for inflation is the 81st highest grossing movie of all time. It has also received a solid Cinemascore rating and Rotten Tomatoes user rating, and has sold generally well on DVD and BluRay.
• Designated Villain: The Shanghai operation does not cast a very favorable light on either NEST or the Autobots. First off, Sideways made no hostile actions against the Autobots, and was merely trying to flee the scene without incident. Also, the toy bios make things much worse: Demolishor apparently considered himself something of a protector to the smaller Decepticons who were just waiting for a new Decepticon leader to rise in Megatron's absence, while Sideways is described as being someone who avoids combat entirely.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sideswipe only appears briefly in the film, but has a large fandom due to his cool design, introduction, and alternate mode.
  • Simmons is well-regarded for being a much more likable character who provides some of the movie’s best laughs.
  • Soundwave, with Frank Welker voicing him which made the appearance of the character help immensely. His portrayal as a Cybertronian satellite was also regarded as a great, logical update of the G1 character’s role as communications officer.
  • Despite having no spoken lines and only a few brief shots, Long Haul holds a special place for many fans due to having a particularly awesome design that has been emulated in other characters, particularly Onslaught in The Last Knight. It helps too that not only was Long Haul the design that got concept artist Josh Nizzi on board as a Promoted Fanboy, but he was also liked enough to be made one of the main playable Decepticons in the PS3/Xbox 360 tie-in game despite his brief appearance.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Skids and Mudflap, already not helping their case by being Spotlight-Stealing Squad along with the humans (and, less unfavorably, Bumblebee), are also seen in many ways seen as racist caricatures of urban African-Americans. Thankfully, Michael Bay recognized how unpopular they were, and they managed to avoid the Creator's Pet curse by being almost completely cut from the sequel (and by being killed off by Sentinel Prime in its adaptations).
  • At least some of those are countered in the novelization. For example, Skids' and Mudflap's line that "we don't really do much reading" to justify why they couldn't read Cybertronian symbols (when they're, you know, robots who have computers for brains) is changed to that they can read, but the symbols are from the language of the Primes, which they don't know and is separate from the standard Cybertronian language.
  • And, apparently, they weren't intended to be parodies of urban African-Americans at all, but instead jab at the subculture of white males who emulate hip-hop mannerism to an offensive degree. Not a horrible idea in-and-of-itself, since the Autobots were already shown to adopt Earth cultures they most identify with and this could've been presented as a rather entertainingly cynical look at their cultural appropriation. However, the commentary falls somewhat short since they're, y'know, robots that have no ethnicity, leaving the audience to draw the most logical conclusions over what they're supposed to be representing, especially since their faces look like racist caricatures anyway.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Transformers: Rolling On The Floor
  • The human/Transformer hybrid known as Alice is being called "Deceptislut".
  • Due to Optimus' dramatic sacrifice and resurrection, many have been calling him "Optimus Christ". There is even a Facebook group devoted to his honor. And why not? He died for our sins.
• Ham and Cheese: John Turturro as Simmons. He is even more over-the-top than he was in the first movie!
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mikaela says to Sam that she loves him after he is killed by Megatron? That love won't last long.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • There's an entire scene with alien mecha wrecking battleships...
  • This movie brings in Soundwave and a Predator drone shows up in a few scenes, a couple of years later it would serve as the alt-mode of another Soundwave.
  • The Fallen's main scheme is to destroy the Sun with its Harvester. Though he fails here, The Force Awakens shows that the First Order perfected the process of draining a star for its energy. You'd half-expect The Fallen to be watching The Force Awakens, and throwing a beer at the screen when the First Order drains the star with ease.
  • The film revolves around a titular antagonist with ties to ancient Egypt, and also received substantially less praise than its predecessor and said antagonist was panned for being a Flat Character. The same would happen in 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse.
  • Epps is present when Galloway accidentally gets pulled out of the cargo plane when he pulls his ripcord while being briefed on its use. Epps' actor Tyrese Gibson would later be unintentionally pulled out of a plane by parachute (while in a car) in Furious 7.
  • President Barrack Obama is mentioned as being flown into a bunker during the Decepticon attack lead by the Fallen. In real life, Obama never used a bunker but his successor did.
  • An antagonistic character called "the Fallen".
  • This isn't the last time Megatron is shown dead below underwater only to then be resurrected.
• Ho Yay:
  • Between Megatron and Starscream.
    "Starscream, I'm home!"
  • Leo and Simmons always seemed real close to some.
  • Megatron looks absolutely heartbroken at the Fallen's demise.
• Memetic Loser: The Fallen. Though the film and the franchise as a whole treats him as a very threatening entity, he's infamous for going down very quickly to Optimus, and in a fashion where he dies horribly and painfully while barely putting up a fight. He's so infamous for dying that multiple toys of him come with a removable face.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Optimus' line "Give me your face!" right before tearing the Fallen's face off.
  • ONE MAN! ALONE! BETRAYED BY THE COUNTRY HE LOVES!
  • “I’m directly below the enemy’s scrotum!”
• Memetic Psychopath: The above-mentioned line "Give me your face" especially blew up on TFWiki.net, and for awhile references to Optimus stealing faces were inescapable on the wiki. Standout examples include:
  • The page for Empurata.
  • Decapitation.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Michael Bay is not responsible for the Ethnic Scrappies Skids and Mudflap; the twins were improvised by their actors, and are meant to be parodies of white people pretending to be black. Of course, it's rather hard to tell when they're green and orange robot cars. Notably, Reno Wilson (who is black himself) was saddened to hear that his performance was apparently offensive to himself.
  • The weak story is not Michael Bay's fault either, and is largely due to the writer's strike going on at the time.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm: See here.
• Narm Charm: "Give me your face!" Only Optimus Prime can make such a silly line sound threatening.
• Nausea Fuel: That silverfish-looking Decepticon who goes into Sam’s mouth while Megatron is pinning Sam down.
• Never Live It Down:
  • While Movie Prime has a tendency to target heads to get a quick kill, the "Give me your face!" scene forever painted him among fans a serial face thief when this is the only time he actually rips off someone's face.
  • Devastator's wrecking balls testes. Appears for about ten seconds as a throwaway gag. Tends to get mentioned often when bringing up Devastator's movie incarnation. What makes this even more baffling is that none of the Constructicons have wrecking balls on their alternate modes.
    • Hasbro has officially gone on record as saying they will never release a Devastator toy that has them.
• Offending the Creator's Own: As mentioned under "Misblamed", many black people were offended by Skids and Mudflap — even though Reno Wilson, who voiced Mudflap, is himself black and has stated that their personalities were improvised by Tom Kenny and himself.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This is not the first time that a Transformers series had featured Ethnic Scrappy Cybertronians.
  • The idea of Transformers like Alice who can turn into humans is actually nothing new. The Pretenders first appeared in Generation 1, and both sides had them. (Although in that version, a Pretender's disguise was more like Powered Armor which could actually fight independently of the Pretender once it revealed itself.) Despite this, many detractors of the film wrongly accused it of ripping off the Terminator franchise.
  • The idea of Optimus Prime having more savage battle tendencies was actually borrowed from Transformers: Armada, where Optimus Prime seems more willing to resort to violence compared to other incarnations; The finale of the show also reveals that Optimus has a darker side where he secretly enjoys the thrill of war and fighting and is just as much of a Blood Knight as Megatron. Both Sideways and Unicron even go as far as to mocks Optimus that without the burden of the Matrix, he'd be no different than the tyrannical Megatron.
  • Many detractors also criticized the film for ripping off The Matrix franchise with the introduction of the Matrix of Leadership, despite the fact that the object has been around since the 80’s.
  • The film actually borrows a surprising amount from The Transformers: The Movie. Megatron is resurrected and works for the true Big Bad, who has vague motivations and cannot act until Prime is dead^note While Unicron was more concerned with the Matrix, he still needed Optimus dead since only a Prime can use it. Optimus dies and the villain makes his move, but then the Matrix is used - which leads to the Big Bad being taken out with ease while Megatron survives. Both films turn the amount of violence up to eleven and introduce both new characters not seen previously and some scrappies. Technically even the animation issues^note Granted, the animated film was pretty good about these, when compared to the series - but it wasn't perfect either are replicated as the CGI has some issues at places and certain character models are recycled. The Blackout/Grindor confusion is especially comical as the original series occasionally had dead characters reappear in some scenes.
• Padding: The first hour of the movie contains plenty of scenes don't really contribute to the plot and feel like they exist to take up. Most of the college scenes are especially superfluous since Sam's mom getting high really doesn't add anything to the film.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Simmons was widely hated for being a mostly incompetent jackass in the previous film. In this film, however, he becomes a genuinely heroic, competent ally to Sam and has several of the film’s funniest moments and is now one of the film series’s most popular original human characters.
• Retroactive Recognition: Sam's college teacher is Dwight Schrute.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The Sam and Mikaela subplot mostly distracts from the main story, particularly due to Mikaela insisting Sam say he loves her while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The next film would reveal the characters broke up anyway, making the subplot feel even more unneeded and pointless.
• The Scrappy:
  • Though he certainly looked awesome and had Tony Todd's performance gong for him, between having zero motivation or characterization, a bizarre grab bag of unexplained powers, an awful, anticlimactic clusterfuck of a fight to his name, and nothing shown in the way of actual transformation, there's a reason the Fallen himself is widely considered to be the worst Big Bad of any of the films. Even Bay himself admitted that the Fallen was "kind of a (expletive) character" in an interview.
  • Sam's parents and Leo are the worst characters in the film for being a burden and annoyance. They have no significant influence to the plot.
  • The Pretender Alice, whose presence in the plot feels rather forced, exacerbating the already contentious Sam and Mikaela subplot, and the film having difficulty deciding if it wants her to be scary or funny. The fact that a concept bringing in as much Paranoia Fuel as her did actually have the potential to be something very dangerous and interesting — especially if she had, for example, killed and duplicated the appearance of an important military or government leader, for the purpose of relaying intel to the Decepticons, or actively-but-subtly sabotaging NEST and worsening Autobot/human relations from the inside — certainly doesn't help the disappointment over how she was used as just a romantic plot device, either.
• Sequel Displacement: Revenge of the Fallen, much more than the first movie, has pretty much become a stereotype of what critics and fans expect from a Transformers movie, often resulting in pessimistic critics and pleasantly surprised audiences for the other sequels.
• Sequelitis: Is infamously the second worst-reviewed movie in the series, and is widely considered one of the worst mega-blockbusters of all time. It is often credited (along with G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) with causing the genre to no longer be taken seriously in Hollywood. It's saying something when a lot of Dark of the Moon's pre-release info involved assuring audiences that it would be better than this film.
• Signature Scene:
  • Other quality issues aside, this movie does contain the famous forest battle, generally considered to be the series' best fight scene.
  • Whatever you may think of Devastator himself, his introduction falls squarely under this.
  • For the film’s many, many detractors, the scene where Simmons stands below Devastator’s wrecking balls sum up the movie’s quality for them.
  • Optimus forging with Jetfire's remains before confronting The Fallen is also worthy of note.
• Sophomore Slump: It's near-universally considered to be worse than the first film and Dark of the Moon. It's often considered the worst film in the franchise, though depending on who you ask The Last Knight is worse.
• Special Effects Failure: Even with the budget being $50 million more than the first movie, the effects are mixed at best, and downright abysmal at worst. Appropriately, while the first and third movies were nominated for the Visual Effects Oscar, this one was not.
  • Shots filmed in direct sunlight prove to be an issue for Industrial Light & Magic this time around, as many of them result in the robots looking unfinished and pasted into the shots. This affects both smaller scenes, like the Autobots being confronted by Galloway or Megatron and Starscream on the Metlife building; and larger ones like the forest fight and the desert finale.
  • During the forest brawl, the shot of Optimus tearing apart Grindor's head features a miniature explosion effect pasted in on top of the footage. It'd be less noticeable if it weren't for the fact that it's played at a different frame rate from the rest of the animation that it's laid over. Another example can be found above under the Narm entry.
  • The scenes involving the Fallen's base on Saturn are considered the weakest of the film, looking more like a video game cutscene. Bonus points for the animation of Starscream backing into a hatchling's pod looking robotic in all the wrong ways.
  • Two of Soundwave's scenes are simply the same animation with different lines over them. Note that his mouth moves correctly to only the first use of the footage.
  • Thanks to using footage from the first film, the drone switches from black to white depending on the shot. It's also still called a Predator as opposed to a Reaper.
  • During the desert battle, some flames very noticeably clip through Megan Fox's frame. The robots also exhibit a lack of motion blurring that, while easier to make out who's who; makes their movements look choppy and unrefined during the entire battle.
• Squick: Devastator's wrecking balls.
  • For some, Agent Simmons' thong-clad ass may count as such.
  • The Decepticon hatchlings.
  • Soundwave tearing into a satelite and using his tentacles to inject it with white stuff.
  • Sam's two dogs mating.
  • To a lesser extent, the Decepticon "Alice" taking on a realistic human form to seduce Sam.
  • Wheelie vigorously humping Mikaela's leg.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The titular Fallen. He's voiced by Tony Todd, the Greater-Scope Villain of the Decepticons, a savvy Opportunistic Bastard, and a big winner of the Superpower Lottery... sadly, he's also a Flat Character with little screentime, not to mention he forgets about his powers against Optimus and goes down as an Anti-Climax Boss. Even Word of God regrets how he turned out.
  • Arcee, Chromia, and Elita-1. They get even less screentime than the aforementioned Fallen, Elita-1 is abruptly Killed Mid-Sentence during the finale, and Arcee and Chromia are left on a What Happened to the Mouse? note. Not helped at all by Michael Bay confirming all three of them to be dead and that he killed them off out of sheer hatred of the characters - and even gleefully revealed it while doing press for the film prior to its release just to piss people off.
  • Jolt was screwed from the beginning since he was a last-minute addition to the film, meaning there was nothing they could do with him. However, the other main new Autobot Sideswipe similarly barely appears in the film despite a cool introduction and design.
  • Alice, a Cybertronian Pretender who could perfectly mimic any human. She could easily have become a deadly threat had she assassinated and taken on the appearance of, for example, a military general or government official; and from there working to actively worsen human/Autobot relationships, sabotage N.E.S.T. operations and relay crucial intelligence to the Decepticons from the inside. But instead, Alice's only involvement is with the Romantic Plot Tumour... and getting her ass handed to her by Mikaela, of all people.
  • Devastator. They give us a giant behemoth far more monstrous than any previous Decepticon combiner and what do they do with him? Drive a railgun through his head after losing to only two Autobots (Skids and Mudflap, no less) and accomplishing nothing of relevance aside from freeing up the sun harvester, which practically any of the Decepticons could have done by accident. Even worse, despite Constructicons being mass-produced in this universe — and therefore carrying the implication that multiple Devastators can be formed — this is the only Devastator that appears over the course of the film series.
  • Even fans who don't like this incarnation of Jetfire still think that killing him off was a bad idea and that he'd have more potential alive than dead. In fact, part of the reason some fans don't like this version of him is because of how much potential they feel like his death wasted. Not to mention the fact that some see it as an unnecessary darkening of the Jet Prime mode from Armada, where Jetfire didn't have to die to combine with Optimus and could return to being an individual robot with no issues afterwards.
• Unexpected Character: Back when the film was first announced, fans were wondering who would be the main villain of the film now that Megatron was dead. Very few fans were expecting Bay to go with the Fallen, who at the time had only appeared in a single story-arc of Dreamwave's Transformers: Generation One comics.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Some accused Michael Bay of holding an anti-Barack Obama agenda, since he is specifically mentioned as being the president, and the government officials go from being generally cooperative (albeit in over their heads) in the last film to being complete jerkwads in this one. However, as Bay pointed out, the screenplay was completed and filming began at the start of 2008, before he or anyone else involved knew that the Democrats would nominate Obama (Hillary Clinton was still the favorite for their nomination at the start of 2008, albeit by a slim margin), much less that he would out-poll all other presidential candidates. Furthermore, Bay and the writers are known Democratic voters and meant no offense to Obama, and the decision to namedrop him occurred after Obama became president. Additionally, Obama is only mentioned in a brief line and shown in a few brief shots of news footage, both of which were obviously changes made in post-production. The line and snippet of footage could've easily been changed to focus on John McCain had he won the 2008 election.

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