LIVEBLOG! "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" Trailer

Note: In keeping up with my “Past Blogs Not Posted Series (unofficial title), this blog has ceased to be a liveblog. The movie was released in theaters months ago and the DVD release is looming on the horizon. I saw the trailer originally in the theaters, and since I didn’t have my laptop on me (just a handheld camera to record “Land of the Lost” on), nor a tripod (handheld camera—gives everything an indie feel), I couldn’t jot down notes until a later date. So I guess you could say this never was a liveblog (you could say that—but you don’t have to be a jerk about it).

0:00
THE FOLLOWING PREVIEW HAS BEEN APPROVED FOR ALL AUDIENCES BY THE MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. Hey, that’s me!

0:03
Sam Witwicky (the alcoholic kid from the first Transformers) mentions college to his robot sex slave, Bumblebee. The retarded car starts playing, “I’m So Excited,” by the Pointer Sisters to express his excitement. The rug is pulled out from under him though when Sam tells his only friend he’s not taking him to college. The robot sulks and wonders who will fuck him late at night (I assume).

0:14
Swooping helicopter shot of a college campus (a trademark Michael Bay camera trick). Dad Witwicky cracks a joke about having to pay $40,000 a year for college. Not to worry, Dad. If I know college kids, Sam will put in one week of intense studying, then congratulate himself by partying the first weekend at a guy’s house a friend knows for the next sixteen weeks. After the end of the whatever $40,000 a year university you’ve chosen kicks him out, he can try a community college closer to home. And when he’s bored with that, he can find a job doing road construction AND keep his costly drinking habit he’s developed alive.

0:22
Megan Fox is straddling a motorcycle in the most awkward and unconventional way I can think of, wearing cutoff jean shorts that are so short I’m pretty sure I can see her vagina. We learn she and Sam are going to try a long distance relationship while he’d busy failing out of college. Okay, I buy the two story tall transforming robot aliens from outer space thing that inauspiciously hide behind trees in the middle of the suburbs breaking shit in the dead of night and no one seeing them, but a long distance college relationship working out? You have created something no one could suspend disbelief about, Michael Bay. Well, not you personally—the screenwriters that wrote the script that you probably didn’t bother to read did that.

0:31
Sam drops a piece of rock on the floor, probably an important plot point. Most likely it’s a plot device that will make no sense and be forgotten about over the course of the movie.

0:40
Sam flips out in the middle of one of his college classes, complaining of “seeing symbols.” It’s called math class. Those are addition and subtraction symbols. The California school system has failed you Sam Witwicky, like it has so many others.

0:44
Meteoroids* fly towards earth, quite possibly stock footage from "Armageddon." Michael Bay, you self-referential genius, you.

0:46
Optimus Prime stands in the middle of a college campus, in plain daylight.

0:50
Meteors** hit towering buildings. A shot-for-shot comparison to “Armageddon” is needed. Michael Bay might be plagiarizing himself.

1:03
Agent Simmons, played by, once respected character actor John Turturro, shows up for the sequel wearing a dickey around his neck, telling Sam, “What you are about to see is top secret. Do not tell my mother.” Does this imply that Sam somehow knows Agent Simmons’ mom? Oh wait, I get it. This is what Michael Bay calls characterization. Agent Simmons is telling Sam and the audience that he’s a mama’s boy, and he wants everyone to know that, because most mama’s boys love publicizing that fact about themselves.

1:08
We’re now in Egypt. I know this because there are pyramids and camels. Bumblebee is also there. So Sam wouldn’t take his love dummy with him to college, but he would drive Bumblebee across the Atlantic Ocean, to Egypt?

1:12
Another sweeping helicopter shot. This trailer could become a drinking game.

1:13
It has been confirmed that Shia LeBeouf has turned this trailer into a drinking game.

1:14
Decepticons are underwater digging up the remains of Megatron—I think. Truth be told, all of the Transformers look alike, and without any discernible features amongst them, I have no idea who the hell is doing what to whom.

1:25
“From Director Michael Bay” flies away from the screen. It confuses me how this is a selling point for the movie, because people who actually pay attention to who directs a movie would automatically be turned off from watching a movie that Michael Bay directs. For people that don’t care about this sort of thing (i.e. the people that go see “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”), this is meaningless information to them. The two seconds it took to mention the director would better be served showing Megan Fox getting fisted by an Autobot.

1:27
A Decepticon (I think) swats the United States flag off the top of the Brooklyn Bridge in an act of defiance. This makes the Decepticons no better than them sumbitch Al-Qaeda terrorists we went to Iraq to stop. And just like that Toby Keith song says, we’ll put a boot up their shiny chrome asses, too.

1:29
Some shit starts to blow up. A Transformer transforms with the aid of a several million dollars of CG. The same effect could have been done with some Reynolds Wrap and a match, because that’s kind of what the transformations look like anyway—just a bunch of shiny scraps flying around until they look like what they’re supposed to.

1:37
“And Executive Producer Steven Spielberg” lands on the screen. Okay, this credit makes more sense than the Michael Bay one to an extent. The laymen know Steven Spielberg. He has some capital to his name. It’s not worth as much as it was, say in the early-nineties, when he could have released a home video of himself trying to ride a skateboard in his driveway and have it gross over $100 million domestically, but he’s still a household name. But he seriously hurts his own credit by attaching his name to this project. The guy made “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Schindler’s List” and “Jurassic Park” and “Munich” and “Saving Private Ryan.” Ah, shit. Who am I kidding? He doesn’t care anymore. Spend less time going home and being a father and more time making good movies, jackass.

1:38
Megan Fox cries. This was done purposefully to bring in a female demographic. That one second of emotions shows that there will be plenty of stuff Hollywood thinks women are into, like sadness.

1:39
Some robots fight, some shit falls over, people scream.

1:46
In a forest full of coniferous trees now, Optimus Prime (I recognize him because Michael Bay decided to paint gay flames on his legs), chops at what I am once again assuming are bad guys with his arm swords. Wait, arm swords?

1:48
Sam contorts his face and screams, “OPTIMUS!”

1:49
Optimus Prime is launched into the air, landing with a thud by a tree he might have previously cut down with his arm swords. Then, an overdub of him saying, “Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.” That’s probably supposed to be profound and meaningful, but it’s not. It’s just stupid and lazy. Fate, by definition, is the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably described. You don’t choose fate—fate chooses you. So there is no “rarely.” Ah, well. If that’s the only error this movie has, they should count their blessings.

1:55
Back in Egypt, a Transformer is climbing one of the pyramids. It also marks the start of a bunch of quick shots—sometimes with things happening. Other times they just settle for a shot of Megan Fox looking at something, or Marines running away, even though a Marine never runs away. Semper Fi.

2:09
The big Transformer that was climbing the pyramid starts to suck stuff up. Symbolism. It’s able to vacuum up heavy rocks and a two-ton Transformer, but not Shia LeBeouf or Megan Fox.

2:15
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” title made out of scrap metal transforms in front of our very eyes.

2:21
The title shatters, forming the Decepticon logo. Admittedly, that was actually pretty damn cool.

There you have it, summer movie fans. I hope you choose to read my dictations of what happened during the trailer as opposed to running out to the local YouTube and just watching the damn thing yourself.



*Any of the small bodies, often remnants of comets, traveling through space: when such a body enters the earth’s atmosphere it is heated to luminosity and becomes a meteor.

**See above.