Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the first of two planned sequels to Transformers. It was released in theaters June 19th, 2009, June 24th in North America.

Synopsis


It is revealed that thousands of years before Optimus Prime and the other Transformers arrived on Earth, there was a race of ancient Transformers who scoured the universe looking for Energon sources. Known as the Seven Primes, they used a device called the "Solar Harvester" to drain stars, such as Sun, of their energy in order to convert it to Energon and power Cybertron’s AllSpark and their life blood. The Primes agreed that life-bearing worlds would be spared, but one brother, who was thereafter dubbed "The Fallen", constructed a Solar Harvester on Earth in 17,000 BCE. The remaining brothers sacrificed their bodies in order to hide the Matrix of Leadership, the key that powers the Solar Harvester, from The Fallen, who swore to seek revenge upon Earth once he found the key.



In the present day, two years after the events of the first film, Optimus now leads NEST, a military organization consisting of human troops and his own team of Autobots - including newcomers Arcee, Sideswipe, Jolt, and the twins Skids and Mudflap. While on a mission in Shanghai to kill Decepticons Sideways (who is killed by Sideswipe) and Demolishor (who is shot in the face by Optimus Prime), they learn that "The Fallen shall rise again". Back in the United States, Sam Witwicky finds a splinter of the destroyed AllSpark, and upon contact the splinter fills his mind with Cybertronian symbols, which he is initially unaware contain a riddle that leads to location of the Matrix of Leadership. Sam gives the AllSpark splinter to his girlfriend Mikaela Banes, for safe keeping, and leaves her and Bumblebee behind to go off to college. Upon arrival, Sam meets his college roommate Leo Spitz, who runs an extraterrestrial conspiracy website, and Alice, a co-ed who makes sexual advances towards him. Back home, Decepticon Wheelie attempts to steal the shard but is captured by Mikaela, who immediately leaves to get to Sam, as he has had a mental breakdown, writing uncontrollably in a Cybertronian script.

Decepticon Soundwave hacks into a US satellite to get info on the NEST forces, learning the locations of the dead Decepticon leader Megatron and another existing piece of the AllSpark. The Decepticons retrieve the shard and use it to resurrect Megatron with the help of Long Haul and Mixmaster (who kill one of their own for parts as none were available). Megatron flies into space and is reunited with Starscream and his master, The Fallen. The Fallen instructs Megatron and Starscream to capture Sam in order to discover the location of the Matrix of Leadership as well as to destroy Optimus, the only possible hindrance to his plans.

Mikaela arrives in town just as Alice, who is revealed to be a Pretender, attacks Sam. Mikaela, Sam, and his roommate Leo destroy Alice, but are captured by Grindor. The Decepticon known as "The Doctor" prepares to remove Sam's brain, but Optimus and Bumblebee appear and rescue him. Arriving in an empty forest, a fight ensues among Optimus, Megatron, Starscream and Grindor. During the fight, Starscream loses his right arm and Grindor is killed. However, Optimus ends up getting killed by Megatron while distracted with Sam's concern.



After Prime's death, Megatron orders a full-scale assault on the planet. The Fallen speaks to the world by transmitting a television transmission from a satellite hacked into by Soundwave and demands that they surrender Sam to the Decepticons or the attack will continue. Sam, Mikaela, Leo, Bumblebee, the Twins and Wheelie regroup, with Leo believing that his online rival "RoboWarrior" may be of assistance. "RoboWarrior" is revealed to be former Sector Seven agent Simmons, who informs the group that the Transformers have visited Earth before, as their language is written on ruins all over the world. Wheelie identifies the language as that of the Primes, and directs the group to a former Decepticon named Jetfire, who can translate the language. They find and reactivate Jetfire at the Smithsonian. After Jetfire goes on a rampage through the aircraft museum, Sam tells him about the symbols he keeps seeing in his head. Jetfire understands them and he teleports the group to Egypt where Sam's hand gets injured during the ejection. Jetfire then proceeds to explain the history of The Fallen and that the tomb of the Primes is located in the surrounding desert, and only that a Prime can kill The Fallen. Jetfire provides them with a vital ancient clue: "When the dawn alights the Dagger's Tip, three Kings will reveal the doorway." The group locate the Pyramids of Jordan, referred to as the Dagger's Tip, and spend the night for the dawn. When the sun rises, Sam recognizes three outstanding stars near the horizon, having gone through the entire astronomy textbook earlier, as being called the Three Kings. They thus follow the stars and locate the tomb of the Primes, where a brawl between Skids and Mudflap breaks a wall and reveals the entrance to the tomb. The Matrix is located inside, but crumbles to dust in Sam's hands.

Believing that the Matrix can still revive Optimus, Sam collects the dust in his sock and instructs Simmons to telephone Major William Lennox to bring the other Autobots and Optimus's body to their location. The military arrives with the Autobots, but so do the Decepticons, and a battle arises. During the fight, the Decepticon Devastator is formed and unearths the Solar Harvester concealed within one of Egypt's pyramids before being destroyed by the US military's prototype rail gun. Jetfire arrives in time to save the group from Mixmaster by slicing him in half and smashing his head off, but is mortally wounded by Scorponok. The Air Force carpet bombs the Decepticons, but Megatron breaks through the offensive and attacks Sam. In a vision, Sam meets with the other Primes, who tell him that the Matrix of Leadership is not found but earned, which Sam has done, and send him back.

The dust reassembles to form the Matrix, which Sam uses to revive Optimus. However, The Fallen then jumps into the fray and steals the Matrix shortly thereafter, rendering Prime unable to fight once again. The Fallen activates the Solar Harvester. In a final effort, Jetfire sacrifices his parts and spark to Optimus, giving Optimus the power he needs to defeat The Fallen. With his new and enhanced capabilities, Optimus destroys the Solar Harvester by shooting it down and takes on both Megatron and The Fallen, after severely damaging Megatron, Prime faces off against The Fallen and kills him by tearing away part of his face plate and then crushing The Fallen's spark with his bare hands. Megatron and Starscream retreat and vow that their fight is not finished.

Optimus Prime concludes the event by proclaiming that the Transformers and humans now share an untold history and will combine despite their differences.

Rating
This film has been rated PG-13 in the US for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, robo-gore, language, crude and sexual material, and brief drug material.

In the UK it was rated 12A for the same reasons.

Errors

 * At the beginning of the film, some primitive humans were hunting a Bengal Tiger, in Egypt, which is on the African continent. Bengal Tigers live 3,000 miles away from Egypt, primarily in India and Bangladesh, which are in Asia.


 * At the beginning of the film where The Fallen was seen lifting up his right foot to crush a primitive human. But at the next scene, The Fallen was seen lifting up his left foot after he had crushed the primitive human.


 * When The Fallen boasts that, "Only a Prime can defeat me", the first three words aren't modified, making him sound somewhat like Megatron. ... Now we see that even live-action movies aren't free from mistakes that occur in animations.


 * The BACK of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (actually the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian) is a desert?!
 * It's actually the Davis-Monthan Airforce Base's graveyard, located in Tucson.


 * According to the subtitle, the Air Force Base Optimus is taken to after his death is in New Jersey. This is not possible. The base is in a desert, and there are no deserts in New Jersey. Also, the C-17's read Altus, a base that is NOT in New Jersey.


 * After the first fight with Optimus Prime, a bird's-eye view of New York City is shown. However, a scene later, Megatron and Starscream are seen on top of a Los Angeles building.


 * So, Devastator is too heavy to stay on his legs and has to support himself with hands, but is light enough to climb on the pyramid without crushing its walls?
 * Well, there's a Sun Harvester under it, so maybe it wasn't built by humans, but by Transformers? But anyway, the walls are absurdly thin, which can be seen when the Fallen stands on top of the destroyed pyramid. Most likely, they wouldn't survive Devastator's "trip".
 * The walls of a pyramid are very very thick. They were only thin near the top where the sun harvester stuck out. Also, the pyramid wall is slanted, so if Devestator was to heavy, he would have slid down, not crushed the wall. He was supported by his own grip.

Continuity errors

 * Bumblebee picks up Sam at the party in the evening and arrives at the cemetery in the daytime. Is the distance between the two places so far?
 * It is possible that the college was on the east coast, whereas the Cemetery (Forest Lawn Cemetery in California) was on the other side of the continent.


 * Frenzy's head is intact in a glass container even though it was destroyed; it's possible that Simmons had it rebuilt or repaired to keep it as a memento.
 * In the official prequel "The Veiled Threat", Simmons is shown to be experimenting on Frenzy's head and Frenzy speaks.
 * If Transformers are radioactive, wouldn't Sam have debilitating brain damage after all that time riding around inside Bumblebee?


 * When Megatron is revived, five Decepticons go down to revive him, one is torn up for parts to repair him, and somehow six still come up out of the water. If one was torn up, it would have still been five total leaving the water. Of course, Scalpel rode down inside Ravage yet came up on his own, so as long as he's large enough to be detected by sonar, the scene makes sense.


 * When Bumblebee fights Rampage in Egypt, he gets his face mask ripped in half by Ravage, yet in the next shot, it shows him wearing his complete face mask. It's also possible that his mask just got pulled back a bit, like in Transformers right after he and Mikaela killed Brawl.


 * Optimus Prime's faceplate is smashed to pieces by Megatron's foot during the battle in the forest. When Optimus Prime takes Jetfire's parts, his face mask is back on his face, even after he discards the parts, as if it hadn't even been smashed in the first place.


 * USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is sunk by the crashing of the Decepticon Protoforms. It displays the identification number "74" instead of the proper "71". To add confusion, USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) shows up later in the film displaying the number "71"! It is possible that adjustments to the images of the numerals on these ships were to be made using CGI, but were forgotten.


 * It's never clear why Alice is after Sam, even before she finds him drawing Cybertronian symbols. She could be after the AllSpark fragment, or she could just be trying to kill him. Maybe she just wanted some sex. No explanation is explicitly stated. Um, well.. in fact, why she's even there is unexplained.
 * Answer: they were after the info in his brain but when did the Decepticon learn that the Allspark has merge into his brain and sent Alice there?


 * Though Sam's hand is injured after Jetfire transported them to Egypt, his hand is professionally bandaged, which can be only done by a doctor or someone with a high degree of medical knowledge.


 * Megatron tells Starscream that the Decepticons aren't going to "hide" from the humans anymore. But when did Megatron ever hide? He came back to life, immediately starting fighting Autobots in broad daylight in a major city, died, came back to life, and immediately started fighting Autobots in broad daylight again. Sure, someone may have told him offscreen that the Decepticons had been in hiding before finding him inside the Hoover Dam and again during his two-year underwater entombment, but it's an awkward line given Megatron's past actions.
 * In addition to that, both of these thirty-foot-tall intelligent metallic aliens are having this casual chat about revealing themselves to the humans whilst standing atop a building in the middle of a DENSELY POPULATED CITY. That renders the entire "Robots in Disguise" concept a little moot.


 * When Sam holds up the pictures of the older Transformers to Wheelie, the two pictures switch between shots.


 * After takeoff, the Predator magically loses its propeller engine and somehow gets a rocket engine.

Not actually an error

 * When Mixmaster was on a bridge he knocked off an American flag, but when Bumblebee, Skids and Mudflap were on the same bridge it was there.


 * Sam's paranoid roommate makes a reference to a Transformer battle in Los Angeles, but the battle in the first movie took place in fictitious Mission City. It's possible that a battle took place in Los Angeles some time between the two movies, but it's not clear. However, this is still possible considering that Lennox said that NEST has been working for two years.


 * There are a few repeated shots of characters and scenes, such as Soundwave in space, Bumblebee shooting at the tiny appliance robots, and a heavily damaged Optimus looking up, along with a shot of the Predator plane from the first movie.
 * Laserbeak is spoken twice. It is possibly some word in Cybertronian


 * In the scene where the Autobots (in alternate modes) are chilling in the hangar, Jolt is missing among them. He shows up later in one of the two shots of the Autobots dispersing into teams, and again when Optimus' body is dropped off at the NEST headquarters. Perhaps a late arrival?


 * Jetfire complains about his age and robustness, but says to Optimus: "Take my (rusty old broken down) parts, and you will have a power you've never known." Perhaps the 'power you've never known' was the power to fly?
 * It's possible that Prime's energon flowed into Jetfire's parts, repairing and re-powering them.


 * How did Megatron knew WHICH boy absorbed the knowledge of AllSpark? The Fallen only told him, it was absorbed by a child.


 * The Decepticons foolishly use the Witwickys to bring Sam close to Rampage rather than actively ransoming them.


 * Sam is so smart that when he has "a few miles to go", he decides to run them on foot and have his car follow him, rather than drive to the meet-up point and get there before most of the Decepticons.


 * When Sam's identity was practically given out to everyone (probably those who were watching their TVs) on Earth, his magical hoodie gave him instant immunity from millions of possible death mobs and the ability to freely walk the streets to greet his secret agent-turned-chef friend. Maybe he took lessons from Clark Kent. In fact, not a single person even seems to bother about Sam: no uproars, no mobs, nothing, to capture Sam. And after the massive, impossible to cover up endfight, no one deigns to ask Sam why his face appeared on every connected screen in the world. Apparently his entire college campus live in some kind of disconnected bubble-dimension.


 * Oddly, when The Fallen makes his broadcast, no one really seems to care in a sort of pee-your-pants, evil alien invasion way. The humans just watch it like a bad movie. Or maybe they just shrugged it off and took it as a bad joke.
 * But let's face it, that is probably what would happen in reality: In 2001, when first broadcasts from the WTC attack were shown, many people thought at first it was a promotion for a new disaster movie. The same thing happened during every large disaster before 9/11.


 * Simmons keeps his collection of top secret files, pictures from Sector Seven, and Frenzy's head in a room with at least two open, eight foot high windows on a ground floor? We can see his security training has served him well.


 * Even though the Constructicons merged into Devastator, we can see Long Haul, Mixmaster and Scrapper among the fighting Decepticons in the climax battle. This can be explained by the fact that there are possibly two of each Constructicon, which might also explain both Demolishor and Scavenger both having the Terex excavator Altmode.


 * We know that in the first film, the only human-made weapon that can damage Transformers is the Sabot round, and yet during the Egypt battle, Lennox and his men are clearly seen rushing into battle armed with conventional weapons. What's even stranger is how these weapons seemed to be actually effective against the Decepticons (several Protoforms seemed to have been killed by normal machine gun fire whilst others were clearly damaged by said weapons). Maybe advances were made in human technology during the two-year gap between the two films? But we know that even if this is possible, the Autobots had nothing to do with it as Optimus clearly stated that sharing their knowledge on advanced weaponry would end badly with the humans. Perhaps humans are not so reliant on alien weaponry as we might think?


 * As with the first film (and all other media, in fact), the Transformers go through all the trouble of disguising themselves as normal vehicles, but still keep their insignias on obvious parts (e.g. as part of their paint job or hood ornaments)? Now that the human governments are aware of their presence, who's going to fall for it?


 * Somehow, Devastator's vortex generator was powerful enough to suck up a people carrier and NOT two humans?! How much weight did Simmons and Leo put on over the years?


 * Exactly what The Fallen was doing during the first film is unexplained. In fact, it would seem to make more sense if he was the Decepticon leader instead of Megatron, especially what with the Decepticons being based on his face. But the fact that he still didn't take control of the situation after Megatron's apparent death, letting Starscream, of all robots, fill the role.

Transformers references

 * Optimus Prime gets killed off, eventually. Don't worry, he will be back online very soon, but much later than his Animated incarnation, whose death only lasted for 75 seconds.


 * Sam's brain contains lots of Sparks, similar to Buster Witwicky, whose brain contained the Creation Matrix for a while.


 * This is not the first time that Egypt is related to the Transformer race.


 * Optimus Prime killed Demolishor in a manner that slightly resembles the way Megatron gave Ironhide a final blow in the film The Transformers: The Movie.


 * When Sam has his "meltdown" in astronomy class, he begins to explain the mathematics behind mass-shifting while he is up at the blackboard. As a part of his babble, he blurts out Sentinel Prime's name, as well.


 * Mikaela's line, "I am your worst nightmare!", is a line spoken by Optimus Prime in The Transformers episode "War Dawn".


 * Even in her full robotic form, Alice's tongue at the tip of her tentacle seems to remain fleshy. Ewww.


 * Like last time, Sam got interrogated by the Decepticons again.


 * When fighting with Decepticons in the forest, Optimus Prime insults Megatron and Grindor, calling them wasted material. Generation One Optimus Prime did almost the same thing in The Transformers episode "More Than Meets the Eye, Part 2", calling Megatron "junk".


 * Optimus Prime spits something like his teeth in the forest battle, much like Optimal Optimus spat his tooth in the Beast Wars episode "Nemesis Part 2".


 * Wheelie acts like a perv? Hmmm...


 * Jetfire mentioned his father is a wheel, which could be a reference to Scrounge, whose alt mode is a wheel.


 * Mudflap gets drawn into Devastator's suction vortex, similar to the way Optimal Optimus got pulled in by Nemesis' tractor beam in the Beast Wars episode "Nemesis Part 2". It has similar gears and blades inside, along with light behind them.


 * Soundwave says "Yessss".
 * So does Megatron a couple of times.


 * During the battle in the "middle of nowhere" while the Decepticons are looking for Sam, you can hear one of the Decepticons say something that sounds a LOT like "Laserbeak".


 * The Sun Harvester is remarkably similar to the Solar Needle in The Transformers episode "Changing Gears".


 * For some reason, the Transformers demonstrate many organic actions, such as Starscream spitting, Bumblebee crying, Jetfire farting a drag chute, and dying bots leaking fluids like humans drip blood. (The glowing 'blood' may be Energon, but this is unconfirmed even as they were leaking it in the first movie as well.)


 * Jetfire's corpse is attached to Optimus. What a suprise''.


 * A Megatron that transforms into a H-tank-esque vehicle, an Optimus Prime that can combine with Jetfire, human-sized Transformers, and an Autobot that goes from Decepticon to Autobot. Why does that sound familiar?

Real-world references

 * When Megatron returns to the Nemesis, the place in the scene slightly resembles the nest of the Alien.


 * When Megatron gets back to the Decepticon mothership, he says "Starscream, I'm home." This might be a reference to I Love Lucy.


 * Starscream states they don't have enough Energon to keep the young Protoforms alive. It somehow resembles Dracula's need for The Monster's life source to bring his undead children to life in the film Van Helsing.


 * Starscream climbs the Empire State Building, just like Devastator's homage to King Kong in The Transformers episode "City of Steel".


 * During the hunt for allies in Museum, in the background many historical planes can be seen. One was shown very clearly - Sam and Mikaela go past Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.


 * Professor Colan says the line "I am the Alpha and the Omega", a line from the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible, as well as the Covenant of Primus.


 * A chase occurs in the library, just like the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, also starring Shia LaBeouf.


 * When The Fallen and his army crash into the aircraft carrier, it sinks much like the RMS Titanic did in the 1997 film  Titanic, and features similar scenes.


 * Your classmate is a hot fembot? Riiight.


 * Alice is a hot Pretender, not a hot alien like Sil. Stop asking.


 * In Sam's room in the college dorm there are various posters for real world movies, such as Cloverfield.


 * Like the film Armageddon is mentioned in the previous movie, there is a poster of the film ''Bad Boys II on the wall of Sam's room.
 * Both films are directed by Michael Bay.


 * The love scene at night in Egypt resembles another love scene from another one of Michael Bay's films, Armageddon.


 * In Leo's computer room, there's a textile scroll/poster for the anime series Naruto in the background. Believe it!


 * President Barack Obama is indeed the president in this film. A clip of him is shown during the video threat from The Fallen. And a news reporter mentions Obama being flown to a safe zone, after the threat is made.


 * As the group descends into Simmons' basement, Leo mentions his fear of Swine Flu, as they pass the dead pigs in the meat locker.


 * When Sam is "killed", Mikaela tries to bring him back by admitting she loves him. This may be a reference to the film The Matrix as Neo is killed by Smith (played by Hugo Weaving just like Megatron).

Transformers sequel and the 2007-2008 Writers Strike
In late 2007, during preproduction for the 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.

Trivia

 * Knock offs: Star Wars, Terminator, Van Helsing, and many, many more...with direct quotes, or technologies, or concepts. (All unnecessarily since they did have a decent amount of original material they could have pulled from.)


 * What exactly was so special about the Primes that scared The Fallen? He kept saying only a Prime could defeat him, but then we learn that all the other Primes put together weren't strong enough collectively to defeat him, so they sacrificed themselves.
 * Ironically, all the Primes were brothers, and Megatron is Optimus's brother, so doesn't that make Megatron a Prime?


 * The reason why Sam's college was never identified was because of Judy becoming high on marijuana brownies in one scene. As the set for Sam's college was Princeton and University of Pennsylvania, the scene resulted in both colleges forcing Michael Bay to keep his mouth shut about the exact college Sam went to.


 * So far, all the Transformers live-action films feature a concept car in each of them. In other words, a car that hasn't been manufactured but is in design. The first film features the 2008 Concept Camaro for Bumblebee, and the sequel features a 2010 Corvette Stingray for Sideswipe.

External link

 * Dreamworks/Paramount's Transformers Movie website


 * Interview with Michael Bay at Collider.com


 * Revenge of the Fallen Quotes -


 * Ten Things About Transformers Revenge of the Fallen That Didn't Make Any Sense at Film.com