When the dust settles and the solar flares fade away, two of the heaviest of heavy hitters in this 2009 blockbuster season--Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen--will linger on as brothers at odds. Though both films were scripted by the writing team of Kurtzman and Orci, you might walk away demanding to see the pedigree papers. Here are two vastly disparate genre films that don't even belong in the same class, let alone the same IMDB page. Helmed by J.J. Abrams, Star Trek is a thoughtful, rollicking adventure film. It's a joyous movie experience filled with top notch performances and dazzling effects, all stemming from cues from that tight, inventive screenplay. As for Transformers? It's a parade of poor choices, all culminating in the latest salvo in Michael Bay's campaign of stupid. It's devastatingly easy to slip into hyperbole when describing this tedious sequel, especially relative to the writers' previous effort, and even in comparison to the first film in the franchise. 


What's so remarkable about Revenge of the Fallen is how it manages to be both an assault on the senses and painfully boring. With a running time well over two hours, the movie shifts between soulless action sequences and informational sessions. We're carpet-bombed with exposition. Thing is, we wouldn't mind all the chatter and setup if it had anything to do with compelling characters or story. We might thrill to the big, metallic brawls if any of it were engaging. But this hulking wreck just doesn't have any spark. Regardless of the nature of a given scene--action, comedy, drama, straight-up tutorial--it's shot as commercial action. The camera soars and rolls, sometimes managing to capture the intended subject of the scene by happenstance, but more often than not sweeping right past it. The design team and animators created some truly awe-inspiring robot characters, but Bay chooses to present battle scenes at a perspective too close and too fleeting for the audience to identify the combatants or appreciate their scale. It doesn't help that, as with the first film, the Decepticons are too visually similar, comprised of too many gray and silver fragments to distinguish anatomy or persona. These characters do a lot of grappling, so with an unreliable camera tracking their movements, it all feels like experiencing a car crash through a monochrome kaleidoscope. That's a filmmaking problem exploiting a weakness in the original design. But the weak script compounds the mess because, as an audience, we're never compelled to see these talking vehicles as individuals. Aside from Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, who come pre-packaged with personality from the first film (or more likely, other adaptations), these robots lack distinct character. There are a couple of obnoxious exceptions. Two Autobots allegedly inserted into the film by the director as comic relief (if you consider lisping minstrel shows at all comic) appear totally superimposed, barely interacting with their human co-stars. They talk in action figure sound bites. It's an odd approach, using the Transformers themselves as set dressings in their own film series. They're props, or worse, they're devices. 

So what about the humans? Objectively, Sam and Mikaela's commitment problems (he just can't say those three little words) might work on paper as a flesh and blood subplot. But there's something about Megan Fox sitting alone at her computer waiting for an absent Shia LaBeouf to show up for their web cam date that doesn't ring all that true. In the first film, this wouldn't been a casting problem, but here it's a writing team's blunder. Then there's Leo and John Turturro, the homo sapien comic relief. It's difficult to refer to them as anything else, because the intent of these walking, yammering plot elements is wholly apparent. They are present to dispense information and keep Sam and Makaela company. It's not as if there is a race of transforming sentient robots who could fill the role. But let's get to the real stars of the film, the U.S. armed forces, their computer terminals, and their sweet, sweet rides. I don't know a lot about Michael Bay's production education, but judging by his reel, he watched a lot of army recruitment videos. 

I left the screening feeling seventeen shades of bad for Orci and Kurtzman. Not because they wrote a bad script, or that they wrote a good script ruined by a misguided director, but because I honestly have no idea what they even wrote. It all reeks of foul play, and there's no knowing who's responsible by simply watching the movie. We're pretty sure they had little or nothing to do with the clanking Jar Jar Binks twins. But was it their call to cut away to a shot of dogs humping each other in the midst of an action sequence? I'd love to get my hands on the original script, just to see how much of this was meddling on Michael Bay's part. Regardless of whether it was his idea or not, I could sense the visceral, pornographic pleasure he took in destroying a university library. Fuck books. Fuck thinking. Just shut up and enjoy the pretty.  

Me, I have no interest in turning off my brain.I figure you gotta be able to think to switch it back on again. 

It might seem impossible to botch a movie about giant robots fighting each other. Peter Cullen is there to drum up some goosebumps with that iconic Optimus Prime voice. The movie itself smells like cash. But without an engaging story or characters, the fisticuffs don't make an impact. Nice car, but the tank's empty.  

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