Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Encyclopedia
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a 2009 American science fiction
-action film
directed by Michael Bay
and produced by Steven Spielberg
. It is the sequel to the 2007 film Transformers and the second installment in the live-action
Transformers series
. The plot revolves around Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf
), the man caught in the war between two factions of alien robots, the Autobot
s and the Decepticon
s. Sam is having hallucinatory episodes of Cybertron
ian symbols, and is being hunted by the Decepticons under the orders of their long-trapped leader, The Fallen
, who seeks to get revenge on Earth by finding and activating a machine that would provide the Decepticons with an energon source, destroying the Sun and all life on Earth in the process.
With deadlines jeopardized by possible strikes by the Directors Guild of America
and the Screen Actors Guild
, Bay managed to finish the production on time with the help of previsualization
and a scriptment
by his writers Roberto Orci
, Alex Kurtzman
, and series newcomer Ehren Kruger
. Shooting took place from May to November 2008, with locations in Egypt
, Jordan
, Pennsylvania
and California
, as well as air bases in New Mexico
and Arizona
.
Revenge of the Fallen was released on June 24, 2009, and was a huge box office
success, setting records upon release, and grossing a total of $402 million in North America and $836 million worldwide. It was the second most successful film of 2009 (behind Avatar) and 12th overall domestically, and the 28th highest-grossing film of all time and fourth highest of the year (behind Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
) internationally. Despite its success at the box office, the film was received poorly by critics, and won three awards at the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards
ceremony, including Worst Picture. A third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, was released on June 29, 2011, in 3-D
.
traveled the galaxy to create Energon with sun-absorbing machines called Sun Harvesters. The Dynasty follow a law that no sun can be destroyed if it has life on one of its planets. However, one of the Primes broke this law by setting up a Harvester on Earth in 17,000 B.C. The rest of the Dynasty named him The Fallen
, and sacrificed themselves to hide the "Matrix of Leadership", the key to start the Harvester.
Two years after the events of the first film, Sam Witwicky is going to college, and the Autobot
s have joined the U.S military to create a classifed team, NEST (Network Elements: Supporters and Transformers), an elite joint military organization from the United Kingdom
and the United States
, selected from the world's top elite soldiers led by Optimus Prime
, Major William Lennox and General Morshower, to eradicate Decepticons from all over the globe. While packing for college, Sam finds a shard of the All Spark, which "uploads" its Cybertronian knowledge into Sam's mind. Sam gives the shard to his girlfriend Mikaela Banes
for safekeeping, and leaves his guardian Bumblebee
behind.
In Shanghai
, the NEST Team encounters Demolishor
and Sideways. Sideswipe and Optimus take down Demolishor and Sideways, but bring damage and destruction to the public. Demolishor warns Optimus of The Fallen's return before his execution. Reporting to NEST's base in Diego Garcia
, the Autobots are patronized by U.S. National Security Advisor
Galloway for their actions in Shanghai. Soundwave
, the Decepticon's communications officer, hacks into a U.S military satellite, and overhears both the location of Megatron's corpse and the Allspark shard that Optimus removed from Megatron in the first film. After Ravage
retrieves the Allspark's shard, it is used to resurrect Megatron's corpse at the Laurentian Abyss
. Megatron then flies to the Decepticon flagship
Nemesis, where The Fallen instructs him to kill Optimus and capture Sam, as Sam has knowledge that can lead the Decepticons to the Matrix of Leadership.
In college, Sam meets his roommate Leo Spitz, who owns a conspiracy website related to the Transformers' existence. Sam eventually starts seeing and scribbling visions of Cybertronian symbols and having a mental breakdown
. At Mikaela's shop, Wheelie
tries to steal the shard, but Mikaela captures him and leaves to see Sam in Princeton. She arrives just as Sam is attacked by the Pretender
Alice. Mikaela, Sam and Leo flee and eventually kill Alice, but are then captured by the Decepticon Grindor, who drops them off in an abandoned warehouse. The Decepticons brutally torture Sam to obtain the whereabouts of the Matrix, but the only way to find it is to cut his head off to get to his brain. Optimus and Bumblebee arrive and battle the Decepticons, with Optimus taking Sam into a forest where the Decepticons battle him. Optimus is badly wounded but manages to kill Grindor and wound Starscream
by ripping his arm off, before Optimus is killed by Megatron. The humans flee with Bumblebee and the Autobot
twins, Skids and Mudflap. The NEST team, shocked by their loss, brings Optimus' body to their New Jersey base. Galloway arrives with the news that NEST is being decommissioned after the arrival of the Decepticons.
Meanwhile, the Decepticons kidnap Sam's parents in Paris
. The Fallen taps into media signals and broadcasts a demand that the people of Earth deliver Sam to the Decepticons or be annihilated. Leo suggests to Sam that his online rival "RoboWarrior" may be able to help. When the trio find him, they discover that RoboWarrior is actually Agent Simmons from the now defunct Sector Seven. Simmons reveals that the Transformers have been on Earth for millennia and convinces Wheelie to reveal a group of Transformers known as the Seekers. They find and revive the elderly Jetfire
. Originally a Decepticon, Jetfire reveals to have changed sides to the Autobots, and teleports the group to Egypt
.
Following several clues, the trio find the Tomb of the Primes in Petra
. When Sam touches The Matrix it crumbles to dust, but Sam puts the sand in a pouch. The Decepticons arrive and battle the Autobots and NEST, who are aided by the United States Marine Corps
, Egyptian and Jordanian military forces. The Constructicon
Devastator
uncovers the Sun Harvester from a pyramid but is killed by a railgun
strike ordered by Simmons. Epps orders an air strike from F-16s, A-10s, and a B-1 Lancer
, taking out all of the Decepticons. Sam makes a dash for Optimus Prime's body, but is shot and killed by Megatron before the Decepticon is overwhelmed and flees. Before dying, in limbo, Sam is told by the Dynasty of the Primes that the Matrix of Leadership is not a physical item to be found, but a right that he has earned.
Sam is resurrected from the dead, and when the Matrix reforms itself from the sand in his pouch, he resurrects Optimus. The Fallen then teleports, grabs the Matrix and flies to activate the Sun Harvester. After an attack by their artillery and air support fails due to The Fallen's telekinesis, Jetfire offers his parts to Optimus before dying of wounds inflicted by Scorponok
. Using a battle armor made with Jetfire's remains, Optimus destroys the Harvester, defeats Megatron and kills The Fallen. Megatron, who has been severely damaged in the battle, follows Starscream's suggestion and retreats. The Autobots, NEST, Sam, and his friends return to the US, where Sam continues to attend college, while Optimus Prime narrates an ending monologue detailing recent events, so the shared past of humanity and the Autobots will not be forgotten as it was before.
In two post-credit scenes, Sam is shown saying goodbye to Mikaela before returning to college.
, as well as possible strikes by the Directors Guild of America
and the Screen Actors Guild
.
Bay began creating animatics of action sequences featuring characters rejected for the 2007 film. This would allow animators to complete sequences if the Directors Guild of America
went on strike in July 2008, which ultimately did not happen. The director considered making a small project in between Transformers and its sequel, but knew "you have your baby and you don't want someone else to take it". The film was given a $200 million budget, which was $50 million more than the 2007 film, and some of the action scenes rejected for the original were written into the sequel, such as the way Optimus is reintroduced in this film. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
said the studio proposed filming two sequels simultaneously, but he and Bay concurred that was not the right direction for the series.
Writers Roberto Orci
and Alex Kurtzman
originally passed on the sequel because of a busy schedule. The studio began courting other writers in May 2007, but as they were unimpressed with their pitches, they convinced Orci and Kurtzman to return. The studio also signed on Ehren Kruger
, as he impressed Bay and Hasbro president Brian Goldner
with his knowledge of the Transformers mythology, and because he was friends with Orci and Kurtzman. The writing trio were paid $8 million. Screenwriting was interrupted by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
, but to avoid production delays the writers spent two weeks writing a treatment
, which they handed in the night before the strike began, and Bay expanded the outline into a sixty-page scriptment
, fleshing out the action, adding more jokes, as well as selecting the majority of new characters. The three writers spent four months finishing the screenplay while "locked" in two hotel rooms by Bay: Kruger wrote in his own room and the trio would check on each others' work twice a day.
Orci described the film's theme as "being away from home", with the Autobots contemplating living on Earth as they cannot restore Cybertron
, while Sam goes to college. He wanted the focus between the robots and humans "much more evenly balanced", "the stakes [to] be higher", and more focused on the science fiction elements. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
said that in total, there are around forty robots in the film, while ILM's Scott Farrar has said there are actually sixty. Orci added he wanted to "modulate" the humor more, and felt he managed the more "outrageous" jokes by balancing it with a more serious plot approach to the Transformers' mythology. Bay concurred that he wanted to please fans by making the tone darker, and that "moms will think its safe enough to bring the kids back out to the movies" despite his trademark sense of humor.
Before Transformers was released, producer Tom DeSanto
had "a very cool idea" to introduce the Dinobots
, while Bay was interested in an aircraft carrier
, which was dropped from the 2007 film. Orci claimed they did not incorporate these characters into Revenge of the Fallen because they could not think of a way to justify the Dinobots' choice of form, and were unable to fit in the aircraft carrier. Orci also admitted he was also dismissive of the Dinobots because he does not like dinosaurs. "I recognize I am weird in that department", he said, but he became fonder of them during filming because of their popularity with fans. He added "I couldn't see why a Transformer would feel the need to disguise himself in front of a bunch of lizards. Movie-wise, I mean. Once the general audience is fully on board with the whole thing, maybe Dinobots in the future." However, upon being asked on the subject, Michael Bay said he hated the Dinobots and they had never been in consideration for being featured in the movies.
During production, Bay attempted to create a misinformation campaign to increase debate over what Transformers would be appearing in the film, as well as to try to throw fans off from the story of the film. However, Orci confessed it had generally not been working. The studio went as far as to censor MTV
and Comic Book Resources
interviews with Mowry and Furman, who confirmed Arcee and The Fallen would be in the picture. Bay told Empire
that Megatron would not be resurrected, claiming his new tank form was a toy-only character, only for Orci to confirm Megatron would return in the film in February 2009. Bay also claimed he faked the leaking of daily call sheet
s from the first week of filming, that revealed Ramón Rodríguez's casting, and the appearance of Jetfire and the twins.
soundstages at Playa Vista served for filming the majority of interior scenes. From June 2, three days were spent on an action sequence at the Bethlehem Steel
site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
, which was used to represent a portion of Shanghai
. Afterwards, they shot at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
. The crew moved to Philadelphia on June 9, where they shot at the defunct PECO
Richmond power station, the University of Pennsylvania
, Drexel University
, the Eastern State Penitentiary
, Fairmount Park
, Philadelphia City Hall
, Rittenhouse Square
, and historic Chancellor Street (which represents a street near Place de la Concorde
in Paris
), and Wanamaker's
. They moved to Princeton University
on June 22. Filming there angered some students at the University of Pennsylvania, believing Bay had chosen to reshoot scenes at Princeton and script Princeton's name in the film. However, neither the University of Pennsylvania nor Princeton gave Bay permission to be named in the film because of a "funny 'mom' scene" that both felt "did not represent the school" in which Sam's mother ingests Marijuana-laced brownies for comedic effect.
Bay scheduled a break for filming beginning on June 30, turning his attention to animation and second unit
scenes because of the potential 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike
. Shooting for the Shanghai battle later continued in Long Beach, California
. The crew shot at Holloman Air Force Base
and White Sands Missile Range
in New Mexico
during September. The two locations were used for Qatar
in the 2007 film, and stood in for Egypt
in this film. A scale model
in Los Angeles was also used for some close-ups of the pyramids. Shooting at Tucson International Airport
and the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group's aircraft boneyard
took place in October under the fake working title Prime Directive
(a reference to Star Trek
). This location was delayed from July. Filming also took place at Camp Pendleton and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
.
The first unit (including Shia LaBeouf) then shot for three days in Egypt itself, at the Giza pyramid complex
and Luxor
. For security's sake, the shoot was highly secretive, but according to Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a crew of 150 Americans and "several dozen local Egyptians" ensured a "remarkably smooth" shoot. Bay earned the Egyptian government's approval to film at the pyramids by contacting Zahi Hawass
, who Bay recalled "put his arm around me and said, 'Don't hurt my pyramids. A 50 feet (15.2 m) camera crane was used at the location. Four days were then spent in Jordan
; the Royal Jordanian Air Force
aided in filming at Petra
, Wadi Rum
and Salt
because one of the country's princes liked the 2007 film. Filming continued at the Place de la Concorde
in Paris, with second unit shots of the Eiffel Tower
and the Arc de Triomphe
. The cast and crew finished on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis
on November 2, 2008.
Bay stated he found the climax of the 2007 film to be weak, partly because it was shot across five different city blocks, making the action confusing and hard to follow. On this film, the final battle in Egypt was devised to make it easier to see what was going on.
Hasbro
became more involved in the designs of the robots than in the 2007 film, and they and Takara Tomy
suggested to the filmmakers that combining robots be the main draw for the sequel. They insisted on keeping the alternate modes of some of the returning characters similar, so people would not have to buy toys of the same characters. Bay used real F-16 Fighting Falcon and tank fire when filming the battles. Many of the new Autobot cars supplied by General Motors
were brightly colored to look distinctive on screen. Revenge of the Fallen features 46 robots, while the original movie had 14.
Scott Farrar returned as visual effects supervisor and anticipated moodier use of lighting as well as deeper roles for the Decepticon
s. He stated that with the bigger deadline, post-production will be a "circus". The producers expected that with a bigger budget and the special effects worked out, the Transformers would have a larger role. Peter Cullen
recalled, "Don Murphy
mentioned to me, 'Only because of the tremendous expense to animate Optimus Prime, he'll be in just a certain amount of [the 2007 film].' But he said, 'Next time, if the movie is a success, you're gonna be in it a ton.'" Michael Bay hoped to include more close-up
s of the robots' faces. The heads had to be designed with more pieces in order to express emotions in a more convincing way. Farrar said the animators implemented more "splashes and the hits and the fighting on dirt or moving, banging into trees, [...] things splinter and break, they [the robots] spit, they outgas, they sweat, they snort." Shooting in the higher resolution of IMAX
required up to 72 hours to render a single frame of animation. While ILM used 15 terabyte
s for the 2007 film, on the sequel they used 140. Particularly problematic effects were the lighting, with scenes such as Jetfire inside the Smithsonian requiring 41 light sources, and the destruction of the pyramid, which appears in about five shots but required seven months alone to simulate the behavior of the blocks.
Orci hinted the majority of the Decepticons were entirely computer-generated in both robot and alternate modes, making it easier to write additional scenes for them in post-production.
Rendering the Devastator took over 85% of ILM's render farm
capacity, and the complexity of the scene and having to render it at IMAX resolution caused one computer to "explode".
, who reunited with director Michael Bay to record his score with a 71-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony
at the Sony Scoring Stage. Jablonsky and his score producer Hans Zimmer
composed various interpretations of a song by Linkin Park
called "New Divide
" for the score.
's Revenge of the Fallen toy line included new molds of new and returning characters, as well as 2007 figures with new mold elements or new paint schemes. The first wave was released on May 30, although Bumblebee and Soundwave debuted beforehand. The second wave came in August 2009, which introduced toys such as 2¼-inch human action figures that fit inside the transforming robots, and non-transforming replicas of the cars that can be used on a race track. Product placement
partners on the film include Burger King
, 7-Eleven
, LG phones
, Kmart
, Wal-Mart
, YouTube
, Nike, Inc.
and M&M's
, as well as Jollibee
in the Philippines
. General Motors
' financial troubles limited its involvement in promotion of the sequel, although Paramount acknowledged with or without GM, their marketing campaign was still very large and had the foundation of the 2007 film's success. Kyle Busch
drove a Revenge of the Fallen decorated car at Infineon Raceway
on June 21, 2009, while Josh Duhamel
drove a 2010 Camaro at the Indianapolis 500
. At the movie's launch in China, a version of Bumblebee was constructed using a Volkswagen Jetta
.
, who had collaborated on The Reign of Starscream comic book, reunited for IDW Publishing
's prequel to the film. Originally set to be a five part series entitled Destiny, it was split into two simultaneously published series, titled Alliance and Defiance. Alliance is drawn by Milne and began in December 2008: it focuses on the human and Autobot perspectives. Defiance, which started the following month, is drawn by Dan Khanna and is set before either film, showing the beginnings of the war.
After the 2007 film, and serving as a bridge between the two films, Alan Dean Foster
wrote Transformers: The Veiled Threat
, originally titled Infiltration. During the writing, Foster collaborated with IDW to make sure their stories did not contradict each other.
The first printed media directly related to the second film was a 32-page coloring and activity book by publisher HarperCollins
, which became available on May 5, 2009 and was the first official source to openly give out key plot points to the film. On June 1, 2009 DK Publishing
published a 96-page book entitled Transformers: The Movie Universe, which intended to provide factual data on the characters of the film.
On June 10, 2009 the comic book adaptation of the film, written by Simon Furman
was released. Additionally, Alan Dean Foster also wrote the novelization
for the film. Meanwhile, Dan Jolley wrote Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: The Junior Novel, a 144-page book oriented at a younger audience than the one by Foster. Lastly, a book titled Transformers: The Art of the Movies, was released, documenting behind-the scenes aspects of the making of the film.
Other minor tie-in publications include Transformers Revenge of the Fallen: The Last Prime, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: The Reusable Sticker Book, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Made You Look!, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Rise of the Decepticons, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Spot the 'Bots, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Mix and Match, Operation Autobot, When Robots Attack and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 2010 Wall Calendar.
cameras.
, Revenge of the Fallen received an average 20% overall approval rating (the original earned a 57%). Critical consensus was that the film was a "noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch." Metacritic
gave it an average score of 35 out of 100 from the 32 reviews it collected. In CinemaScore
polls, however, users gave the film a "B+", compared to the "A" that the original film had scored. Actor Shia LaBeouf was unimpressed with the film, stating, "We got lost. We tried to get bigger. It's what happens to sequels. It's like, how do you top the first one? You've got to go bigger. Michael Bay
went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie...You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn't matter. Then it's just a bunch of robots fighting each other."
Michael Bay
has admitted his disappointment with the movie and has apologized saying the movie was "crap" and blamed the 2007-2008 Writer's Strike saying "It was very hard to put (the sequel) together that quickly after the writers' strike (of 2007-08)". According to The Washington Post
, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Bay's worst-reviewed film, faring even worse than Pearl Harbor
. Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times
described the film as "in-your-face, ear-splitting and unrelenting. It's easy to walk away feeling like you've spent 2½ hours in the mad, wild hydraulic embrace of a car compactor
".
Roger Ebert
, who had given the 2007 film three stars, gave the sequel only one, calling it "...a horrible experience of unbearable length." Later in his review, Ebert discouraged movie-goers from seeing the film by saying "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. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."
He later wrote in his blog about the film, "The day will come when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be studied in film classes and shown at cult film festivals. It will be seen, in retrospect, as marking the end of an era. Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive ($190 million)." Ebert would continue to lambast the film in other movie reviews and responses to letters and emails sent to him. Rolling Stone
critic Peter Travers
did not give the film any stars considering that "Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade." The A.V. Club
gave the film a "C-", complaining about the writing and length, and considering the film only works during the action scene that occurs in the last half-hour. Among positive reviews, Amy Biancolli of The Houston Chronicle called it "A well-oiled, loudly revving summer action vehicle that does all that’s required, and then some", Jordan Mintzer from Variety
said it "takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence", and Owen Gleiberman
of Entertainment Weekly
wrote that "Revenge of the Fallen may be a massive overdose of popcorn greased with motor oil. But it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old's appetite for destruction."
On a year-end poll administered by Moviefone
, the film was voted the worst film of 2009, and Fox's performance the worst by an actress that year. Comcast
ranked the film as the 4th worst sequel of all time. Empire
named the film the 25th worst movie ever made. In June 2009, an Associated Press
article by David Germain called the film as the worst-reviewed $400 million hit ever.
There was considerable negative reaction to the characters Mudflap and Skids, who some perceived as embodying racist stereotype
s. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times
said that "the characters [...] indicate that minstrelsy
remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks
was set loose by George Lucas
". Critic Scott Mendelson said "To say that these two are the most astonishingly racist caricatures that I've ever seen in a mainstream motion picture would be an understatement". Harry Knowles
, founder of Ain't It Cool News
, went further, asking his readers "not to support this film" because "you'll be taking [your children] to see a film with the lowest forms of humor, stereotypes and racism around." Director Bay has attempted to defend the film as "good clean fun" and insisted that "We're just putting more personality in". Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman responded to the controversy with "It's really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie".
Another major complaint about the film was Bay's usage of the IMAX
format. Instead of using IMAX for complete unbroken sequences similar to director Christopher Nolan
's approach for The Dark Knight
, Bay chose to use the format primarily on a shot-by-shot basis, combining conventional 35mm footage and IMAX shots in the same sequence. That approach, combined with rapid cutting of same created a jarring, highly unpleasant experience for most moviegoers.
, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson
) at the 82nd Academy Awards
, eventually losing to The Hurt Locker
. The film won five Scream Awards
, for Best Actress (Megan Fox
), Breakout Performance-Female (Isabel Lucas
), Best Sequel, Best F/X, and Scream Song of the Year ("New Divide
"); and two Teen Choice Awards
, for Choice Summer Movie Star: Female (Megan Fox) and Choice Summer Movie Star: Male (Shia LaBeouf). Revenge of the Fallen was also nominated for the Saturn Award
for Best Science Fiction Film
, Satellite Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound, a VES Award
for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Feature Motion Picture, a SAG Award
for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble
, and an MTV Movie Awards
for Best WTF Moment (Isabel Lucas turning into a Decepticon). LaBouf was nominated for a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie Actor.
On the other hand, it was nominated for seven Razzie Awards including Worst Actress for Megan Fox
(also for Jennifer's Body
), Worst Supporting Actress for Julie White
, Worst Screen Couple (for Shia LaBeouf
and either Fox or any Transformer) and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, winning three in the Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay categories at the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards
.
s record ($44.2 million) for the biggest Wednesday opening in history, bringing in $62 million in total receipts on its first day (until The Twilight Saga: Eclipse topped this record with $68 million), additionally ranking it as the second biggest opening day ever, at the time, behind The Dark Knight
. The film grossed $108.9 million on its first weekend, the seventh-largest in history at the time, and brought in $200 million in its first five days, putting it in second place behind The Dark Knights $203.7 million for all-time biggest five-day opening. Its gross from Friday to Sunday was the biggest June opening weekend for one year, breaking Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
s record ($93.7 million), until Toy Story 3
claimed that record ($110.3 million).
Revenge of the Fallen remained #1 at the box office for two weeks straight, by a close margin. Initial studio estimates showed a tie between it and that weekend's new release Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
, but the actuals showed Revenge of the Fallen taking the #1 spot yet again with $42,320,877. Also, it was the first film of 2009 to reach the $300 million mark in North America. On July 27, a month after its release, the movie reached $379.2 million in the US, which brings it into the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever in that country as of August 2009. Revenge of the Fallen closed its box office run with $402,111,870 in North America and $836,303,693 worldwide, being the twelfth highest-grossing film of all time domestically, and the 28th highest internationally. Among 2009 films
, it was the second highest grossing in the United States and Canada, behind Avatar, and fourth globally behind Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
.
editions, and a single-disc DVD version. Michael Bay has revealed that the Blu-ray release of the film, produced by Charles de Lauzirika
, will feature variable aspect ratio for the scenes shot in IMAX format. A special IMAX edition is available exclusively at Wal-Mart
.
Home versions include over three hours of bonus content and several interactive features, including "The AllSpark Experiment", which reveals Michael Bay's plans for a third movie in the series. At Target
, the DVD and Blu-ray versions will include a transformable Bumblebee case. Both two-disc editions are the first to include Paramount's Augmented Reality
feature, which allows the user to handle a 3D model of Optimus Prime on a computer by moving the movie's package in front of a webcam. First week sales of the DVD reached 7.5 million copies, making it the best-selling DVD of 2009. The Blu-ray version had the best first-week sales of 2009, with 1.2 million units.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
-action film
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
directed by Michael Bay
Michael Bay
Michael Benjamin Bay is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing high-budget action films characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals and substantial practical special effects...
and produced by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. It is the sequel to the 2007 film Transformers and the second installment in the live-action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
Transformers series
Transformers (film series)
Transformers is an American film franchise directed by Michael Bay, and based on the toys created by Hasbro and Takara Tomy. The first film, Transformers, was released in 2007, the second film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in 2009, and the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 2011...
. The plot revolves around Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf
Shia Saide LaBeouf is an American actor who became known among younger audiences for his part in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens and made his film debut in Holes . In 2007, he starred as the leads in Disturbia and Transformers...
), the man caught in the war between two factions of alien robots, the Autobot
Autobot
Autobot, a faction of sentient robots from the planet Cybertron, are usually the main protagonists in the fictional universe of the Transformers, a collection of various toys, graphic novels, paperback books, cartoons and movies first introduced in 1984. In all but one Transformer story, the...
s and the Decepticon
Decepticon
The Decepticons are usually depicted as the antagonists in the fictional universes of the Transformers stoyline and related comics and cartoons, and the enemies of the Autobots and the University of California Davis Aggies...
s. Sam is having hallucinatory episodes of Cybertron
Cybertron
Cybertron is a fictional planet, the homeworld of the Transformers in the various fictional incarnations of the metaseries and toyline by Hasbro. In the Japanese series, the planet is referred to as "Cybertron" pronounced as セイバートロン Seibātoron...
ian symbols, and is being hunted by the Decepticons under the orders of their long-trapped leader, The Fallen
Fallen (Transformers)
The Fallen is a fictional character in the Transformers universes. According to Hasbro, he was formerly known as Megatronus Prime, and is a multiversal singularity, meaning that while he exists across the multiverse, he has no alternate-universe counterpart.-Character history:Although the Fallen's...
, who seeks to get revenge on Earth by finding and activating a machine that would provide the Decepticons with an energon source, destroying the Sun and all life on Earth in the process.
With deadlines jeopardized by possible strikes by the Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
and the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
, Bay managed to finish the production on time with the help of previsualization
Previsualization
Previsualization is a function to visualise complex scenes in movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography...
and a scriptment
Scriptment
A scriptment is a written work by a movie or television screenwriter that combines elements of a script and treatment, especially the dialogue elements, which are formatted the same as in a screenplay. It is a more elaborate document than a standard draft treatment...
by his writers Roberto Orci
Roberto Orci
Roberto Gaston Orci is a Mexican-American film producer, television producer, and screenwriter.-Biography:Orci was born in Mexico City to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother. His mother had left Cuba for Mexico after Fidel Castro came to power. He is the older brother of screenwriter-producer J....
, Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman is an American film and television screenwriter and producer.Kurtzman was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where he met his high school friend and long time collaborator Roberto Orci...
, and series newcomer Ehren Kruger
Ehren Kruger
-Life and career:Kruger was raised in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended college at New York University. He attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, graduating in 1990....
. Shooting took place from May to November 2008, with locations in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, as well as air bases in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
.
Revenge of the Fallen was released on June 24, 2009, and was a huge box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
success, setting records upon release, and grossing a total of $402 million in North America and $836 million worldwide. It was the second most successful film of 2009 (behind Avatar) and 12th overall domestically, and the 28th highest-grossing film of all time and fourth highest of the year (behind Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a 2009 fantasy film directed by David Yates and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman and David Barron...
, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, also known as Ice Age 3, is a 2009 3-D computer animated film. It is the third installment of the Ice Age series, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox...
) internationally. Despite its success at the box office, the film was received poorly by critics, and won three awards at the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards
30th Golden Raspberry Awards
The 30th Golden Raspberry Awards or Razzies were held on March 6, 2010 in Hollywood to honor the worst films of 2009. The nominations were announced on February 1...
ceremony, including Worst Picture. A third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, was released on June 29, 2011, in 3-D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
.
Plot
Thousands of years ago, the Dynasty of PrimesOriginal thirteen Transformers
In the fictional Transformers universe, there were Thirteen Primes created by the Transformer deity Primus before he went on to create the rest of the Transformers race...
traveled the galaxy to create Energon with sun-absorbing machines called Sun Harvesters. The Dynasty follow a law that no sun can be destroyed if it has life on one of its planets. However, one of the Primes broke this law by setting up a Harvester on Earth in 17,000 B.C. The rest of the Dynasty named him The Fallen
Fallen (Transformers)
The Fallen is a fictional character in the Transformers universes. According to Hasbro, he was formerly known as Megatronus Prime, and is a multiversal singularity, meaning that while he exists across the multiverse, he has no alternate-universe counterpart.-Character history:Although the Fallen's...
, and sacrificed themselves to hide the "Matrix of Leadership", the key to start the Harvester.
Two years after the events of the first film, Sam Witwicky is going to college, and the Autobot
Autobot
Autobot, a faction of sentient robots from the planet Cybertron, are usually the main protagonists in the fictional universe of the Transformers, a collection of various toys, graphic novels, paperback books, cartoons and movies first introduced in 1984. In all but one Transformer story, the...
s have joined the U.S military to create a classifed team, NEST (Network Elements: Supporters and Transformers), an elite joint military organization from the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, selected from the world's top elite soldiers led by Optimus Prime
Optimus Prime
Optimus Prime is a fictional character from the Transformers franchise. Prime is the leader of the autobots, a faction of transforming robots from the planet Cybertron. The autobots are constantly waging war against a rival faction of transforming robots called Decepticons...
, Major William Lennox and General Morshower, to eradicate Decepticons from all over the globe. While packing for college, Sam finds a shard of the All Spark, which "uploads" its Cybertronian knowledge into Sam's mind. Sam gives the shard to his girlfriend Mikaela Banes
Mikaela Banes
Mikaela Banes is a fictional character from the Transformers universe. She is differentiated from "typical" women in her age group, having inherited mechanical skills from her father, Cal, a grease monkey and paroled car thief...
for safekeeping, and leaves his guardian Bumblebee
Bumblebee (Transformers)
Bumblebee is the name of several fictional characters from the various Transformers universes. In most incarnations, Bumblebee is a small, yellow Autobot with the altmode of a compact car.- Transformers: Generation 1 :...
behind.
In Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, the NEST Team encounters Demolishor
Demolishor
Demolishor is the name of several different fictional characters in the various Transformers universes.-Transformers: Armada:Demolishor is one of the earliest created Decepticons of the toyline; and in the storyline, also one of the first to come to Earth from his homeworld - the fictional planet...
and Sideways. Sideswipe and Optimus take down Demolishor and Sideways, but bring damage and destruction to the public. Demolishor warns Optimus of The Fallen's return before his execution. Reporting to NEST's base in Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean at 7 degrees, 26 minutes south latitude. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory [BIOT] and is positioned at 72°23' east longitude....
, the Autobots are patronized by U.S. National Security Advisor
National Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
Galloway for their actions in Shanghai. Soundwave
Soundwave (Transformers)
Soundwave is the name of several characters in the various series Transformers series. His most famous disguise is that of a microcassette recorder and has an iconic voice done by a vocoder.-Transformers: Generation 1:...
, the Decepticon's communications officer, hacks into a U.S military satellite, and overhears both the location of Megatron's corpse and the Allspark shard that Optimus removed from Megatron in the first film. After Ravage
Ravage (Transformers)
Ravage is the name of several fictional characters in the Transformers universes. Due to the inability to trademark the common word "ravage", he is sometimes called Battle Ravage, Command Ravage or Tripredacus Agent...
retrieves the Allspark's shard, it is used to resurrect Megatron's corpse at the Laurentian Abyss
Laurentian Abyss
The Laurentian Abyss is an underwater depression off the eastern coast of Canada in the Atlantic Ocean. Not a trench, but more of an "underwater valley", it is estimated to be at most ~6,000 meters in depth...
. Megatron then flies to the Decepticon flagship
Flagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, reflecting the custom of its commander, characteristically a flag officer, flying a distinguishing flag...
Nemesis, where The Fallen instructs him to kill Optimus and capture Sam, as Sam has knowledge that can lead the Decepticons to the Matrix of Leadership.
In college, Sam meets his roommate Leo Spitz, who owns a conspiracy website related to the Transformers' existence. Sam eventually starts seeing and scribbling visions of Cybertronian symbols and having a mental breakdown
Mental breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
. At Mikaela's shop, Wheelie
Wheelie (Transformers)
Wheelie is the name of two different fictional characters in the Transformers series.-Generation 1:The first Wheelie is a young Autobot who turns into a car. He has a distinctive style of speech, in which he rhymes his sentences while speaking in a high pitched voice, making him sound like a child....
tries to steal the shard, but Mikaela captures him and leaves to see Sam in Princeton. She arrives just as Sam is attacked by the Pretender
Pretenders (Transformers)
Pretenders is a subline within the Transformers toy line, introduced in 1988. The concept behind the toy was that the Transformers were capable of disguising their robotic forms through the use of synthetic organic outer shells.-Cloudburst:...
Alice. Mikaela, Sam and Leo flee and eventually kill Alice, but are then captured by the Decepticon Grindor, who drops them off in an abandoned warehouse. The Decepticons brutally torture Sam to obtain the whereabouts of the Matrix, but the only way to find it is to cut his head off to get to his brain. Optimus and Bumblebee arrive and battle the Decepticons, with Optimus taking Sam into a forest where the Decepticons battle him. Optimus is badly wounded but manages to kill Grindor and wound Starscream
Starscream
Starscream is a fictional character in the Transformers franchise. He is one of the most prolific characters in the Transformers fictional work, appearing in almost all incarnations of the story. Starscream is usually portrayed with the same characterization...
by ripping his arm off, before Optimus is killed by Megatron. The humans flee with Bumblebee and the Autobot
Autobot
Autobot, a faction of sentient robots from the planet Cybertron, are usually the main protagonists in the fictional universe of the Transformers, a collection of various toys, graphic novels, paperback books, cartoons and movies first introduced in 1984. In all but one Transformer story, the...
twins, Skids and Mudflap. The NEST team, shocked by their loss, brings Optimus' body to their New Jersey base. Galloway arrives with the news that NEST is being decommissioned after the arrival of the Decepticons.
Meanwhile, the Decepticons kidnap Sam's parents in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. The Fallen taps into media signals and broadcasts a demand that the people of Earth deliver Sam to the Decepticons or be annihilated. Leo suggests to Sam that his online rival "RoboWarrior" may be able to help. When the trio find him, they discover that RoboWarrior is actually Agent Simmons from the now defunct Sector Seven. Simmons reveals that the Transformers have been on Earth for millennia and convinces Wheelie to reveal a group of Transformers known as the Seekers. They find and revive the elderly Jetfire
Jetfire
Jetfire is the name of several fictional characters from the Transformers universes. He is nearly always depicted as an Autobot with jet or space shuttle alternate mode.-Transformers: Generation 1:...
. Originally a Decepticon, Jetfire reveals to have changed sides to the Autobots, and teleports the group to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
.
Following several clues, the trio find the Tomb of the Primes in Petra
Petra
Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited...
. When Sam touches The Matrix it crumbles to dust, but Sam puts the sand in a pouch. The Decepticons arrive and battle the Autobots and NEST, who are aided by the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
, Egyptian and Jordanian military forces. The Constructicon
Constructicons
right|thumb|Scavenger, Bonecrusher, Longhaul, Scrapper & Mixmaster - five of the original six Constructicons The Constructicons are a group of fictional characters from the various Transformers continuities...
Devastator
Devastator (Transformers)
Devastator is the name of several fictional characters in the various Transformers universes. For legal-political reasons, Hasbro now adds a modifier to the character's name on newer toy packages, such as Constructicon Devastator....
uncovers the Sun Harvester from a pyramid but is killed by a railgun
Railgun
A railgun is an entirely electrical gun that accelerates a conductive projectile along a pair of metal rails using the same principles as the homopolar motor. Railguns use two sliding or rolling contacts that permit a large electric current to pass through the projectile. This current interacts...
strike ordered by Simmons. Epps orders an air strike from F-16s, A-10s, and a B-1 Lancer
B-1 Lancer
The Rockwell B-1 LancerThe name "Lancer" is only applied to the B-1B version, after the program was revived. is a four-engine variable-sweep wing strategic bomber used by the United States Air Force...
, taking out all of the Decepticons. Sam makes a dash for Optimus Prime's body, but is shot and killed by Megatron before the Decepticon is overwhelmed and flees. Before dying, in limbo, Sam is told by the Dynasty of the Primes that the Matrix of Leadership is not a physical item to be found, but a right that he has earned.
Sam is resurrected from the dead, and when the Matrix reforms itself from the sand in his pouch, he resurrects Optimus. The Fallen then teleports, grabs the Matrix and flies to activate the Sun Harvester. After an attack by their artillery and air support fails due to The Fallen's telekinesis, Jetfire offers his parts to Optimus before dying of wounds inflicted by Scorponok
Scorponok
Scorponok is the name shared by several fictional characters in the various Transformers universes. All are Decepticons that turn into Scorpoins.- Transformers: Generation 1:...
. Using a battle armor made with Jetfire's remains, Optimus destroys the Harvester, defeats Megatron and kills The Fallen. Megatron, who has been severely damaged in the battle, follows Starscream's suggestion and retreats. The Autobots, NEST, Sam, and his friends return to the US, where Sam continues to attend college, while Optimus Prime narrates an ending monologue detailing recent events, so the shared past of humanity and the Autobots will not be forgotten as it was before.
In two post-credit scenes, Sam is shown saying goodbye to Mikaela before returning to college.
Cast
- Shia LaBeoufShia LaBeoufShia Saide LaBeouf is an American actor who became known among younger audiences for his part in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens and made his film debut in Holes . In 2007, he starred as the leads in Disturbia and Transformers...
as Sam Witwicky - Megan FoxMegan FoxMegan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
as Mikaela BanesMikaela BanesMikaela Banes is a fictional character from the Transformers universe. She is differentiated from "typical" women in her age group, having inherited mechanical skills from her father, Cal, a grease monkey and paroled car thief... - Josh DuhamelJosh DuhamelJoshua David "Josh" Duhamel is an American actor and former fashion model. He first achieved acting success in 1999 as Leo du Pres on ABC's All My Children and later as the chief of security, Danny McCoy, on NBC's Las Vegas...
as U.S. Army MajorMajor (United States)In the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, major is a field grade military officer rank just above the rank of captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel...
William Lennox
- Tyrese Gibson as USAF Master SergeantMaster SergeantA master sergeant is the military rank for a senior non-commissioned officer in some armed forces.-Israel Defense Forces:Rav samal rishoninsignia IDF...
Robert Epps
- John TurturroJohn TurturroJohn Michael Turturro is an American actor, writer and director known for his roles in the films Do the Right Thing , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , Quiz Show , The Big Lebowski , O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Transformers film series...
as Seymour Simmons - Ramón Rodríguez as Leo Spitz
- Kevin DunnKevin DunnKevin Dunn is an American actor who has appeared in supporting roles in a number of films since the 1980s. His roles include Colonel Hicks in the 1998 version of Godzilla, Sam Witwicky's father in Transformers, and Oscar Galvin, the primary antagonist in the 2010 action thriller...
as Ron Witwicky - Julie WhiteJulie WhiteJulie White is an American actress. She is known for her role in Grace Under Fire and for her role as Judy Witwicky in the Transformers film series.-Personal life:...
as Judy Witwicky - Isabel LucasIsabel LucasIsabel Lucas is an Australian actress and model perhaps best known for her role as Tasha Andrews on the Australian television soap opera Home and Away...
as Alice - John Benjamin HickeyJohn Benjamin HickeyJohn Benjamin Hickey is an American actor with a career in stage, film and television. He won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Felix Turner in The Normal Heart....
as Theodore Galloway - Glenn MorshowerGlenn MorshowerGlenn Grove Morshower is an American actor best known for playing Secret Service Agent Aaron Pierce on the Fox action thriller drama series 24...
as USMC GeneralGeneralA general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Morshower - Matthew MarsdenMatthew MarsdenMatthew Marsden is an English actor and singer. In the United Kingdom he is widely remembered for playing the character Chris Collins in the popular soap opera, Coronation Street. However, he is best known in the USA as a film actor. He has played the roles of Paris in Helen of Troy, Dr...
as Graham - Rainn WilsonRainn WilsonRainn Dietrich Wilson is an American actor and comedian. He is primarily known for his role as the egomaniacal Dwight Schrute on the American version of the television comedy The Office...
as Professor R. A. Colan
Voice Actors
- Peter CullenPeter CullenPeter Claver Cullen is a Canadian voice actor, known as the voice of Eeyore in the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise, Optimus Prime and Ironhide in the original Transformers series, and the narrator in both of the original American Voltron series...
as Optimus PrimeOptimus PrimeOptimus Prime is a fictional character from the Transformers franchise. Prime is the leader of the autobots, a faction of transforming robots from the planet Cybertron. The autobots are constantly waging war against a rival faction of transforming robots called Decepticons... - Mark Ryan as JetfireJetfireJetfire is the name of several fictional characters from the Transformers universes. He is nearly always depicted as an Autobot with jet or space shuttle alternate mode.-Transformers: Generation 1:...
- Reno WilsonReno WilsonRoy Reno Wilson is an American actor and voice artist who has appeared in a number of television programs and films. His first television role was on the NBC sitcom The Cosby Show, where he portrayed Theo Huxtable's college friend Howard during Seasons 5 and 6 of the series...
as MudflapMudflap (Transformers)-Transformers: Cybertron:Mudflap transforms into a construction crane. In the Japanese version of the series; Transformers: Galaxy Force, the character is called Demolishor.... - Jess HarnellJess HarnellJess Q. Harnell is an American voice actor and singer, best known for voicing Wakko Warner on Animaniacs. Harnell has been the announcer for America's Funniest Home Videos since 1998.-Life and acting career:...
as IronhideIronhideIronhide is the name of several different fictional characters in the Transformers universes. According to the original creator of the Transformers names, Bob Budiansky, Ironhide was named after the television series Ironside.-Transformers: Generation 1:... - Robert FoxworthRobert FoxworthRobert Heath Foxworth is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life and career:Foxworth was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Erna Beth , a writer, and John Howard Foxworth, a roofing contractor...
as RatchetRatchet (Transformers)Ratchet is the name of several characters in the Transformers universes. According to the original creator of the Transformers names, Bob Budiansky, Ratchet was named after the character of Nurse Ratched from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The name Ratchet is almost always portrayed as... - André SogliuzzoAndré SogliuzzoAndré Sogliuzzo is an Italian-American voice actor, comedian, and actor.-Animated roles:* American Dad! – Dill* Avatar: The Last Airbender – King Bumi, Hakoda, Haru* The Batman – Duncan* Brandy & Mr...
as Sideswipe - Grey DeLisleGrey DeLisleGrey DeLisle is an American voice actress, singer-songwriter, and comedienne. To date, she has released four solo albums and has featured on the tribute album Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash and film soundtrack of Loggerheads...
as ArceeArceeArcee is the name of a fictional character in the Transformers franchise. She is a female Autobot, usually pink in color. Being the most famous of the Female Transformers, she has two primary forms... - Hugo WeavingHugo WeavingHugo Wallace Weaving is a Nigerian born, English-Australian film actor and voice artist. He is best known for his roles as Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy, Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "V" in V for Vendetta, and performances in numerous Australian character dramas.-Early...
as Megatron - Tony ToddTony ToddAnthony T. "Tony" Todd is an American actor and movie producer, known for his height of 6'5", and deep voice. He is well known for playing the Candyman in the horror movie franchise of the same name, William Bludworth in Final Destination and for guest starring roles on numerous television...
as The FallenFallen (Transformers)The Fallen is a fictional character in the Transformers universes. According to Hasbro, he was formerly known as Megatronus Prime, and is a multiversal singularity, meaning that while he exists across the multiverse, he has no alternate-universe counterpart.-Character history:Although the Fallen's... - Charlie Adler as StarscreamStarscream (Transformers)Starscream is a fictional character in the Transformers franchise. He is one of the most prolific characters in the Transformers fictional work, appearing in almost all incarnations of the story. Starscream is usually portrayed with the same characterization...
- Frank WelkerFrank WelkerFranklin Wendell "Frank" Welker is an American actor who specializes in voice acting and has contributed character voices and other vocal effects to American television and motion pictures.-Acting career:...
as SoundwaveSoundwave (Transformers)Soundwave is the name of several characters in the various series Transformers series. His most famous disguise is that of a microcassette recorder and has an iconic voice done by a vocoder.-Transformers: Generation 1:...
/DevastatorDevastator (Transformers)Devastator is the name of several fictional characters in the various Transformers universes. For legal-political reasons, Hasbro now adds a modifier to the character's name on newer toy packages, such as Constructicon Devastator....
/Reedman/Grindor - Tom KennyTom KennyThomas James "Tom" Kenny is an American actor, voice actor and comedian. He is especially known for his long-running-role as SpongeBob SquarePants in the television series of the same name, as well as the live-action character Patchy the Pirate, Gary the Snail and the French narrator based on...
as WheelieWheelie (Transformers)Wheelie is the name of two different fictional characters in the Transformers series.-Generation 1:The first Wheelie is a young Autobot who turns into a car. He has a distinctive style of speech, in which he rhymes his sentences while speaking in a high pitched voice, making him sound like a child....
/SkidsSkids (Transformers)Skids is the name used for four characters in the Transformers Universes. Due to trademark reasons, the name was modified to "Skid-Z" for it to be used on new characters and an "Autobot" prefix was added when the original Skids toy was reissued and when he became an Alternator.-Transformers:... - Calvin Wimmer as DemolishorDemolishorDemolishor is the name of several different fictional characters in the various Transformers universes.-Transformers: Armada:Demolishor is one of the earliest created Decepticons of the toyline; and in the storyline, also one of the first to come to Earth from his homeworld - the fictional planet...
(credited as "Wheelbot") - John DiCrosta as Scalpel
- Michael YorkMichael York (actor)Michael York, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:York was born in Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the son of Florence Edith May , a musician; and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, a Llandovery born Welsh ex-Royal Artillery British Army officer and executive with Marks and Spencer department stores...
as Prime #1 - Kevin Michael RichardsonKevin Michael RichardsonKevin Michael Richardson is an American actor and voice actor who currently stars as Cleveland Brown, Jr. in The Cleveland Show...
as Prime #2/RampageRampage (Transformers)Rampage is the name of several different fictional characters in the Transformers universes.-Transformers: Generation 1:Rampage is a fictional character of the Transformers Predacons, with his alternative form being a mechanical tiger....
(credited as "Skipjack") - Robin Atkin DownesRobin Atkin DownesBorn in London, England, Robin Atkin Downes is an English actor who is one of the most prolific voice-over actors in Los Angeles. He is well known for his work in film, television and voice acting...
as Prime #3
Development
In September 2007, Paramount announced a late June 2009 release date for the sequel to Transformers. A major hurdle that was overcome during the film's production was the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....
, as well as possible strikes by the Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
and the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
.
Bay began creating animatics of action sequences featuring characters rejected for the 2007 film. This would allow animators to complete sequences if the Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
went on strike in July 2008, which ultimately did not happen. The director considered making a small project in between Transformers and its sequel, but knew "you have your baby and you don't want someone else to take it". The film was given a $200 million budget, which was $50 million more than the 2007 film, and some of the action scenes rejected for the original were written into the sequel, such as the way Optimus is reintroduced in this film. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
Lorenzo di Bonaventura
-Life and career:He spent the 1990s as an executive at Warner Bros. Pictures, eventually rising to President of Worldwide Production. His production company di Bonaventura Pictures is based at Paramount Pictures. His tenure at Warner Bros. included discovering and shepherding The Matrix into...
said the studio proposed filming two sequels simultaneously, but he and Bay concurred that was not the right direction for the series.
Writers Roberto Orci
Roberto Orci
Roberto Gaston Orci is a Mexican-American film producer, television producer, and screenwriter.-Biography:Orci was born in Mexico City to a Mexican father and a Cuban mother. His mother had left Cuba for Mexico after Fidel Castro came to power. He is the older brother of screenwriter-producer J....
and Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman is an American film and television screenwriter and producer.Kurtzman was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, where he met his high school friend and long time collaborator Roberto Orci...
originally passed on the sequel because of a busy schedule. The studio began courting other writers in May 2007, but as they were unimpressed with their pitches, they convinced Orci and Kurtzman to return. The studio also signed on Ehren Kruger
Ehren Kruger
-Life and career:Kruger was raised in Alexandria, Virginia, and attended college at New York University. He attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, graduating in 1990....
, as he impressed Bay and Hasbro president Brian Goldner
Brian Goldner
Brian Goldner is the chief executive officer of the American toy company Hasbro.-Early life:Goldner's father Norman came from Utica, New York, while his mother Marjorie grew up in Mississippi. They married in 1961 after she came north to work for UNICEF, and settled in Huntington...
with his knowledge of the Transformers mythology, and because he was friends with Orci and Kurtzman. The writing trio were paid $8 million. Screenwriting was interrupted by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike
The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, more commonly referred to as simply the Writers' Strike, was a strike by the Writers Guild of America, East and the Writers Guild of America, West ....
, but to avoid production delays the writers spent two weeks writing a treatment
Film treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
, which they handed in the night before the strike began, and Bay expanded the outline into a sixty-page scriptment
Scriptment
A scriptment is a written work by a movie or television screenwriter that combines elements of a script and treatment, especially the dialogue elements, which are formatted the same as in a screenplay. It is a more elaborate document than a standard draft treatment...
, fleshing out the action, adding more jokes, as well as selecting the majority of new characters. The three writers spent four months finishing the screenplay while "locked" in two hotel rooms by Bay: Kruger wrote in his own room and the trio would check on each others' work twice a day.
Orci described the film's theme as "being away from home", with the Autobots contemplating living on Earth as they cannot restore Cybertron
Cybertron
Cybertron is a fictional planet, the homeworld of the Transformers in the various fictional incarnations of the metaseries and toyline by Hasbro. In the Japanese series, the planet is referred to as "Cybertron" pronounced as セイバートロン Seibātoron...
, while Sam goes to college. He wanted the focus between the robots and humans "much more evenly balanced", "the stakes [to] be higher", and more focused on the science fiction elements. Lorenzo di Bonaventura
Lorenzo di Bonaventura
-Life and career:He spent the 1990s as an executive at Warner Bros. Pictures, eventually rising to President of Worldwide Production. His production company di Bonaventura Pictures is based at Paramount Pictures. His tenure at Warner Bros. included discovering and shepherding The Matrix into...
said that in total, there are around forty robots in the film, while ILM's Scott Farrar has said there are actually sixty. Orci added he wanted to "modulate" the humor more, and felt he managed the more "outrageous" jokes by balancing it with a more serious plot approach to the Transformers' mythology. Bay concurred that he wanted to please fans by making the tone darker, and that "moms will think its safe enough to bring the kids back out to the movies" despite his trademark sense of humor.
Before Transformers was released, producer Tom DeSanto
Tom DeSanto
Tom DeSanto is an American film producer and screenwriter. DeSanto is best known for his work with long time friend Bryan Singer, especially with his contributions to the first two X-Men movies.-Education:...
had "a very cool idea" to introduce the Dinobots
Dinobots
Dinobots is the name of several teams of characters in the fictional Transformers Universe. The groups are made up of several robots, each of whose transformed mode is that of a dinosaur or similar prehistoric animal. They are called Dinotrons in the Japanese version; and ' in the Japanese dub of...
, while Bay was interested in an aircraft carrier
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
, which was dropped from the 2007 film. Orci claimed they did not incorporate these characters into Revenge of the Fallen because they could not think of a way to justify the Dinobots' choice of form, and were unable to fit in the aircraft carrier. Orci also admitted he was also dismissive of the Dinobots because he does not like dinosaurs. "I recognize I am weird in that department", he said, but he became fonder of them during filming because of their popularity with fans. He added "I couldn't see why a Transformer would feel the need to disguise himself in front of a bunch of lizards. Movie-wise, I mean. Once the general audience is fully on board with the whole thing, maybe Dinobots in the future." However, upon being asked on the subject, Michael Bay said he hated the Dinobots and they had never been in consideration for being featured in the movies.
During production, Bay attempted to create a misinformation campaign to increase debate over what Transformers would be appearing in the film, as well as to try to throw fans off from the story of the film. However, Orci confessed it had generally not been working. The studio went as far as to censor MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
and Comic Book Resources
Comic Book Resources
Comic Book Resources, also known as CBR is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book-related news and discussion.-History:Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1996 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland had created to discuss DC...
interviews with Mowry and Furman, who confirmed Arcee and The Fallen would be in the picture. Bay told Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
that Megatron would not be resurrected, claiming his new tank form was a toy-only character, only for Orci to confirm Megatron would return in the film in February 2009. Bay also claimed he faked the leaking of daily call sheet
Daily call sheet
The daily call sheet is a filmmaking term for a sheet of paper issued to the cast and crew of a film production, created by an assistant director, informing them where and when they should report for a particular day of shooting. Call sheets also include other useful information such as contact...
s from the first week of filming, that revealed Ramón Rodríguez's casting, and the appearance of Jetfire and the twins.
Filming
The former Hughes AircraftHughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...
soundstages at Playa Vista served for filming the majority of interior scenes. From June 2, three days were spent on an action sequence at the Bethlehem Steel
Bethlehem Steel
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation , based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based U.S. Steel. After a decline in the U.S...
site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,...
, which was used to represent a portion of Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
. Afterwards, they shot at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum 's annex at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Chantilly area of Fairfax County, Virginia, United States....
. The crew moved to Philadelphia on June 9, where they shot at the defunct PECO
Exelon
Exelon Corporation is an electricity generating and distributing company headquartered in the Chase Tower in the Chicago Loop area of Chicago. It was created in October, 2000 by the merger of PECO Energy Company and Unicom, of Philadelphia and Chicago respectively. Unicom owned Commonwealth Edison...
Richmond power station, the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, Drexel University
Drexel University
Drexel University is a private research university with the main campus located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a noted financier and philanthropist. Drexel offers 70 full-time undergraduate programs and accelerated degrees...
, the Eastern State Penitentiary
Eastern State Penitentiary
The Eastern State Penitentiary is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and was operational from 1829 until 1971...
, Fairmount Park
Fairmount Park
Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of 63 parks, with , all overseen by the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation, successor to the Fairmount Park Commission in 2010.-Fairmount Park proper:...
, Philadelphia City Hall
Philadelphia City Hall
Philadelphia City Hall is the house of government for the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At , including the statue, it is the world's second-tallest masonry building, only shorter than Mole Antonelliana in Turin...
, Rittenhouse Square
Rittenhouse Square
Rittenhouse Square is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century in central Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The park cuts off 19th Street at Walnut Street and also at a half block above Manning Street. Its boundaries are...
, and historic Chancellor Street (which represents a street near Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde
The Place de la Concorde in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.- History :...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
), and Wanamaker's
Wanamaker's
Wanamaker's department store was the first department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the first department stores in the United States. At its zenith in the early 20th century, there were two major Wanamaker department stores, one in Philadelphia and one in New York City at Broadway...
. They moved to Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
on June 22. Filming there angered some students at the University of Pennsylvania, believing Bay had chosen to reshoot scenes at Princeton and script Princeton's name in the film. However, neither the University of Pennsylvania nor Princeton gave Bay permission to be named in the film because of a "funny 'mom' scene" that both felt "did not represent the school" in which Sam's mother ingests Marijuana-laced brownies for comedic effect.
Second unit
In film, the second unit is a team that shoots subsidiary footage for a motion picture. Its work is distinct from that of the first unit, which shoots all scenes involving principal actors...
scenes because of the potential 2008 Screen Actors Guild strike
2008 Screen Actors Guild strike
The Screen Actors Guild labor dispute of 2008-2009 is an ongoing labor dispute that could lead to a strike by the Screen Actors Guild, the American labor union representing actors in the film industry...
. Shooting for the Shanghai battle later continued in Long Beach, California
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
. The crew shot at Holloman Air Force Base
Holloman Air Force Base
Holloman Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located six miles southwest of the central business district of Alamogordo, a city in Otero County, New Mexico, United States. The base was named in honor of Col. George V. Holloman, a pioneer in guided missile research...
and White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range
White Sands Missile Range is a rocket range of almost in parts of five counties in southern New Mexico. The largest military installation in the United States, WSMR includes the and the WSMR Otera Mesa bombing range...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
during September. The two locations were used for Qatar
Qatar
Qatar , also known as the State of Qatar or locally Dawlat Qaṭar, is a sovereign Arab state, located in the Middle East, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the much larger Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its...
in the 2007 film, and stood in for Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in this film. A scale model
Scale model
A scale model is a physical model, a representation or copy of an object that is larger or smaller than the actual size of the object, which seeks to maintain the relative proportions of the physical size of the original object. Very often the scale model is used as a guide to making the object in...
in Los Angeles was also used for some close-ups of the pyramids. Shooting at Tucson International Airport
Tucson International Airport
Tucson International Airport is a joint civil-military public airport located six miles south of the central business district of Tucson, in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and is the second largest and busiest airport in Arizona, after Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.- Overview...
and the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group's aircraft boneyard
Aircraft boneyard
Aircraft boneyard is a term for a storage area for aircraft that are retired from service. Most aircraft at boneyards are either kept for storage or turned into scrap metal...
took place in October under the fake working title Prime Directive
Prime Directive
In the universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet's General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets...
(a reference to Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
). This location was delayed from July. Filming also took place at Camp Pendleton and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
Davis–Monthan Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located within the city limits, and approximately south-southeast of downtown, Tucson, Arizona....
.
The first unit (including Shia LaBeouf) then shot for three days in Egypt itself, at the Giza pyramid complex
Giza pyramid complex
The Giza Necropolis is an archaeological site on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments includes the three pyramid complexes known as the Great Pyramids, the massive sculpture known as the Great Sphinx, several cemeteries, a workers' village and an...
and Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
. For security's sake, the shoot was highly secretive, but according to Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a crew of 150 Americans and "several dozen local Egyptians" ensured a "remarkably smooth" shoot. Bay earned the Egyptian government's approval to film at the pyramids by contacting Zahi Hawass
Zahi Hawass
Zahi Hawass is an Egyptian archaeologist, an Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs. He has also worked at archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, the Western Desert, and the Upper Nile Valley....
, who Bay recalled "put his arm around me and said, 'Don't hurt my pyramids. A 50 feet (15.2 m) camera crane was used at the location. Four days were then spent in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
; the Royal Jordanian Air Force
Royal Jordanian Air Force
The Royal Jordanian Air Force is the air force branch of the Jordanian Armed Forces.-Early days:...
aided in filming at Petra
Petra
Petra is a historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma'an that is famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduits system. Established sometime around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan as well as its most visited...
, Wadi Rum
Wadi Rum
Wadi Rum also known as The Valley of the Moon is a valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in south Jordan at to the east of Aqaba. It is the largest wadi in Jordan. The name Rum most likely comes from an Aramaic root meaning 'high' or 'elevated'. To reflect its proper Arabic...
and Salt
Salt, Jordan
Salt is an ancient agricultural town and administrative centre in west-central Jordan. It is on the old main highway leading from Amman to Jerusalem. Situated in the Balqa highland, about 790–1100 metres above sea level, the town is built in the crook of three hills, close to the Jordan River...
because one of the country's princes liked the 2007 film. Filming continued at the Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde
The Place de la Concorde in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.- History :...
in Paris, with second unit shots of the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
and the Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe
-The design:The astylar design is by Jean Chalgrin , in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture . Major academic sculptors of France are represented in the sculpture of the Arc de Triomphe: Jean-Pierre Cortot; François Rude; Antoine Étex; James Pradier and Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire...
. The cast and crew finished on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis
USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)
USS John C. Stennis is the seventh Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier in the United States Navy, named for Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi. She was commissioned on 9 December 1995...
on November 2, 2008.
Bay stated he found the climax of the 2007 film to be weak, partly because it was shot across five different city blocks, making the action confusing and hard to follow. On this film, the final battle in Egypt was devised to make it easier to see what was going on.
Effects
Hasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
became more involved in the designs of the robots than in the 2007 film, and they and Takara Tomy
Takara Tomy
is a Japanese toy, children's merchandise and entertainment company created from the March 2006 merger of two companies: Tomy and long-time rival, Takara...
suggested to the filmmakers that combining robots be the main draw for the sequel. They insisted on keeping the alternate modes of some of the returning characters similar, so people would not have to buy toys of the same characters. Bay used real F-16 Fighting Falcon and tank fire when filming the battles. Many of the new Autobot cars supplied by General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
were brightly colored to look distinctive on screen. Revenge of the Fallen features 46 robots, while the original movie had 14.
Scott Farrar returned as visual effects supervisor and anticipated moodier use of lighting as well as deeper roles for the Decepticon
Decepticon
The Decepticons are usually depicted as the antagonists in the fictional universes of the Transformers stoyline and related comics and cartoons, and the enemies of the Autobots and the University of California Davis Aggies...
s. He stated that with the bigger deadline, post-production will be a "circus". The producers expected that with a bigger budget and the special effects worked out, the Transformers would have a larger role. Peter Cullen
Peter Cullen
Peter Claver Cullen is a Canadian voice actor, known as the voice of Eeyore in the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise, Optimus Prime and Ironhide in the original Transformers series, and the narrator in both of the original American Voltron series...
recalled, "Don Murphy
Don Murphy
Don Murphy is an American film producer who produced Natural Born Killers and many other films, including Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.-Personal background:...
mentioned to me, 'Only because of the tremendous expense to animate Optimus Prime, he'll be in just a certain amount of [the 2007 film].' But he said, 'Next time, if the movie is a success, you're gonna be in it a ton.'" Michael Bay hoped to include more close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
s of the robots' faces. The heads had to be designed with more pieces in order to express emotions in a more convincing way. Farrar said the animators implemented more "splashes and the hits and the fighting on dirt or moving, banging into trees, [...] things splinter and break, they [the robots] spit, they outgas, they sweat, they snort." Shooting in the higher resolution of IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
required up to 72 hours to render a single frame of animation. While ILM used 15 terabyte
Terabyte
The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...
s for the 2007 film, on the sequel they used 140. Particularly problematic effects were the lighting, with scenes such as Jetfire inside the Smithsonian requiring 41 light sources, and the destruction of the pyramid, which appears in about five shots but required seven months alone to simulate the behavior of the blocks.
Orci hinted the majority of the Decepticons were entirely computer-generated in both robot and alternate modes, making it easier to write additional scenes for them in post-production.
Rendering the Devastator took over 85% of ILM's render farm
Render farm
A render farm is a computer cluster built to render computer-generated imagery , typically for film and television visual effects, using off-line batch processing. This is different from a render wall, which is a networked, tiled display used for real-time rendering...
capacity, and the complexity of the scene and having to render it at IMAX resolution caused one computer to "explode".
Music
The score to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was composed by Steve JablonskySteve Jablonsky
Steven Jablonsky is an American music composer for film, television and video games. He has been the music director for all the Michael Bay movies produced and directed since The Island...
, who reunited with director Michael Bay to record his score with a 71-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony
Hollywood Studio Symphony
The Hollywood Studio Symphony is the credited name of the symphony orchestra behind many major soundtracks, including The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sucker Punch, Jurassic Park 3, Last Samurai, Pirates of the Caribbean, We Are Marshall, Spider-Man 2, Lost and The...
at the Sony Scoring Stage. Jablonsky and his score producer Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
composed various interpretations of a song by Linkin Park
Linkin Park
Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. Formed in 1996, the band rose to international fame with their debut album, Hybrid Theory, which was certified Diamond by the RIAA in 2005 and multi-platinum in several other countries...
called "New Divide
New Divide
"New Divide" is a song by American rock band Linkin Park. The song is released as a single and was recorded specifically for Michael Bay's film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The song serves as the film's theme, and was released as a single on May 18, 2009...
" for the score.
Marketing
An additional $150 million was spent to market the film globally. HasbroHasbro
Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
's Revenge of the Fallen toy line included new molds of new and returning characters, as well as 2007 figures with new mold elements or new paint schemes. The first wave was released on May 30, although Bumblebee and Soundwave debuted beforehand. The second wave came in August 2009, which introduced toys such as 2¼-inch human action figures that fit inside the transforming robots, and non-transforming replicas of the cars that can be used on a race track. Product placement
Product placement
Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the...
partners on the film include Burger King
Burger King
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...
, 7-Eleven
7-Eleven
7-Eleven is part of an international chain of convenience stores, operating under Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd, which in turn is owned by Seven & I Holdings Co...
, LG phones
LG Group
LG Corp. is the second-largest South Korean conglomerate company following Samsung, and it is headquartered in the LG Twin Towers in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. LG produces electronics, chemicals, and telecommunications products and operates subsidiaries like LG Electronics, LG Display,...
, Kmart
Kmart
Kmart, sometimes styled as "K-Mart," is a chain of discount department stores. The chain acquired Sears in 2005, forming a new corporation under the name Sears Holdings Corporation. The company was founded in 1962 and is the third largest discount store chain in the world, behind Wal-Mart and...
, Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
and M&M's
M&M's
M&M's are dragée-like "colorful button-shaped candies" produced by Mars, Incorporated...
, as well as Jollibee
Jollibee
Jollibee Foods Corporation is the parent company of Jollibee, a fast-food restaurant chain based in the Philippines. Among JFC's popular brands are Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich, Red Ribbon, Caffe Ti-amo, Mang Inasal and Burger King...
in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
' financial troubles limited its involvement in promotion of the sequel, although Paramount acknowledged with or without GM, their marketing campaign was still very large and had the foundation of the 2007 film's success. Kyle Busch
Kyle Busch
Kyle Thomas Busch, is an American NASCAR driver and team owner. He currently drives the No. 18 Mars/Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Sprint Cup Series, the No. 18 Z-Line Designs/NOS Energy Drink Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs in the Nationwide Series, and the No...
drove a Revenge of the Fallen decorated car at Infineon Raceway
Infineon Raceway
Infineon Raceway, formerly Sears Point Raceway, is a road course and drag strip located on the landform known as Sears Point in the southern Sonoma Mountains near Sonoma, California, USA. The course is a complex series of twists and turns that go up and down the hills...
on June 21, 2009, while Josh Duhamel
Josh Duhamel
Joshua David "Josh" Duhamel is an American actor and former fashion model. He first achieved acting success in 1999 as Leo du Pres on ABC's All My Children and later as the chief of security, Danny McCoy, on NBC's Las Vegas...
drove a 2010 Camaro at the Indianapolis 500
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, also known as the Indianapolis 500, the 500 Miles at Indianapolis, the Indy 500 or The 500, is an American automobile race, held annually, typically on the last weekend in May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana...
. At the movie's launch in China, a version of Bumblebee was constructed using a Volkswagen Jetta
Volkswagen Jetta
Although the Golf had reached considerable success, in the North American markets, Volkswagen observed that the hatchback body style lacked some of the appeal to those who preferred the traditional three-box configuration...
.
Printed media
Chris Mowry and artist Alex MilneAlex Milne
Alex Milne is a Canadian comic book artist, best known for his work on various Transformers comic books.-Career:Graduating from Sheridan College, Milne debuted on the comics scene after being hired by Dreamwave Productions to pencil their Transformers: Energon series...
, who had collaborated on The Reign of Starscream comic book, reunited for IDW Publishing
IDW Publishing
IDW Publishing, also known as Idea + Design Works, LLC and IDW, is an American publisher of comic books and comic strip collections. The company was founded in 1999 and has been awarded the title "Publisher of the Year Under 5% Market Share" for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 by Diamond Comic...
's prequel to the film. Originally set to be a five part series entitled Destiny, it was split into two simultaneously published series, titled Alliance and Defiance. Alliance is drawn by Milne and began in December 2008: it focuses on the human and Autobot perspectives. Defiance, which started the following month, is drawn by Dan Khanna and is set before either film, showing the beginnings of the war.
After the 2007 film, and serving as a bridge between the two films, Alan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster is an American author of fantasy and science fiction. He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, and is also known for his novelizations of film scripts...
wrote Transformers: The Veiled Threat
Transformers: The Veiled Threat
Transformers: The Veiled Threat is a novel set in between the events of the 2007 movie Transformers and its 2009 sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Alan Dean Foster, author of another Transformers novel and the novelizations of both movies, is the author of this novel also.The 304 page...
, originally titled Infiltration. During the writing, Foster collaborated with IDW to make sure their stories did not contradict each other.
The first printed media directly related to the second film was a 32-page coloring and activity book by publisher HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, which became available on May 5, 2009 and was the first official source to openly give out key plot points to the film. On June 1, 2009 DK Publishing
Dorling Kindersley
Dorling Kindersley is an international publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 51 languages. It is currently part of the Penguin Group....
published a 96-page book entitled Transformers: The Movie Universe, which intended to provide factual data on the characters of the film.
On June 10, 2009 the comic book adaptation of the film, written by Simon Furman
Simon Furman
Simon Christopher Francis Furman is a comic book writer, particularly associated with of a number of notable Transformers comics for Marvel UK, Marvel US, Dreamwave, and most recently, IDW...
was released. Additionally, Alan Dean Foster also wrote the novelization
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
for the film. Meanwhile, Dan Jolley wrote Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: The Junior Novel, a 144-page book oriented at a younger audience than the one by Foster. Lastly, a book titled Transformers: The Art of the Movies, was released, documenting behind-the scenes aspects of the making of the film.
Other minor tie-in publications include Transformers Revenge of the Fallen: The Last Prime, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: The Reusable Sticker Book, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Made You Look!, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Rise of the Decepticons, Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Spot the 'Bots, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Mix and Match, Operation Autobot, When Robots Attack and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 2010 Wall Calendar.
Video game
Revenge of the Fallen video games are available on the following platforms:- PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (Developed by LuxofluxLuxofluxLuxoflux was an American video game developer. It was founded by Peter Morawiec and Adrian Stephens in January 1997, and was based in Santa Monica, California.-History:...
and published by ActivisionActivisionActivision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
) - Games for Windows (Developed by BeenoxBeenoxBeenox is a video game developer, established in Québec City, Québec. Founded in 2000 by Dominique Brown. Beenox has been awarded with the Quebec's Best Employer 2008 title and is among the Top 50 of the World’s best video game developers published in March 2008 by the Game Developers Research...
), which is similar to the PS3 and Xbox 360 version - Wii and PlayStation 2 (Developed by Krome StudiosKrome StudiosKrome Studios is an Australian video game company. Its headquarters are in Brisbane and it previously had offices in Adelaide and Melbourne. Krome Studios is best known for their Ty the Tasmanian Tiger games and for revitalising the Spyro the Dragon series...
) - PlayStation Portable (Developed by Savage Entertainment)
- Nintendo DS (Developed by Vicarious VisionsVicarious VisionsVicarious Visions is an American video game developer founded by the high school brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1990, which developed some PC and Game Boy Color games in late 90's and 2000. They later developed Terminus, which won two Independent Games Festival Awards in 1999...
), which is separated into two games, Autobots and Decepticons.
Release
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was premiered on June 8, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan. After its UK release on June 19, 2009, it was released in regular and IMAX theaters in North America on June 24 (though some theaters held limited-access advance screenings on June 22). Three of the action sequences were shot with IMAX cameras, and the IMAX release received additional scenes not seen in the regular theater version featuring robot fighting sequences. Although in an August 2008 posting Orci suggested that the IMAX footage would be 3D, Bay later said that considering himself an "old school" filmmaker, he found 3D gimmicky. He also added that shooting in IMAX was easier than using stereoscopicStereoscopy
Stereoscopy refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth...
cameras.
Critical reception
The film has received generally negative reviews from film critics. Based on 234 reviews collected by Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, Revenge of the Fallen received an average 20% overall approval rating (the original earned a 57%). Critical consensus was that the film was a "noisy, underplotted, and overlong special effects extravaganza that lacks a human touch." Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gave it an average score of 35 out of 100 from the 32 reviews it collected. In CinemaScore
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.-Background:...
polls, however, users gave the film a "B+", compared to the "A" that the original film had scored. Actor Shia LaBeouf was unimpressed with the film, stating, "We got lost. We tried to get bigger. It's what happens to sequels. It's like, how do you top the first one? You've got to go bigger. Michael Bay
Michael Bay
Michael Benjamin Bay is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing high-budget action films characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals and substantial practical special effects...
went so big that it became too big, and I think you lost the anchor of the movie...You lost a bit of the relationships. Unless you have those relationships, then the movie doesn't matter. Then it's just a bunch of robots fighting each other."
Michael Bay
Michael Bay
Michael Benjamin Bay is an American film director and producer. He is known for directing high-budget action films characterized by their fast edits, stylistic visuals and substantial practical special effects...
has admitted his disappointment with the movie and has apologized saying the movie was "crap" and blamed the 2007-2008 Writer's Strike saying "It was very hard to put (the sequel) together that quickly after the writers' strike (of 2007-08)". According to The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is Bay's worst-reviewed film, faring even worse than Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor (film)
Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American action drama war film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay...
. Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
described the film as "in-your-face, ear-splitting and unrelenting. It's easy to walk away feeling like you've spent 2½ hours in the mad, wild hydraulic embrace of a car compactor
Car crusher
A car crusher is an industrial device used to reduce the dimensions of derelict cars prior to transport for recycling.Car crushers are compactors and can be of two types: "pancake", where a scrap automobile is flattened by a huge descending hydraulically-powered plate, or the baling press type,...
".
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, who had given the 2007 film three stars, gave the sequel only one, calling it "...a horrible experience of unbearable length." Later in his review, Ebert discouraged movie-goers from seeing the film by saying "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. Then close your eyes and use your imagination."
He later wrote in his blog about the film, "The day will come when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be studied in film classes and shown at cult film festivals. It will be seen, in retrospect, as marking the end of an era. Of course there will be many more CGI-based action epics, but never again one this bloated, excessive, incomprehensible, long (149 minutes) or expensive ($190 million)." Ebert would continue to lambast the film in other movie reviews and responses to letters and emails sent to him. Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
critic Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
did not give the film any stars considering that "Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade." The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
gave the film a "C-", complaining about the writing and length, and considering the film only works during the action scene that occurs in the last half-hour. Among positive reviews, Amy Biancolli of The Houston Chronicle called it "A well-oiled, loudly revving summer action vehicle that does all that’s required, and then some", Jordan Mintzer from Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
said it "takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence", and Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
wrote that "Revenge of the Fallen may be a massive overdose of popcorn greased with motor oil. But it knows how to feed your inner 10-year-old's appetite for destruction."
On a year-end poll administered by Moviefone
Moviefone
Moviefone is an American-based movie listing and information service. Moviegoers can obtain local showtimes, theatre information, film reviews, or advance tickets...
, the film was voted the worst film of 2009, and Fox's performance the worst by an actress that year. Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
ranked the film as the 4th worst sequel of all time. Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
named the film the 25th worst movie ever made. In June 2009, an Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
article by David Germain called the film as the worst-reviewed $400 million hit ever.
| "On every level this movie is as bankrupt as GM. [...] Transformers: The Revenge of The Fallen is beyond bad, it carves out its own category of godawfulness." |
| — Peter Travers Peter Travers Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:... , American film critic |
There was considerable negative reaction to the characters Mudflap and Skids, who some perceived as embodying racist stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
said that "the characters [...] indicate that minstrelsy
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
remains as much in fashion in Hollywood as when, well, Jar Jar Binks
Jar Jar Binks
Jar Jar Binks is a fictional character from the Star Wars Saga , and the television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. His primary role was to provide comic relief, but many reacted negatively to his character...
was set loose by George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
". Critic Scott Mendelson said "To say that these two are the most astonishingly racist caricatures that I've ever seen in a mainstream motion picture would be an understatement". Harry Knowles
Harry Knowles
Harry Knowles is known for his website called Ain't It Cool News. Knowles is a member of the Austin Film Critics Association.-Biography:...
, founder of Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News
Ain't It Cool News is a website founded and run by Harry Knowles, dedicated to news, rumors and reviews of upcoming and currently playing films and television projects, with an emphasis on science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic-book and action genres...
, went further, asking his readers "not to support this film" because "you'll be taking [your children] to see a film with the lowest forms of humor, stereotypes and racism around." Director Bay has attempted to defend the film as "good clean fun" and insisted that "We're just putting more personality in". Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman responded to the controversy with "It's really hard for us to sit here and try to justify it. I think that would be very foolish, and if someone wants to be offended by it, it’s their right. We were very surprised when we saw it, too, and it’s a choice that was made. If anything, it just shows you that we don’t control every aspect of the movie".
Another major complaint about the film was Bay's usage of the IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
format. Instead of using IMAX for complete unbroken sequences similar to director Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
's approach for The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
, Bay chose to use the format primarily on a shot-by-shot basis, combining conventional 35mm footage and IMAX shots in the same sequence. That approach, combined with rapid cutting of same created a jarring, highly unpleasant experience for most moviegoers.
Awards and nominations
Revenge of the Fallen was among the films shortlisted for the Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards, but was only nominated for Best Sound (Greg P. RussellGreg P. Russell
Greg P. Russell is an American sound engineer. He has been nominated for fourteen Academy Awards in the category Best Sound. He has worked on nearly 200 films since 1970...
, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson
Geoffrey Patterson
Geoffrey Patterson is an American sound engineer. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Sound. He has worked on over 50 films since 1985.-Selected filmography:* Twister...
) at the 82nd Academy Awards
82nd Academy Awards
The 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2009 and took place March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. The ceremony was scheduled well after...
, eventually losing to The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2009 American war film about a three-man United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team during the Iraq War. The film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and the screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded as a journalist in 2004 with a US bomb...
. The film won five Scream Awards
Scream Awards
The Scream Awards is an award show dedicated to the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres of feature films. Originally only having Scream Queen and Heroic Performance awards for actors, the personnel awards have expanded to include actors and actresses of all three recognized genres. In addition,...
, for Best Actress (Megan Fox
Megan Fox
Megan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
), Breakout Performance-Female (Isabel Lucas
Isabel Lucas
Isabel Lucas is an Australian actress and model perhaps best known for her role as Tasha Andrews on the Australian television soap opera Home and Away...
), Best Sequel, Best F/X, and Scream Song of the Year ("New Divide
New Divide
"New Divide" is a song by American rock band Linkin Park. The song is released as a single and was recorded specifically for Michael Bay's film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The song serves as the film's theme, and was released as a single on May 18, 2009...
"); and two Teen Choice Awards
Teen Choice Awards
The Teen Choice Awards, are an annual awards show that air on the Fox cable channel, that honor the year's biggest biggest achievements in music, movies, sports, television, fashion and more, voted by teen viewers aged 14 through 17. Winners receive an authentic full size surfboard designed with...
, for Choice Summer Movie Star: Female (Megan Fox) and Choice Summer Movie Star: Male (Shia LaBeouf). Revenge of the Fallen was also nominated for the Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...
for Best Science Fiction Film
Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
The Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film is a Saturn Award given to the best film in the science fiction genre by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.-Winners:-External links:*...
, Satellite Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound, a VES Award
Visual Effects Society
The Visual Effects Society is the entertainment industry's only organization representing the full breadth of visual effects practitioners including artists, animators, technologists, model makers, educators, studio leaders, supervisors, PR/marketing specialists and producers in all areas of...
for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Feature Motion Picture, a SAG Award
Screen Actors Guild Awards
A Screen Actors Guild Award is an accolade given by the Screen Actors Guild to recognize outstanding performances by its members. The statuette given, a nude male figure holding both a mask of comedy and a mask of tragedy, is called "The Actor"...
for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture is one of the awards given by the Screen Actors Guild...
, and an MTV Movie Awards
MTV Movie Awards
The MTV Movie Awards is a film awards show presented annually on MTV . It also contains movie parodies that used official movie footage with hosts and other celebrities and music performances. The nominees are decided by producers and executives at MTV. Winners are decided online by the general...
for Best WTF Moment (Isabel Lucas turning into a Decepticon). LaBouf was nominated for a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie Actor.
On the other hand, it was nominated for seven Razzie Awards including Worst Actress for Megan Fox
Megan Fox
Megan Denise Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001 with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on Hope & Faith. In 2004, she launched her film career with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen...
(also for Jennifer's Body
Jennifer's Body
Jennifer's Body is a 2009 black comedy horror film written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama. The film stars Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, and Adam Brody. Fox portrays a newly-possessed teenage serial killer specializing in killing her male classmates as her best friend...
), Worst Supporting Actress for Julie White
Julie White
Julie White is an American actress. She is known for her role in Grace Under Fire and for her role as Judy Witwicky in the Transformers film series.-Personal life:...
, Worst Screen Couple (for Shia LaBeouf
Shia LaBeouf
Shia Saide LaBeouf is an American actor who became known among younger audiences for his part in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens and made his film debut in Holes . In 2007, he starred as the leads in Disturbia and Transformers...
and either Fox or any Transformer) and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, winning three in the Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay categories at the 30th Golden Raspberry Awards
30th Golden Raspberry Awards
The 30th Golden Raspberry Awards or Razzies were held on March 6, 2010 in Hollywood to honor the worst films of 2009. The nominations were announced on February 1...
.
Box office
Despite poor reviews from critics, the film was a box office success. Revenge of the Fallen grossed $16 million on its midnight premiere, at the time the most ever for a Wednesday midnight debut. The film proceeded to beat Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a 2007 fantasy film directed by David Yates and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the fifth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Michael Goldenberg and produced by David Heyman and David Barron...
s record ($44.2 million) for the biggest Wednesday opening in history, bringing in $62 million in total receipts on its first day (until The Twilight Saga: Eclipse topped this record with $68 million), additionally ranking it as the second biggest opening day ever, at the time, behind The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
. The film grossed $108.9 million on its first weekend, the seventh-largest in history at the time, and brought in $200 million in its first five days, putting it in second place behind The Dark Knights $203.7 million for all-time biggest five-day opening. Its gross from Friday to Sunday was the biggest June opening weekend for one year, breaking Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 fantasy film directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the third instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by Chris Columbus, David Heyman and Mark Radcliffe...
s record ($93.7 million), until Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film, and the third installment in the Toy Story series. It was produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. The film was released worldwide from June through October in Disney Digital...
claimed that record ($110.3 million).
Revenge of the Fallen remained #1 at the box office for two weeks straight, by a close margin. Initial studio estimates showed a tie between it and that weekend's new release Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, also known as Ice Age 3, is a 2009 3-D computer animated film. It is the third installment of the Ice Age series, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox...
, but the actuals showed Revenge of the Fallen taking the #1 spot yet again with $42,320,877. Also, it was the first film of 2009 to reach the $300 million mark in North America. On July 27, a month after its release, the movie reached $379.2 million in the US, which brings it into the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever in that country as of August 2009. Revenge of the Fallen closed its box office run with $402,111,870 in North America and $836,303,693 worldwide, being the twelfth highest-grossing film of all time domestically, and the 28th highest internationally. Among 2009 films
2009 in film
The year 2009 saw the release of many films. Seven made the top 50 list of highest-grossing films, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that as of this year, their Best Picture category would consist of ten nominees, rather than five .- Highest-grossing films :Please note...
, it was the second highest grossing in the United States and Canada, behind Avatar, and fourth globally behind Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a 2009 fantasy film directed by David Yates and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman and David Barron...
, and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, also known as Ice Age 3, is a 2009 3-D computer animated film. It is the third installment of the Ice Age series, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox...
.
Home media
The film was released on October 20, 2009 on two-disc Blu-ray and DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
editions, and a single-disc DVD version. Michael Bay has revealed that the Blu-ray release of the film, produced by Charles de Lauzirika
Charles de Lauzirika
-Early years:Lauzirika spent his early years in La Crescenta, California and attended Glendale College where he served as entertainment editor of In Focus, the college's weekly Public-access television show...
, will feature variable aspect ratio for the scenes shot in IMAX format. A special IMAX edition is available exclusively at Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
.
Home versions include over three hours of bonus content and several interactive features, including "The AllSpark Experiment", which reveals Michael Bay's plans for a third movie in the series. At Target
Target Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
, the DVD and Blu-ray versions will include a transformable Bumblebee case. Both two-disc editions are the first to include Paramount's Augmented Reality
Augmented reality
Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is...
feature, which allows the user to handle a 3D model of Optimus Prime on a computer by moving the movie's package in front of a webcam. First week sales of the DVD reached 7.5 million copies, making it the best-selling DVD of 2009. The Blu-ray version had the best first-week sales of 2009, with 1.2 million units.