Now, I came into this movie not having high expectations... lots of people have said it wasn't great. I went to see it anyway, but I was expecting pretty much any scene with Shia in it to be lame, like the first movie, but for there to be lots of cool robot battles.

 

Well, I was partly right. Shia had his annoying parts, but I thought he did a bit better than in the first movie. (And it was quite funny that one part where he totally shrieked like a girl) Megan Fox was also pretty good (action / character wise... I will not speak of her looks on BZP ) The army guys were okay... they didn't quite have the epic moments from the first movie (where they killed of helicopter dude... that scene totally rocked) but they were still blasting away things. Even agent Simmons was pretty stellar on his return... hating him in the first (well, his character, at least) like him this time around). And Rainn Wilson, for his cameo, was cool.

 

No, the worst were Shia's character's parents. Ever scene they were in was like "C'mon, let's move on now." Maybe they were in there for comic relief or something, but they weren't a relief. Additionally, there was way too much raunchy stuff that this movie totally could've done without. Seriously, most of it didn't support the plot at all, totally unnecessary. Only part that did was the robot girl seducing Shia, and still, that could've been handled differently, I'm sure.

 

Now, away from the puny insects that infested this movie and into the real stars... the Transformers. The first movie was okay... a few got to show up and fight it out, mainly focusing on Prime and BumbleBee. This one let loose all sorts of robots. (And pardon me if I get names and stuff wrong... I've only been a fan of the first movie, so I still don't know a ton about the series as a whole, and any specific names) The Decepticons got alot more speaking time in this movie... and Megatron got to come back to life... woo? The Autobots also had more on their side... I recognized a few like Ratchet and Ironhide from the first movie, and the others, while I'm sure they represent an actual character from the series, were pretty much nameless to me. And in the final battle, it was getting hard to tell which big, black robot was a good guy and which was a badguy... they all seemed to look like Ironhide to me. And it's too bad they made the Twins (red and green cars) so ugly... i guess it was all to make BumbleBee look that much cooler.

 

The fights were amazing. The last 40 minutes of the first movie were my favorite, as that had all the great robot to robot fights. But that movie was all "Introduce characters, big fight at the end, run credits." This movie had big steller fights in the beginning, middle, and end. Prime got to show off his moves again and again (although that one time he kinda got in over his head) BumbleBee also got off great... his "fights" were rather limited in the first movie, but not this one. and even the twins, in all their annoyance, actually had a chance to shine. (Although it wasn't clear to me if they lived or died fighting?) Lots of good robot action... the ending was a bit abrupt, but still good.