Attack of the fallen…or whatever.

When was the last time a sequel was better than the original? Bells of St. Mary’s, is all that comes to my mind. At any rate Transformers 2 is certainly no threat to that pristine record.
For starters the Title seems to be courtesy of the same source as "Attack of the Clones", namely the one brain cell that Lucas and Spielberg now have between them.
Of course on the surface it only looks insipid, not completely inane. But then they had to go and try to surprise us. At first glance one might have presumed that revenge of the fallen, referred to Magatron. Who did after all fall in combat and had reasonable reason to seek revenge one the humans and autobots. But that would be what we would suspect, and would make more or less sense…so of course that could not be what it refers to. It in fact refers to some strange proto decepticon, who is called “the fallen” because…well because he is basically the cybertonien version of Lucifer. And he is seeking revenge because, because “return” is reserved for good guys and he is a baddy so it had to be revenge.
The script is a morass of trite often cringe worthy dialog, over the top “they fight” a few lost opportunities, plenty of cinematic stereotypes; solders are brave and clever, commanders are wise and of course communication officers are incredibly cute (As far as I am concerned all you fan boys can have Princess Lea. I want the girl who transfers lunch control to the viper pilots…lunch when reedy!).
But aside from all this is the clumsy and ill-advised attempt to transform the whole mythos into something, well Biblical.
Optimus has transformed from a leader of a ragtag but heroic group of solders into a - last of a once noble race - messiah. And just incase Prime’s is too subtle for you, before Sam can save all humanity he hast to be deemed worthy by dying and being resurrected.
So in the end, with all the Cube shards and mystical keys used up, all the critical characters must be alive. Magatron and Starscreem (who has reverted to being the winniest of winy lutenets) slink off into the shadows. Some how they resisted saying “I’ll get you next time Prime!”.
In the final analysis we must remember that Transformers is a franchise based on a line of toys, if the first movie allowed us to forget this momentarily ROTF certainly does not.