Yet, even with expectations lowered, and any judgements as to the creative integrity of Michael Bay temporarily put to one side, Fallen makes for a terribly disappointing experience. Which isn't to say there's nothing to enjoy here. Far from it, there are moments of breathtaking technical wizardry that make you long for what could have been, given the right pair of hands at the helm. But this is film-making by numbers, churned out far too quickly on the back of the first film's box office success, and with little consideration of story, character or anything like common sense.
Fallen's gallery of Transformers look quite beautiful at times. Yet Bay still can't manage to give the majority of his robot characters any semblance of character. Save for Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, two Transformers easily distinguishable by their colour and voice (or lack thereof, in the former's case), it's hard to make out who exactly is who, rendering action scenes oddly flat and unengaging.
Worse, Bay seems completely unconcerned with creating any sense of space or logic to his action scenes. There are three major set pieces of note here, with only one really hitting the mark, a wonderful forest battle between a dual sword-wielding Prime, Megatron and other Decepticons (it's hard to tell, really). The other two - an opening Shanghai skirmish and a climactic desert battle that sees the introduction of the impressive Devastator - never take flight in the way you hope they will.
At the heart of Fallen's problems is the distinct lack of new ideas on show. Screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Ehren Kruger (the latter apparently a lifelong Transformers fan, though you'd hardly tell from the treatment many staples of Transformers lore are given here - step forward the under-developed rivalry between Megatron and Starscream) seem content to borrow liberally from past movies, and not very good ones at that: Alien vs. Predator, Terminator 3, Spider-Man 3 are just some noticeable for their influence. Elsewhere, the film simply recycles parts of 2007's Transformers in the belief that more of the same will do just fine, substituting Anthony Anderson's bumbling techno wizard with Ramon Rodriguez's Leo, or staging a climactic desert battle that seems eerily similar to the first film's Scorpinok attack, albeit with less flair.
In truth, Fallen makes for a better comedy film than it does an action film. Not quite the outcome many would expect, or would want, but in a film that runs over two and a half hours with very little excitement, it's important to be grateful for small mercies.
Who else?
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Uh-oh...
