Transmorphers: Fall of Man (2009)

transmorphers_fall_of_man_pTiny Juggernaut’s special effects are pretty good when compared to other indie productions and though it’s all mostly takes on the Transformers, the robot menaces are pretty sleek and cool to watch as they fuck shit up in civilization. I’m still not sure why we need an attack from a cell phone, but Tiny Juggernaut keeps the special effects standard and old school quite often. And who ever creates the one sheets over at The Asylum, I commend them on their artistic ability. If anything The Asylum is great for providing great cover art for their productions. I also enjoyed some of what director Wheeler brings to the screen. There’s even a really ominous sequence where our hero and heroine realize that the signal these robots have sent out just didn’t get intercepted and comets are falling to the sky with the alien menace in tow. It’s a great scene that is thankfully sold by star Shane Van Dyke’s shocked reaction.

I really liked the first “Transmorphers” from The Asylum. I mean in spite of being a total rip off of The Terminator, Robotech, and the Transformers, it actually excelled at being something more than a carbon copy. That was thanks to the ace direction from Leigh Scott, one of the Asylum’s heavy hitters. Now comes “Fall of Man,” a prequel to the first movie now under the direction of Scott Wheeler another Asylum heavy hitter whose work has been mostly relegated to special effects with varied success over the years. This installment sets down in modern day America where important people are being assassinated by an unknown force. Sadly the force that brings this movie down to the ground is its sheer ignorance of what entertainment is supposed to be.

I was bored and “Transmorphers 2” takes so much time to build up to the robot attacks that you’ll be left wondering why a movie with such a cool cover could ultimately leave you in the dust waiting for something to happen. For nearly ninety minutes I wondered why these robots are camouflaging as standard electronics, why they were hiding if they had such power, and how long were they on Earth. Most importantly why start the attacks now when they had perfect chances years before. But then “Transmorphers 2” doesn’t ask for logic, it instead asks that its audience remain silent and revel in the robots that–well–do much of nothing, really. There’s an instance where Wheeler could have taken advantage by featuring a cell phone turning in to an arachnid robot, but the battle is so brief and abrupt all fun is sucked out before we could brace ourselves. Wheeler doesn’t have the same knack for visual style as the original director Leigh Scott did and the writers certainly aren’t keen to providing a steady even pace.

Sometimes the movie flows so quickly that it’s hard to keep up, while other times it’s as dull as day old bread with more questions posed toward us than answers. Seriously, why not camouflage as a missile rather than a satellite dish? And what purpose would it have served to kill a senile old lady in the first place? And why the sudden appearance of Autobots as villains? It’s just disappointing after watching the first movie that had such a better atmosphere of doom than this one did. There are moments when “Transmorphers 2” rises to the occasion and injects a sense of urgency to the proceedings, but it takes too long for anything to happen. It’s one long stretch of boring with a few hits of excitement, but the cons drastically affect the pros.