Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen



""Gotta wonder... if God made us in his image, who made him?""

- Sgt. Epps (musing about Optimus Prime)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to the hit film Transformers, released 2009.

Two years after the first movie, more robots on both sides gather to Earth. The Autobots are working alongside Human Special Forces from around the world to deal with the Decepticon arrivals while Sam is heading off to college. Because of leftover elements of the first film, Sam has secrets of Cybertronian history downloaded into his subconscious mind, including the location of an ancient power source left on Earth by a Transformer known as The Fallen.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen provides examples of the following tropes:
"Sign on their combined altmode: (Decepticon symbol) Suck my popsicle!"
 * Aerith and Bob: Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Sideways, Mixmaster, Devastator, Demolishor, Scorponok, Ravage... Reedman. Mind you, several characters have weird placeholder names before finalized names are decided, and some accidentally made it into the credits -- Demolisher/Scavenger is called "Wheelbot", and Rampage is called "Skipjack". It's just that "Reedman" went unnamed onscreen (being the underling of a 'bot who is never heard to speak) and doesn't have any merchandise for a more Transformery name to be used on, either. Keeping "Reedman" seems to have just happened, rather than being intended.
 * Ancient Astronauts: The Primes came to Africa around 17,000 BC. The Fallen himself seems to have inspired the look of Egyptian Pharaohs.
 * Artistic License Geography: According to this film, the Pentagon is in Washington D.C., not Virginia. Egypt and Jordan share a border (there's a little country named Israel), the Pyramids are portrayed as being in walking distance of the Sphinx (close, but not quite), the Valley of the Kings (thousands of miles away) and Petra (in a completely different country).
 * Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: The Fallen looks like he's wearing an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh's headdress. Fitting, because
 * As You Know: Galloway goes through this on a "secure" satellite line, detailing both the location of Megatron's corpse and the Allspark fragment. Naturally, Soundwave is listening in.
 * Back From the Dead:
 * Badass Grandpa: The geriatric Jetfire still kicks major ass.
 * Bad Humor Truck: Skids and Mudflap's original altmode was an ice cream truck, one of them forming the front and the other the back.

"Gen. Morshower: Let me stop you right there, Mr. Galloway. It was vetted right here. Major Lennox and his team have demonstrated the highest quality judgement. If he says it was necessary, that's good enough for me."
 * The Beautiful Elite: During the college and France portions, aside from maybe Sam's parents, nobody on the set is ugly. ESPECIALLY the women. Leo lampshades this, apparently taking credit for it using some hacking trick to get all the hot chicks into his dorm.
 * Benevolent Boss: General Morshower, commander of NEST. He backs up Major Lennox and his Autobot/Special Forces admirably, no matter how many a--holes question them.

"Sam: You're Optimus Prime, you don't need me.
 * Bifurcated Weapon: Jetfire's cane.
 * Blow You Away: Optimus.
 * Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Subverted; Skids and Mudflap seem to doing this, but they are both idiots
 * Brass Balls: Devastator
 * Broken Faceplate: During the forest battle, Megatron delivers a powerful kick to Optimus that completely shatters his iconic faceplate. He even has to spit some it of out his mouth after being blasted across the forest.
 * The Call Knows Where You Live: "Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."
 * Colossus Climb: The twins attempt one on Devastator.
 * Combining Mecha
 * Devastator
 * The twins start out having a combined Altmode: an old fashioned ice cream truck. Supposedly they were originally going to combine in robot mode as well (which is presumably why they're lopsided on opposite sides)
 * In the climax of ROTF, This also doubles as a throwback to Transformers Armada.
 * The Arcees were designed with combination in mind, in order to give their robot mode more mass in comparison with the other characters. This was eventually cut, but you can find art of the combined mode with a quick image search and in one panel of the tie-in comic.
 * Continuity Nod
 * Simmons kept Frenzy's decapitated head in his basement.
 * During a long shot of Decepticons gathering their forces, you can see the minesweeper alternate mode of Bonecrusher among them. The robot CGI model is only used briefly, through smoke and behind a building, likely because of his major scene in the first film.
 * Cool Old Guy: Jetfire
 * Cyber Cyclops: Ravage
 * Dare to Be Badass:

Optimus: Yes we do, Sam. More than you know.

Optimus: Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing."

Supplementary materials provide a much less ridiculous explanation; yes, the people know it happened, but they don't know that it was aliens who did it. The government put forth a cover story claiming that prototype search-and-rescue robots (human-built) went haywire and escaped into Mission City, going on a destructive rampage through the area. "Epps: Really don't like that dude. He's an ASS-HOLE."
 * Defector From Decadence: Jetfire
 * The Determinator: Megatron, in the final battle, makes it his personal mission to ensure Sam does not reach Prime's body with The Matrix of Leadership, alive. He becomes the only Decepticon that actually survives "Operation: Firestorm" and actually charges right into a barrage of tank fire, just to get one shot to kill Sam.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Megatron presses Sam down on an operating table while remarking that it feels good to hold the boy's flesh and then sticks things into him. And he was all on top of Starscream... It would seem this is the Legion form of Megatron...
 * Do Not Adjust Your Set: The Fallen broadcasts an ultimatum to the entire world to hand over Sam by having Megatron grab onto the antenna on top of the Empire State Building. (Though Soundwave did hijack communications for the entire movie...)
 * Double Entendre: The astronomy professor's spiel is loaded with them.
 * Dummied Out: Done indirectly with the Autobot motorcycle figures -- leaving out the third one from the toyline resulted in two Autobot sisters with the components intended for a three-part mecha form.
 * Dynamic Entry
 * gets one of these. It doesn't go as planned, though.
 * Bumblebee makes one against Rampage, starting his third Big Damn Heroes moment of the film.
 * Extra-Strength Masquerade / Weirdness Censor: ROTF hits these hard. Bay claims that the events of the first movie had, by the time of the second movie, been covered up and entirely forgotten about it to the point where it's laughed off as just a joke. Think about that for a moment. Giant alien robots demolish several blocks of a US city, kill what is likely hundreds of people in the process, and less than two years later it's dismissed as just a joke?
 * Fan Disservice
 * Did we really need to see a closeup of Turturro's thong-clad ass?
 * How about Devastator's "scrotum"?
 * Fandom Nod: Leo and co. are basically pitch-perfect parodies of some of the more extreme bloggers any fandom can pick up.
 * Faux Action Girl: The Arcees. At first glance, they're among the more interesting of the new Autobots introduced: a trio of female motorcycle Transformers. We're set up to expect a Crowning Moment of Awesome from them, since they're Fragile Speedsters with the emphasis on "fragile".
 * Five-Bad Band: The Decepticons form one:
 * Big Bad: The Fallen
 * The Dragon: Megatron
 * The Dragon (to Megatron) / Dark Chick / The Starscream: Starscream
 * Evil Genius: Soundwave
 * The Brute: Devastator
 * Foreign Queasine: Looks like escargots disagree with Sam's parents.
 * Foreshadowing: Under the influence of the Allspark, Sam rambles in Astronomy class about the "Sentinel Prime expedition", and explains (while writing what appears to be an equation in Cyberglyphics) what might possibly be the Space Bridge.
 * Fruit Cart: Shows up at one point during the police chase in the Middle East.
 * Funny Background Event: Just before Optimus kills the chopper-bot Grindor, he hacks off the latter's rotor-wielding arm -- being formed from his tail rotor, and it flies unaided into the background as the battle continues.
 * Gainaxing: Mikaela during a few scenes in the desert... in slo-mo, no less, and at an completely inappropriate time.
 * Gay Paree: A brief scene of Sam's parents in Paris includes all the requisite clichés: disgusting escargots, annoying mimes, the Arc de Triomphe...
 * Geeky Turn On: "Camshafts".
 * Gender Flip: A mild reversal of expected gender roles with Sam going off to college while Mikaela works in her father's motorcycle repair shop.
 * Give Me Your FACE!
 * Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Optimus does this to Galloway while stating that You Are Not Ready... with a finger nearly the size of the man's arm.
 * Grievous Harm With a Body
 * When Optimus Prime is triple-teamed by Megatron, Starscream, and Grindor, he is seen at one point beating Starscream with his own severed arm before . Of course, being a robot, Starscream is able to retrieve his arm and reattach it afterward... after Megatron hit him with it a couple times too.
 * In the last battle,
 * After Bumblebee
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * Honor Before Reason: All the Autobots possess this trope to some degree, but it is actually who takes this to an all new level of awesome.
 * I Have Come Too Far: Sam in the later stages of the movie.
 * Jerkass: Biggest one would have to be Galloway.

"Starscream:"
 * Know When to Fold'Em:

"Wheelie: Little guys are mean. Tell him he's tall."
 * Let's Get Dangerous: The Twins as they step up and take on Devastator.
 * Long-Distance Relationship: Sam and Mikaela try this. It starts falling apart before the end of the first day. This is largely due to a combination of Transformers and Alice, who is all over Sam.
 * Madness Mantra: "KITTEN CALENDAR KITTEN CALENDAR KITTEN CALENDAR--"
 * Man Behind the Man: The Fallen is
 * The Napoleon: Wheelie assumed the checkpoint guard fits this trope.


 * Not Using the Zed Word: The actual term "Transformers" wasn't mentioned at all in the first film (they did use the word "transformer" as in electrical transformer), they instead referred to the robots by their faction name or just as robots. ROTF does have Simmons refer to the robots as The Transformers.
 * Not What It Looks Like: Doubled-over.
 * Obstructive Bureaucrat: Galloway.
 * One-Scene Wonder: Jolt's only prominent scene is
 * Orifice Invasion: Sam gets more than his share of alien robot probing.
 * Our Hero Is Dead:
 * Outrun the Fireball:
 * Please Get Off Me: Mikaela finds herself on top after she and Leo end up in a pile after being teleported to a point roughly twenty or thirty feet over Egypt. Leo has the presence of mind to note that it's a dream come true to find such a beautiful woman land in his lap... except that she accidentally performed a gravity-assisted Groin Attack during her landing.
 * Power of Love: When, though it's partially this trope and partially.
 * Promoted Fanboy: Josh Nizzi created a fan design for a movie-based Long Haul, which was so good he was brought to Hasbro and eventually to the actual film production team. In addition to Long Haul being the first new design approved for ROTF, he ended up designing Jetfire, the new Megatron and
 * Rambling Old Man Monologue: Jetfire
 * Reaction Shot
 * During one tense scene, the film keeps cutting back to Leo's whimpering face.
 * There's also Mikaela covering her mouth to keep from screaming when she and Sam are being stalked by the Decepticons.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure
 * General Morshower embodies this. He supports his NEST team 100 percent and then some.
 * Optimus has shades of this as well.
 * Red Shirts: Human (mostly American) soldiers during the opening battle.
 * Refusal of the Call: Sam says it isn't his war and he just wants to be normal (in the novelization, he also mentions that his last adventure gave him a bad back, and he's too young for chronic pain like that). It goes without saying The Call not only knows where he goes to school but also where his parents plan to vacation.
 * The Right Hand of Doom
 * Skids and Mudflap each have one hand much larger than the other; this is evidently leftover from the stage when they were planned to have a combined robot mode.
 * Megatron's gun arm in comparison to the other. Look at his toy!
 * Room Full of Crazy: Sam obsessive-compulsively decorates his dorm room with Cybertronian symbols while under the influence of the AllSpark.
 * Same Story, Different Names: Fallen is the first film, but bigger and louder.
 * Shout-Out: No matter its use, the ammo-less electro magnetic weapon nicknamed a rail gun that resides on an aircraft carrier matches the description, and fires in an almost identical way, to the MacGuffin weapons in Eraser. Makes it somewhat more acceptable knowing that.
 * Single-Stroke Battle: Sideswipe versus Sideways... "Damn, I'm good."
 * Smug Snake: Galloway. Oh so much.
 * Snap Back
 * At the end of the first movie, Bumblebee's damaged voicebox was repaired. However, at the start of ROTF, he still doesn't speak normally. Sam says that he could but he's deliberately playing it up and trying to be cute.
 * A tie-in comic reveals that 'Bee's voicebox was damaged again in a battle between the two films... which isn't much better than the "trying to be cute" explanation.
 * A smaller-scale case occurs during the battle in Egypt: Ravage claws off part of Bumblebee's faceplate, but once Rampage goes down, Bumblebee's pristine.
 * Spell My Name With a "The": The Fallen.
 * The Starscream: The film somewhat answers the concerns about the treacherous nature of this universe's Starscream. Apparently, he deliberately left Megatron to die on Earth at the end of the last film just for the opportunity to become Decepticon leader. Unfortunately for him... Megatron is none too pleased by that notion.
 * Strawman Political: Obstructive Bureaucrat Director Galloway is specifically described as President Obama's National Security Advisor and repeatedly states that he acts on behalf of the president. He spends the whole film making bad security decisions and butting heads with the military, following common conservative accusations that the Obama administration is weak on defense. Galloway also unsubtly represents the views of American-Iraq war detractors. Namely that the "autobots presence encourages more Decepticons to attack" and that we should try "diplomacy with the Decepticons".
 * Stuff Blowing Up: It's a Bay movie, so that's a given, but Fallen has apparently set a Guinness record for the largest explosion with the actual actors in the shot. According to Shia on The Tonight Show, it used one thousand gallons of gas. It also took about seven months to plan, set up and execute... which was about the length of time to complete principal photography for the movie as a whole.
 * Suggestive Collision: Mikaela lands face-down in Leo's crotch after a space bridge mishap. Subverted in that Leo notes he'd normally enjoy having a hot woman's face in his lap, but in this case he's worried she crushed something on impact.
 * Super Mode:
 * Telephone Polearm: During the forest battle, several trees are used as bludgeons by the combattants.
 * This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: Mikaela gets one as she
 * Those Two Guys: Skids and Mudflap.
 * Throwing Your Sword Always Works
 * Sideswipe has a version of this; he fires one of his retractable blades into Sideways' hood, then presses down on it and drives the blade into the ground, effectively forcing Sideways to bisect himself by driving through it.
 * During the forest fight, Optimus throws one of his swords into Grindor's thigh, taking the Decepticon out of the battle for a brief period (enough to beat Starscream up with his own arm).
 * Took a Level In Badass: Optimus Prime. He was already a Badass in the first movie, but only just about as much as the other robots, and was brutally owned by Megatron. Not so in this movie. Although, Optimus is an absolute berserker and is responsible for most of the movie's kills, and now has a penchant for Gory Discretion Shots involving ripping Decepticon faces apart.
 * Uncanny Valley Girl:
 * Villain Exit Stage Left:
 * Villain Opening Scene: The very first scene in the film shows The Fallen terrorising a group of primitive humans in Africa during 17,000 BC, whilst his followers are busy building the Harvester.
 * Viral Marketing: Rival conspiracy websites mentioned in the film really exist.
 * Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: Combined with Wacky College once Leo shows up.
 * Wave Motion Gun:
 * Weaponized Exhaust: Optimus blasts Megatron through a wall with
 * Weaponized Landmark: The Pyramid of Giza, although
 * We Will Not Use Photoshop in The Future: Inverted, when Sam tried to convince Leo and his fellow bloggers that the footage from China was faked. They, having spent months blogging about such events, are justifiably skeptical.
 * You Are Not Ready: The Autobots won't share advanced weapon technology. Optimus explains that he is well aware that the military would likely point such weapons at non-Deception targets and will not be party to such a slaughter. (They actually make a blanket refusal to share any of their technology at all.)
 * You Can't Get Ye Flask: Mikaela wants Sam to tell her "I love you,", and she won't accept synonyms.
 * Your Cheating Heart: Bumblebee actually plays the Trope Namer song to remind Sam of the trope when Sam is in the car with Alice.