Now it’s time to bribe my little sister into editing this bad boy down for me so I don’t have to deal with nonexistent romantic chemistry between leads, plot holes big enough to swallow Delaware whole, and giant robot testicles. In the meantime, enjoy:

I cannot in any way compare this to the quandary I faced when The Phantom Menace came out on DVD. In that case my course of action was clear. I didn’t buy it. I will not buy it, and no Jedi mind tricks can ever make me. I still have my VHS copies of the real Star Wars movies, because they are the versions free of the pollution of enhanced Death Star explosions and Hayden Christensen ghosts.

Except for a few well-done action sequences, including the infamous murder of Optimus Prime, Transformers: Return of the Fallen was terrible. The plot made no sense at all (even less so when considering that this is supposed to be a sequel to the first installation), the script was awful, and there was more racism and sexism than I expected from even somebody as brainlessly asplodey as Michael Bay. There were tasteless attempts to plug into the acts of American patriots (“Let’s Roll!”) and the endless cast of sidekicks made me want to just plug my ears until the next action sequence, when everybody would finally shut up to make way for robot mayhem.

If it were possible for me to extract the good stuff, like the battles and the bit with RoboGimli (up until he stupidly committed suicide to make mega-Optimus), I would want to buy this DVD. Does anybody know where I can find a cut of this flick that does not have:

• Dogs humping
• Megatron acting like Starscream
• Girlfriends too obsessed with hearing their man say “I love you” to notice that they are in mortal danger
• Minstrelsy that makes Al Jolson look like Malcom X
• Jewish stereotypes
• German stereotypes
• Latino stereotypes
• Arab stereotypes
• Depiction of women as either crazy or slutty, or both
• Dialogue that makes me think Pearl Harbor might not have been so bad after all
• Pointless irresponsible drug use
• Death and resurrection of characters that should stay dead if they die
• An afterlife populated by alien robots
• John Turturro

I know it would only be like, 17 minutes long, but that would be worth my twenty bucks.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen achieves its purpose. It’s two and a half hours of giant rampaging robots wrecking everything in sight. And they’ve upped the ante, at the cost of plausible geography and plot continuity. Last time the goal was Decepticon dominance, and a city got destroyed. This time — oh, oops. Scratch previous Decepticon goal. Actually they want to destroy the sun instead. And wreck archeological sites. There are incredibly long sequences with no dialogue at all while metal crunches against metal, humans run screaming for mercy, and many many bricks of C4 go kaboom. In short, exactly what I expected.

Michael Bay is better seen and heard as long as what you are hearing are explosions. The plot is ridiculous, and with the notable exceptions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee every character is more hollow than the inside of a cheerleader’s head. This movie will cause Transformerphiles to end up like Star Wars nerds — loving and loathing their precious franchise with a furiously conflicted passion. Most astounding are the sheer number of racist stereotypes. African-Americans get the shortest end of the stick, although Latinos, Jews and Germans have fair opportunity for griping as well. Among the Autobots are the Racial Stereotype Twins, who speak an embarrassing picanninny jibberish, use a lot of profanity, and generally give the impression that Hollywood is just fine with encouraging stereotypes of urban youth as poorly-spoken illiterate doofuses. They may have been robots, but the gold teeth, sloppy speech and Ebonics are a somewhat less than flattering integration of black culture into robotkind. Lines like “Das’ cuz you a pussy” and “We don’ read” had me shaking my head. What’s next? Tap-dancing, fried chicken and singing about how much dey luv dat waddamelon? I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of the characters end up with motor oil blackface.

But on to the plot. Once upon a time . . .

Even though Megatron never said a word about it in the first flick, he’s actually working for a dude called The Fallen, a crochety old Transformer grandpappy who sits in a rocking chair kvetching about humanity while Megatron acts like a sycophantic suck-up– oh wait, he acts like Starscream. LAME. Oh yeah, Megatron is brought back to life because apparently the guards the U.S. Navy sends to monitor alien robot carcasses are about as competent as the ones Dr. Evil has to look after Austin Powers. Come on, guys. Any decent auto wrecking yard could have taken that bad boy to bits.

Anyway. The Fallen is the Transformer equivalent of Lucifer — having fought against the other Primes in prehistory when they stopped him from using the power of Earth’s sun to create Energon, the lifeblood of the Transformers that the giant robots use to power their babies, who drop from creepy cocoons in the ceiling like the vampire babies in Van Helsing. There’s a flashback here that shows ancient Decepticons with dreadlocks stepping on cavemen as the arrive on Earth to set up the sun harvester. Nice! Grudges die hard, so even after 19,000 years The Fallen hasn’t gotten over it and really, really wants to destroy Earth. Like, for reals this time.

Snap to the modern day, where Optimus Prime and his Autobots are working with their human allies to eradicate Decepticons. Just before killing Demolishor, who in his spare time must be a 1337 haxx0r, the human-Autobot team learns that “The Fallen shall rise again.” Wormy Liberal Guy, sent by the President (later identified as Obama) comes in and spouts off leftist talking points about Why We Shouldn’t Be In Iraq, threatening to halt their military actions. Tyrese jokes about shooting him. Optimus Prime royally outclasses him both in wits and word choice, leaving Wormy Liberal Guy speechless. Michael Bay’s currency with the U.S. armed forces rises 200%, if that’s even possible at this point.

Sam Witwicky announces that he doesn’t intend to take his Camaro (Autobot Bumblebee in disguise) with him to college. Hot Girlfriend fails to notice that this proves that he really doesn’t intend to cheat on her during their separation, because that car would have gotten him into the pants of every girl in the dorm. As soon as he gets there, he is met by Annoying Token Latino Sidekick That The Marketing Guys Thought Would Help The Movie Do Better Among The Latino Demographic (we’ll just call him Token), who looks about 10 years too old to be a college freshman and is an alien conspiracy theorist blogger. This guy spends the rest of the movie agging along when a smart person would run for it, screaming, and being Sam’s annoying sidekick. In fact, Sam does pretty much nothing for the entire film apart from acquiring annoying sidekicks. None of whom die. LAME.

While packing for college, he finds a remaining shard of the AllSpark (literally the only significant plot connection to the first film) which gives him visions of ancient symbols in a lost Autobot language. This information points to the location of the ancient machine capable of harvesting the sun and manifests itself in behavior that makes Sam look like he has Asperger’s and epilepsy. The Decepticons realize they can pump his brain for this information and send an improbably Hot Skank to try to get with him. Bumblebee, a true wing man, runs the girl off when her advances get over the top.

Sam shows the classic male weakness to appearances and fails to remember a basic rule of robots. If an improbably hot girl takes unreasonable interest in you for no apparent reason, there is a 100% chance that she is a robot and a 75% chance that she will kill you. Luckily RoboSkank is a lousy Terminatrix, opting for tongue strangling rather than a real robot murder weapon, like a liquid metal exoskeleton or a shotgun. Hot Girlfriend, who has imprisoned and tortured a Decepticon spy (nice!), walks into Sam’s dorm just as his virtue is being violated by RoboSkank. Hot Girlfriend gets angry and storms off, but she hears Sam screaming like a little girl and comes back to save the day. RoboSkank achieves Epic Terminator Fail by getting run over and destroyed by Hot Girlfriend driving a hotwired Saturn. A Saturn. Honestly. What kind of self-respecting Terminator can be taken out by a compact car? Despite the cunning escape, they all get captured and Sam almost gets a lobotomy by Dr. Frankenbot. Megatron demonstrates total incompetence as a villain by failing to kill Hot Girlfriend, Token, and Sam before Optimus and Bumblebee come to the rescue.

Sort of. While running for it, Sam and Optimus are outflanked and the Autobot leader, alone and outnumbered, defends the human boy and his brain goo from an entire pack of Decepticons. (Glam Quote: “You’ll never stop at one! I’ll take you all on!”) In the most beautifully filmed battle sequences of the film, Optimus kicks ass and takes a beating like Rocky Balboa, but Megatron stabs him in the back, killing him. Bumblebee finally arrives and the humans escape in style.

At this point I almost left the theater.

Movies based on television shows can often take the entire dynamic of a serial show and derail it with a plot finality that can shock the hell out of fans. (See: Firefly) The Transformers franchise did this to me once before in 1986. I was a devout follower back in the day when my pimped out ride was a Big Wheel with handlebar streamers and my #1 method for altering my mind was a Sit ‘N Spin. My main reason to keep breathing was to see Transformers: The Movie, which should have been a shining moment of my young life.

And then the bastards murdered Optimus Prime.

I cried. For days. I was inconsolable. And don’t you Firefly nerds compare it to when Wash gets staked through the heart with a fury that only shows that the Reavers are really descendants of Buffy Summers. It’s not the same. But it was bad enough that they killed him. And then! Oh, then! After breaking my heart, they go and violate his corpse, reincarnating Optumus as . . . Rodimus Prime.

Rodimus?

RODIMUS?

What the frak? I don’t care who opens the Matrix of Leadership — call Neo and have him stop it, because that plot idea was even worse than the Dinobots. I want my Optimus. He’s the perfect hero. Even his name is perfect, meaning “the ideal foremost.” He is uncompromising on his principles, never backs down from his word of honor, and will defend the innocent at all costs — even that of his own life. I quickly disavowed the film and plunged into a state of denial and depression. (Luckily the following year Masters of the Universe came out and showed that my hero didn’t have to die and be reincarnated a somebody who doesn’t kick nearly as much ass just to keep the franchise fresh. That movie changed my life.)

And they did it to me again. I didn’t know quite how to react. What do I say? I mouthed the word “no!” but no sound escaped my lips. I didn’t know what to do. Had they done it to me again? But then the least satisfying revelation of the movie struck me. This is a friggin’ Michael Bay movie. It’s an “America, Fuck Yeah!” movie. That means nobody important dies, and if they do they get to come back. After all, if they can resurrect Megatron’s carcass unscathed from the Laurentian Abyss with a spark plug and a scuba tank, chances were good Optimus would be back. So that bastards murdered him again, but it wasn’t even going to end up meaning anything.

So when Optimus bites the big one in Revenge of the Fallen . . . you know what? I haven’t got the energy to finish the story. It’s just too overcomplicated for words. So I’ll sum up.

Optimus is dead, so Sam collects his sidekicks (Token, Hot Girlfriend, Cute Prisoner Decepticon RC Car, The Racial Stereotype Twins, and Jewish Stereotype, who was the secret agent guy in the first flick. Bumblebee patiently deals with them all.) Like Darth Maul to Palpatine, Megatron grovels before The Fallen, who sits in a robot rocking chair and gripes about how kids these days won’t get off his lawn. So he’s going to blow up the earth. They run into the robot equivalent of Gimli, who is an ancient Decepticon-Turned-Autobot who saves them all the trouble of figuring out the code in Sam’s brain by teleporting them to the Middle East (so why did the first 90 minutes matter?) where Petra and Giza, the locations of The Matrix and the weapon, happen to be about a fifteen minute run through the sand from one another. LAME. The bad bots turn on the machine. The soldiers dump Wormy Liberal Guy in the middle of the desert so they can go help in the battle. Rednecks everywhere wave Confederate Flags and holler with glee. Sam uses pixie dust from his socks to bring Optimus Back to life, and Gimli-Bot commits suicide so Optimus can use his parts to heal. Optimus Prime pays tribute to Flight 93 (Glam line: “Let’s Roll!”) and kills The Fallen really, really fast. The Day Is Saved. Hot Girlfriend is happy because what this was really about was getting her boyfriend to say “I Love You.” The Racial Sterotype Twins shout “Lawdy, Lawdy! We sho’ love killin’ dem Decepticons fo’ Massah Optimus!”

The End.

Okay, so the story is ridiculous and the only way we know that the characters are acting is when the camera gets all spinny around them to show that it’s really intense now. But plenty of shit blows up and it’s hard to be unhappy about that. My only really major beef with the flick is the title. You really shouldn’t call a movie Revenge of the Fallen when The Fallen doesn’t actually get revenge. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire actually struck back and that heartbreaking image of Luke and Leia staring out into space together is one of the many reasons it’s my favorite of the Star Wars trilogy. As Matrix 2-esque as it would have been, I could have dealt with Optimus Prime still being dead at the end of the flick, with his illustrious return in Transformers 3 coming in a more satisfying fashion than being reanimated with the spare parts from Robo-Gimli and an Autobot defibrillator.

I wasn’t dissatisfied — this is an enjoyable movie where plenty of things go asplode. But next time, Michael Bay, puhlease at least make it clear which robots are Autobots and which are Decepticons. As much as I crave maximum destruction, it really does me no good if I can’t even tell who’s winning. And Michael Bay really should have learned from the mistakes of George Lucas (crappy characterization can’t be compensated for with special effects) and Stanley Kubrick (movie timelines shouldn’t span 19,000 years). Optimus never should have died in the first place, but at least when they brought him back he was himself and not that Rodimus guy. Man, I hate that guy.

At least I got to see my sexy car onscreen. And for Zarquon’s sake, don’t you ever murder Optimus Prime again.

So, how would this matchup play out? It’s an important scenario to run. Even more so than imagining if Papa Smurf could defeat Bilbo Baggins in a kung-fu fight. It depends on a lot of factors. What are we talking about? In a one-on-one brawl, I’d absolutley pick any one of the Transformers. They’re much more agile and hand-to-hand combat capable than the T-series of terminators, who seem pretty good at the brute strength issues but also seem relatively easy to knock out of commission. No, Skynet’s advantage is in numbers. If it was all of Skynet versus all of the Transformers, that might be a more even matchup, but even then I’m not sure. Skynet is used to picking on a numerically, physically, and intellectually inferior enemy. To match up against an equal or superior opponent . . .

Size matters and even the most wee Transformer would have no trouble taking out legions of Terminators. If you don’t believe me, just think back to when Blackout single-handedly obliterated an entire Air Force base in a spine-tingling display of foot-stomping, laser-firing doom. The Autobots and Decepticons working together against Skynet would probably put John Connor out of a job pretty quick. Really the only way this could end well for Skynet would be if it could somehow infect the Transformers with its collective consciousness and turn them to its will. But even that seems unlikely as the Autobots derive their very name from the concept of being individually autonomous organisms, and the Decepticons display stubborn independence as well.

No, I hate to say it but the Transformers beat Skynet out on all counts. Skynet’s Terminators are ruthless, efficient, and another will take the place of a fallen comrade. But their tenacity is linked to their rigidity. Machines that operate as interchangeable cogs — even an ocean of them — would be hard pressed to move creatively against a diverse and seasoned team of acrobatic warriors who are in themselves weapons of mass destruction.

Really, instead of pondering how robots could best be pitted against one another, I think instead we should think of how quickly they could conquer the human race . . . together. Isn’t that a nice thought? Robots side by side, holding hands and raining down doom under a rainbow . . . awww!