Back in 2007 the box-office-obliterating Transformers had the perfect recipe for summer blockbuster success. Giant robots? Check. Ridiculous explosions? Check. Nonsensical story and an unbelievably hot female lead? Check times 12. So is it possible for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to up the awesome ante from the first flick?
Destruction-happy director Michael Bay thinks it is. “Let’s just say that this is the first movie in 40 years that got to shoot on the pyramids,” he laughs. For anybody thinking that Hayden Christensen’s 2008 bust, Jumper, beat Bay to the punch, the director calmly responds, “They got dog shit. We used Egyptian military helicopters to get shots not even National Geographic or IMAX could get.” Well, that settles that.
If you forgot where the first Transformers left off, after the climactic battle Optimus Prime and the surviving Autobots joined a military team called NEST with master sergeant Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson). “After I watched the first one, I cried. I’m dead serious,” says Gibson. “With the sequel we had to take it to a whole new level.” With the possible return of series villain Megatron, the arrival of a mysterious new enemy, the Fallen, and hordes of new Transformers both good and bad (like Jetfire, a crochety SR-71 Blackbird), the latest installment promises to do just that. “In the first movie we were really just scratching the surface,” Bay assures us.
But some fans only care that there will be lots of slo-mo shots of Megan Fox again, right? Happily, she returns as Shia LaBeouf’s girlfriend—and there should be plenty of superfluous scenes of her outrageous hotness. “Listen,” says Gibson, “Megan is a very sexy situation.” ’Nuff said. The big question then is: Will there be a third installment? Answers Bay, “I told the writers to do a script that wasn’t a cliff-hanger and to pretend it’s the last ever Transformers movie.” Hmm...we still think there might be more to summer 2011 than meets the eye.