As every boy who grew up in the 90’s knows, Transformers were freaking awesome. Therefore, it was only natural for the children who grew up with these “robots in disguise” to see the first Transformers film when it hit movie screens in the summer of ’07. Like the original cartoon series, the film did not disappoint; in fact, it astounded audiences as evidenced by that summer’s box office.

But, as has become painfully obvious, the makers of Transformers did not stop with their smash hit. Instead, they chose to pollute their popularity by making a sequel, an idea that has harmed many movies in the past. This was no exception. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen may have been one of the worst movie letdowns of the summer. Why? It followed a great movie, and the film makers had a lot to work with (Transformers are ridiculously cool, and the director had a $200 million budget). Instead of being something refreshingly new and charged with creative action, Transformers 2 came off as cliche as it attempted to mimic its predecessors success.

If one is looking for evidence of cliche, look no further. Romance abounds in absurdly common and corny ways. For example, Sam Witwicky battled with the those three little words that every love-struck schoolboy must say to their serious girlfriends: “I love you”. And the girlfriend, Mikaela Banes played by Megan Fox, was a cliche herself. The makers knew an attractive female such as Megan Fox would pull boys in like a magnet.

The Megan Fox technique only hooks some men, though, and new strategies needed to be adopted to secure more of an audience. It was there that writers turned to humor. This film introduced two new characters, comedic twins by the names of Skids and Mudflap. While this may have worked for a comedy, the oily, spark-filled battles of the Autobots versus the Decepticons clearly call the genre of Action home. Comedy had no place among these steely aliens.

Of course, more can be said about the failures of Tranformers 2, but what lies at the core of these failures is that film makers really wanted to top their previous creation. Instead of taking care in engineering a new plot or constructing a more original love story, writers simply stuck comedy awkwardly in and took short cuts at every turn. And why not? Wouldn’t just one hulking, metal, destructive machine guarantee viewers? I mean, I went and saw it. But the fact remains that not even Optimus Prime could have saved this cliche movie.