TF2 - ROTF Movie reviews and comments.

[jacksplatt11]

Just saw it, I liked the first one better but still enjoyed this, massive robots fighting is always good. My friends, and I for that matter, complained about the fact that you can't clearly make out whats going on in the fight scenes, but that's the same as the first so what are you gonna do eh...

Dislikes:
-All attempts are humour were rubbish, humping dogs, TFs humping legs, Devastator balls, reefer cookies wtf wasn't even realistic, Spitz tasering himself with his boxers down got the biggest laugh and we didn't even think it was funny? hmmm
-Devestator did nothing really, had this awesome vortex sucking thing that was sucking in and destroying everything, but it couldn't grind up one of the twins? Isn't that the purpose of it, to destroy stuff?
-Fallen was no big threat really when it came down to it but I guess Optimus was super powered at the time, which also annoyed me, since when was Optimus such a good fighter? Must have got a lot of training in the 2 years between
-Decepticons not seen as a viable threat, how are we meant to believe they will ever actually threaten us when all it takes is a handful of Autobots and humans to take down 30-something Deceps
-Death isn't forever
-No real characterization of most TFs, but it was good to see the Starscream of old, even if Megatron became a lackey

One question though, have these 'hatchlings' been explained? I haven't read the comics cause I'm lazy so I'm not sure if they're in there, do they grow up into protoforms that get sent to planets or whatever?

[darockk]

well ive been puposely keeping myself in the dark about this movie so here are my impressions after seeing it without knowing anything about it

likes:

- opening sequence and intro of prime
-forest fighting scene. this was awesome. the reason being the camera was panned far away enough to actually see what was going on.
-starscream gets to talk
-heaps more robots, even if not character developed


dislikes:

-lowbrow human humor, should have ditched the parents, sector 7 man and sam's roomate altogether. they were annoying, not funny.
-hated how we get a terminator X / Species chick in this movie. since when can TF's become humanoid?
- twins got irritating fast. talk about the jar jar binks of this movie.
-hated the 'sam holding the key to earths future' plotline used again
-didnt get to see jetfire fly in jet mode much.
-how robots can come back to life. why should we care if someone dies from now on, knwoing they can come back later?
-didnt get to see the motorbikes and that silver concept car much
-the design of devastator, he just looked like a blob to me(and testicle gag was stupid)
-problems with identifying whats going on in the final fight scenes (unlike the forrest scene)
-final scene with prime combined with jetfire was too short.
-no autobots died, are the decepticons that bad? i was hoping this movie would end on a sad note like empire strikes back.

wow thats alot of bads, but overall i enjoyed the film, but like the first, it could have been better with a bit of editting and smarter choices.
first half was good. 2nd half not so good. u can tell they kinda ran out of money and couldnt get the effects they wanted for the 2nd half.

3/5 stars

[Eazy D]

Just saw it.

Not happy

I didn't mind the first movie [although I hate the bionicle -like bots] becuase it was good value summer blockbuster action cheese. ROTF is too long and just gets boring.

Megatron is whipped by the fallen who himself isn't very scary. Heaps of new bots are chucked in randomly but no attampt at characterisation is made for most of them. Its difficult to even figure out who is who since everyone looks like bionicle silvery mush. The ending was incredibly dragged out. Its basically just Sam and his friends taking an hour to cross a stretch of sand with lots of explosions around them. Jetfire was embarassing. Such a cool SR-71 blackbird transforming into a Geriatric piece of junk with a walking stick and a bad british accent. Ecen I can't accept that much cheese.

The only saving grace of the movie for me was the prime vs megs/screamer/blackout fight. Thats was beautiful. I had been disappointed with the first movie coz there wasn't enough robot on robot action but this fight was exquisitely done. The camera was pulled back enough to give a good view and the focus was kept on the bots. Prime was heroic, valiant and totally bad-ass. He nailed all three of them until a cheap shot took him down. That scene was worthy of the animated movie. I'd pay 14 bucks at the movies just to see that fight scene again

PS - I had major fan rage when prime's body was dumped from the chopper like that. Treat the body with some respect why don't you. It would'tn hurt to lower him down gently.

I didn't go into this movie expecting awesome dialogue or the intricacies of method acting. I expected big blockbuster cheese with some nice in-references for the fans. I ended up with a too long and somewhat boring movie that isn't even the best action-cheese out this summer.

[Tommy K]

ok so where do i begin

i enjoyed this movie, it was lots of fun, me and my friends loved it, we saw it on the v max screen in parramatta because thats the only way you can watch this movie, not in a normal cinema, but in a huge friggin screen! lol.

i was a big fan of ravage he was heaps cool

the isabel lucas made wonder, if more aussie girls were like her (robot sense not seductive sense) the world would be a much more scarier place.

the first primes and the fallen had a good design, was not a big fan of those helmet/ tiki mask type things they wore.

jetfire was amazing, they did say there was going to be an old timer robot in this movie, we all had our speculation, was it going to be a decepticon or autobot but it was great having jetfire as it, i even loved the walking stick, and they explained it perfectly, the rusted up parts and the depletion of energon in his body, it was a shame to see him go, i thought it was funny though when he argued with the sector 7 guy (mainly because the person whom played that character also voiced over jetfire).

i wasnt a big fan of the egypt concept when i first heard about it, but now looking back on the movie i thought it was great, it didnt have the whole alien vs predator, yugioh whatever thing it had with those popular frachises lol.

the finger thing was covered up allright i believe, using the bandage as an excuse was plausible, besides many people forgot it, only remember it when optimus was making his grand speech at the end.

optimus prime turned into a one mean awesom leader, he took on several decepticons just to save sam (some what simialr to code of honor or whatever teh dinobot episode was) and yeah

wheelie was SSSSSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better in this movie then the cheap orange rhyming piece of, well you know this wheelie was a much better improvement

and lastly i was a big fan of those 2 awesome robots, skids and mudflap, theyre humor, even though childish at times, was great and was an awesome asset to the movie, just like wheelie

[Vector Sigma 13]

Saw it last night. And frankly i loved it! Nothing more to say really.

Its been interesting reading other peoples comments on this movie and how contrasting they have been.

[GoktimusPrime]

Loved this movie, so much in common with the G1 cartoon version.

I agree that like the first movie, it does well in capturing the essence of the G1 cartoon. The Constructicon army are like those purple Seekers!

I wish people would stop bagging out the "dropping" of prime when they return his body to base....

1) What, the Choppers suppossed to Land on top of him? It wasn't a special souped up thing... it was a plane old cargo carrying thing with some chains on it!!!

and 2) it was to show the change in attitudes.... NEST was on the outter, collection was by the USA not NEST (i think anyway, otherwise they would have done alot more to load him into a plane and work on him or something)

I would agree more with point #1. Optimus Prime's body was in the middle of a forest, presumably an area accessible by the public. They needed to evacuate him ASAP before some random civilian walks along with a mobile phone camera and "fuels the jet." And to their credit they did bring the chopper down pretty low before dropping the body. With Egypt it was a high altitude fly-by, so they needed parachutes for Prime otherwise his body would probably shatter on impact. Also, they had time to prepare for it at NEST's secret HQ.

[Lord_Zed]

Optimus such a good fighter? Must have got a lot of training in the 2 years between

Well they were putting down Decepticons for 2 years, so yeah I'd assume the members of Nest would now be well drilled in anti-Transformer combat.

-Decepticons not seen as a viable threat, how are we meant to believe they will ever actually threaten us when all it takes is a handful of Autobots and humans to take down 30-something Deceps

Well they were still more of a threat than the G1 cartoon cons, but that was a kids cartoon. At least as stated above the handfull of humans and Autobots were veteran Decepticon fighters I'm sure they knew where to aim, and if the cons were mostly drones then that would downgrade their effectivness. And they did kill a lot of soliders and possibly an Arceee triplet or two.

[kup]

Before I begin please keep in mind that I saw this movie only once on IMAX so that may have warped my perception of the film a bit and some views may change once I see the movie again on a 'normal' screen - This mostly applies to some of the action scenes.

Here we go:

As mentioned I went to see TF2 on IMAX. I was already excited to see the movie and going to see it on IMAX for the first time ever added even more to the excitement.

The first thing we see in the movie is a prehistoric background story on how the Fallen and his kin had visited Earth before in the very distant past, before civilization begun - I thought this bit rather cool and epic. The Fallen's design is pretty weird but effective as an Ancient Transformer and it does evoke mystery in it - He is not much to look at in pictures but he does work in the movie.

After that 'set up' plot scene is over, we go back to the present which takes place 2 years after the first movie and I was very pleased how the story begun with the Transformers upfront which unlike the first film, they weren't trying to hide them from the audience but more willing to show them in action. Also the people behind the movie appear to have come to terms and accept the Transformers as talking and interacting characters rather than props to be used which is always welcomed - This aspect can be noticed throughout the movie with mixed results.

The scene started off with a pretty awesome and fast action sequence and an 'already in progress' plot about the Transformers allied with the humans going around on a global hunt tracking down any rogue Decepticons hiding among human machinery. This bit was very nice and a great opening - However I wasn't all that thrilled about the conclusion of this initial sequence. When the Constructicon by the name of Demolishor was defeated and knocked out of the action, no longer posing a threat - then comes Prime and executes him in cold blood in a savage manner that felt more like the movie artificially trying to be 'hardcore' than anything substantial and so much against the character of Optimus Prime not just from G1 but also the character we saw in the first movie. It was as if Optimus Prime was now a souless avenging killing machine rather than the compassionate leader we saw in the first movie.

Some people have said that he was also savage in the first movie when he decapitated Bonecrusher but that was during combat not after Bonecrusher was down and out of the battle - A little bit of my appreciation for the Prime movie character died when he killed Demolisher in cold Blood.

Anyway, the movie progressed along and now we were back with Sam at his house from TF1. I expected the cringy humor to make me roll eyes here but it wasn't as bad as I expected even if there was still pretty bad crude humor with the dogs humping and so forth. I am not a fan of the Allspark freak bots concept but the bit with the kitchen appliances coming to life after Sam dropped the Allspark shard was fun and I enjoyed it but what got my attention is that the freakbots look more cartoony than anything else I have ever seen in this franchise, including Animated; Yeah freaky but still cartoony in design with big heads, eyes and Gremlin like mouths. I thought that to be yet another irony given Bay's stand on "no cartoony stuff".

The part with Bumblebee coming to the rescue was cool and his part about being sad about Sam leaving for College without him wasn't that bad.

Now we come to the college bit which was absolutely horrible. 'Alice' the Pretender was just crap and tedious and her purpose there was just for eye candy nothing more - She had no purpose in the film whatsoever and neither did Sam's room mate. They were just tedious and annoying characters and all the College scenes were a mess. The humor with the parents was a disgrace with the 'special cookies' and this sequence was ten times worse than anything we saw in the first movie. I visibly saw several people in the IMAX theater rolling their eyes with some moaning in frustration. It did get some cheap 'WTF?' laughs but that's all. Orci and Kurtzman should seriously be stopped from doing comedy, its just cheap crude humor and more cringe inducing than funny to begin with and this can be noticed in different degrees in all their works. Star Trek was an awesome movie but its humor was pretty forced and gimmicky even if it was no where near as crude, loud and distracting as it is in TF2 but still had that 'copy & paste' Terrence & Phillip feel as it was forced in rather than naturally occurring within the script.

The College sequences are by far the worse parts of the movie and thankfully they end when Sam escapes after being seduced/attacked by Alice which was all a very cringy affair. That whole Pretender character should of just been cut from the film as it wasn't fun it was just freaking tedious and pointless. Alice gives a bad name to G1 Pretenders.

Well with that over, we move on to my views on the better parts of the movie and where the action begins to pick up.

We get to see Soundwave in Satelite mode, thankfully he did have a solid purpose in this movie as he is coordinating Decepticon forces on Earth and although for some stupid reason they had removed the synthesizer from his voice, Welker doing Dr Claw on him worked reasonably well for me. Soundwave sends Ravage to retrieve the Allspark fragment which Prime removed from Megatron in the first movie - Ravage was absolutely awesome and well executed even if I am not crazy about that nanobot combiner thing he used to infiltrate the base. Ravage later firing on the base from his hip canons was also pretty awesome and it makes sense from the spying/retrieval point of view as he went in stealthily and then opened fire on the base in order to scape during the chaos.

Naturally the reason for acquiring the Allspark fragment was to revive Megatron and the sequence with the Constructicons jumping off the ship to reach the ocean depth where Megatron had been dumped was cool even if it contradicts the first movie as the depth of the ocean doesn't crush them but that could be interpreted as the Humans' lack of understanding on Transformers durability. Although I liked the ritualistic way in which the Decepticons revived Megatron, I was a bit disturbed about them Sacrificing the Constructicon. Why was that necessary? Megatron clearly looks as if he had been revived from Brawl's parts due to the tank mode and it seems that this was the original intention but probably for greater impact, Bay chose to do this rather pointless sacrifice instead.

With Megatron revived and well; they go to what I assume to be the Decepticon's ship on one of Saturn's moons and it was great to see the Decepticons in some sort of base, particularly a spaceship as it throws out the absurd notion that the Movie Transformers travel through space as rocklords. It seems that the comics and fan theories that the Autobots and Decepticons simply 'parked' their ship somewhere in the solar system and then traveled the rest of the way as comets has been realized in this movie. I can only assume that the Autobots also have their ship parked in the Solar System somewhere. Here is where we meet the Fallen.

I was honestly surprised to see the Fallen so soon, I thought he would be the big Bad that only appears at the end of the film as if he had been entombed or something. Instead he had been on the ship apparently leading the Decepticons since the start - This was surprising and doesn't really make much sense when it comes to the first movie. Another strange thing was watching Megatron subservient to the Fallen so willingly, in G1 (both cartoon and comic) Megatron bowed down to no one willingly and if he did so, it was only to get the upper hand later on but here he seems to genuinely worship the Fallen. However the Movie Universe is a completely different and isolated continuity to all others so I guess this Megatron is different than the others but just like Prime, this behavior also contradicts the Megatron character we saw in the first film. The best parts out of this scene was the interaction between Starscream and Megatron although we are yet to see Starscream's treacherous side as far as the Bay movies are concerned. When it comes to the hatchlings/protoforms - I didn't think much of them at the time, more of a 'What the hell?' specially since it had been established in the previous film that the Allspark was imperative to creating Cybertronian life. At least it raised a need for Energon which is a traditionally important aspect of Transformers which until now had been ignored in the movieverse.

Back on earth, after Sam escaped from college with his annoying room mate and Mikaela, Sam gets captured by the Decepticons and probed by Scalpel (The Doctor) who in appearance looks rather stupid but was given a somewhat fun personality so it warmed me up to the character. Sam eventually gets rescued by the Autobots before Scalpel does any permanent harm to him and escapes.

Later on we get an awesome Forest Battle with the Decepticons as Prime and Sam are separated and it becomes evident that the whole Decepticon effort with capturing Sam was primarily to lure Prime into a trap. In this battle Prime was awesome and this time the actions was clearly intended for IMAX as everything looked fantastic on the large screen. Optimus gets surrounded by Decepticons and one of them is either a resurrected Blackout or another Transfomer like him (kind of like how Starscream has several 'lookalikes' in G1 and how G1 Prowl looks like Smokescreen and Bluestreak). At first Optimus gets the crap beaten out of him and then he gets the upper hand and kicks a lot of ass until Megatron runs him through from the back. This sequence was fantastic and although it was fast, frantic and furious in a Michael Bay sort of way - it was possible to follow the action unlike the first film which suffered from a lot of bad zoom ins and an irritating tendency to move the camera away from the action. The action sequences are a clear improvement overall in this film when compared to the first movie.

The forest scene is my favorite part of the movie even if it ended in the overly cliched death of Prime which in my opinion was a bad plot idea as it flattened the already thin plot of the movie - There was no longer any surprises, we all knew he was going to be revived by the end and save the day but regardless of this, it didn't bother me that much. I was already expecting a thin cliched plot, this is a Bay movie after all so I continued to watch the movie for what it was and despite the overall cliched end of the battle, the Forest battle was so good that it had twists of its own. At some points it seemed that Prime was going to die but then it seemed that wasn't the case as he begun to kick ass and get the upper hand but suddenly Bang! He is dead!

[kup]

The plot then moves into following Sam around with his friends, Bumblebee and the twins. Now I know that before the movie many of us thought that the twins were a stupid idea and technically it still is but I found them somewhat likable and fun. I was expecting a couple of Jar Jars but thankfully that wasn't the case and like The Doctor, I warmed up to the characters which had fun personalities despite both of them being somewhat over the top and weird looking. I did not see anything racist about the Twins, by the way. I have no idea where this is coming from as I primarily saw that as a satire on small town hicks not black people. I think this racism thing is being artificially induced as criticism.

Since we are now discussing characters we all thought we would hate, let's talk about Wheelie. Wheelie's design looks shit - no doubt about that but the character was much like the twins, fun. He was a little over the top but I enjoyed his presence and again shows that the movie makers are no longer afraid to portray the Transformers with personalities.

The rest of the movie becomes a bit of a treasure hunt with Sam and the Autobots trying to work out what the writing that Sam sees in his mind means and Wheelie points them out to an ancient Transformer who has been hidden on Earth dormant for a long time. They go to the Aero space museum (I hoped we would see Ransack, the bi-plane but we only saw his alt mode ) and this is where we meet Jetfire.

Jetfire was a bit weird but likable even though his only real purpose was just story exposition which was somewhat disappointing but at least he wasn't a throwaway character (more on that later). Jetfire's story adds a bit of much needed back story to the Movie continuity which is vaguely based on the Marvel G1 origin with the 7 Primes who had a traitor among them. This is similar but still distanced to the 1980s origin with the first 13 Transformers created by Primus with the Fallen being the Judas of the group who chose to conspire with Unicron and betray his brothers and creator in return for power. The Movie version is a considerably more simplistic take on this origin story to the point that there is only a passing similarity.

Something in regards to Jetfire who is a Decepticon in the Movie verse is that it seems that the Decepticons in Movie Cybertron's ancient past weren't originally evil as Jetfire expressed disgust on what has become of them. This is a unique take in Transformers fiction as typically in G1 fiction (such as Marvel G1) the Decepticons are depicted as a breakaway faction of Cybertronians who rebelled against the original Cybertronian Council of elders. I was pleased to see this unique take on Decepticon origins and since Megatron is not the founder of the revolutionary movement in this continuity, it also brings some sense into why he is subservient to the Fallen. Too bad this aspect of the Movie Decepticons wasn't further expanded as its very interesting.

Jetfire then transports them to Egypt where they find 'The Matrix' of the Primes (I prefer the original look of the Matrix but was happy to see one in the movie verse even if its nature and purpose has been radically changed) and we come to the final battle.

This is a battle for the Matrix to prevent the Fallen from powering up his Super Nova causing machine to gain Energon. This was like most of the overall story, rather cliched and unimaginative but again, I wasn't expecting much of the story in a Bay movie so it didn't bother me as much. The Action again was very frantic, furious and fast but thankfully the focused remained on the action rather than some random side shot like it was in the first movie. Unfortunately the action here was rather poorly choreographed in the latter part of it when Sam nears Prime and illogical in many ways as it is clear that things were artificially arranged to make the US military look good which is yet another Bayism. The US military again fired the brunt of the fire power against the Decepticons defeating them and although there was some cool animation with some of the Autobots firing shots at the Deceopticons, they didn't really do much at all in this battle. Now having said that, we also saw some pretty poor CGI here with the Decepticons as there were way too many generics here including several Constructicon clones.

Now let's talk about Devastator, he was unfortunately poorly handled as some of the Constructicon generics simply merged into Devastator right away (traditionally this is done as part of a major offensive or a last resort) and set loose against Sam's bunch, particularly the twins which in my opinion was a bit of a waste. Devastator should have been used in the main battle against the military to properly shine while the Autobots fight the individual Decepticons but oh well. He later climbs the pyramid to destroy the top of it to expose the machine and gets blasted away by some high tech US military missile which was rather anti-climatic and gimmicky. Again they had some crude unwanted humor with Devastator's 'balls' but after the 'special cookies' stupidity, it wasn't that bad but once again shows how crudely poor Kurtzman and Orci are at comedy.

Of course Prime gets revived by the Matrix as well as repaired and upgraded by Jetfire arriving to help in the battle and later sacrifice himself which was good but rather sudden. Jetfire was severely injured during the fight so maybe he was going to die anyway and wanted his death to mean something but this was not properly explained and happened within just a couple of seconds.

Prime gets upgraded and beats the Fallen within just a few seconds which was rather disappointing as they showed the Fallen have all this crazy magical powers during the battle like his G1/War Within counterpart but was very easily defeated by the resurrected Prime ending the battle and the movie - It would have been better if they had allowed for a nice duel between the Fallen and Prime while the former used his magical powers against him but in a typical Bay fashion, the potential wasn't exploited.

The movie ends with the Decepticons retreating and the credits rolling.

General Comments:

This movie was certainly bigger than the original when it comes to action but unfortunately its a considerably lesser film when it comes to the screenplay as its rather soulless in execution. Yeah they do improve on some aspects from the first movie such as more exposition on Transformers but sadly in a typical Michael Bay manner, some characters were completely forgotten once they served their purpose in the action that was intended for them and are abandoned randomly during the film such as Wheelie and the twins. Something that I am sure would confused critics, fans and the general public alike is the huge amount of Constructicon clones. There were at least 3 identical sets of them with no explanation. What makes this more confusing is that we clearly see one of them be killed at the start of the movie. These 'multiples' are not explained in the film which is again a sloppy Bay signature film making flaw but my guess is that they are like G1 Seekers in which several Transformers share the same design.

Another thing that bothered me was that Soundwave never came down from Satellite mode. I expected him to join the battle at the end which would have been awesome but he didn't and again more wasted potential for something great - It seems that he was forgotten by Bay too but he did play a substantial role in the movie at least.

As mentioned, this movie is basically a bigger movie than the first one but its not greater. There is considerable improvement on the action which makes this movie entertaining and fun but they have done so at the cost of the plot which is barely there and seems more as an excuse for the action than anything else which is very typical of Michael Bay. The first screenplay wasn't a masterpiece of writing but it was certainly better than this one.

It has been mentioned that this movie is fun and thrilling but that you need to leave your brain at home to fully enjoy it and I cannot disagree with that. This time around this movie is more Bay than the first as there is no sign of Spielberg's influence here and the only thing that I can identify from Orci and Kurtzman's work is the crude humor which isn't exactly a highlight as those sequences were the lowest points of the movie and if they had been cut film it would have been better of. It's possible that the lacking screenplay is due to the writer's strike and letting Bay do whatever he wanted.

This movie was a massive action Summer Blockbuster movie, very entertaining, fun and exciting just like going on a fast Roller coaster ride but that's it. There is very little substance here just plain dumb fun. Now having said that, the plot is so thin that it may hurt its repeat viewing potential but like all modern Summer Blockbusters, they are not made for longevity and may even bore some who are unable to follow the action or fill in the plot gaps themselves.

Although Transformers characters here received much more exposure than the first film, there were some odd aspects. Most of the Autobots aside from Prime and the twins had at best cameo appearances, including ones from the first film such as Ratchet and Ironhide. Arcee had a single line and jolt and Sideswipe (who looks more like G1 Tracks) were mostly just there for one or two action shots and that's it. Jolt was just hanging around the background on a couple of scenes which is dissapointing.

The Decepticons on the other hand had much more exposition than the first movie which is very welcomed and one of the highlights of the film even if the heavily advertise character of Sideways had a tiny cameo appearance which was a bit disappointing.

Final thoughts:

I liked this movie and found it fun and exciting in a dumb sort of way. I didn't mind the lack of depth in the script as its just an excuse for the action as it is typical of Bay. Since this time around I knew what to expect since Bay is a very monotonous film maker so I wasn't disappointed in that regard as I went to see a big flashy action movie and that's what I got - It would have been silly of me to expect anything more.

Revenge of the Fallen is indeed bigger in every way to the first movie and this includes greater and better action as well as much worse cringe worthy humor. The humor (and the pretender) in the movie is the real killer for me, much more than the paper thin script and character discrepancies. To put it simply the good parts of the first movie are made better and the bad parts are made a lot worse which is rather shallow since aside from improving the first film they have just made it bigger.

Aside from the bad humor, a low part of the movie for me is Prime's savagery and later extended absence which robbed the movie from the 'soul' that the first had. In this aspect the first movie is a much better work of film making than this one which is mostly a big action romp and rather soulless in that sense.

I will go to see it again sometime soon on a normal screen and I may be able to amend some of my views here as I may change my mind on some aspects but overall I enjoyed the movie even with its flaws. I will buy some of the toys as I did enjoy several of the characters but I'll be conservative in my ROTF collecting as there were too many 'throwaway' characters in this one.

[SMHFConvoy]

I figured out why this movie didn't work for me. It felt like I'd skipped the second movie and watched the end of a trilogy.