by Matty Boy Anderson 06.29.07
Lately, in addition to being incredibly depressed, I've been unbelievably pissed off, 24/7. My depression is rooted in the obvious fact that despite my best efforts, time continues to whip past at ludicrous speed, and I've set and missed deadlines for the John's Arm movie so many times at this point that it's practically a joke in the vein of Duke Nukem Forever. Nobody outside of my astoundingly understanding and hot girlfriend has even the foggiest clue of the scope of this thing, or how I've been nearly killing myself trying to ready everything properly with zero venture capital, and running out of money again. And again. And again. Everything costs SO MUCH MONEY. Everything takes DAYS. And nobody has any idea how desperately I've been craving the payoff on this movie, when I can finally show the fucking thing to people and explain why I've barely talked to anyone in over a year. Barely left the Pod office. Over a year.
As for why I'm so pissed off, that's another matter. I hate myself like I was fucking Mega-Hitler on steroids for still not having JA:A ready, sure. But that's not it entirely. It's not my stupid cunt of a neighbor and her shitbag yapping dog, even though she's not helping matters with her cunty penchant for blasting shitty music so loud it drowns out our fucking TV. (Open note to the endless legion of idiots out there: if you don't like the idea of a stranger slitting your throat while you sleep, maybe you should take the hint when you hear someone pounding on your fucking wall, and turn Kid Rock down to a considerate volume. Like OFF, in the case of Kid Rock.) It's not the entirety of fuckhole Europe deluging my forums with their lovely porno spam. (I've disabled the forums for the time being because I'm fucking tired of deleting the shit.) Hey, Europe and Russia? FUCK YOU. GO FUCK YOURSELF. You lead the fucking pack in porno spam, so here's an American guy telling you to SUCK YOUR MOM'S COCK. It's a shame there's not another internet for you troglodyte sex freaks. Aw, you don't like me talking shit about you, Europe and Russia? Here's a novel fucking idea: DO SOMETHING. The rest of the world treats America like we're supposed to be perfect and solve every fucking problem. Try punishing a SINGLE SPAMMER who's fucked with my business here. I won't hold my breath, Europe and Russia, I know you're too busy gagging on each other's sweaty, reeking testicles.
Anyway- I digress, as always. (I pay the bills here so I'll digress if I fucking want to.) I'm pissed off because I have to get something off my chest. It may seem trivial to some people, but here it is. Lately, as the days tick down to the premiere of the upcoming Michael Bay Transformers movie, I've been getting a twinge that reminds me of summer a few years ago, in the year 1999, when I was 27 years old. Remember that I told you I was 27 years old.
Like millions of others, I lined up for the most anticipated movie in decades: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I knew full well going into the theater that there was no way in hell that it would live up to the expectations people had been building up since they were children. I figured it would probably be akin to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, where it would have a markedly "prologue" quality to it. I was just happy to see a new Star Wars movie, beyond everything else.
Guess what happened? I LOVED THE PHANTOM MENACE. I loved the title when I first heard it, and still do. I saw it in the theater over and over again. Fuck you, it was fun. I didn't have some impossible construct for new Star Wars created in my mind that Episode I had to top. The effects were fucking awesome. I got to see Jedi conducting regular, everyday Jedi business. I saw Lucas imply that Anakin Skywalker was not only a regular little boy once upon a time, but he was also Hitler-Christ. I understood that Jar Jar Binks was a device implanted in the prequels to show viewers how patient and fair Jedi have to be: THEY EVEN HAVE TO HELP A STUPID ALIEN LIKE JAR JAR, WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT. And being that I have cognitive abilites above that of a moron (roughly), I grasped the necessity of droids as Jedi adversaries, being that we live in a world that tries to cut down on the amount of human dismemberment in kids' movies. Just why I understood why Greedo had to shoot first. Because he fucking did, and no amount of crying to your mommy is going to change that. Greedo shot first. He just couldn't shoot for shit, probably due to his bulging compound eyes, so Han fucking fried him. We're not talking about IG-88 here: Greedo got his bounty hunting license online. It's fucking worthless.
That was seven years ago. And for seven years, I've had to listen to the unceasing gripes of an entire generation of whining, spoiled, pseudo-ironic hipster fuckwads. No new Star Wars can ever top their beloved, untouchable original version of The Empire Strikes Back. They think Watto is a "kike stereotype", and they compare Jar Jar Binks to "Stepin Fetchit" when they don't even know who that was; they're just parroting something they read in Entertainment Weekly or Something Awful. They can't accept that children might hold an interest in Star Wars movies, so they act like George Lucas personally blew diarrhea in their face for showing Darth Vader as a little boy (oh, what, "he was a bad actor"? What, your bitch ass could've out-acted him at age 9?). And then when you remind them that Star Wars is inherently for kids, they cite the number of hand-and-head removals by lightsaber as kid-unfriendly, as though children haven't been raised on the Brothers Grimm and similar dark fables for centuries. I know Disney has done their darnedest to pussify the entire universe (though to be fair, Lasseter axed the unholy Sequel Machine), but even they acknowledged the occasional cannibalistic witch, and so many of their movies open with a matricide I'm astonished moms even show that shit to their kids at all. Don't shit a shitter: you put the Star Wars prequels under a microscope, and if you'd seen them when you were a toddler, you would have decorated your fricking diapers with glee. Ask a kid what they thought of The Phantom Menace. They fucking LOVED IT. Are you kidding? OBI-WAN KENOBI CHOPPED DARTH MAUL IN HALF.
And it went on like this, prequel after prequel. I kept seeing and enjoying them, though I knew that ANY little imperfection would be splayed across the internet like so much European and Russian porn. YES, the love scenes in Episode II were stilted; WHO FUCKING CARES. YOU ARE NOT A PRE-TEEN GIRL. Pre-teen girls LIKE crushy stuff like that; what the fuck, are you so much of a dick that you can't let GIRLS IN YOUR CLUBHOUSE? You take the good with the bad. I always hated C-3PO, so I didn't mind when he was so annoying in Episode II; hell, if anything it made his memory wipe after Episode III feel like poetic justice. He has to learn to be a big gaybot all over again.
Holy fuck. I was going to talk about Transformers.
Well, honestly, this illustrates my point nicely; the same aggravating shit is happening again with people whining about the Transformers movie, when all I desire is to see the film and enjoy it. I have been a "TFan", without interruption or loss of interest, since I was 12 in 1984 and I got my first Transformer. It was Soundwave. I am more old school than you can even conceive. I have over 20 Transformers on my desk right now. My collection totals over a thousand easily. Since the first "Golden Age" of TFs, I have suffered through cartoons where Predacons sang "I've Been Workin' On The Railroad", and Optimus Prime takes orders from a holographic schoolgirl. Shit, even the original, most-beloved G1 cartoon had an episode where a human girl had a preternatural obsession with an Autobot who turned into a seaplane. Motherfucker, don't tell me your fucking childhood has been sodomized because the movie is directed by the guy who did "Pearl Harbor".
I'll admit, for the first few months, I was anti-Bay. It really seemed like we were going to get fucked again, and they didn't "get it" (like a movie based on toys is complex and esoteric). Then I started to see the footage. Bonecrusher vs. Prime. When I was able to stop giggling like a 12-year-old, I realized what even the highest members of the TFandom begrudgingly admitted later; somehow, Bay and company "got it". And fuck, it's not rocket science: a director who's famous for explosions and car chases making a movie about giant robots blowing shit up. You could add flaming tigers with tits launching ninjas out of their assholes and it couldn't be more of a sure thing. I could be wrong, and I won't know until I see the movie, but like I said, I had to sit through a cartoon where a chick wanted to hump an alien seaplane. How is this insanely high-budget movie about the robots I love fucking shit up for two hours going to be bad again, exactly?
But that's just part of it. See, Transformers are in my goddamn blood. I've bought Transformers when I was better off buying food. A good Transformer means literally years of fun. And see, some of these movie nay-sayers, despite the fact that they're writing e-death threats to Michael Bay, are WRONG as well as stupid. They're stuck in a G1 mindset when they weren't really that into Transformers to begin with. Sure, they know who Optimus Prime is, and they know that Starscream was always trying to overthrow Megatron. But beyond that, they're cursing the upcoming movie unfairly because they're incorrect. So, because I'm undoubtedly a bigger expert on Transformers than you (unless you're George, Phil, or Philip, but they know I don't mean them in the first place), I'm about to set everybody straight on some shit. Listen good. Here are the most common gripes I have to put up with on this crazy thing we call the internet. If I hear these from anyone I reserve the right to pimp-slap your nose crooked.
1. Why isn't Megatron a gun? That's fucking stupid DIE IN A FIRE MICHEAL BAY
Megatron was a gun for two years, from 1984-1986. If you are able to conjure simple arithmetic, you will note that a person born when Megatron was last a realistic gun would be old enough to drink in America by now. I say "realistic" because Hasbro was nice enough to bring out a Megatron that turns into a "blaster" recently that we could all spend our money on. The Japanese company that manufactures Transformers even released a "Masterpiece" Megatron that turns into a Walther P-38 the size of a hair dryer, and you still can't import it into the U.S. without an orange cap glued in the end of the barrel. Why? BECAUSE AMERICANS POINT EVERYTHING AT COPS FOR SOME REASON. Also, I should note that reaction to Movie Megatron's original face/head (a.k.a. "Pocket Pussy") was so negative and fussy that they changed it, and if you whine about it now, you're like the crying fat kid at Chuck E. Cheese who doesn't think he got enough sprinkles on his jumbo banana split. Shut the fuck up and eat, Fatty.
In the 1986 Transformers animated movie, the alien robot Satan known as Unicron recreated the mortally wounded Megatron as Galvatron, setting up the "upgrade" formula used in the years to come to sell us a repainted Megatron (as well as the formula for ending everything in "-ron"). Anybody who bitches about repainted Transformers is not a real fan. The original lineup of toys in 1984 was 50% repaints; the characters were engaging enough that we didn't care about buying the same toy twice. THREE times- no, SIX, in the case of Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp, Thrust, Dirge, and Ramjet. Plus you never know when a mold will be improved upon or made more desirable by a few simple color or mold changes. Ask any Transfan who has a Sunstorm. If that made no sense to you, kill yourself because you have no chance of ever being even remotely as cool as I am. Sorry. Them is the breaks.
Since 1986, Megatron has been a jet, an alligator, a T-Rex, a giant floating head, a dragon, a tank, a Batmobile, and a weird-ass samurai-looking thing with eight modes, one of which was a big hand. The only iconic thing about the original Megatron was his fusion cannon, which was an accident of his gun alt-mode. (Plus we all saw him blow off Ironhide's head with that thing, and that shit was fucked.) It's not really a character to split hairs over, design-wise. Sure, I appreciate the original Megs' look as much as the next pathetic geek, but only recently have efforts been made to embellish his background and character. The bottom line; is there a giant evil robot destroying a lot of shit, and the other evil robots follow him? Yeah, that's probably Megatron. Kids practically rioted in the streets when Rodimus Prime took up the Matrix from TRUKK Prime, but Megatron can be anything; in fact he's often the "wildcard" to shake things up.
Christ, I was gonna put pictures with this update? Fuck that. This shit is overlong enough as it is. Goddamn I hate myself.
2. WHY dosent BUMBELBEE have a FACE??!11 AND ALSO LOOKS LIKE FURBY U SUCK MICHA34L BAYY!!!!11
This is another example of where a toy's cartoon counterpart became unexpectedly iconic. Ask anybody who had the original Bumblebee. He didn't have a face. Cliffjumper (his repaint) did. I guess I kinda have to back this up with a picture. Fuck.
That's Original Recipe Bumble on the left, his box art in the middle, and of course the Movie version on the right. See, you were totally a dick to those nice Hollywood people. This is just one of many examples where they subtly worked in things that will cause a near-fatal fangasm, like that orange sword that pops out of Prime's arm. And you said them naughty things to them people and made them sad. :( (Here is where I'd bring up people complaining about Bumblebee not being a VW Bug, but I've already hated on Europe enough in this article, and I don't need to start in on the fucking Germans and their "no war-toy" shit.)
Also I just remembered that anyone who has a problem with black Movie Ironhide can refer to #1, and just replace "Megatron" with "Ironhide". Again, you have to remember that we're talking about a kids' toyline here, albeit one adults happen to engage in, and kids have the attention span of jumping beans on crack. Many recall the gruff red veteran Ironhide of yesteryear and his aforementioned tragic unheading, but there's a bunch of kids who only knew "Energon-era" Ironhide, who was both a green soldier and a green truck. He talked like Ed from Ed Edd & Eddy, and he was either too dumb or too ignorant to hide his head in alt mode. If you got on board during the divisive Beast Wars era, you'd know Ironhide as an elephant who helped form the Maximal super warrior Magnaboss. You know, a hobby seems so deviant when you type it out in detail on a web page.
3. What is the deal with the FLAMES on OPTIMUS PRIME!!! WHY is he FLAMING??!?
Again, this was something that separated the casual fans from the obsessives. Say what you will about sad-sack Rodimus Prime: he was rockin' those flames back in '86, as was metrosexual Autobot warrior Tracks a year previous. I can't for the life of me understand why people are so vanilla when it comes to Transformer deco. A 5-year-old can look at Movie Optimus Prime and know who it is. For some unbelievable reason (mainly money, but it's OK), adults who are in the position of producers of multi-million-dollar movies are talking about the future possibility of Dinobots vs. Constructicons. This is where you do what's called NOT LOOKING A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH. The same applies to Ratchet's lime-green paint job. Maybe if I didn't see a vehicle that color spraying human pizzas off the asphalt everytime I hit Spaghetti Junction on a Saturday, I'd be pickier. Look at the big picture. Beautifully-rendered Transformers laying waste to all manner of shit. Unless the movie sucks. It's still possible.
4. STARSCREEM'S FACE IS FUGLY
Okay, first off, I swear to god, the next person who says "fugly" is gonna end up like that dismembered chick in Guinea Pig 2, which Philip and I sat through last night. Can you believe Charlie Sheen called the FBI about that?! Hahahaha, isn't he adorable! Can't you just imagine him, thinking he's going to be feted as a hero and people will fall in love with him again? Oh my god. Such a sweetie.
Anyway, Starscream is a little trickier than Megatron, it's true. His incarnations have, with few exceptions, been relatively faithful to his G1 self, and Movie Starscream is a bit of a stretch. Here's how I look at it. First off, Starscream is another example of the designers doing what I hoped they were gonna do; they have made the Cybertronians' faces look alien and multi-faceted close-up, but if you see 'em from a distance, they look human. Take Barricade, the Decepticon police car. He was the first movie toy I got, and I was really struck by how much I liked his face. It's gold, and from a distance Barricade appears to be affecting an imperious, downcast look, which to me is classic Decepticon; he's even got a beard, like Wreck-Gar. That's what we in the business call FUCKING AWESOME.
To fully appreciate this latest version of Big Screamer, you have to have liked the Beast Wars/Beast Machines era of Transformers. Well, it at least helps; Predacon stumblebum Waspinator was "possessed" by Starscream's spark (the "soul" of a Transformer) in one of the most fan-beloved episodes of that underrated epoch. And what do you know... Movie Starscream bears more than a passing resemblance to Waspinator... who for all we know could be his descendant. See how that works? Who'd expect implied genealogy in a toy line?
But that's the thing about Transformers, there's always been an implied genealogy, originally just as an explanation for repainted toys. Like the Transformer history itself, it's been shaped and refined over the past two decades. And whatever they leave out, you fill in with your goddamn imagination. Is that too much to ask? Sheesh! (And shit, if you completely cannot deal with Movie Starscream, the filmmakers have even implied that Starscream used to look more familiar, back in '82. FEEL THE METAL LOVE.)
So there you go. Starscream's face, from a distance, looks to me like old-school Starscream without a "helmet" on. He's got the evil glint. Throw in subtle nods to Vehicon design (Brawl fits in that category too) and little hints of his G1 self and I'm happy.
At this point I think even if you're interested in what I've been saying, this has gone on long enough. I'm gonna break for now, but I've only scratched the surface on this particular spleen. Stay tuned- I swear to god I'm trying to hash a trailer together. Or it may end up being more hamster stuff. I'm gonna go crawl into a hole and die now. If you're just now tuning in: the DVD is coming soon and I fucking hate myself. Bye bye.
-MBA
