UNappreciation (Part 1 of 3): Transformers

If you've known or followed me for any amount of time, it didn't take you long to discover that I have an undying love for the Transformers franchise.  Just short of a year ago, I wrote about the original Transformers movie and my adoration for it.  In said blog, I took the liberty of pointing out many quirky elements of the movie, from animation errors to plot holes to any minute detail that I could nit-pick on just for kicks and giggles.  

When the the live-action Transformers movie series began in the Summer of 2007, many fans were elated, as was I.  But I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only TF fan who was fully prepared to take this movie with two hand-fulls of salt.  You see, any geek who has had his or her favorite TV show, book, or video game turned into a movie (or vice-versa) has witnessed the bastardization and castration of what they know and love as it is put into commercial form on the big screen.  One such instance of this was the X-Men series.  As a long time fan of X-Men (the only thing that closely rivals my affinity for The Transformers), I was put through fanboy hell as I sat and watched them get things wrong time and time again.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the need for a new spin on things when a series gets translated into a movie or any other media that it didn't previously take form in.  I mean, who wants to see the exact same thing retold as a movie?  Yeah, people would still watch it, but it wouldn't be a hit.  You have to add fresh new ideas and twists in order to attract those who aren't hardcore fans of the genre.  However, while you can't exclusively cater to the old heads, you can only change and ignore so much of the original material before it begins to be a complete hack-spit in the face to the fans who have been supporting it from day one.  This is how I felt about the X-Men series.  

While I could easily go off an a loooooong tangent and vent about all that went wrong with X-Men, I bring that up to say that there is one reason I'm grateful for that series, and that is it prepared me for the same thing in the Transformers series.  Having been disappointed by X-Men, I knew not to expect so much.  I was able to tell myself "Self:  check your fan boy at the door when you walk in.  Enjoy the movie for what it is."  And that, I did.  However, that doesn't mean my mind wasn't mentally jotting down things to gripe about later.     

In the same vein as I did previously with TF:TM, I will be writing about my thoughts on each of the three movies, but more so about all the things I didn't like, things they got wrong, and things I feel they could have done better, along with other random thoughts.  So, without further adieu, here's part 1 of 3 me venting my frustration about Transformers.

 **************************************************

OK, one last disclaimer before I get into it...  It will become very obvious to any TF fans that read this that I have a strong bias towards the Generation 1 era of transformers.  I like Beast Wars as well (it had to grow on me), but that's about it.  So y'all new-school TF fans will have to forgive me if I give off a "If it didn't reference or respect G1, it's trash" vibe with this.

- The "All-Spark", aka "The Cube".  No mention of this artifact anywhere in ANY Transformers continuity EVER.

- The first transformer we meet is Blackout, as he all but wipes out the military base in Qatar and attempts to hack its computers.  Prior to the movie coming out, I researched it to see which characters would be in it.  When I saw Blackout there, I thought to myself, "Who the heck is Blackout?"  

I looked him up and found that Blackout was the name of several TF characters, but the one they most likely  referenced was his Transformers: Energon incarnation, which was also a helicopter.  

Side note:  When we first see Blackout transform, this is one of only two times in the entire live-action TF movie series that we hear the original transformation sound effect.  That saddened me. 

- My first thought after discovering Blackout's alternate mode was "if there's a Decepticon helicopter, why isn't he named Vortex?"  Vortex was a G1 character and member of the combiner group, the Combaticons,  whose alt mode was a military helicopter.  While Vortex may not be a household name, I'm pretty sure he's a lot more recognizable to TF fans than Blackout.

 

- The next TF we meet is Scorpinok, as he's ejected from inside Blackout during the Qatar base attack in order to track down the survivors who fled.  Scorpinok was originally a huge (city-sized, even, based on his cartoon depiction) Decepticon who was the leader of the Headmasters subgroup.  Given that his character had been nerfed into a bumbling henchman in Beast Wars, I wasn't too upset that it happened here as well.  My only real gripe here is that if you never took a stroll through your local Wal-Mart toy section, you'd never know he actually had a robot mode. 

- Here, we meet Sam Witwicky, our human protagonist.  I could easily nitpick here and say "His name was Spike in the cartoon."  However, this isn't the '80s anymore.  How many people do you know named Spike?  #DontWorryIllWait.  Shia LaBeouf fits the look, but despite both characters being teenagers, Spike was much more responsible and much less spastic than his movie counterpart.

They did a good (too good, maybe) job with matching the Witwicky patriarch's hairline. 

- Next, we meet Spike's  Sam's dad, Ron Witwicky.  Last name fits, of course, but his character in the cartoons and comics was named "Sparkplug."  Sparkplug was a mechanic and often assisted the Autobots with repairs.  With the writers' decision to not make him a mechanic, though, I suppose the nickname no longer fit.  

"The driver don't pick the car... The car pick the DRIVER."  

- Bobby Bolivia

Out with the old, in with the new.

- Here, we meet our first Autobot, Bumblee, a fan favorite.  Now you may expect me, as a G1 purist, to be peeved that they made 'Bee a Camaro instead of a Volkswagen Beetle.  However, I applaud this decision.  I mean, seriously, with the hero role that 'Bee was supposed to play in the movies, you really can't expect anyone to respect him otherwise.  A Camaro makes him look much more aggressive, and like a legitimate threat.  

Hi, Maggie. ^_^

 

- Now, we meet Sam's girlfriend, Mikaela.  His counterpart Spike's girlfriend was a smart, headstrong blonde named Carly.  This was just one of many "I'm just not even gonna attempt to keep in line with the original" moments that occur throughout the movie.  Though Carly was also beautiful (for a cartoon, anyway), she was more brains than beauty, whereas Mikaela was almost there strictly for eye-candy.  

Dude.  You show up at a lake party and your first inclination is to climb a tree?

"She's an evil jock concubine, man!  Let her hitchhike!!!"

- Miles

- OK, maybe it's the southern gentleman in me, but it irks me that two different guys, within about a minute of each other, suggest that Mikaela should get in the back seat.  I'm sorry, but if any woman is with me, especially a hot one, she's sitting in the front with me.  Hop in the back, bro. 

- Seems that they did a slight role switch.  Instead of Sam's dad being a mechanic, they gave that job to Mikaela's dad.

- Next up for the Decepticons is Frenzy.  At first,  I was a bit upset that he transformed into a small boom box, which more resembled G1 Soundwave's alt mode.  However, considering that Frenzy's original alt mode was a cassette tape (which nobody uses anymore) and the fact that I'd have been pissed if they'd have thrown Soundwave's name on this character (it's personality fits Frenzy's, minus the intelligible babble), I quickly made peace with it.  

 

- I do love this G1 reference:  The Air Force One stewardess carrying Frenzy deeper into the plane is a direct parallel to Spike accidentally helping Soundwave infiltrate The Ark during The Transformers' pilot episodes, "More Than Meets The Eye."

 

- Yet another "Who the heck is that?" moment:  The Decepticon's Barricade.  Again, I found myself researching because the writers decided to reach for a character instead of going with one who was more recognizable.  I'm not gonna claim to be the biggest TF fan of all, but anybody who knows me would be hard pressed to find a bigger TF fan they know other than me.  If I have to research a character, there's something wrong.  They were really reaching.  But I digress...

Like Blackout, Barricade also had several incarnations, the earliest of which being a late G1 character and a member of a team of Decepticon Micromasters.  Despite the Autobots being known more for cars than the Decepticons, there was still a large enough pool of Decepticon cars to pull from before going for Barricade.  They could have used any of the Stunticon cars, or even their choice of Runabout or Runamuck.

Stunticons Breakdown, Dead-End, Dragstrip & Wildrider, as well as Runabout & Runamuck. Plenty of Decepticon cars to choose from without reaching for obscure characters.

There are some things I did like about Barricade.  He just happened to be one of my favorite cars, a Ford Mustang.  And despite the fact that I have good reason to gripe that there was a police car not named Prowl or Streetwise in the movie, I kinda liked the idea of a Decepticon cop car.  It kinda lends itself the Decepticon namesake, as well as the whole "robots in disguise" theme.

Classic moment at 2:31

Are you LadiesMan217?!?!

- Ok, it's no later than Saturday afternoon when Sam initially gets "chased" by Bumblebee.  By the time Bumblebee and Barricade throw down, it's nighttime.  You mean to tell me that what we saw was a several-hour-long car chase?  And it would have been nice to have seen the entire fight, not just seeing that 'Bee eventually emerged victorious.

Daaaaang, 'Bee.  You ain't have to do him like THAT.

- I like how Frenzy adapted a new form after getting his head handed to him by Sam & Mikaela.

"That seat belt idea was a pretty smooth move."

Mikaela's "piece of crap car" comment may have pissed 'Bee off, but it had great side-effect.

Meet the Autobots.

 

- I was a bit disappointed with Jazz.  They were on point with his voice and personality, and his color scheme to a degree, but the car, not so much.  Jazz's original alt mode was a Porsche.  In the movie, he transformed into a Pontiac Solstice.  Um, can we say "downgrade"?

- Something else I wasn't to keen on was the fact that everywhere else in the TF universe, Jazz is bigger than Bumblebee.  But in the movie, it's the opposite.  However, due to the alt modes that each character is given, it does actually make sense, especially since the movie stayed away from mass-displacement*. 

*For those of you who aren't hip to that term, it more or less explains why cartoon Megatron could change from a 50 ft tall robot to a gun small enough for another 50 ft tall robot to hold in his hand.

- While there are plenty of TF purists who are upset about Optimus Prime's design, I actually loved it.  To me, it was a perfect example of paying respect to the old while still keeping it fresh and new.  Some people loathed the flame decals, but I was all kinds of cool with them.  We could be anal about the fact that Prime was originally a Cab-Over-Engine truck, but we hardly ever see those anymore, in favor of forward-engine models.  The fact that they were able to get Prime's original voice-actor (Peter Cullen) was definitely a plus.

 

- I have a love-hate relationship with Ironhide's portrayal.  I understand and agree with their decision to go with a different alt mode.  Similar to Bumblebee, we really would not respect Ironhide if they'd have gone with his original alt mode, which was a minivan.  Turning him into a huge truck was a good move.  However, Ironhide was red.  They could have made him red, but chose not to for no good reason to me.  And why did Ironhide have an English accent?  In the cartoon, he had a thick southern accent.  He was voiced by the same actor who did Prime, so the very well could have given Ironhide is original voice.  They just chose not to.

This is how Ironhide SHOULD have looked.

 

- I was less peeved about Ratchet.  Ratchet's original alt mode was an ambulance, but was the same model as Ironhide's van.  Again, in the "real world", we can't have punch-buggies and minivans outchea fighting Decepticons.  I'd say a Hummer-model emergency response vehicle was a good choice.  Though I would have preferred it to be Ratchet's original colors, I wasn't too mad about the color scheme, since that weird lime green, green-yellow is a common color for roadside emergency vehicles. 

Still coulda made him white and red.

"The boy's pheromone levels suggest he wants to mate with the female."

- Ratchet

- Ok, who's genius idea was it to have Bumblebee be a mute?  And what other geniuses allow him to think that was a good idea?

You know your girlfriend is hot when your parents catch her hiding in your room, and all they do is compliment her and dap you.  

CLASSIC.

- OK, so we finally meet the almighty Megatron.  I was cool with his alt mode, since again, him downsizing to a gun like he does in the cartoon wouldn't have worked.  My biggest gripe with Megs is his robot form.  I mean, he just looks like tons of jagged shards of metal molded into humanoid form.  Looks ugly as crap to me.  I mean, if not for people mentioning his name in the movie, you wouldn't even recognize him.  I get that you want him to look alien and intimidating, but this was a bit much.  Another thing that annoyed me was finding out that Michael Bay actually had the option of using Megatron's original voice actor, Frank Welker, but chose not to because the voice "didn't fit."  EXCUSE ME?!?!  How does Megs' original voice not fit?

Pretty much the epitome of how I feel about Megatron's robot form.

- I don't have much to gripe about regarding Starscream.  He was an F-15 in the cartoon, but they've pretty much been replaced by F-22s in the military now.  A necessary upgrade.  The color scheme change was on point as well, since a silver jet with red and blue trim wouldn't have blended well with other jets that were all grey.  I could complain about there not being enough dialogue between him and Megatron, but given the fact that few other Decepticons got any lines at all, the one small conversation they had was enough.  Especially since it involved Starscream brown-nosing and Megatron berating him for his apparent failure.

- OK, this is one of the biggest complaints that I have about this series, and for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it spans across more than one movie.  Up until the movie came out, all the character lists on the sites I researched, as well as the movie toys themselves, stated that this Decepticon tank's name would be Brawl.  I was completely in favor of this, since this was a direct reference to G1 Brawl, who had a tank as his alt mode and was a member of the combiner group the Combaticons.  So you could imagine my horror when I see him sounding off and find his name to be "Devastator."  I stopped cursing a long time ago, so it says a lot to say that I came thiiiiiis close to yelling "WTF?!?!" out loud.  You see, Devastator was the name of the combined form of the combiner group the Constructicons.  Devastator never had any other incarnation except that.  He was never a single character.  It nearly enraged me that they just carelessly slapped a name on a character like that.  

The REAL Devastator.

Even the toy says his name was supposed to be "Brawl".  To the right is the original incarnation of his character.

 

- The last TF we see introduced is Bonecrusher.  His original character was a member of the Constructicons, which is another reason why I was completely and utterly disgusted at them using Devastator's name incorrectly.  I mean, how do you have both Devastator and one of his components separate in the same movie?  Ok, getting off subject here, but that was very necessary.  Anyway, I wasn't too upset with Bonecrusher not having his original alt mode of a bulldozer.  His alt mode (a minesweeper) fit with the scene they used him for in the movie.  The Decepticons were chasing the Autobots to Mission City.  We see Barricade, Brawl Devastator and Bonecrusher on the highway, but only Bonecrusher is able to catch up to the Autobots.  Devastator only catches up to the Autobots after they reach the city (Barricade didn't catch up, either, but more on that later).  Had Bonecrusher been a bulldozer, that would have been the case for him as well.  Given that Bonecrusher in the comics and cartoon had a nasty disposition and a thirst for destruction, I'd say they did his character justice.

 

- I think the Combaticons' leader, Onslaught, whose alt mode was a missile trailer, would have been a better fit as far as alt modes go.  I thought of this because if they'd have chosen Vortex over Blackout and Brawl over Devastator, we'd have had 3/5 of the Combaticons in the movie.  I could also make a case for giving him the name Motormaster, the leader of the Decepticon combiner group the Stunticons.  His alt mode was a tractor trailer.  This would have been an awesome G1 cartoon reference, since he and Prime also had a highway battle, just like in the movie.

"The little energizer bunny from hell" transforming is the only other time we hear the classic "transformer" sound. 

Decepticons, ROLL OUT!!!

- I will admit, they did a good job with the reference to Prime's energo-axe.

- Prime hit Bonecrusher so hard, he knocked his optics out. 

- This was my favorite scene in the entire movie.  Many would agree with me when I say that this movie needed a lot more robot vs robot combat.  

- While watching this in the theatre, I saw Barricade check in like the other Decepticons did.  As shown in a previous picture, we also see him chasing the Autobots along with Devastator and Bonecrusher.  However, we never see him again after that.  In the IDW comic Transformers: The Move Adapation, we see Prime killing Barricade after doing Bonecrusher in.  Again, in a movie that needed more fights, it would have been delightful to see this, even if it was just a deleted scene on the DVD.

I suppose the writers believed that this Eva Longoria clone boob-shot disguised as Ironhide being heroic was completely necessary.  -_-

- Another huge gripe of mine came towards the end of the movie.  Every Prime vs Megatron fight in the cartoon (and cartoon movie) was pretty evenly matched.  Only when Megatron cheated in the last episode of season 1 did Megatron every truly have the upper hand.  And they were both relatively the same size in the cartoon and comics.  Maybe they wanted to give the scene a bit more of a sense of desperation, but this fight was waaaaaay too lopsided.  Optimus Prime all but had his head handed to him.  Not to mention the fact that, if they both stood straight up, Megatron is almost twice as big as Prime.  

- Maybe this is me reaching, but I do believe we got a reference to Starscream's attempts at usurping Megatron here at the end.  As the military's F-22s fly in to attack the Decepticons, Starscream is among them.  He briefly transforms and takes out a few of them, but then transforms back into his alt mode and rejoins them.  Later, that same group of jets is seen firing upon Megatron.  This does not ultimately kill him, but it sets him up for Sam to plunge the All-spark into him.  While it's not explicitly stated, I think Starscream was still with that squad of jets and was also shooting at him.  I mean, Starscream could have destroyed those other jets with no problem, but chose not to.  I think this was his way of taking a shot at Megatron without being discovered.  Again, it's not confirmed, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  

Part 2 of 3 coming soon...