I'd like to kick this off by saying that I'm both a film-maker and a fan. I work in the animation industry as a story artist and designer. My very first transformer was Sky Lynx, who my parents saved up for and got me one Christmas. As a little kid I would pour over the art on the back of his box- a vivid space battle between monster robots- and imagine what they were saying. I carried around the "Transformer Map" as I called it, which was really just the fold out catalog that came with the toy. I always wanted Trypticon, so he could battle Sky Lynx, and maybe they could become comrades in the battle against Skeletor... Never got Trypticon though. My most recent purchase was Animated Blackarachnia.
Transformers has a long and bizarre history- one that has recently come to a head as the Robots we love breached the mainstream and got their own big budget feature film.
And it bums me out.
Not since "Carbombya," (
http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Socialist_Democratic_Federated_Republic_of_Carbombya) has Transformers reached such an all time low. (Well, maybe Kiss Players bridged that gap).
Instead of opening a rich and varied "mythology" to people unfamiliar with the franchise, the movies have set a standard of fast, loud, and dumb.
It's not that the various TF cartoons or comics haven't had their share of the same- but so have Batman, Superman, and Spiderman. And yet they all got films that surpass the Transformer films in almost every aspect, the major difference being explosions.
But like their Super Hero counterparts, the Transformers have had their share of terrific story-lines and characters.
What about the Marvel series- early on when Ratchet is the last Autobot left, and he alone has to strike a deal with Megatron? He was a great character- amazed by trees- a type of life he never dreamed of on Cybertron. In those same comics we also follow the origin of Circuit Breaker- a pretty nasty turn from technician to robot hating killer.
See, humans and robots, treated with smarts, about to embark on cool adventures. Ratchet travels to a jungle hidden in the North Pole, and Circuit Breaker ends the Decepticon civil war by blasting Shockwave.
How about Beastwars? I remember them. I thought it was the end of Transformers, and instead it became one of the most enduring narratives in the franchise. While it had its share of "energon farts," it also had the exchanges between Dinobot and Rattrap, Megatron's master plan, and Blackarachnia's warming up to Silverbolt.
Over the years Transformers have had a slow but steady climb from a hodge-podge of import toys, cobbled from various lines- to a complex (and sometimes confusing) history with a surprising amount of humanity.
And now the movies are here.
The films may be simple, or perhaps they're better "with your brain turned off," but somehow I just feel like they set Transformers, and the community, back a few decades.
I think it's safe to say that both films are light on character and plot. We do get a bunch of action.
In no particular order, we also get:
-Dog sex jokes.
-Wrecking ball testicles.
-Weak or non-existant female characters.
-A robot with a gun for a penis.
-Robot pee.
-Jockstrap jokes.
-Bizarre portrayals of race and culture.
-Character threads that leave portions of the cast missing by the end of the film(s).
-Pot brownies.
-A transformer with a gold tooth.
As a community, I think we could be a bit more discerning about what we support. When you imagined a Transformers film (and I know you all have), were these the things you thought of?
Wouldn't it be nice to favorably compare a Transformers movie to
The Dark Knight rather than
Batman and Robin?
We have a cool community, dedicated to an awesome series of toys, comics, and shows. Do the movies really measure up to the level of quality the franchise has been building to for the last 25 years?
I'm not angry... I just hate most things.