I Kind of Can't Believe This

I'm getting excited about Transformers all over again. The first Movie was such a let down, but there's already a crap-ton of talk about what the sequels are going to be (they've reportedly already greenlit two), and the pure potential is just too much for me. I'm guessing next time 'round is going to be Galvatron and Unicron (see the animated movie). Unicron is pretty cool, but not really all that great in movie form, sicne he can't really fight with anyone - he ends up being more of a surface than a guy. (For those of you with lives, Unicron is a planet-sized transformer (maybe moon-sized) who eats planets.)

Honestly, I'm not all that interested in the Unicron story line, but one thought has got my blood a-boilin': Dinobots vs Constructicons. (Tingle)

In the comics, the Dinobots were created by the Autobots specifically to deal with the Constructacons - powerful Decepticons that could join together to form a giant called Devistator. Devistator was the first Transformer that was a group assembled like that, and for a long time he was unstoppable, more powerful even than Optimus or Megatron (well, maybe not Megatron, and he obeyed Megatron, so it's moot). To counter this force, the Autobots set off to find something very powerful to scan and create new Autobots from (in the comics they had a limited supply of unrealized Autobot frames that they could wake up). Because their ship (the Arc) crashed into a volcano, they're partially underground and the Autobots find dinosaurs. They're big and stong (and cool), so they scan the fossils and bam; Dinobots are born.

The Dinobots are stupid, but extremely strong. They really aren't all that loyal; they only respect Optimus because he's as strong as they are, and won't listen to anyone else. In fact, Optimus is killed at one point and Grimlock (the Dinobot leader and a T-rex) assumes command of the Autobots based purely on strength. They're basically this nearly-uncontrolable killing machine that the Autobots point at a target and get the hell out of the way. Even they aren't that much of a match of Devistator; they can never kill him, but they're tough enough to duke it out with him and keep him busy.

In the animated film there's a great bit where the Decpticons are attacking the Autobot base on earth while a lot of Autobots are gone, and Devistator start ripping shit apart. The missing Autobots show up in a spaceship and Optimus tells the Dinobots to take care of Devistator - they jump out of the plane and beat on him so the rest of the Autobots can focus on other things. It's a really cool dynamic, and one works well throughout the comics. Even as more Decepticon teams are introduced who can join up like Devistator, the Autobots get a few massive robots that balance things out (Metroplex and Fortress Maximus, for example, were basically cities that turned into robots).

This was always part of the fun of Transformers; there were the main guys who were often very strong (like Optimus, Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, etc), but then there was this whole seperate class of badass giant killing machines that both sides tried to yield but could never completely control. Come to think of it, they were a lot like the atomic weapons - both sides were somewhat afraid of their own arsenal, but they needed them.

In one of Starscream's many coup attempts he created his own group of Decpticons called the Combaticons that could combine into a giant called Bruticus specifically to deal with Devistator. Bruticus eventually did destroy Devistator, but then Bruticus was destroyed by the Stunticons, who could combine into Menasor - yet another giant! See how crazy this shit got??

The thought of a Transformers movie featuring these teams done properly... Oh man, that would be the best thing ever. I really hope that after the success of the first movie two things happen: 1) The people in charge realize people might actually like a movie about Transformers, and you don't need to make your Transformers movies much more about the stupid marines and hackers and crap. 2) The robot fight scenes actually feature robots fighting, and they cough up the dough to show us what we want to see.

This is going to be a little messy because they had the tank version of Devastator in the first movie (Devastator was re-introduced in the comic at one point as a "triple-changer" that could turn into a dude, a tank and a jet). But I don't think they'd really have a problem seeing as how, like all the Transformers, Devastator barely appeared in the movie.

I know I'm just setting myself up for another let down, but looking back, the months leading up to the movie were still great. Just thinking about what could be makes me smile, and it's going to take more than one false start to kill my dream of a good Transformers movie.

Minneapolis, Ho!

I'm heading to Minneapolis tomorrow with Pat to meet up with Joe, Chris, Mark, Halibus, Erin, Erin, Chad, Bridgette, etc etc etc etc. This trip has spawned what can only be described as the king of email storms (thus far, at least). It isn't even over yet, but I'm getting reports that it has already crossed 75 messages.

While in the Twin Cities I'm looking forward to the various manly things that always come with these trips. This time 'round we'll be golfing, smoking cigars, playing poker, drinking scotch, watching a Twins game, probably trying to get Pfeiffer to hit on people, and all kinds of other great stuff. There's a chance for some liveblogging ala the Madison trip, but I doubt it. I won't have my own computer, and Joe has this strange mish-mash of TV computers and old crappy laptops and computers screwed into his bedroom wall, so I doubt I'll find the time to write a quick entry here or there. But honestly, if you're not there, you probably don't care all that much about yogurt sandwiches or where we drop drunk Joe.

Car Junk

First of all, I can't select the title field in Blogger anymore - I have to tab to it. What's the deal with that? Same thing in Firefox and IE. Whatever. I installed Maria's new hard drive tonight (her old one went kaplooey in the move). I love a fresh Windows install - it boots in like twenty seconds.

So anyways, I've had the Saab for about a month now, and I love driving it. I'm afraid I'm getting used to it, which is too bad, but I'd rather be used to a nice car than used to the pickup truck. There are a few things on my to-do list that I still haven't taken care of:

-Run a fuel injector cleaner through the system (lots of hard starts these days, especially with the summer gas). Cans of BG 44K are like twenty bucks - I'll run one through as soon as I remember to place an order (I may stop in the CarX next door and see if they can sell me one). If this doesn't help I may have to spring to have the injectors flushed.

-Get the paint fixed. I'm going to get a couple of quotes and try to find a place that will do the work for a decent price. I'm really not sure what to expect, so we'll see. I need to get this done in the next month or so so that the paint has time to set before winter rolls around.

-It's time for a general tune-up; spark plugs, oil change, air & fuel filters. Unfortunately this is going to be a little pricey, as I have a V6 that demands full synthetic oil. I may try to do some of this work myself.

Also, not related to the Saab, I've been trying to find a more sanely priced source for a new Suburban mirror. I have found a million places that sell off-brand replacement mirrors, but since this isn't my car I'm going to make sure to get GM parts. I have one lead that may pan out and save me some cash, but otherwise I'll be biting the bullet and paying out the full price. This mostly sucks as this cash will come directly from my Saab fund, meaning I'll have to put some of the work off for a few months.

Moving Just got a Whole Lot More Expensive

While driving my gigantic moving van last weekend I clipped the sideview mirror off of what appeared to be a piece of junk truck parked on the road. Well, that piece of junk turns out to be a 2003 Chevy Suburban with the world's most expensive mirrors - $337 to replace the stupid thing because it has a turn signal on it (and thus you have to buy the part from a Chevy dealer). So keep that in mind next time you're going to break a mirror - if it has a turn signal stay the hell away from it.

Just FYI

I let www.blogulution.com die. The site should be around for a few more days, but the domain registration will expire very soon. Third time's the charm, people; keep an eye out for letsdiscusspuppies.com!

Don't let my Dissapointment Deter You

A lot of people I've talked to about Transformers loved it. It seems like most everyone who goes in looking for a summer blockbuster, with no specific love of Transformers, thinks its fantastic. So go see it! Hopefully you'll love it and the movie will bring in enough money for them to make another one.

Dissapointment Tsunami

As a summer blockbuster, Transformers was fine. As a Transformers movie, it was hugely dissapointing. I wanted to love this movie. I was this movie's trusty bloodhound, waiting for it to come home so I could shower it in unconditional love, and all it had to do to win me over was give me two thigns: a couple of decent robots fights and a little bit of that old Transformers charm (Optimus and Megatron screaming at each other in front of a burning building, for example). Instead, I got a movie that was barely about Transformers, and clearly tried to keep them off the screen as much as possible (remember all those stories about how this was made for so cheap? It shows).

Let's start with the massive let down that was every single fight scene in ths movie. Every robot fight followed one of two formulas:

FORMULA A FOR A LAME ROBOT FIGHT: Two giant robots square up against each other, preparing for an epic brawl. Just as they're about to throw down, the movie cuts away to Shia Le Boeuf getting pelted by dirt that we assume comes from one robot smashing another into the ground. No, no, we wouldn't want to see the amazing giant robot fight going on ten feet away, please show me Shia La Boeuf hiding behind a rock instead. Or, even better, after an HOUR of movie, when we were finally about to get our first robot fight, let's cut away to Shia La Boeuf getting his pants pulled off by the little annoying robot (more on that later).

FORMULA B FOR A LAME ROBOT FIGHT: Twenty seconds or less of robots fighting in the midst of a great sea of humans doing stuff. A perfect example of this is Jazz's death. This is how Jazz dies (I am not exaggerating this one bit): Starscream flies into the frame, holding Jazz, and lands on a ledge. Jazz says something like "You want a piece of me?" Starscream says something like "No, I want the whole thing", and rips Jazz in half. That'S IT. THAT IS HOW JAZZ DIES. We never see them fighting before hand, he's just suddenly in the clutches of Starscream, and he's torn in half five seconds later, then they cut away and that's it. Another good example is the best fight of the movie: Ironhide and Ratchet are fighting Starscream in the streets of a city. They're flipping over each other, shooting him, getting knocked back, etc, and it's awesome, but again, it lasts five seconds. And these fights often only lasted as long as they did because they were in extreme slow motion.

FORUMLA C FOR A LAME ROBOT V HUMAN FIGHT: The vast majority of fighting in the movie was humans fighting Transformers. Humans are not supposed to be able to touch Transformers; they're astronomically farther advanced, made out of armor, and all around killing machines. These scenes were so stupid it hurt. Every one basically went: robot chases humans, corners humans, then stands a polite distance away and lobs horrendously inaccurate shot after shot in their general direction while the humans pelt the robot with machine guns. This happened so much I actually got bored of watching people shoot giant robots with machine guns.

So the fights were awful. But I could have still loved this thing, had the Transformers been decent; they were not. Every one of the Transformers (Autobot or Decepticon) was just a set piece. They weren't even one-dimensional characters. The closest thing to a character we got was Optimus, who was just a generic leader guy, but at least that's something. The other Autobots were introduced in one two minute scene as doctor, funky, weapons guy, and mute Camaro. That's all the development we ever got for them, and that was WAY more than we got for the decpticons, who were all just monsters. There was one moment, when Starscream and Megatron finally meet, when Megatron learns the humans got away and yells "You've failed me yet again, Starscream!" That was, as far as I can recall, the ONLY time two decpticons spoke to each other through the entire film. WHY?!? They spent so much time introducing this stupid plot line about teenaged hackers working for the government that went NOWHERE when we could have had a little Transformers development instead! Those dumb hackers, you don't even know where they are for the last half of the movie, but they spend at least a half hour following them for no reason. It makes me want to cry.

On top of the dumb hackers, most of the rest of the human cast was terrible too. Shia and the girl were actually quite good, and I was fine with them. But we met like four different layers of government officals, including those dumb hackers, which meant that in the first hour+ of the movie we saw one Transformer for a couple of minutes (the opening scene where Blackout attacks a military base). They had this government body called Section 7 (basically the Transformers specialists) headed up by this bizare goofy a-hole (John Turturro) who was so out of place and worthless that he made this should-have-been-cool government black ops group a joke. Basically every moment a human was on the screen (except Shia and the girl), I was just begging to please, PLEASE see a f'n ROBOT! I would actually like to watch this movie again with two stop watches; one to keep track of the ammount of time any Transformer is on screen, and a second to keep track of any time two transformers are actually interacting with each other. My estimates from this 144 minute movie: 70 minutes with a Transformer on screen, 15 minutes where two interact with each other (6 minutes of Transformers fighting). Seriously, where were the Transformers?

Now let's talk about the Jar Jar Binks robot. They introduced this little robot that was about as big as a chimp that was the Decpticon's spy, basically. It snuck around and stole data and crap. It was awful. I think they realized it, too, because they actually made it sound like Jar Jar Binks (it talked in this alien jibberish). This thing was always there, making scenes suck. Remember the first giant robot fight between Bumble Bee and Barricade? No, you don't, because instead of watching that, we were watching Jar Jar Robot rip Shia La Beouf's pants off. Perhaps the worst part of JJR's reign of terror on this movie was when he engaged a few humans in a gun battle and accidentally chopped it's own head off with a little flying disc thing (that flew like a boomerang, but only this one time - they flew straight throughout the entire movie). When he killed himself in a f'n slapstick gag I almost walked out of the theater. You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. There are fifty-foot tall robots beating the hell out of each other next door, but to save money on the special effects budget you're going to show me this crap instead? Screw you.

You could have easily taken the Transformers out of this movie and made it about cars and jets with new armor or some crap. Or replaced them with super intelligent sea gulls or gnomes or anything. This movie was so barely about Transformers I barely remember them being in it; they really were just set pieces, just like a tank or a plane or whatever in any other action movie. It really makes me sad that there was such potential for an amazing Transformer movie, which I would have loved beyond all reason, and instead they made this.

In memory of my excitment for this movie, I will leave you with a discription of what happens an hour in, when I still believed the movie could be great. Barricade is chasing Shia and the girl, about to grab them when Bumble Bee comes sliding in (in car form) and trips him. Shia and the girl jump in Bumble Bee and they peel off, starting a cool car chase with awesome music. That goes on for a while until Barricade traps them in this empty parking lot. Bumble Bee throws the kids out and transforms, jumping over them and putting up his fists to defend them. I lost my shit when that happened. It was the first moment two Transformers squared up against each other, and it looked so bad ass. Then we watched Shia lose his pants and it was all downhill from there. Remembering it now just makes me sad, thinking what could have been. Here's hoping Transformers 2 is better.