I won't be quick to judge, though. I had a similar experience back in 1998 when I was living in Good Korea and I was initially exposed to the character and mecha designs of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The first time I saw an Eva I was shocked at how bizarre and unconventional they looked. Honestly I thought they were the most ugly and ungainly robots I'd ever seen and I was not interested in them at all until a friend invited me to an Eva marathon. Then after seeing the series I came to appreciate the design aesthetic of the Evangelions and I even bought a couple of the Bandai LM HG Eva models. The story really made me love the look of the characters. Maybe it'll be like that with the Transformer movie for me. Except with Transformers, 'story' will be little more than a loose contextual background for the real stars of the show, which are a series of loud explosions.
As the Transformer movie approaches it becomes clear to me that this bandwagon is turning into a gigantic out of control rocket powered robo sperm. I have learned to respect the Joe Pokemon casual fans who become overnight mega fans of whatever the most popular movie franchise is. Their box office power is enormous. Spider-Man 3 looks to have done pretty fantastic out the gate although I don't really care for the Hollywood version of that character and how they condense a mishmash of story elements that took decades to tell in comics into 2 1/2 hours. I hated when dramatic Spider-Man storylines that I thought should get movies by themselves got chopped up and reassembled into a sort of greatest hits collage of plot for the movies. Thankfully there's no rich vein of established marketable Transformer canon for Hollywood to plunder, so they'll have to come up with scenarios for Optimus to say "Roll Out" on their own. "Roll out" is about as deep as TFs get. Transformers has nothing in its history as profound as that "With great power comes great responsibility" line. Hell, there's never been a line in Transformers as profound as "Go web!" It's hard to cram profundity into dialog coming from a 40 foot robot Tyrannosaurus with a speech impediment.
I am a little worried with how casual a fan I've been acting like lately. Not getting the movie toys or that last Classics Mirage toy that was on clearance for $5 isn't exactly how a card carrying member of the Transformer dweeb army should act. Holy crap I haven't bought any of the Classics toys at all, which is like the minimum a robot nerd must do in order to be in good standing with the Transformer dweeb army. I'm slacking! In fact, Saturday was free comic book day and I almost missed out on the free Transformer book because I showed up 40 minutes after opening and there was only one copy of it left. A die hard robot nerd would have been there two hours before the store opened, dressed up as Optimus Prime. A true robot nerd would ensure they were guaranteed to get a copy of that free comic book, which is actually just a book I already paid $4 for a couple months ago but with a different cover.
I am a little nervous with how strong the TF movie hype is among non-robot obsessed 'normal' people. It seems like every normal dude I know is now one of those 'I had all the toys when I was a kid' type of scary fan. I expect everybody who doesn't give a crap about the movie will at least want to go visit their local Transformer nerd's robot room out of curiosity once the movie hits. Nothing helps you feel better about yourself than seeing the room a 30+ year old loser has crammed up with 20 year old robot toys (and one Godzilla from Shogun Warriors). But I swear if someone comes to my house wanting to see my collection and they complain about the lack of robot sperm rockets from the new movie, I am going to crap a robot shit monster on their head!
4 comments:
What's sad is that the movie might easily kill many TF fans love of TFs. At least for a few years.
I don't mean the "Michael Bay is ruining my childhood" camp but for me, I think overexposure will surpress it.
I've been a collector and fan of TFs for so long and now, with this movie and massive overexposure, people are going to think the Decepticon logo on the Deluxe Luxury New Beetle will be from this movie.
Not that I really care mind you. It is all silly.
But a part of me feels like now is indeed the time to downplay my being a fan of TFs until after the movie bru-hahah fades in September.
When the last of the Transformers lipstick, wireless routers, toilet seats, etc., are on the shelves of Family Dollar I can crawl back into it feeling like my old love-hate relationship has been cleansed and survived.
And while I think it is safe to assume we generally have the same thoughts on the toys, we'll always have the Real Gear guys to keep us going!
That's going to be the fun bright point of this summer for me!
Michael Bay isn't ruining my childhood. My childhood was the kind of thing that could only happen during the 1980s. But he will make it much harder to rationalize my obsession. Of course, he's also making the summer much cheaper for me. And I'll get to act all snooty and OG, like some kind of toy hipster!
Bring on more nostalgic G1 crap, Takara! At least I'll buy that.
This movie probably will do the same thing that the 1986 movie did for me as a kid-kill my interest in the Transformers. Looking back on my childhood collection there's a big hole from about mid-'86 until 1988 when I got back in the game with Powermaster Optimus Prime. I blame it on the movie robots. I spent '86-'87 reading robot comics instead of playing with robot toys.
In a roundabout way, this movie kills my robobuzz just like the 1986 movie did. In '86 I wasn't excited about the movie toys and the direction the line was going in after that. I think my biggest beef with the movie toys was how large of a discrepancy there was between what I saw on screen and what I got in the boxes. Wheelie and Rodiums were the biggest offenders, although pretty much all of them looked really lanky and oddly proportioned compared to their movie selves. Even with all the advances in toy technology that we've had in the last 21 years these new movie toys have the same problem. I find it ironic that the 2007 movie toys are just as unrepresentative of their movie counterparts as the 1986 ones were. Which is either good or bad depending on what your opinion of the movie designs is.
What I find especially disappointing is that Hasbro feels the Alternators have to be put on hiatus for them to focus on the movie toys. Although it is nice knowing that whenever I go to a store from here on out I will have no interest whatsoever in checking out the Transformers. It'll be nice to be free of the toy aisle tractor beam that usually sucks me there before all else. I will probably be playing lots of videogames unless Alternators comes back.
Okay, you should have put a warning above that post. Prime tried to read to me three time and had to stop. He kept bursting out laughing everytime.
Me? My damn sides still ache. It's kinda hard to breathe right now.
Right now, I don't know whether to love the movie or hate it. On one hand, Bumblebee figures big in it. On the other.... I don't want to spoil it for you, but there's a reason we haven't heard anything about a voice actor for Bumblebee. And that sucks. >:(
I'm already high on Prime's crap-list (we'll end up buying at least three of each Bumblebee, come hell or high water) and with a $900+ mortgage, something's going to have to give.
I've been a collector and fan of TFs for so long and now, with this movie and massive overexposure, people are going to think the Decepticon logo on the Deluxe Luxury New Beetle will be from this movie.
It's white, right? As in Bug Bite? Cause an evil yellow V-Dub is just plain wrong.
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