How I Would Have Done TRANSFORMERS (2007)

One of the more fun episodes of Myopia Movies that I've participated in was our episode on the 2007 Michael Bay film Transformers. The episode was notable for Nic's hilarious impersonation of Bay, which he used to criticize how the film often objectified Megan Fox's Mikaela Baines.

(Someone online said that if you had just the script she'd be a very capable and competent heroine, but the way the film is shot it often comes off as the camera leering at her. Fellow podcaster Daniel said the movie made him want to take a shower.)

I had my own set of criticisms of the film, but as I've said before, complaining is easy. Here's how I would have done it...

Act One

*We begin with Optimus Prime’s voice-over about the civil war on Cybertron, the AllSpark, etc. Then cut to Earth orbit when two mysterious extraterrestrial craft appear. One approaches a human satellite and transforms into the Decepticon Soundwave, who attaches himself to the satellite with tentacles much like he does in Revenge of the Fallen . He scans through various data-streams and finds the eBay page of Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf), which has some piece of obvious alien technology on it. Upon seeing Sam is located in California, Soundwave dispatches the other mysterious alien toward what is obviously the Middle East.

*Cut to Sam and his father shopping for the car. All Sam can afford with his savings and the money his father is willing to give him is the “piece of crap Camaro.” Yes, this means Bobby Bolivia (Bernie Mac) will stay, but since my proposed revisions cut the entire hacking subplot to save time, preserving one wacky comic relief character can be tolerated.

*Meanwhile in Qatar, we meet Captain William Lennox (Duhamel) and Sergeant Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson) while they Skype with Lennox’s wife and his baby daughter, born while he was deployed. They’re interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious helicopter that does not respond to human hails and whose pilot it turns out is a hologram. The helicopter transforms into a humanoid warrior robot — the Decepticon Blackout — who begins attacking. The human soldiers flee to their Hummers, tanks, etc. like they do in the canonical film, but we actually see the fight this time. Deploying parasite creatures like Scorponok and able to withstand quite a bit of human firepower, Blackout triumphs, but the prolonged firefight allows Lennox, Epps, and a few others to flee to a nearby Arab village. They’re pursued by Scorponok, but Lennox, other survivors, and the villagers with their bolt-action rifles manage to hold the Decepticon off long enough for Epps — a forward air controller — to “bring the rain” with with AC-130 gunships and A-10 Warthogs. Scorponok loses his tail and flees. This is the kind of spectacle Michael Bay is good at and cutting the hackers means cutting a bunch of actors (including Jon Voight as Not Donald Rumsfeld, who probably cost a lot), freeing up cash to expand the first battle sequence.

*Back to California, Sam and his best friend Miles (John Robinson) crash a party attended by Mikaela Banes (Fox) and her odious football player boyfriend Trent (Travis Van Winkle). The broad strokes of Sam and Mikaela’s story work fine. Sam is amusing and Mikaela is a pretty cool character overall. However, although Sam’s dork to Mikaela's "evil jock concubine" is funny (and we contrast Sam's earnestness with Trent’s arrogance, condescension, and sexism), there are times he’s straight-up creepy. Furthermore, Bumblebee is the world's most unsubtle wingman and Sam's "more than meets the eye" from the original TV series was just lame. Although Sam is not supposed to be the king of social skills, he is so annoying in that scene we’d need some dialogue changes to make him even remotely convincing as a suitor for Mikaela. I would have also toned down the unsubtle Mikaela body shots. Yes, she's very pretty. No, we don't need endless close-ups of her midriff while walking down the road or her semi-posing in short-shorts and a crop top while tinkering with Bumblebee's engine. While Mikaela examines Bumblebee, we see them being stalked by a police car driven by an obvious hologram police officer. This unnerves Mikaela, who has Sam take her home.

*Back in Qatar, we see there’s an emerging crisis in the Middle East attracting the attention of the entire world and something is interfering with the military network. This keeps Lennox from contacting his terrified wife, who knows only that her husband’s base in Qatar has been attacked and many soldiers are dead. The soldiers examine Scorponok’s tail and comparing it to the composite armor American tanks use. It’s similar in structure, but it’s made of materials unknown to humans and its technique is vastly more advanced. Cue the arrival of Tom Banachek (Michael O’Neill), who has heard about what has happened and is very interested in hearing the soldiers’ report. When Lennox asks where he’s from, he only says “Sector Seven.”

*Back in California, Sam sees his car driving away on its own and follows, seeing it transform into the humanoid Bumblebee for the first time. He gets arrested after the police think he’s on drugs, alerting the lurking Barricade at the police station. When his father retrieves him, Bumblebee returns. Sam flees on his mother’s bicycle with Bumblebee in pursuit. He runs into Mikaela again, who follows him when he flees pursued by a car with no driver. He encounters a police car — who it turns out is Barricade. The resulting sequence plays out very similarly to the canonical film, since it provides good character moments for both humans.  Sam is self-sacrificing (jeopardizing his own escape to keep Mikaela from getting too close to Barricade) but prone to panicking, while Mikaela is level-headed, takes no crap, and is quite handy with power tools. Since the whole Air Force One/hacker subplot is dispensed with, Frenzy is simply some parasite creature of Barricade that attacks Sam and Mikaela while Barricade fights Bumblebee. And even though Mikaela chops him up, his head can survive to mimic her phone and hide in her purse.

*With Barricade defeated, Bumblebee collects the kids and reveals his purpose. Not only is he an alien, but he’s called for friends. And they’re arriving.

Act Two

*The arrival of the Autobots is appropriately majestic (see here), but how they introduce themselves to Sam and Mikaela needed work. For starters, Jazz is a millennia-old alien robot who acts like a ghetto stereotype. Although Jazz was always depicted as being "hip,” (watch this scene here from the TV show and this scene from the animated movie), Jazz's voice-actor was Scatman Crothers, not 2 Live Crew. Surely Optimus Prime's able lieutenant merits a more dignified portrayal. Meanwhile Ratchet's commentary on how he can detect Sam wants to "mate" with Mikaela was stupid on two levels — an alien robot older than human civilization isn't realistically going to care, and the empathetic Autobots won’t want to embarrass their human allies. And although I didn’t mind, "We learned your language from the World Wide Web," Optimus Prime would never say, "My bad."

*Optimus Prime explains what the Autobots are searching for. Sam was unknowingly in possession of part of Megatron, the overlord of the evil Decepticons, and they need to collect it before the Decepticons can confirm their missing master is on Earth. Furthermore, said part might contain information about the AllSpark, which the Decepticons absolutely cannot have. That was why Bumblebee was sent to Sam — the Autobots were investigating on their own and once they learned what Sam had, they wanted to protect him from the Decepticons.

*The Autobots take Sam and Mikaela back to Sam’s house, where they search for the Cybertronian artifact. His parents arrive and, suspicious of his evasive behavior, think they’ve caught him masturbating. Mikaela emerges from behind Sam’s bed to put a stop to it, prompting even more embarrassing commentary from Mrs. Witwicky. I found that sequence in the movie amusing, so it can stay. However, rather than engaging in increasingly-creative contortions to stay out of sight and destroying the Witwicky yard in the process, the Autobots just stand guard in the nearby streets in vehicle form.

*Then Sector Seven arrives and detains everybody, ignoring the vehicle-form Autobots (and thus demonstrating their questionable competence). John Turturro’s Agent Simmons will still be creepy and obnoxious (getting unduly poky with Sam's crotch with the Geiger counter, calling Mikaela "hot"), alluding to his portrayal of "pederast" Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski. Mikaela mouths off at Simmons, who reveals her father’s criminal past and her own juvenile record. S7 takes everybody away, only for Optimus Prime and the Autobots to intervene and capture them. Simmons ends up handcuffed to a streetlight in his underwear, part of the humiliation he deserves for, as someone online put it, “sexually baiting an underage female detainee,” but no Bumblebee “lubricating” (i.e. urinating on) him like in the actual movie. That was stupid. Then S7 reinforcements arrive and Sam and Mikaela are recaptured along with Bumblebee. The Autobots don’t intervene, since Optimus values confirming that Megatron is on Earth and that he has not claimed the AllSpark over a rescue that would likely take many human lives. This is where Ratchet can demonstrate his medical talents examining whatever artifact Sam had, confirming that it is part of Megatron and it contains information about the AllSpark. Once this is done, then they set off in pursuit of S7.

*Next is a scene that wasn’t in the actual film — rather than the Decepticons coming from all over the world at short notice when they hear from Frenzy, they’ve taken advantage of the Qatari distraction to gather in the United States. The characterization of the Cybertronians who aren't Bumblebee or Optimus Prime is a big weakness of the first three live-action films (that’s when I gave up) and one in particular is Starscream. In the cartoons I watched as a kid, it’s clear he covets Megatron’s position, he’s probably the smartest Decepticon, he prefers subtlety to Megatron's frontal assaults, and he's too cowardly to openly claim power. Some of the film’s promotional material stated Starscream views Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Decepticons as morally-equivalent personality cults and that in contrast he is solely concerned about the dying Cybertronian race. However, once in power he makes many of the same bad decisions as Megatron. That would be a pretty interesting interpretation.

But it's in none of the movies! Instead he's only a blathering sycophant that Megatron regularly abuses. In my rewrite, we see Starscream is clearly not interested in finding Megatron and the other Deceptions are suspicious, something the prequel novel Ghosts of Yesterday touches on. However, between Soundwave’s infiltration of the military network and Frenzy transmitting his location, they now know where Megatron and the AllSpark are. Although he’d clearly rather not, Starscream has no choice but to act.

*Everybody converges on Hoover Dam. Lennox and his men come with Banachek to assist S7 in fighting the Cybertronians (at this point nobody other than Sam and Mikaela knows there are two warring factions, with one friendly to humans), Simmons is transporting the detained Sam, Mikaela, and Bumblebee, the remaining Autobots are chasing them, and the Decepticons are in turn following them to liberate Megatron and take the AllSpark. The AllSpark is revealed to be something smaller from the get-go rather than somehow shrinking a house-sized machine to something a human can carry. And Simmons doesn’t credit all 20th Century technology to Megatron--for starters, cars already existed before Megatron was stored beneath Hoover Dam in the 1930s. When the Autobots arrive, Sam forces S7 to release Bumblebee and wipe Mikaela's juvenile record. That was another good character moment and explains why Mikaela, who no doubt has lots of options in the boy department, falls for him. However, Frenzy (or at least his head) makes his move, reawakening Megatron and setting the final battle into motion.

Act Three

*Megatron is awake and clearly pissed off and the Decepticons are attacking Hoover Dam. Rather than risk their breaking the dam and all the havoc that would cause, Lennox and friends propose leading the Decepticons into the desert, where American air power can be brought to bear without risking civilians.  Even though it’d be easier to hide in nearby Mission City than in the open where the Decepticons could easily do to American ground forces what the Coalition did to the Iraqis in 1991, the U.S. military is generally not known for Soviet-level callousness toward civilians. Simmons, jackass that he is, suggests the film strategy of disappearing into a populated area, only for Lennox to shut him down, with a gun to his head if necessary. While the Autobots and Army guys "roll out," Simmons and S7 battle Frenzy so Epps can use the 1930s-era radios not in the compromised military network to call in reinforcements.

*The city fight in the real film had some cool moments, so the Autobots and Army guys find some one-stoplight town they didn't realize was there. This lets us keep Mikaela hotwiring a tow truck to carry the injured Bumblebee into battle and Lennox's motorcycle power-slide that kills Blackout. Starscream infiltrates the F-22 squadron that Epps called in and attacks, but enough survive to hammer Megatron to the point they force him to his knees (and do enough damage to Megatron's chest that what happens next works). Optimus will still duel Megatron with "one shall stand, one shall fall," a callback to the 1986 animated film.  Sam still Takes A Third Option and rams the AllSpark into Megatron’s damaged chest to kill him rather than killing the defeated Optimus with it to deny it to Megatron.

*The film ends in Washington with a treaty between the U.S. and the Autobots to fight against the remaining Decepticons. A public treaty, since good luck covering up the Autobots’ arrival in California, the battle in Nevada, etc. in an age of smart-phones and YouTube. Sam and Mikaela are there, clearly a couple without that weird make-out scene on Bumblebee’s hood like in the actual film. Miles is there too, indicating that Sam didn't just abandon his hitherto best friend (and that Miles is willing to put aside his own prejudice against an "evil jock concubine"), as are Mr. and Mrs. Witwicky (for once) acting appropriately. The film ends with Bumblebee assigned to protect Sam against any Decepticon revenge and Ironhide transporting Lennox home to meet his baby daughter, setting up the establishment of NEST in the next film. Meanwhile, the dead Decepticons are dumped into the Laurentian Abyss, not because it’s the deepest part of the ocean (that's Challenger Deep), but because it's right off the East Coast. If the Decepticons attempt to salvage their comrades, it can be more easily defended than something way out in the Pacific.

This version preserves the film’s broad strokes while remedying many of its flaws. If you like this, you might like my Fix Fic of the second film, The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot. That one had potential too, but like this one wasn't executed well.

Transformers: The Last Knight, Or Franchise Peak Stupidity

A few minutes ago, my friend Loren Collins shared this article on the new Michael Bay Transformers film Transformers: The Last Knight. I looked it over and quickly shared with my friend Nick, who is no fan of Michael Bay, and told him that it looked like the franchise had reached "peak stupidity."

Let the record state that I saw the first three Michael Bay Transformers adaptations. I enjoyed the first one, which I own on Blu-Ray. The second one Revenge of the Fallen had a good concept, but a rather mediocre execution. It bothered me so much that I wrote my own version of it on fanfiction.net.

The third movie Dark of the Moon I saw in theaters and didn't particularly like it. Part of it was because they not only ditched Megan Fox but also the character Mikaela Banes and replaced her with the much less interesting Carly, but also, well, for a whole bunch of reasons. Here's my review; beware spoilers.

I skipped the fourth movie Age of Extinction altogether and based on the film's poor Rotten Tomatoes score and the sheer ludicrosity of what the Io9 article and the film's Wikipedia page described, I'm probably going to skip this one two. Seriously, an ancient order consisting of various famous people descended from Merlin called "the Witwiccans"? As, the origin of the name "Witwicky"? That's ridiculous. And the Transformers having been on Earth for generations? Bumblebee fighting the Nazis I could understand (he was on Earth before the Autobots began arriving en masse in the first movie), but a "secret history" of Cybertronian involvement on Earth dating back to King Arthur? Overkill and a continuity problem.

I wish I were part of Michael Bay's writer mafia. The first one was generally good and could have been better (some of the humor was really infantile, like Bumblebee "urinating" on Simmons), while the second one could have explored the Cybertronians in more detail (I kept the backstory of Starscream and Jetfire from the animated series, for example) and could have had a more cohesive storyline as well as Michael Bay's glorious explosions.

And here's how a Matthew W. Quinn version of Dark of the Moon would have looked like. It'd draw heavily on the 1986 Transformers animated film (complete with Unicron, Galvatron, and a child-traumatizing massacre of most of the well-known Autobots) but would have the characters from the first two films and a bit of a "next generation" thing going with Daniel being the son of Sam and Mikaela, Simmons (and his apprentice Leo) and Lennox being high-up intelligence and military guys, etc. And no chucking Sam and Mikaela either--since it's 20 years later, just recast them if they're no longer interested in being in the franchise (Shia) or they do something that annoys the boss too much (like Megan Fox did).

(Not sure how I would have done #4 and #5. Perhaps stuff based on the animated series material that took place after the movie, like Starscream trying to get a new body, the Quintessons, etc.)

Instead we got a series of films so firmly enmeshed into what TVTropes calls Status Quo is God that the Io9 author makes a good case that Michael Bay has issues with "object permanence."

News Article Roundup 6/6

It's been a long time since I've done a "News Article Round-Up" post featuring interesting news articles and commentary. Here goes...

Michael Bay is Giving "Britain's Loneliest Dog" 15 Minutes of Fame-Not only has Michael Bay included this no doubt incredibly sad and bored shelter dog in Transformers: The Last Knight, he's also going to try to get her adopted. I've got friends who criticized Michael Bay for his various excesses, I wrote "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" because I was so disappointed with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and I never even bothered with Transformers: Age of Extinction, but I think this is a really cool thing to do.

The Zoo That Wants To Release Wild Elephants In Denmark-This article is about "rewilding," or restoring places to their pre-human state. Some of the more radical variants involve bringing lions, tigers, elephants, etc. to North America and Europe. There's this article I found on The Atlantic that describes the emptying of rural parts of the U.S. So long as people aren't forcibly displaced or endangered by more dangerous types of wildlife, that doesn't seem like a bad idea to me. The reintroduction of wolves in various places doesn't seem to have caused problems.

This is Africa's Most Overlooked Achievement And It's Changing the Lives of Millions-Africa is one of many places that's skipped a generation of technology--for example, areas that never had landline phones now have lots and lots of mobile phones. This article describes another area where Africa has "skipped a generation"--a lot of rural villages now have small-scale solar power and wind power as opposed to feeding off gigantic industrial power-plants. This is pretty cool, as it provides Africans with modern technologies while at the same time avoiding the environmental problems gigantic power plants, huge power-line infrastructures, etc. Decentralized power generation would be the way to go for the whole world and it looks like Africa's leading the way.

Engineered bacterium inhales carbon dioxide and hydrogen and excretes fuel alcohols-Get enough of this going and goodbye greenhouse effect. I have heard some concerns about the bacteria potentially getting out of control and causing problems, but perhaps there's the possibility of engineering them so they can't reproduce beyond a certain point? Think the "terminator gene" to avoid GMO plants spreading their genes to wild plants.

Ten Slavic Spirits and Monsters You've Probably Never Heard Of-For those of you who are into writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror, here are some new critters for you to use.

Enter Hiero Desteen, Pursued By Mutant Wolverines-This isn't really a news article per se, but it's still pretty cool. It's a linked series of blog posts in which the blogger, who's a college professor somewhere, re-reads and comments on the novel Hiero's Journey. I first read that novel in high school and it was a big influence on my Wastelands series. I re-read both the first book and the sequel The Unforsaken Hiero recently and they're still fun. The blogger's comments are also pretty darn funny, including the following commentary on the first chapter:

Things are looking dark for Hiero, and it appears that our novel is about to become a short story, when of a sudden Gorm the Bear comes out of hiding and bites S'nerg in the balls.This was probably the point at which, while I was first reading Hiero's Journey, I realized I was going to finish the novel. You just don't get mutant-bear groin-biting in conventional stories.

I hope all of the above content interested you...

My Trunk Novels, Fan-Fic, and One Million Words

The other day I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast in which they interviewed Charlie Holmberg, who said she had finished nine novels before she sold one. That was mildly worrying, as I'm currently pitching The Thing in the Woods (got a full-manuscript request from an agent who's an AAR member ten minutes after querying, although he ultimately rejected it) and seriously considering indie-publishing Battle for the Wastelands in hopes of being like Marko Kloos (parleyed independent novel Terms of Enlistment into multiple-book deal with 47 North) or Chris Nuttall (successful independent writer). Both Battle and Thing are my first finished original novels. I'd rather not have to write between three and six more that never see the light of day--when I make something, I generally like the ideas, characters, etc. too much just to toss them.

There's a term for books that never escape the drawer--"trunk novels." I've got one writer friend who has a book (that to me sounded really cool) she was told was "fatally flawed" that's never going to see the light of day, plus a second finished novel that doesn't seem like it's going anywhere either. I've also heard the "my first, second, third, etc. novel didn't sell either" from a bunch of different writers.

It turns out I've got a fair number of those myself. The main difference being, however, that they're not actually finished.

Darkness in the North-This one I actually started writing in high school, with one of my friends really liking the prologue. It has some interesting concepts, including the idea of a revolutionary republic in a fantasy world (which the Powder Mage novels like A Promise of Blood get into) and how a coed military (of said republic) might function. I was outlining it and it turned into a rambling mess, but the prologue did eventually see the light of day as one of the stories in Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire. Other than that prologue, nothing from this is likely to see the light of day. 14,750 words.

Seventeen Sons-This one I remember writing in college (my college ministry had a writing group as part of its arts division) and bringing before my secular writing group at least in part some time after I graduated. It involves a half-demon who's getting hunted by a religious order despite not being a bad guy at all. After his girlfriend is killed by mistake, he wages a one-man counteroffensive, only to unintentionally help his evil father carry out his plans for invading the mortal realm. This in turn necessitates allying with his old enemies. Perhaps it'll get "reimagined," but in its current form isn't going anywhere. 22,964 words.

The American Principate-I'm generally a conservative, but there was a lot of stuff about the Bush Administration I came to dislike. Think the Patriot Act, the Transportation Security Agency, citizens getting interned without trial, etc, all to the applause of people who would have been outraged if Bill Clinton did it. A wise man named Randolph Bourne once said that, "War is the health of the State" and Founding Father James Madison said that if tyranny and oppression came to America, it would be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. And there's this questionable quote ostensibly from Julius Caesar.

So I decided to adapt the fall of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire to American circumstances, with a faux George W. Bush as Julius Caesar, an illegal war with Iran as the crossing of the Rubicon, faux Ron Paul as Brutus, and ultimately faux Dick Cheney (whom I dislike much, much more than Bush) as Caesar Augustus. Here's some more detail. The manuscript is full of early-2000s zeitgeist and even some flirtation with questionable economics--there's the implication that the war with Iran had to do with the country deciding to sell oil in Euros and the United States ends up a financial vassal of China. As such the window of opportunity to write it would have been in 2004-2006 or so. Too late now. 2,769 words.

Aaron Greymalkin-This is another high-school story--I remember telling some of my Quiz Bowl friends about it on a trip and one said they liked the character's name. It's set in an independent California after a comet strike destroys most of the United States and causes an impact winter that wrecks the rest of the world. Think the awesome novel Lucifer's Hammer. Notable for a nuclear-armed neo-Aztec cult being manipulated by the surviving U.S. military leadership in Colorado Springs and an independent Alaska trying to avoid resource vassalage to Japan. I'm thinking this would make a really good setting for an RPG. 2,727 words.

Blasted Lands Cycle-Another high-school project--I remember doodling about this rather than watching a Spanish translation of The Never-Ending Story as the first semester drew to a close around Christmas. This takes place in the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of a nuclear war between the United States and Putin's Russia...in which the latter deploys some kind of weapon that opens a gateway to the age of the dinosaurs. So you have various warlord types, Haitian settlers, a Russian warship that's still fighting the war, and dinosaurs. Another good RPG setting, but the actual novel isn't going anywhere. The last time I remember doing anything with this one was in 2006 when I visited Destin with my friend Nick and his buddies from Ohio. 7,561 words.

Gates of Vasharia-Up until relatively recently, it was widely believed that the Ninth Legion was destroyed somewhere in Scotland fighting the Picts. I wondered, what if the Ninth Legion wasn't wiped out in battle, but ended up...somewhere else? And they weren't the only ones?

Enter the world of Vasharia, where the descendants of the Ninth Legion established a new Roman Empire that grew to encompass various other cultures (including my personal favorites, the Nestorian Christians--imagine a world where the Church of the East continued to thrive) and traded with other worlds through controlled wormholes. I started writing this one probably in 2004 and there are characters based on people I knew in high school and early college. Oh boy, that's a good way to get into trouble. :)

It's been so long since I touched this one that I'm thinking this one isn't going anywhere. That said, I had the idea of re-telling the story from the first-person point-of-view of Patrick Rassam, a Nestorian Syrian general who was cast into the dark spaces between the worlds (think Stephen King's todash darkness), only to return having made a Faustian deal with things living there. I'd call it I, Dark Lord, a title that would capture Rassam's dry wit.

I re-read the manuscript a year or so ago and found there are some pretty good character moments, so of all of the "trunk novels," this one might be the most salvageable. Of all of them, it's the one that's gotten the most attention from my writing group, which helped me work a lot of the bugs out, especially dealing with military stuff. 40,274 words.

However, although none of the above would count toward having a bunch of finished novels one writes before one sells the big one, I have finished novels that aren't going anywhere either. They certainly contribute to the whole "you have to write a million words before you're any good" maxim far more than the 91,000-odd words of those "trunk novels." They're called fan fiction. You can find my fanfiction.net profile here.

The Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince-My friend Jamie pointed out this one is actually longer than the first three or even four Harry Potter novels combined. It's actually 193,000 words. It's basically the entire First War if Snape had broken with the Death Eaters his fourth or fifth year--the divergence is at the same time as Snape and Lily's argument about his skinhead friends, some time before the "Mudblood Incident." If this was a book series, I imagine it could be a trilogy.

Lord of the Werewolves-This one I wrote with a pen-pal. It's 125,000 words. It's a "fix fic" intending to correct the underuse of Lupin and Tonks in Deathly Hallows. The first part of the story is basically Deathly Hallows from Lupin and Tonks' points-of-view and includes stuff we don't see, like their romantic relationship (a lot of people thought Tonks some kind of stalker, but the impression I had was that Lupin liked her too but was just too hung up on being a werewolf to act on it), wedding and honeymoon, and much of the Battle of Seven Potters. It diverges from canon during Bill and Fleur's wedding and gets really dark. Like, really, really, dark. Of all my fan-fiction, it's probably the best in terms of characterization. Heck, of all my fiction generally it ranks up there.

Revenge of the Fallen Reboot-I loved the first Michael Bay Transformers film, but was rather disappointed by the second. Good concept, but mediocre execution. So this is how I would have done it. There was some stuff suggested by the commercials (like a confrontation between female lead Mikaela Banes and Starscream) that never happened, but would have been really cool. Heck, the Bay universe botched Starscream's character massively, and that's just one of its sins. 58,476 words, about the length of a decent novel and not that much longer than Thing. I should probably write a TVTropes page--there's already Fix Fic, What The Hell Hero, and a bit of Your Approval Fills Me With Shame.

The Dragon and the Bear-There's very little actual narrative here. It's basically an alternate version of S.M. Stirling's Draka timeline where Russia defeats the Domination in World War II. In terms of sheer word count it would match a novel though--and I still haven't posted all of it on fanfiction.net. I'm self-banned from the forum until Christmas, so maybe I'll post the rest of it then. It's 46,000 words now, but there's a big chunk left to transfer. I kind of let it peter out a decade or two after the Final War between the Domination and the Alliance for Democracy, but I would bit it's around 60,000 words all total.

So of my "modern" fan-fic (i.e. stuff I wrote after college), that's around 436,000 words. I also wrote some Dark Angel fan-fic in high school that was basically how I would have done Season Two. Combined I think that's around 100,000 words--there were several 20K to 25K installments. There're also various dribs and drabs from short stories both unfinished and finished, my 2006 Battlestar Galactica short story "The Death of the Triton," the 600-odd posts on The World According to Quinn (if they average 800 words each that's 480,000 words), and the thoroughly massive amount of writing I've done for multiple newspapers in my seven-odd years as a full-time and part-time professional journalist.

(Not sure if the latter counts, since some members of my writing group have said writing like a journalist leads to a rather dry and overly-informative product. Good for newspapers, not good for novels.)

So I realized that I'm not necessarily all that different from those "I wrote ten books before I sold one" writers. Even if Battle for the Wastelands (92,000 words) is ultimately destined for the trunk too (God forbid, and I mean that), perhaps The Thing in the Woods (56,000 words) won't be, and neither will my secret third project I've obliquely referenced before (17,000 words presently) or my science fiction tale The Cybele Incident (20,000-odd words presently). :)

New Comics Podcast: THE FANBOY AND GEEK GIRL POWER HOUR

The other day I learned that my friends James R. Tuck and Danielle Tuck have got a new podcast, THE FANBOY AND GEEK GIRL POWER HOUR. The podcast is focused on comic books and comic-book-related pop culture (that latter bit I didn't initially notice). I'm not a major comic-book junkie even though I'd seen the recent Marvel and DC movies and own Gareth Hinds' Beowulf and Watchmen graphic novels, so I didn't initially think I'd like it.

Well, I was wrong. The banter between the two of them was really engaging and they brought up a lot of interesting topics. I'd thought it might be them talking about comics I'd never read or wasn't interested in, but they made discussions even about those really interesting.

Some highlights of the first two episodes:

*Discussion of Image Comics as a company whose creators ultimately own their intellectual properties. Image just produces the comics in exchange for a cut. In contrast, DC and Marvel own the IP and hire people to write stories for them. If I had a hot IP, I'd be more willing to work for Image (or Icon, Marvel's creator-owned imprint) because I tend not to want to let go of my ideas. Image Comic even has a page of submission guidelines. Hmm...

*Some thoughts on the representation of women in Mad Max: Fury Road vs. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The most damning indictment of Michael Bay for objectifying women comes in how two different movies handled Rosie Huntington-Whitely. In Mad Max we can see that she's actually a very capable actress and despite the nature of her character she's NOT objectified. However, in Dark of the Moon she's mostly there to be looked at, and how they introduced her is particularly obnoxious.

(And to make matters worse, she and her male co-star have no chemistry at all, even though they're supposed to be lovers. I was not a fan of Dark of the Moon and not a fan of her replacing Megan Fox as the franchise's female lead, no matter what offensive comments Fox made. I'd thought Huntington-Whitley wasn't a good actress and was simply chosen for her looks. Mad Max proved me wrong--she's not just eye candy and she really can act. If the writers give her something to do and the director puts in the effort, of course. George Miller clearly did in Mad Max; Michael Bay clearly didn't.)

*Discussion of the adaptation of the Kingsman graphic novel into the Kingsman: The Secret Servicefilm and some commentary on some stuff that didn't work. I really enjoyed The Kingsman, but I admit I thought they took a joke at the end of the movie too far. I wasn't as offended by said joke as much as James and Danielle were, but it went on for far too long. It was funny at first, but then as the joke progressed, it just got crass.

*Discussion of the Old Man Logan comic (Marvel) and the rebooted JLA (DC). There was also some criticism of Man of Steel that I didn't agree with and some concerns about the upcoming Batman vs. Superman (that it would be too GrimDark) that I did.

So if you're a comics fan, a film fan, or a cultural connoisseur in general, check out this podcast!

Movie Review: "Starship Troopers: Invasion" (2012)

The other day, I drove up to North Fulton's last Blockbuster Video store and rented the new animated film Starship Troopers: Invasion.  Going to return it soon, but figured I'd review it first...

The Plot

The (surviving) major characters of the live-action film--Johnny Rico (now a general), Carmen Ibanez (a ship captain in her own right), and Carl Jenkins (an intelligence and ESP bigwig)--are brought back together when Carl requisitions Carmen's ship for a classified purpose he claims will win them the war.  When the Federation loses contact with the ship, Carmen and some Mobile Infantry have to get it back.

The Good

*It was a straight-up entertaining animated bug-blasting festival and was pretty fun to watch. Not necessarily all that thoughtful (see my comment on the politics), but it was still entertaining.  When I was a lot younger, I watched the animated series Starship Troopers: Roughnecks and this was a good reminder of that.

*It's an animated movie intended for adults. In the United States, animation is generally considered stuff for kids, with many attempts at using it for more mature audiences failing miserably (the awesome Titan A.E.) comes to mind.  However, outside of the U.S., animation can be used to tell more adult-oriented stories.  The movie was actually made in Japan, which is very well-known for that sort of thing.  In this case, there's much more violence (with blood), more realistic military cursing, nudity, and sex.

*It stayed out of politics entirely. The book depicted a society where one had to serve in the military (or some other dangerous sort of public service, although this is less clear) in order to vote, with the idea that if one had to sacrifice for something, one would appreciate it more and use it more wisely.  Paul Verhoeven, who was in charge of the first film, did not agree and depicted the Terran Federation as being some kind of fascist-ish regime that regulated how many children one could have, televised executions, may have tried to pass off a natural asteroid impact as an alien attack for its own purposes, and then bungled the military "response."  I don't agree with limiting the franchise in this manner ("no taxation without representation" should be reason enough), but that isn't fascistic.

Verhoeven could have made his point about fascism, war, propaganda, etc. by making an original movie and not trashing one of the best science fiction writers of the 20th Century by depicting his ideas as faux Nazism.  Thank God (I mean that) they're remaking it, and they get the bloody point.

*The movie is largely centered on Carmen, who was secondary to Johnny in the original film and is only referenced in the direct-to-video live-action sequels.  Johnny is there and he plays a pivotal role later on, but it's mostly her show.  I really wasn't expecting that.  Sci-fi action movies are generally a boys' club, but this is rather different.

*The sniper girl Trig is apparently a human from a non-Earth human colony, since she lost her family and hometown to a Bug assault. The first film depicts an asteroid strike on Buenoes Aires but otherwise it doesn't seem the Bugs have actually attacked Earth. Although in the book the Terran Federation included multiple planets, the film barely touches on human colonization of other worlds (a Mormon attempt to colonize a Bug world goes predictably badly) and although the animated TV series depicts other worlds, I don't recall any human settlements.

*Powered armor.  That was one thing they left out of the first movie (so they could depict people wearing SWAT gear getting massacred to make an antiwar point I suppose), but finally managed to bring in for the third.  In this one, like in the animated series, most of the soldiers wear roughly human-sized power suits, with the book-style uber-powered armor of the third film appearing in the climax.  On the DVD commentary, one of the people involved said by making it animated, they could depict stuff like the powered armor that would be too expensive to do live-action.

*The movie in general has some really good visuals like mangled bodies floating in zero-gravity, ship-to-ship combat, etc.  See my last comment about how you can do some stuff with animation you can't do live-action.

The Bad

*The completely gratuitous Carmen shower scene was ridiculous.  They start at her feet, pan up to her behind and come around for her breasts, all while this soft sexy music is playing.  Then she starts banging on the wall of the shower and cursing Carl for stealing her ship.  The latter is a character moment--it shows how fixated she is on the ship she commanded and getting it back--but in context, the whole scene is just aggravatingly dumb.


*Carl wasn't that much of a jerk in the first movie.  The only remotely jerky action I can recall is him telepathically prompting his ferret to bug his mother, which isn't especially jerky. In fact, even though he did dress like some escaped Nazi, it's strongly implied he used his telepathy to help Johnny rescue Carmen when her shuttle crashed in Bug territory, which is actually rather nice. One could argue that power corrupts, but Carmen flat-out tells him "you always were an asshole."  Granted, it's been years since I saw the original, but I don't remember any friction between the two of them back when they were in high school.

*During a briefing, Johnny asks Carmen out on a date, which she responds to by walking out of the briefing room.  Depicting Johnny pining after Carmen ten to twenty years after she Dear John'd him is kind of pathetic, plus since he's a general now and giving her orders, that would be really inappropriate.  It does play an important role later in the film and in context I suspect it was intended to be funny, but still.

*One of the characters has extra-sensory powers but didn't have them in the strength needed for the ESP program so he ended up a grunt.  One of the female characters gets all hot and bothered and says that this must be why he always knows when she's in the shower.

(They retain the coed showers present in the first film.)

The character's (weak) telepathy is a Chekhov's gun that should have been fired.  Given how the Bugs seem to run on the same frequencies as human telepaths (we see this to a degree in the first movie and it's a big plot point here), I would have loved to have seen this actually used somewhere. Perhaps in some key fight scene he manages to set the Bugs against each other?


*When Johnny orders the soldiers to investigate Carmen's missing ship, the soldiers agree to do it only if they let an officer who was jailed by Carl (for reasons I won't get into due to spoilers) lead them. Johnny agrees, but said this will not be prejudicial to his court-martial. The attempt to impose conditions, especially the way they did it, comes off as borderline insubordination.  It would have been better if one of the soldiers had asked more respectfully, citing said officer's record, and Johnny considered it and agreed.  THEN he can make the "this will be in no way prejudicial to his trial" comment.

*Since Casper Van Dien, who played Johnny in the original, executive-produced the film, it wouldn't have been that difficult to have him do Johnny's voice-acting.  Consider it something in the same vein as Peter Cullen always being the voice of Optimus Prime. I didn't mind the main characters being voiced by different actors than the ones who played them in the film (with the exception of Carl, who came off as really prissy at the beginning), but still.

*It was difficult to tell some of the lesser characters apart.

The Verdict

A fun romp that could have been a bit better, but I liked it better than the first movie.  7.5 out of 10.

Movie Review: "Battleship" (2012) (Spoilers)

Just saw Battleshipwith my friend David.  Here's the review...

The Good

Once the actual alien invasion starts, things get fun.  I liked how Nagata devised a way to track the aliens without using radar using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys.  It also provided a way to have naval combat resembling the Battleship game realistically.  I'd talked with friends about how this would do just as well without tying it into the game at all, but this actually justifies the fact they made this based on a board game.

Although it's dubious that the U.S.S. Missouri could be made ready for battle that quickly and that it has ammunition for its big guns handy, the modern Naval crew and the retired WWII and Korean vets working together to get the ship running and setting off to do battle against the main alien ship was awesome.  In addition to the action coolness, there's some humor in the timing of the shots in the "move the shell" scene.

I really liked the beginning in which Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) tries to impress Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker) by breaking into a convenience store to get her a chicken burrito.  And then he flees the cops and gets Tased repeatedly to make sure she gets the burrito.  All that was hilarious.

They foreshadow Mick Canales (Gregory Gadson)'s hand-to-hand tooth-breaking brawl with the aliens by having Sam reference him being a Golden Gloves boxer when we first meet him.  Having him suddenly beat on the alien soldier without foreshadowing would have been an eye-roller.

The film does give some of the characters story arcs.  Alex has to grow out of his slacker ways and man up, especially once his effective brother is killed in battle.  He also has to put aside his pride and acknowledge the superior skills of Nagata, despite the soccer-game incident before.  Meanwhile, Canales has to put aside his self-pity and belief his injuries have left him incapable when the aliens attack and the NASA scientist has to face his own cowardice.  He starts out fleeing while the aliens massacre his graduate students, later abandons Sam and Canales, and ends with a surprise intervention into Canales' fight with the alien warrior..

Also, Rihanna didn't do a bad job as Petty Officer Cora Raikes.  It wasn't an outstanding performance, but she wasn't a bad actress.  The same for Decker.  If you want someone from a non-acting profession who cannot act, that British girl in Transformers: Dark of the Moon who had no chemistry with the male lead and only one good line ("Sentinel Prime's bitch!") is the way to go.

The Bad

There are some military issues.  I'm assuming Alex entered the Navy as an enlisted man due to his apparent lack of higher education (his brother is trying to get him a construction job).  Furthermore, assuming Alex was given the choice between jail or the military, which used to be fairly common and could explain why he wasn't in jail the next morning after breaking and entering, that's going to be another strike against advancing his career.

So how did he end up an officer again, especially in a relatively short time period?  Although it is possible for enlisted men to become officers (the "green to gold" program or something like that), very few long-service enlisted men become officers.  Where else do all these venerable sergeants and deck chiefs even low-ranking officers fear come from?

Also, there was some bad dialogue, especially early in the film.  When Stone laws down the law on his brother after the burrito incident, the culminating line ("YOU'RE JOINING ME IN THE NAVY!") was just lame.

The aliens are too human in appearance.  They're basically horse-faces with lizard eyes that don't take the sun well, four fingers on each hand, and funky beard-looking things.  Non-humanoid aliens would probably cost an arm and a leg to animate, but they could have looked a bit more different.

The aliens' odd military attitudes.  They smash two of the human destroyers but leave the third one alone when it breaks off to rescue survivors.  The aliens do a commando raid on the destroyer to rescue one of their personnel who's been taken prisoner and then walk off without taking the opportunity to kill the humans present (which include the ship's captain).  And then either they either left another soldier behind (the one who attacks the engine room) or were overconfident to the point they were willing to pull most of the rescue party off the ship and leave one to wreck it.  One of their soldiers catches the guy who runs the Beacon communications system and for some strange reason does not register him as a threat.

Either they were trying to fight a war with one hand behind their back (why?) or they were really overconfident.  If they'd been a bit more ruthless, they'd have won (or at least succeeded in phoning home with valuable intelligence that could aid a larger follow-up force, even if the initial attackers got nuked into oblivion later).

The Verdict

It was a entertaining movie, especially once the mayhem starts.  6 out of 10.  If you want to see this first-run, go to a matinee.

Jeffrey Stepakoff Dispenses His Wisdom

Last Saturday, I attended a seminar at a local library featuring Jeffrey Stepakoff, a novelist, screenwriter, and a professor at Kennesaw State University.  I figured someone with his extensive experience writing in several fields would provide much wisdom for a small fish like me, and I was correct.

Stepkanoff told the participants that they should stop thinking of themselves as being at the mercy of producers and publishers.  If producers and publishers did not have content, they had nothing.

"We are at the center, the epicenter," he said.

He said there are people right now looking to find the next big book or the next script for a big television show or film.  However, he said this doesn't mean that one shouldn't write well and produce good content in the first place.  He advised people to wait until their content was outstanding before putting it out there.  If it really is good, getting it published/produced is just a matter of time.

A professional writer shouldn't just start writing without planning.  One should know one's story and ensure the story works before one starts writing.  Writing a script that doesn't come from a good story is a miserable process that requires a lot more work--one has to come up with stuff as one goes along.  This is important when one pitches one's story to an editor--one should have a good story, not just a vague world.

Then he dropped a substantial bomb.  He said if one's novel or script isn't getting traction, even after years, chances are it's not that good.  Write well.  "Have your killer story," he said.

He advised those writing scripts to pay attention to what the market wanted.  If someone writes for cop shows, but the market is for comedies, one should ask if they've ever written something funny during one of their cop shows.  If they have, they can write comedy.  However, he said that doesn't mean one should take the novel one has been working on for 20 years and add vampires just because they're trendy.

Stepkanoff said if one thinks one's book is in the same vein as, say, Jodi Piccoult, one should study her work and who reads it.  If the book is unpublished, find out who Piccoult's agent is.  Examine the book jacket.

He warned even if one has a contract for a book, if it's not a good point, the publisher will only print a small number of copies and won't put a lot of effort into promoting it.  However, if it is good, one's editor will push for the publisher to promote it.  Most publishing houses put out around 1,000 books. How many books get first print runs of 20,000 to 50,000 copies?  Maybe 20, and of those, 15 will have been written by established authors.

Stepkanoff described the process of "selling in."  If the sales people hear from on high the publisher is psyched about the book, they'll push that one more so than the other 300 or so books they're responsible for selling.

He advised the writers they should have the book jacket in mind when they write the book.  One should think about where the book should go in the bookstore.  One's pitch begins with the author and will ultimately travel all the way to the book buyers.  Stepkanoff designed his pitch before he even started writing the book.  This doesn't mean one shouldn't have the writing space to develop good characters, but that one should have a good idea from the beginning.

He then advised writers to build a public persona.  Publishers don't want just an image, but a built-in fan base.  Editors are thinking about how to pitch a person.

(Hmm...I think my built-in fan base are Harry Potter and Transformers fans from my fan-fic, BattleTech people from "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," Digital Science Fiction readers from "Coil Gun, people I know from Marietta because I grew up there, Griffin and North Fulton because I work there, and alternate-history enthusiasts due to my long posting history at AH.com.)

Audience members asked him if he wants them to write something that can be easily forwarded.  Stepkanoff said this was the case.  An agent once asked a colleague of his to tell her what to tell publishers.  The colleague was upset, until Stepakoff told him the agent had connections and does her things so he can live in Georgia nad have a good place with his family.  He recommended audience members to craft a killer letter.

Stepakoff then explained the differences between literary and film agents.  A Hollywood agent, especially one who works in television, invests a lot in a single writer.  A literary agent will work with a larger number of writers and, consequently, will not be as present in one's life.  New York agents are more accessible--although their Web sites often say not to e-mail them, it does work.

An audience member suggested the Web site Everyone Who Is Anyone, which contains contact information for many publishers and agents.  Stepakoff told people who approach agents and publishers via this method to wait until their product is darn good, as a favor to other writers who might use this site later.

Stepakoff suggested people join the Writer's Market Web site or purchase the large Writer's Market books to find agents in one's field.  One should also find books in one's genre and check out the acknowledgements section.  One should find the agency that represented the writer and then go to the agency's Web site to find an agent.

However, he advised them not to fire off crazy e-mails and to think long and hard about one's opening line.  Agents don't just get you jobs--they're your business partners.  You have to give them something.

He then discussed marketing.  Most writers aren't pushed hard by their publishers and if the publisher won't put the effort into promoting one's book, one should.  However, there needs to be a balance between time spent writing and time spent on things like Facebook, blogging, Twittering, or doing signings in bookstores.

He then had some advice about bookstores.  If one goes to a bookstore and tries to arrange a book signing, the staff will be much more interested in you if you can point out where the book is in the store.

"Make noise on the Internet," Stepakoff advised.  "Get people to review the book."

(That advice I've already implemented.  I've promoted "Coil Gun" and the collection it's in, the third Digital Science Fiction anthology, via contacts I've made on AH.com.)

Stepakoff is on the fence about spending one's own money on Internet advertising.  He recommended if one is in a niche market, one should focus on social networking, as well as focused events relevant to your topic.  He then said every writer should have a Twitter feed.

"Nobody knows what's going to happen to publishing," he said.

His informed opinion is that consumption of stories is not going to fall and that digital media is going to be remarkably beneficial to it.

(I can agree with this wholeheartedly.  My publications, including the well-paying BattleTech and Digital Science Fiction ones, were in primarily online markets.  I did make a couple of sales to a smaller print magazine, but the magazine went under before they could be printed.)

Stepakoff discussed electronic readers like the Nook.  Amazon is selling more e-books than print books these days and many people bring their e-readers into stores, see what interesting books are on the shelves, and download them electronically.

He suggested that independent bookstores conduct a public-service campaign.  People who go to bookstores just to see what books they can download don't know they're not supporting the bookstores.  He said people complained about the death of Borders, but had to be asked if they even bought books in the first place.  He said Barnes and Noble is trying to integrate more with the local communities and compared them to Whole Foods.  Barnes and Noble also promotes books by region.  The company promoted his book Fireworks Over Toccoa heavily in the South, where it has been selling well.

Stepakoff also discussed giving out content for free as a means of enticing readers.  He has a free e-book entitled "Love A La Carte," which he described as being the "deleted scenes" from his novel The Orchard.  It's the number-two free item on Amazon.com at the moment.  He suggested writers put their own content online or for free at a low price, but not to just spew low-quality stuff.

An audience member brought up James Patterson, who gives out the first few chapters of his books online for free--people will buy the complete product to finish it.

Stepakoff said Patterson's books are so well-designed, they hook readers.  He reminded the writers it's their job to get people to read the second page.

He also weighed in n book trailers.  He recommend they not mess with those and instead focus on social media, which is free.  Creating a quality book trailer is expensive and it involves putting faces on characters Hollywood would like to cast.  If one absolutely must do a book trailer, one should focus it on selling the writer, not just the story.

"Let the publisher pay for it," he said. "Let them do the professional version of it."

He suggested a better way to get one's name out there is to guest-write for blogs.  There is a correlation between this and a high Amazon author rating.

"Revenge of the Fallen Reboot"--What's Next?

While I was on vacation with my family in St. Simons, I gave some thought to what might happen in the aftermath of "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot."  Don't worry, I don't intend to write it--I'd like to finish Battle for the Wastelands by Veterans Day or at least pretty close to it.

SPOILERS for "Reboot" if you all haven't read it yet.

However, here're my thoughts on what a third story would look like.  It resembles the 1986 animated movie, which I saw at least twice as a child, a lot more than it does Transformers: Dark of the Moon, although it uses movie-verse characters.

*It takes place 20-odd years later.  Sam and Mikaela have since married and have a son named Daniel.  In the 1986 film, the G1 Sam and Carly were married and Daniel was their son.  The Autobots have established a ground-based civilization on Earth (Autobot City, like in the animated series) while the Decepticons remain primarily in space. 

Given the Autobots' origins among Cybertronian civilians and the Decepticons' origins among Cybertron's military, I figured the Decepticons would be more likely to be, in what fans of A Few Good Men, would recognize, "out there on the wall" while the Autobots would prefer a planetary existence.  Plus Starscream remembers the Fallen was not just a danger in his own right--he was the herald and apostle of Unicron, who is still out there somewhere.  Despite issues, the peace agreement brokered by Optimus Prime and Starscream (after finally usurping Megatron) remains in place.  Both sides cooperate in the mining of Energon and the creation of new Cybertronians (or to put it cynically, new toys), while other survivors filter in as they learn about the end of the war and Cybertronian settlement in the Earth system. 

Meanwhile, the humans have colonized the Moon and Mars, using borrowed Cybertronian technology to (partially) terraform Mars and build warrens and domed cities on the Moon.

*This peace is disrupted by the arrival of Galvatron and his minions, reforged by Unicron from the dead Decepticons (which included Megatron and probably Soundwave as well) cast into a black hole at the end of "Reboot."  Galvatron has taken the place of the Fallen as Unicron's herald and Unicron has learned from his mistakes with his last herald--he has given him a substantial army of his own rather than simply making him more individually powerful.  And Galvatron has the Fallen's ability to raise armies of robo-zombies from fallen Cybertronians and destroyed human military equipment too.  It has taken Galvatron this long to return to take his revenge because he probably cannot remember where Earth is (due to battle-damage from Starscream's assassination) and because Unicron had other plans for him.

*Galvatron and his army tear through the Decepticon defenses in the outer solar system on their way to Earth.  Galvatron takes pains to kill Starscream specifically, and then kills Jetfire who tried to avenge him.  He manages to collect a few Decepticon followers who recognize him as Megatron reborn and want to renew the war with the Autobots.  I'm thinking Dropkick, a lesser Decepticon from "Reboot" who got some POV chapters, will be one of them.  Bypassing Mars (which is out of the way enough they can do that without leaving their rear exposed), Galvatron and company batter their way through Earth's defenses and attack Autobot City.  They're driven off, but not before Ironhide, Optimus Prime, and others die (like in the 1986 film).

*As the Autobots and their human allies lick their wounds and attempt to rebuild their defenses, Galvatron returns to Unicron.  He intends to use Unicron to destroy the Autobots and the Decepticons who have remained allied to them, along with the pesky "fleshlings."  Unicron, who is fairly close to the Earth system, goes for it.

*The Autobots choose new leadership.  Not sure who among the surviving movie-verse Autobots would be chosen.  Bumblebee, perhaps, as one of the last survivors of Cybertron?  Or we could bring in Hot Rod, as one of the new Cybertronians created in the Earth system?  Bumblebee is the most recognizable Cybertronian movie character, but it was Hot Rod who (eventually) succeeded Optimus Prime in the 1986 film.

*Unicron arrives and begins devastating Mars.  Knowing that Unicron was able to defeat the much more advanced Quintessons (the original creators of the Cybertronians) in a straight up space battle, the humans and "good Cybertronians" come up with a different plan.  Their spatial forces will engage Unicron in order to provide cover for a ground force to land on him (it?) and dig inside to attack his vitals directly.  I imagine the Nemesis would take the lead in the space-battle, while the more colonization-oriented Ark would be the one landing the masses of Cybertronian ground troops and spacesuited humans.  There, the human forces (under the command of Lennox, who would probably be a general by now) and the Autobots under the command of Bumblebee or Hot Rod, must face off against Galvatron.

Now the stuff I'm not so sure about...

*Not sure how to get Sam and Mikaela involved in the violent mayhem again.  Their presence in North Africa in "Reboot" was a bit contrived--they got caught up in the deployment of NEST troops by accident.  Perhaps they'll be background characters and it'll be Daniel who is on the sharp end, so to speak.  He'd probably be around the same age the Daniel character was in the 1986 film, after all, while Sam and Mikaela would both be in their 40s.  "Transformers: The Next Generation" perhaps?

*I wonder what to do with Miles and Leo?  Given the Cybertronian fixation I gave Leo in "Reboot," I could imagine him having some kind of technical job after graduating college.  The fact Miles and Sam are drifting apart does come up in "Reboot," so him being left out of the story entirely could be doable.  Or maybe Sam runs into him at their 20-year high-school reunion, they awkwardly make conversation, and then promise to keep up better even though both of them know they won't?

Do any of your fan-fiction types want to take a stab at this?  If so, leave a comment and we can discuss it.  I'm not going to write anything, but I can always provide ideas and advice.