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."

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS and X-MEN: APOCALYPSE Trailers

Over the last couple days, I've gotten a couple really nice cinematic bones thrown my way. The trailers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and X-Men: Apocalypse have just been unleashed.

If the Turtles are giving interviews to the media (the whole "we're brothers who hate bullies" thing), I'm guessing the masquerade has been broken. Of course, when it looks like there's a straight-up alien invasion happening in New York, I think people would be a lot more tolerant of "freaks" than they would be before.

And enter Casey Jones. Pretty impressive--able to take down a bunch of Foot guys in seconds and even evade a gigantic mutant. If the movie is anything like canon he and April are going to hook up. I imagine her cameraman and Michelangelo are going to be so disappointed. :)

I also like what they did with the Foot this time around. They basically seem to operate like a Special Forces battalion and even dress the part in the scene where Casey rescues April from a bunch of them. They still kept the Shredder Japanese, although with recasting he's now a skinnier guy with a goatee. Did the mutagen we see him keeping at the end of the first film make that happen? It could be a nice in-universe explanation.

My one quibble is it looks like in the trailer April is taking off her clothes in public for no reason. Given how this movie is being produced by Michael Bay (albeit directed by somebody else I think), I suspect there's his typical silly Fanservice going on. And I say this as a Megan Fox fan.

I enjoyed the first one, much to some of my friends' horror. Hopefully this new one will be fun.

I admit Apocalypse was not one of my favorite villains back when I was an elementary schooler reading the X-Men comics and watching the X-Men animated series. However, this trailer succeeds in making him really cool.

And Jennifer Lawrence is back as Mystique. I liked her better than Rebecca Romjin, who played her in the X-Men films that came out when I was in high school. She's a great actress generally, plus Mystique in X-Men First Class and Days of Future Past is a much more complicated character. And in her speech to Cyclops, we have her going full-blown Katniss Everdeen, which is always cool. We also have Sophie Turner, best known for Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, as the young Jean Grey. Interesting...

Hmm...Magneto as one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen? Never seen that before. Given how in Days of Future Past we see an elderly Magneto lamenting how stupid he'd been as a young supervillain perhaps it's his alliance with (or subservience to) Apocalypse that's his wakeup call.

And it looks like they're bridging the gap between the 1960s/1970s First Class era and the 2000 films both chronologically (this is the 1980s) and thematically (Xavier losing his hair).

I wonder if they'll bring in, or at least hint at, Mr. Sinister? I remember reading in the Age of Apocalypse comics--in Mr. Sinister's death scene specifically--that he'd made a Faustian bargain with Apocalypse to gain immortality and the freedom to pursue his scientific research.

A Response to Alison Willmore's Critique of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (2014) (SPOILERS)

Earlier this morning, I found an article on Facebook in which Buzzfeed movie critic Alison Willmore takes the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to task. In particular, she states that the 1990 film is in many ways superior. Although she does make some good points, I disagree with others. So hence this response:

#1: The Appearance of the Turtles

She thinks the Turtles are scary-looking. Although she doesn't explicitly use the phrase, the thing that comes to mind is "uncanny valley." They're close to human in appearance, but so close that it's revolting, not endearing. I didn't find them frightening, but given that one of the theories behind "uncanny valley" is that it's an evolutionary mechanism, I really can't fault her for something that's likely hard-wired into her brain.

One of the commentators, one Benjamin Kubilus, praises the 1990 design for giving them beaks. Given how these are mutated turtles and not, say, human babies injected with turtle DNA, their having beaks makes a lot of sense. Although Willmore didn't say this, I'll give her points for inspiring Kubilus to say this and giving him a platform. Obviously the Jim Henson creatures are less realistic-looking that Bay's turtles, but making the Turtles more "humanoid turtle" instead of "turtle-oid human" would have been a better design.

#2: The Turtles Aren't Fighting Crime

In the original film, the Turtles were already fighting street crime and only encountered an actual supervillain (Shredder) incidentally, by rescuing April from some of his minions she'd caught stealing from her television van. Here they get involved with supervillainy from the get-go.

However, that ties in with the reason Splinter trained them in the martial arts in the first place. Splinter said he trained them because if they went above-ground and tried to openly mingle with humanity, they would be mocked and treated as freaks (which is IMO an understatement--they wouldn't just be sitting by themselves at lunch; odds are someone would try to kill them or put them in a zoo) and would need to defend themselves. It was never his intention to deploy them as crime-fighters--this was a choice they made upon learning about the Foot Clan's depredations, a choice Splinter opposed. To quote Scripture, "To whom much is given much is expected" and the Turtles chose to challenge Shredder because they couldn't stand to see him terrorizing New York and had the means to do something about it.

If Willmore doesn't think this is a good story choice that's her call, but there are reasons they're not (at least during the events of the movie) general-purpose crime-fighters. Given how the film ends with their driving around an armed Turtle-Van, this might change.

She still makes the good point that the villains' evil scheme needs work. Although her argument that Sacks' motive is greed doesn't work because he's already rich--most white-collar criminals (at least the ones who make the news) are already well-off--it would have been better story-wise if this was something Sacks was doing for Shredder. One of the better aspects of the story was that Shredder was apparently Evil Mr. Miyagi to Sacks' Daniel-San when Sacks' father died in Vietnam and if Shredder was more explicitly established as the mastermind and Sacks his minion, this would expand on that.

#3: April O'Neill

Here's where I'm going to disagree with Willmore most strongly. This movie's April, rather than being an established reporter, seems to be new to the job based on how she talks about journalism school as though it's a recent thing. Furthermore, if she were around eight or nine years old in 1999, she's in her very early 20s now. Her superiors at the television station simply don't think her capable of doing more than fluff either due to her inexperience or her gender (the latter is less likely due to her boss being a woman, but still). And putting her on the trampoline isn't Fan-Service--she's too modestly dressed, it's shot from too far away, and it's over too quickly to be all, "Look at Hot Megan Fox on the Trampoline." Yes, her cameraman Vernon does leer at her behind at one point and it is played for laughs, but that's part of his character--he's lazy (he's content to do the feature stories April hates) and he's into her but too inept to really do much about it. Furthermore, she does display a great deal of "hard" news-gathering skills (by collecting evidence of turtle activity elsewhere--even if it didn't prove they were giant mutant turtles, it proved the Foot Clan had a rival), something her boss disdains rather than acknowledge.

And as far as her being important only because of who her dad was, the fact her father was a scientist only gave her access to the lab. It was her who fed the turtles and the rat pizza and gave them names (names that only a very smart child would know--any kid could come up with "Splinter," but the Renaissance artist names she gave the turtles shows intelligence). It was her who ran back into a burning laboratory to rescue Splinter and the turtles, something that Splinter explicitly said inspired him to be a father. He raised the turtles to think they were rescued from a fiery death by some kind of godlike being and when the turtles realize this, they bow to her. Wilmore's argument gives the 2014 April far too little credit.

And as far as April's father is concerned, he just comes off as an impulsive idiot. Rather than pretending to go along with Sacks' plan while secretly gathering evidence for the cops, he proceeds to flip out and destroy the laboratory while his daughter is in the building (putting her in danger from fire or the vengeful Sacks) and while Sacks is present. Considering how Sacks claims to have killed him, that was a really bad idea.

Finally, the budding romance between Casey Jones and April in the first film was poorly developed. In this film, however much Vernon crushes on her, she never reciprocates or even acknowledges his feelings. This holds true even after he dramatically rises above his previous worthlessness by helping rescue the turtles from Sacks and then beating the evil scientist down with a microscope and getting shot in the process. Feminist-inclined commentators have claimed Fox's character Mikaela in Transformers was a "trophy" for Sam, but here she has no romantic plot at all.

#4: Splinter's Asian-ness

There's actually a good point entangled in the Social Justice Warrior business. Splinter in the 1990 film was the pet of a Japanese martial artist and learned karate by mimicking his practicing master's movements. That would explain why, when he gained the ability to speak, he spoke English with a Japanese accent and had this shinobi-esque ethical system. In the 2014 film, Splinter taught himself and later the turtles martial arts from a book. That wouldn't explain his accent and manner of dress--even if he adopted other aspects of Japanese culture from the book, he wouldn't have the accent since he wouldn't have been exposed to Japanese language.

(Maybe if Splinter had been the pet of a rival ninja that Shredder killed and then Sacks claimed him for the lab that could explain it, but this isn't in the movie. It would be kind of clunky to include, although perhaps it would fit in the flashback scenes. Heck, perhaps Bay could include it in the sequel, although it would then inspire the same kind of complaints making Splinter and the turtles April's semi-pets did.)

That said, you can't win when you as a Western artist try to portray or borrow from a non-Western culture. She complains about the franchise's "exotification" of Japanese culture, but without including it, you couldn't have the Ninja Turtles in the first place. Ninja Turtles is a hell of a lot better than "Teenage Mutant Professional Wrestler Turtles" or "Teenage Mutant Boxing Turtles" (i.e. using a Western, not an Eastern, practice). However, then the franchise's creators would get crap for leaving out heroic non-Westerners, especially if they keep the Japanese Shredder as a villain. Then it'd be "heroic (culturally) white people against the Yellow Peril" and people would complain about that.

Obviously her argument leaves room for including Japanese culture, the martial arts, etc. in a non-stupid way, but how to do it?

#5: No Actually Getting to Know The Turtles

It's true that Bay could have developed the turtle characters better beyond the angry Raphael and the immature, blatantly-crushing-on-April Michelangelo. However, that would best be done subtly and in small bites. For example, there's some promotional material out there depicting Donatello wanting to be "the badass for once" that some interpret as an effort to overcome cowardice and others interpret as him not wanting to be in the backseat because he's the techie. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this in the actual film. Either interpretation of Donatello's character could have been interesting, given how one of the complaints about the film I've seen elsewhere is that the turtles (or at least those other than Raphael, whose development she doesn't acknowledge) are lacking characterization. And I did suggest a way to develop Leonardo as the team leader in an earlier blog post.

However, the interlude in the countryside in the first movie Willmore is nostalgic for is one of the most incredibly boring parts of the film. Not only that, but it gives Splinter the completely unexplained talent for astral projection that isn't foreshadowed and is never used again. Unless of course this was some kind of group hallucination and for all of them to see the exact same thing at the same time seems really tricky. I can understand her desire for more developed characters, but mimicking that sequence really isn't the way to go.

How I Would Have Done the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie (SPOILERS)

I just reviewed the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesmovie produced by none other than the polarizing Michael Bay. I overall liked it a fair bit, but I'd have done a few things differently. Here goes...

*April is fired from her job at the television news station for continuing to push her theory about the vigilantes fighting the Foot Clan because she supposedly lacks proof. However, she did have some pictures of the Turtles on her phone that she later showed Sacks. Why didn't she show them to her boss? The boss could've dismissed them as Photoshop or too blurry to mean anything, much like how she blew off her picture of the graffiti the Turtles left behind when they first challenged the Foot, but it doesn't look like she even tried.

*The master plan that Sacks and the Shredder concocted between them doesn't make a great deal of sense. Sacks creating a chemical attack or plague (it's not totally clear which) secretly and then producing the cure and making a butt-load of money and getting all the glory, that makes sense. But how exactly is the Foot Clan going to rule New York? They try that, they're going to get slapped down by the New York National Guard or, if they get too troublesome, the U.S. Army. Maybe if their intent was to use the chemical weapon to take the city hostage a la Bane's scheme in The Dark Knight Rises that might be more sensible, but it's never explained. It would've been better if the Foot was providing the muscle, stolen lab equipment, etc. for the plan in exchange for a cut of the money or Sacks' chemical weapon for their own use. Given the relationship revealed between Sacks and the Shredder (the Shredder became his mentor/father figure after his own father died in Vietnam), Sacks as an agent or puppet of the Foot pursuing their agenda in the corporate world would make sense.

*Sacks was basically raised by the Shredder, an evil ninja, but never displays any martial-arts ability himself. Vernon, April's cameraman, jokes about having taken yoga classes but quitting after (rather pathetically) injuring himself. If it were me writing the script, Vernon could've (briefly) taken a real martial art and quit after (quickly) getting hurt. Then, in the scene where April and Vernon confront Sacks in the lab, Sacks has them at gunpoint and Vernon manages to surprise him and knock away his gun. Then Sacks proceeds to unleash some real martial-arts and kick the living hell out of him. It's April who attacks Sacks from behind with one of those heavy lab microscopes, avenging the death of her father at Sacks' hands years before. She does stab Shredder in the back when he's dueling Splinter in the sewers earlier in the film, so even if she's not going to be taking on adult male martial artists, ambush or taking advantage of a distracted opponent is still entirely doable. And although we sacrifice Vernon's yoga joke, having him get the tar beat out of him by Sacks preserves him as the semi-lovable Butt Monkey he kind of is.

*Since the movie is the Turtles' origin story, we could see the individual turtles growing into their roles. We do see Raphael overcoming his anger issues and threats to abandon his brothers to go rescue them when they're captured by the Foot. Having Leonardo be the one to defeat the Shredder (instead of April convincing the Turtles to basically use her as a club to knock him sixty stories off a falling radio tower) could cement him in his role as the Turtles' battle leader, especially if Splinter remains too injured for frontline fighting. April could get her action-girl glory (in a more thematically appropriate way) in my above scenario where she caves in Sacks' head with a microscope.

Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Just got back from seeing the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action film. Here goes. There won't be a lot of detail due to the need to avoid spoilers, but I promise more later.

The Good

*Once things got going, it was never dull and quite entertaining. From when the Foot Clan invades the Turtles' lair onward it's a blast. The fight scenes are really well-done and fun to watch. The fight choreography is vastly better than the 1990 version.

*There are a lot of good callbacks later in the movie to stuff that happens earlier, like the "don't move no matter what" in the climax. And good callbacks to the animated series, including Shredder's vow to eat turtle soup, Vernon making a reference to "heroes on a half-shell," etc.

*I liked the back-story between Sacks and the Shredder.

*Megan Fox did a pretty good job playing April O'Neill. I liked Judith Hoag in the 1990 version better, but it wasn't a bad performance. A lot of people don't think she's a talented actress and I really haven't seen that many of her movies, but she does seem to play a particular type of character (spunky young female with a chip on her shoulder?) well enough. And I did like the character--they combine her different back stories (in some versions she's a scientist or daughter of a scientist, while in others she's a newspaper reporter) in a coherent way.

*A lot of people thought the Turtles' new designs were nightmarish or creepy, I'm guessing due to the Uncanny Valley effect. They didn't bother me. I actually thought they were kind of cool. And Splinter using his long tail as a fifth limb for fights--such as his epic throw-down with the Shredder--was awesome.

*They bring in Karai, although her relationship with the Shredder (in many versions she's his daughter, adopted daughter, granddaughter, etc) is never really explained beyond the fact she gets to explain herself and not get mashed when things go wrong.

*It had a lot of funny moments.

The Bad

*The early part of the movie kind of drags. Things pick up after the Foot Clan takes hostages in the subway and the Turtles proceed to take the perpetrators apart, but the slow beginning isn't helpful.

*The Shredder's master plan is really kind of dubious. I could understand how [NAME REDACTED TO AVOID SPOILERS] would benefit from his part of it--the Foot Clan could have simply been providing muscle in exchange for part of the eventual profits. That'll go into the "how I would've done it" post I wrote tonight.

*There's a pivotal scene I would have done rather differently, but going into detail would be spoilery. It was all right, but it could've been much better. That'll go into the "how I would have done it" post as well.

*The Shredder is too bulky. I would have preferred him more lithe like he was as a powered-armor-free ninja in most of his incarnations. Given how gigantic and steroidal the Turtles are in this incarnation some kind of enhancement was necessary to make him a realistic threat, but something more akin to Iron Man would've been better.

The Verdict

It's not the greatest movie ever, but it's not bad either. Worth seeing once. 7 out of 10.

"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.

Draka/Transformers Fake Film Trailer

Keith posted the trailer for the Draka/Transformers crossover I described in this post on my alternate-history forum.  Here it is for your enjoyment.

(A view of Cybertron from space, city-sized explosions bursting over its surface.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

Our world was consumed by war...

(Earth is seen from space, its ice caps swollen by nuclear winter, dust storms raging over North America, debris floating in orbit.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

...just as yours has been.

(The camera zooms in on Nevada, too fast to make much out, and stops to show SAM WITWICKY and his father RON working on the partly disassembled engine of an excavator, Draka serf tattoos visible on their necks.)

RON:

I wonder what they're looking for?

SAM:

What does it matter?

(Zoom out again. The rubble of the Hoover Dam rises above them along with the wreckage of the power station buildings. Hundreds of other SERFS are clearing away the rubble with both power and hand tools. GHOULOONS and Draka OVERSEERS patrol the area.)


(Zoom out further to space. One of the larger spacecraft hulks suddenly sheds its outer layer of debris and deformed metal and sprouts sensors and racks of missiles.)

OPTIMUS: (V/O)

Now our war has come here...

(RAVAGE leaps into the middle of a party of heavily burdened SERFS, energy weapons fire cutting over their heads. He swats screaming humans out of the way with irritated snarls, shrugging off bullets from the OVERSEER's pistol. SAM crawls away as BUMBLEBEE appears over a rock outcrop, struggling with LASERBEAK.)

OPTIMUS (V.O.):

...and your war has become ours.

(LENNOX, EPPS, and five other SOLDIERS survey the wreckage of a Draka forward base.)

EPPS:

Who the hell could'a done this?

LENNOX:

Not who. What.

(SAM and MIKAELA BANES--who is wearing something scandalously revealing--watch as BUMBLEBEE transforms from car mode to robot mode.)

MIKAELA:

What...the hell...is that?

SAM:

It's a robot. Like, a...super-advanced robot. (beat) From space.

(Watched by RAVAGE, LASERBEAK and RUMBLE, MEGATRON bursts from a new hole in the wrecked dam, shrugging off boulders and fragments of rebar.

MEGATRON:

I...am...Megatron!

(A dozen flame-wreathed metallic objects descend from orbit towards the former United States.)


(ERIC VON SHRAKENBURG is seen talking to an AIDE in a Draka command centre.)

AIDE:

Excellency, we've detected more of the alien signatures among objects that have fallen to Earth in the last few weeks.

ERIC:

How many?

AIDE:

Over nine thousand.

ERIC:

What?!

(Hundreds of missiles streak through space, pinpointing and destroying Draka ships and weapons platforms. An enormous Autobot in robot mode, FORTRESS MAXIMUS, his size indicated by the much smaller Transformers manouvering around him, fires a volley of lasers and kinetic projectiles at incoming missiles from his shoulder- and arm-mounted weapons. The camera turns with him as an equally large Decepticon, SCORPONOK, opens fire on him.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

Autobots! Transform and roll out!

(Montage: Dozens of wrecked, rusting or abandoned vehicles lying/sitting in the streets of bombed-out American cities reconfigure themselves into shiny, new, beweaponed versions of the same vehicles and speed off. More AUTOBOTS emerge from underground parking garages or subway tunnels, some transforming into helicopters or aircars.)


(OPTIMUS in truck mode leads a convoy of Autobots down a freeway through the desert.)

STARSCREAM (V.O.):

Decepticons! Attack!

(A formation of Draka Falcon hypersonic fighters dissolves suddenly as a third of their number open fire with energy weapons and massacre the rest.)


(Several DECEPTICONS rampage through a Draka military base, shooting anything that moves. Several American SERFS cheer them on until STARSCREAM absently obliterates them as well.)


(A shadow falls over a DRAKENSIS OFFICER, and we see in his face that he's just learned the meaning of fear. The camera spins to show the towering form of DEVASTATOR rising above him.)


TITLE:


STARRING SHIA LABOEUF


(SAM accepts a gun offered to him by EPPS.)

SAM:

Guess I'm in the army now.

TITLE:


JOSH DUHAMEL


(LENNOX pulls the pin from a grenade with his teeth.)

LENNOX:

Enslave this, you sick freaks!

TITLE:


MEGAN FOX


(MIKAELA moves in to kiss SAM.)

MIKAELA:

You're twice the man any Snake will ever be.

TITLE:


AND SAMUEL L. JACKSON


(AGENT SIMMONS looks up over the back of a speeding jeep as Iowa cornfields blur past.)

AGENT SIMMONS:

That's it! Enough is enough! I have had it with these mutha(inaudible) Snakes on this mutha(inaudible) plain! (He lifts a rocket launcher.) Everybody strap in! S'time for some pest control!

TITLE:


WITH THE VOICES OF PETER CULLEN


(Freed SERFS stampede through a newly blasted gap in a razorwire fence, watched over by OPTIMUS PRIME, JAZZ, LENNOX, and his SOLDIERS)

OPTIMUS PRIME:

Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.

LENNOX:

Hell yeah.

TITLE:


AND FRANK WELKER


(A hologram of MEGATRON addresses ERIC and his ADVISORS.)

MEGATRON:

Know this: I have conquered and enslaved worlds for a million years. You are no more than insects to me.

(The camera pans over an apocalyptic battlefield in the ruins of Los Angeles, hundreds of AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS fighting each other and DRAKA soldiers shooting at both and trying not to get stepped on.)


TITLE:


UNITED PRODUCTIONS OF SAMOTHRACE PRESENTS


A MICHAEL BAY FILM


(SAM silently screams a denial.)


(MEGATRON and OPTIMUS PRIME charge at one another in slow motion amid burning rubble.)


TITLE:


TRANSFORMERS


COMING THIS SUMMER


(AGENT SIMMONS struggles with a remote detonator, pounding on it with his fist when it fails to activate.)

LENNOX:

You want a hand with that?

SIMMONS:

Naw, leave me alone, I got this.

(A Draka fortification explodes in a colourful and extremely noisy fireball.)

"United Productions of Samothrace" is a reference to the world the Alliance survivors settle in the Alpha Centauri system after the Domination of the Draka conquers the Solar System.  The conceit Keith is going with is that this is a Samothracian film.

Having Samuel L. Jackson playing Simmons isn't IMO the best idea, but maybe if they have John Turturro playing the Draka commander who has made Mikaela his concubine, that'd work.  Turturro's Simmons is comic-relief in the second and third films, but in the first movie, he was downright creepy and evil.

A Transformers Fan-Fiction Scenario

Keith Fraser, a member of my alternate-history forum who wrote the crossover between the Draka and the Twilight novels I blogged abour earlier, has posted a fan-fiction "plot bunny"--a crossover between Transformers and S.M. Stirling's Draka novels.  :)

(That kind of thing seems to be his bag.)

The premise is that the Cybertronians arrive in 2007 or so during the Draka timeline, which would be after the Domination defeats the Alliance for Democracy in the Final War but before they've completely pacified the Alliance territories.

Here's what Keith wrote about the general world situation:

-Jetfire teleported to avoid the nuclear destruction of the DTL's version of the Smithsonian and, realizing that both sides were using Cybertronian technology, sent a distress signal which was picked up by both the Autobots and Decepticons.



-Megatron and the Allspark were dug out of the Arctic and hidden in the Hoover Dam as per TFTL, providing the US with its technological leg-up (some of which was stolen/acquired by the Draka).


-The solar harvester inside the Great Pyramid was dismantled and analyzed by the Draka long ago, and was responsible for much of their technological leg-up.


-The crashed Ark and Sentinel Prime were fought over secretly by Alliance and Draka forces during the Protracted Struggle; most of the technology was destroyed, but the Draka recovered Sentinel Prime and a few of the space-bridge components.

He then described what happened to the human cast members.

-Sam Witwicky survived the Final War (the movie trilogy indicates that he is clearly half-cockroach) and is part of a serf labour force excavating the remains of the Hoover Dam (which was deliberately demolished during the Final War to stop the Draka getting to the goodies inside). More specifically, he and his mother are hostages for his mechanic father's good behaviour. He has a crush on the labour camp commandant's bedwench (who can be either Mikaela or Carly, since the two characters are largely interchangeable).



-Most of the members of Sector 7 were infected with the Stone Dogs and died in the Final War. Agent Simmons is one of the few survivors, now somewhat (more) unhinged, and is making his way across the post-apocalypse US to try to stop the Draka excavating the Hoover Dam site.


-Lennox, Epps and some of their men make up a surviving fallback force that links up with Agent Simmons.


-The politicians, computer hackers and wacky ethnic comic relief characters were all killed or enserfed.

He then derailed from the Transformers movie canon considerably, giving the Transformers themselves big upgrades so they're stealthier and harder to destroy, including the ability to withstand tank fire.  I think that goes a bit too far, since the movie-verse Transformers are much more destroyable with human conventional weapons than the Transformers from other media.

(I'm told a comic-book depicts Megatron being bombarded with human artillery and aircraft, not being damaged in the slightest, snorting contemptuously, and walking away and one of the Dinobots is damaged but not destroyed by a nuclear bomb.  I used to watch the animated series religiously and I don't remember much human military involvement at all--maybe they were staying out of the way?)

Here's how Keith intends to begin his story:

The action begins when Bumblebee and two of Soundwave's subordinates (Laserbeak and Ravage) clash near the remains of the Hoover Dam. The battle is witnessed by a group of serfs including Sam who were on latrine/trash burying/whatever detail and their guards; the Decepticons massacre the group except for Sam after Bumblebee is seemingly disabled, but then he rallies and drives them off.



What happens next? Will the Autobots and Decepticons ally against the Draka? Will Sam get laid? How will the Draka react to physically superior opponents who consider *them* vermin?

Here're my thoughts on how the story would go if I were writing it.  No, I'm not going to write it myself, howver cool that would be.  I've got better things to do.
 
*The commander's "bedwench" would be Mikaela.  Being British, there's a much larger chance Carly died in the Final War (Britain is densely populated and would suffer more in a nuclear exchange--plus in the Drakaverse, the Stone Dogs-addled British nuked London themselves) and if she did survive and ended up in Draka hands, she might have been given limited Citizenship or made higher-status serf than some mid-level officer's concubine.
 
(The Draka hate Americans, but being the descendants of loyalists and Napoleonic vets, might feel more kinship with Britain.)
 
Plus if the Witwickies survive the war and get enslaved by the Draka, chances are Mikaela would have survived as well.  All of them lived in the same general area, so they'd probably get captured in the same Draka roundup.
 
*I liked the idea of Simmons surviving infection by the Stone Dogs virus but being more crazy than usual.  He could actually be a source of comic relief (as he was in the later movies) or a somewhat darker figure (like in the first film--since the Stone Dogs drives its victims violently insane, him being a bit dangerously psychotic makes sense).
 
*I also liked the military characters being part of the Alliance fallback forces.  In the Drakaverse, they wouldn't be deployed in the Middle East, since the Draka controlled that area since WWI.  It's more likely they'd be in the Continental United States when the hammer falls.
 
*The politicians would definitely be killed--the novel Under the Yoke describes the leaders of defeated European countries being paraded through the Draka capital in court-jester outfits before they're publicly executed.  Bobby Bolivia (the only "wacky ethnic comic relief character" who isn't anything else from the first film) would probably be killed or enslaved.  Maybe he's a serf entertainer for the Draka commander who keeps Mikaela as his concubine.

However, I can definitely imagine the computer-hackers from the first movie being given limited Citizenship.  The Draka lost a lot of their technical people during the Final War and the Alliance's superweapon--a computer virus their agents built into Draka equipment at the factory--gave the Draka particular trouble.  The Draka leader Eric von Shrakenberg pushed through the deal to give as many Alliance survivors as possible Citizenship to ensure the Domination had access to their skills.

Given how one of the hackers is black, this could be kind of awkward.  Eric's proposal gave Citizenship to people many Draka considered "racially totally unsuitable."  The black hacker would be one of the very few free blacks in the entire Solar System and I can imagine Draka "mistaking" him for a serf and abusing him, counting on the fact he's an overweight nerd and they've been trained from childhood to be killing machines to win any resulting fights.

(Of course, since the Alliance had universal military service, chances are he'd be in a lot better physical shape.  Still, the Drakas! anthology features American soldiers being told to avoid hand-to-hand combat with Citizens--they will lose.)

*As the discussion progressed, the concept of the two Cybertronian factions joining forces to take down the Domination of the Draka took shape.  Optimus and Megatron both want to revive Sentinel Prime for different reasons, while the Autobots will be horrified by the abuses the Draka heap on everyone else and the Decepticons will want to show the "master race" who the real masters are.

(It was suggested that Starscream, being Starscream, might try to make some deal with the Draka.  Given how one of the biggest things about the second two movies that sucked was that Starscream's desire to usurp Megatron was largely ignored, I'd love to see this.)

*With the Domination getting knocked around, the millions of Alliance survivors given Citizenship might remember they were Americans (or Britons or Australians or Japanese) before they were "Draka" and see opportunity.  Although the majority of Alliance survivors would be slaves, the neo-Citizens are in the best positions to cause trouble.

*Given how the Draka by this point have extensive orbital assets and orbit-to-ground weapons, the Cybertronians will need space assets of their own to avoid being hammered to bits by Rods from God.  Both the animated series and the live-action films featured the Autobot Ark and the Decepticon Nemesis, so I would imagine they and space-capable individual Cybertronians would make an appearance.

Keith said he might write a fake movie trailer like he did for his Twilight/Draka story, the one I posted here.  If he goes through with it, I'll post it here.

I'm posting this here so that any of you fan-fiction writers out there can take the ideas for a spin.  I'm officially retired from fan-fic writing now that The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot is done, but that doesn't mean I can't sow ideas like seed and see what sprouts.

"The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" is Done

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5208263/1/Revenge_of_the_Fallen_Reboot

I wrote the climactic chapter in a marathon writing session on July Fourth and posted it before I left for a friend's party.  I then wrote the first part of the last chapter during "down time" at said friend's party when the other guys were playing beer pong, his wife was knitting, and I figured I had more productive things to do than get their cat chasing after the laser from an infrared thermometer.

It's done.  I started writing this a few days after I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009.  I essentially wrote this story to prove a point, or several points:

1. It is possible to have epic Michael Bay-esque action sequences and have a coherent plot and characterization.  I had friends who said they saw the movie for the action scenes and the storyline was a secondary consideration.  My question is, why can't you have both?  Bay can command massive amounts of resources--finding good writers should not be a problem.

2. I could write something better than what appeared on-screen.  The concept was sound, but how it was executed was just aggravating.  I will give props to the people who wrote Revenge of the Fallen for being successful screenwriters, but there were some massive plot-holes in that movie.

3. Anyone can complain, but providing constructive ideas and suggestions shows talent.

This one took me a lot longer to write because I had a lot of other projects going on, like my Harry Potter story "Lord of the Werewolves" (which I was about halfway through at the time) and my original novel Battle for the Wastelands.  The latter was one reason why at one point "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" went six months without an update--I think at this point, I was writing the first few chapters of Battle.

Ironically, taking as long as I did to write it meant I was finishing up around the time Transformers: Dark of the Moon came out and interest in the Transformers series revived.  I'm not going to claim to be the best Christian in the world, but I was reminded of Romans 8:28.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  (Romans 8:28, NIV)

It seems like lack of and/or diversion of focus actually came in handy.  :)

This will be my last fan-fiction.  I have much better things to do with my time, especially since now I've got a quarter to a third of Battle to go before the first draft is done.  As I said in my last chapter, I've played in others' sandboxes long enough.  Now it's time to build a new sandbox, so others can play in it later.

(Given how my first two, possibly three finished novels are fan-fic, I'd be a massive hypocrite to object to people using my ideas in their own work, especially if they acknowledged I was the creator and final authority.  Many writers are advised to throw away their first completed novel--however, by using other people's ideas in a non-commercial context, hopefully I "worked the bugs out" in my own writing without sacrificing any of my ideas.)

There's not going to be a "Dark of the Moon Reboot," however much that movie needed one.  If I did write one, I'd keep the space-race, Sam-job-angst, and the stuff that happened with Sentinel Prime, but not replace Mikaela with Carly, keep Bumblebee with Sam, and rewrite the entire invasion plot to account for the probability the human nations and armies would make a much better account of themselves.

I hope y'all enjoy the ride. It's as good as my Harry Potter stories and about one-half to one-third the length, so it won't take as long to read.

Movie Review: "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (2011) (Spoilers)

I saw Transformers: Dark of the Moon with a couple of friends last night.  Here's my review:

The Good

For starters, the movie was never boring.  Even the cinematically-superior Super 8 had moments where it dragged.  I will give Michael Bay and his coterie of writers credit--I've seen several Bay films and I don't think any of them were dull.

Sentinel Prime's betrayal was a really good idea.  I've discussed the concept of evil Autobots with some people on my alternate-history message-board but I've never seen it actually done.  It would have been more interesting if more Autobots went with him--in his ultimatum to the United States, he demands that "Autobot rebels" be expelled, which came off to me at the time that there were non-"rebel" Autobots.

I liked a lot of the humor, including the bathroom assault on Sam by conspiracy-theorist Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong) and how he later busted out out two pistols on Laserbeak.  Although I didn't like Sam's behavior for much of the early part of the movie, I did find him funny at times.  The scene where he totally spazzes out and (briefly) overpowers a NEST soldier was one of them. The scene where Sam's mother starts talking about how he wouldn't be so lucky with women a third time unless he had a large member--and how Sam and his father both react to that--was also amusing.

Speaking of Laserbeak, I liked him (or was it her?).  I remember in the cartoon that he was Soundwave's spy-bot, but here he does quite well as an assassin robotic vulture-from-hell.

The "secret history" angle of the film (the Cold War space race was really about who could get to a crashed Cybertronian spacecraft first) was interesting.  And they brought in the Buzz Aldrin, which was kind of cool.

I remember when I was a kid watching an episode of the animated series in which the Decepticons' gambit is to bring Cybertron to Earth, although I cannot remember why.  It's good to see they took a plotline from the TV show and at least tried to provide a reason for it (convenient location to billions of slave laborers to rebuild it).  I also liked that we saw the war on Cybertron, however briefly.

The Decepticon gambit of using small-scale space bridges to bypass the defenses the humans and Autobots have established to defend against orbital attack was a clever one, as well as how they manipulated the Autobots into reviving Sentinel Prime and how they actually had the space-bridge components the entire time.

I did like how they depicted Megatron, despite lying in a trash heap in an alley after being essentially usurped by Sentinel Prime, watching Cybertron materialize in Earth orbit and being glad the planet has been saved.  Although the ideological differences between the two Cybertronian factions are not described in detail (I would deduce the Decepticons are fascistic due to their cult of personality around Megatron and Cybertronian-supremacism), I imagine Megatron would have ultimately wanted the best for his world and race despite his general villainy.

And however much I didn't like Sam (Shia LaBeouf) earlier in the movie, later on, when he in TVTropes terms Takes A Level In Badass, he's impressive.  He holds a gun on Carly's treacherous boss, plays a pivotal role in killing Starscream, and then later hammers Carly's boss into a space-bridge device with a length of rebar after vowing to kill him.  No "hero refuses to kill the villain and the villain does something stupid to get themselves killed" idiocy here.  Boo-yah.

And *how* Sam is depicted killing Starscream is foreshadowed by a training session in the NEST base in which we see human soldiers jumping on Bumblebee from above.  Writer Ehren Kruger did think that one through.

The Bad

Where do I begin?  There's just so much to criticize once you actually start thinking.

Sam was really, really obnoxious in the beginning of the movie.  I can understand that not being able to find a job would be frustrating, but I would expect someone with his life experiences to be much more desirable to employers (since the Autobots' existence is apparently known to the general public, there's no need to cover up his role in the first two films) and have much better job interview skills.  Seriously, I've bungled job interviews, but never as atrociously as he has.  One would hope an Ivy League school (Princeton?) would have prepared its graduates better.  And the way he behaves toward Carly wasn't cool at all.

Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) was not a good character.  She and Sam had little chemistry, which is kind of important given how she's set up as the love of Sam's life.  The only depth they tried to give her was that she was from a military family and her brother had died in battle and that only comes up in one scene, when she and Sam have their fight.  That part of her character could have been developed much more, perhaps if it had been introduced earlier--when we see that she and Sam are living together, we could see photos of her and her brother, for example.  About the only significant thing she does besides being taken hostage is to manipulate Megatron into turning on Sentinel Prime. 

(I admit it, I did like the "Sentinel Prime's bitch" line.)

I'm not going to defend Megan Fox's behavior, but it would have been far better if Steven Spielberg or Michael Bay (whoever actually pulled the trigger) simply made her watch Schindler's List a bunch of times or volunteer for one of Spielberg's Holocaust projects as a condition of further employment to get it through her head that no matter how overbearing a director is, comparing him to Hitler is ridiculous (and given how Bay is Jewish, particularly insulting).  If Fox absolutely had to go (some crew from the second film accused her of diva-like behavior), they could have recast Mikaela instead of shoehorning a much less-developed character into her role and throwing in some comments about how Mikaela was "mean" and how she dumped Sam, which strike me as being fairly out-of-character.

(Especially the latter--see my earlier post In Memorium: Mikaela Banes in which I noted that loyalty was one of her character's big traits.  If Sam had said "she chose her father over me" or something like that, it would have been much better.  Instead, we get petty crap like her being "mean" and dumping Sam.  Really, Michael Bay?  How immature.)

Starscream's attack on Sam and Carly toward the end of the movie was ridiculous.  I have never seen a mechanical life-form spit that much.  He was like an F-22-sized psychotic Sylvester the Cat.  And the drama-queen way he screamed when he got speared in the eyes by the gadget in Sam's glove was so irritating.  I like my interpretation of Starscream better (I wrote a fan-fic entitled The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot that basically transplants G1 Starscream into the movie-verse) than the one depicted in this film.  He wouldn't be second-in-command of the Decepticons if all he was was a sycophantic whiner.  And again, his penchant for treachery and his desire to usurp Megatron were completely ignored, just like in the second movie.

The U.S. military, like it did in Skyline, appears to have largely lost its capability of engaging beyond visual range.  When the Decepticons occupy Chicago, we see a couple of human fighters being taken out at knife-fighting range by Decepticon spacecraft with no indication they had attempted to attack from greater distances. At least they correct this later when they attack the Decepticons with cruise missiles guided in by special-ops troops.

Speaking of the special-ops guys, they entered Chicago via Ospreys, which are largely unarmed, and they did it without escorts.  No wonder Starscream was able to destroy half the aircraft and kill (I assume) a whole lot of them.  Lennox was in contact with General Morshower and even asked for a distraction so his team could get in.  We don't ever see this distraction, although the fact Lennox's team wasn't absolutely massacred by the Decepticon gunships seems to indicate it works.  Sam, Epps, and Epps' friends manage to infiltrate the city on foot and we later see some other soldiers entering the city via its waterways, so it would have been smarter to have done this.

The film depicts the Decepticons having forces, including gunships and even a much larger battleship, on the Moon.  Apparently they've been there for decades.  Where were they during the first movie?  I would imagine Megatron would have called them in during the battle for the AllSpark, which was his primary goal--he was so intent on catching the AllSpark that he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings and got frozen into a glacier.  There was no indication in the first movie that he was intending to meet up with Sentinel Prime.  The Decepticon forces would also have been useful in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, given the casualties the Decepticons were taking from the massed NEST tanks and the (apparent) lack of human air support.

The first movie bashed Bush, which I didn't like, and the second movie bashed Obama, which I didn't think was really appropriate either.  The third film features another obnoxious civilian official in charge of NEST (granted, she's an improvement over the guy from the second movie) and depicts both her and the U.S. government willing to agree to Sentinel Prime's demands after two hundred Decepticons infiltrate the United States via the space-bridge.  If the U.S. government was depicted as being in on the (phony) exile of the Autobots, that would be one thing, but the movie essentially depicted the (Republican) Congress, Bill O'Reilly, and the Democratic administration as a bunch of foolish appeasers and Optimus Prime being the sole mastermind of the plan in order to prove a point with the human leadership.

(I concede the infiltrated Decepticons could have done a lot of damage, but it couldn't have been worse than what happened to Chicago *after* the apparent assassination of the Autobots when they left Earth.)

And although this is a bit petty, the scene where we see the Decepticons in hiding in Africa and a bunch of National Geographic-style animal shots are interspersed with Megatron's posturing was lame.  Unless of course the goal is to show how degraded Megatron has become--he intimidates a bunch of elephants and demand they bow before him.  If only it weren't obvious that the animal shots were taken from elsewhere--the coloration and lighting look rather different.

The Verdict

An entertaining movie until you actually start to think about it.  Five out of 10. 

Although I do admit feeling a bit tempted, I'm not going to write a "Dark of the Moon" reboot fan-fiction.  "The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot" is going to be my last fan-fic, although I'll gladly disburse ideas to my loyal readers for them to use themselves.

This review also appeared here at the Dudeletter.

My Friend Jon Reviews "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (2011)

My friend and co-worker Jon got the chance to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon in Atlanta the other night and wrote the following review:

http://georgiagamer.com/2011/06/review-transformers-3/

Jon told me they don't explain what happened to Mikaela (Megan Fox), although another review said there are references to an unnamed ex who is "bitchy."

Darn.  I actually liked Mikaela's character (I explain why in this older blog entry--it's not just because she's hot) and I hoped in the interest of having a coherent storyline, they'd at least explain this.  However, it seems as I feared, they just shoehorned the new character Carly into Mikaela's role with no explanation.

(I don't like to criticize without offering suggestions for improvement, so I suggested their breakup could come around if Mikaela's dad relapses into criminal activity and Mikaela refuses to cut ties with him--an entirely in-character action that would cause severe friction with Sam.  If the end of his first relationship that's survived so much has left him despondent and it's Carly who pulled him out of it, that would strengthen all the characters involved and explain the situation at the same time.)

Despite this, I'll probably end up seeing it.  I've been a fan of "Transformers" since I was a kid and apparently the destruction of the city of Chicago by the warring robots is pretty epic.

(At the office today, since I watched part of Ferris Bueller's Day Off last night, I suggested a funny in-joke where the actor who played Cameron Frye kamikazes a Deception in a Ferrari.)

Given how it seems the most popular page on my blog right now is the one about Mikaela, I imagine my loyal readers are very interested in Transformers.  Not only will I give you this review, but I'll also link y'all to my "fix fic" The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot, which is the second movie if I'd been making it.

I hope both of these help slake your thirst for Transformers action.

In Memorium: Mikaela Banes (Transformers)

This post is a little out-of-date in terms of the subject matter, but Transformers: The Dark of the Moon hasn't come out yet, so it could still be appropriate.

By now, I imagine everybody has heard that Megan Fox will not be returning for the film and that her character Mikaela Banes has been replaced with a new character named Carly, who appeared in the original series as the girlfriend and later wife of the original "Spike" Witwicky.

However much I can understand why Michael Bay would not want Megan Fox around (really, publicly comparing a Jewish director to Hitler was not cool), replacing Mikaela with an entirely new character rather than simply recasting her (as was done when Katie Holmes did not wish to return for The Dark Knight) is really going to be problematic for the story.

Let's see--given Sam's age and fixation on cars and girls in the first movie, chances are Mikaela was his first girlfriend.  And due to the whole alien-invasion thing, they'd been through a colossal amount of crap together, crap that could break a lesser couple.  Ending such a relationship would be extremely difficult to say the least--what problems people in a relationship typically have compare to surviving repeated attacks by evil extraterrestrials and a near-death experience?

Given how they re-shot the scenes Fox had already performed with the new actress playing the new character, it seems to me they'll simply shoehorn Carly in Mikaela's place without an explanation and that would just be gorram ridiculous.

The only thing I can possibly think of that could explain this in a non-idiotic manner is if Mikaela's dad was the cause of the problem.  In the first movie, Sam freaks out upon learning of Mikaela's criminal background (she said her crime was refusing to testify against her dad, but she *does* know how to hot-wire cars).  If her father backslides into his criminal ways and Mikaela refuses to cut ties with him (as would be in-character), that could be a major problem for Sam.

If this were the cause of the breakup I've read about, it left Sam seriously despondent (as it likely would), and it was Carly who pulled him out of it, I could buy Mikaela being replaced by an entirely new character.

But given the plot problems that Revenge of the Fallen had, something tells me including an intelligent explanation is not going to happen.  I don't despise Michael Bay like some people do, but when a film wastes its potential to the point it inspires one to write a "fix fic" to do it better (my story The Revenge of the Fallen Reboot), that's pretty bad.

And I'm probably one of the few people who actually like the character of Mikaela Banes.  Most people thought she was basically there to have Megan Fox run around looking hot (and were quite satisfied) and/or provide a "trophy" for Sam, but she was a lot more developed than that.

*Firstly, she had a particular skill--her mechanical abilities.  And these skills actually played a part in the story, when she hot-wired a tow-truck to pull a wounded Bumblebee back into battle at the end of the first film.  She didn't just stand around looking pretty.

*Secondly, she was not some cliched damsel-in-distress.  When the Decepticon spy Frenzy attacked her and Sam in the first film, if I remember right she cut him in half with a chainsaw while Sam was the one who panicked.  In the second film, she tortured and interrogated the Decepticon spy Wheelie and broke him to the point he became her adoring pseudo-pet.  Torturing another being requires a great deal of personal steel, since most people have built-in inhibitions against deliberately causing pain.

*Thirdly, although a female member of my alternate-history forum wrote this off as "being at the mercy" of her father and boyfriend, her refusal to testify against her father when he has committed crimes (based on her comments, I imagine he was running a chop-shop working on stolen cars) and helping him readjust when he gets out of jail rather than following Sam to the East Coast, her staying with Sam no matter how much personal danger it puts her in, and her rescuing him from the LustBot when she has every reason to think Sam is cheating on her with a human girl shows that her character values loyalty.

I've gotten into arguments over this, once with a female member of my writing group (who eventually conceded Mikaela was a "weak character" instead of a trophy) and once with an author at DragonCon after the "what women want in speculative fiction" panel.  And since I'm writing all this here, I stand by this position.

If Transformers: Dark of the Moon does well, as it probably will, and Fox gets an attitude adjustment (something that hopefully came with the poor performances of Jennifer's Body and Jonah Hex), maybe they'll bring her character back for a fourth film?  That would be very interesting story-wise and could provide a reason for Mikaela's disappearance.

Not to mention geeky guys who identify with Sam would love seeing two pretty girls fighting over him.  :)