Just finished The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell - you may know her better as the voice of Violet in the Incredibles. It’s a good read. In her essay on Al Gore’s nerdiness, she references an anonymous commentator on slashdot.
Furthermore, geeks tend to be focused on very narrow fields of endeavour. The modern geek has been generally dismissed by society because thier passions are viewed as trivial by those people who “see the big picture”. Geeks understand that the big picture is pixellated and their high level of contribution in small areas grows the picture. They don’t need to see what everyone else is doing to make their part better.
Indeed. Today’s geeky topic: Transformers. My bio says I don’t get excited about giant armored robots - that’s generally true, unless they’re the kind that turn into cars, planes, and cassette players. The Transformers cartoon was on right after school every weekday when I was a kid in grade one. I’d risk punishment on a regular basis by trying to sneak in an episode instead of doing what I should have been doing, which was practicing piano. Mom was at work, so being caught was determined by when sisters got home from school. One memorable day, unbeknownest to me, Roz had stayed home from school and had been asleep til she was woken by the sound of laser fire emanating from the television. From that day forward, I learned to check the rest of the house for stray family members when I got home.
At some point some kind relative gave me a real Transformer: Mirage, the Formula 1 racer whose schtick in the cartoon was that he also could turn invisible. For a few days I was cool with my fellow classmates Trevor and Marco, who between them owned Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Jetfire, and a small army of Autobots. Then Aaron broke Mirage in half, took him away to “fix”, and never returned him. Then I accidentally broke Trevor’s Ironhide, pissing him off enormously. Then moved away from Canada to Taiwan with Dad, came back after a month with Mom, and we disconnected basic cable; and that was the end of my Transformers toy phase as a kid.
A few years ago, flush with disposable income, I got back into Transformers when the Robots in Disguise line came out. This year I’ve really gotten back into collecting Generation One characters as well as Takara’s Binaltech line. Of course this means I’m finding myself looking forward to Michael Bay’s live action adaptation that comes out next year, although my fellow geeks seem to be up in arms about certain.. liberties.. taken. Here’s a case in point: Penny Arcade’s comic from Monday. To this I have two rejoinders.
First. Watch The Island, Bay’s most recent directorial effort. Susan and I did this weekend courtesy of Netflix. It is a movie which can at best be tenously classified as science fiction. It very vaguely raises serious ethical questions and then dashes them in favor of highly prominent product placement. Whatever: that is not the point of a Michael Bay movie. It is to see finely choreographed violence and explosions and general preposterous mayhem. People falling from the top of skyscrapers with bullets fired from above and from below and surviving while shit blows up all around them. Now imagine giant robots causing said preposterous violence and general mayhem - animated by some of the best in the business (Bay recently bought Digital Domain) - and you see what I mean. To what other director would you entrust the franchise? Brian Singer would give us finely nuanced character development. Hello, we already know this is a battle between one-dimensional cartoonish villains and equally one-dimensional cartoonish heroes, who needs motivation? We really just want to see people, buildings, etc caught in the crossfire blown to smithereens, and how they’re going to pull off the CGI for cars turnin’ into bots and vice versa.
Second. The original Transformers cartoon is really quite craptacular. I acquired the complete Transformers series on DVD on the cheap, the Pexland International box from China. Watched a few of these and was struck by how bad it was. This is a cartoon designed to sell toys, and it shows. For example, here is an excerpt from the second episode. The Decepticons have just attacked a dam and the Autobots have of course shown up to defeat their nefarious plans. At some point, Optimus Prime finds himself hanging on for dear life at the mercy of Megatron.
Megatron: “Any words?”
Optimus: “None you’d want to hear, Megatron!”
Megatron: “Nothing can stop me now! Not even you!”
Thich would be more worrying if we hadn’t just seen Optimus and all the other Autobots flying. Not in a previous episode, but literally two minutes before this very scene. Far be it for me to debate Optimus on combat tactics, but Megatron should really know better than to think stomping on Optimus’ fingers is really going to get him anywhere. Incidentally, I’ve noticed Optimus really has difficulty with terra firma. Four episodes in and the guy keeps falling into water, rolling off cliffs, and so on. When he finally gets aborne via the aid of a rocket pack he gets shot down almost immediately. Some leader he turns out to be.
Back to episode two. While Optimus is still hanging on, the show cuts away to fan favorite character, Starscream. Starscream usually turns into a fighter jet and fires a “null ray”. He’s also Megatron’s snivelling second-in-command.
Yes, Starscream appears to be a crackshot with a .. slingshot. All that firepower and he goes for the Bart Simpson approach. The point is, if Bay’s movie isn’t true to the cartoon, it’s because the cartoon sucks. If Optimus is still a truck - who cares if it’s a Peterbilt and not a Mack? - and things still blows up - it’s still getting my nine bucks. Especially if the inevitable toy tie-ins are decent.
