Open letter to Hasbro and the studios behind the Transformers movies

Dudes,

I keep hearing stupid comments from the dumbasses that “wrote” the Transformers movies, saying that they don’t know what to do for future installments of the Transformers. They’re “tired” and the concept is getting “stale”. This pisses me off to no end. As a Transformers fan, I know that Transformers lore presents endless possibilities for stories and villains. Just because Orci and Kurtzman are bereft of any creativity and because they know nothing about he Transformers mythos while professing to be fans, now the whole franchise has to suffer while it could have gone on for another 4 or 5 more movies or even beyond. Don’t believe me? Read on:

Unicron and Primus:

They still haven’t done a movie featuring Unicron, the Chaos Bringer. Unicron was a god before the Universe existed and sought peace through the destruction of all life. He accomplished this by destroying everything, even the stuff of space itself leaving nothingness, and slumbered in deep sleep. But he wasn’t thorough enough in his destruction, and small fragments of the old universe reacted with each other and formed a new Universe. In this Universe, Primus, Lord of Light was born. Unicron awakened and proceeded to destroy everything again, but Primus shifted the fight to the physical plane, our Universe, and without time to properly generate their energy forms, Primus entrapped both himself and Unicron in two barren asteroids. Unicron learned over the eons to shape his asteroid into aplanet, then again into a robot. Primus, fearing that if he too shaped into a robot the conflict that destroyed the former universe would resume, decided to instead to turn his asteroid into a planet, Cybertron, inhabited by robot beings that could, like Unicron, alter their forms and eventually defend the Universe against the inevitable Unicron threat. Unicron awakens and proceeds to eat planets for sustenance. He zeroes in on Earth and the Autobots feel they must convince Primus to turn Cuybertron into an enourmous robot to stop Unicron by delving into the core of Cybertron and awakening the spark of Primus. Primus can battle Unicron and fail, resulting in the Transformers facing the truth that they are the ones that were created to destroy Unicron. Autobots and Decepticons team up and defeat Unicron before there is no more universe for the Decepticons to rule or the Autobots to defend. They delve into the core of Unicron and destroy his spark, blowing up Unicron's body just before he's about to devour Earth. Unicron’s head can blow off his destroyed body in the end and orbit Earth or something. This would be an epic movie. Too bad you won’t make it.

Galvatron:

Have Megatron get defeated by Optimus during the Unicron story and get Uncron to remake him as Galvatron to take the Matrix of Leadership from Optimus, the only thing that can defeat him.

Dinobots:

I’m tired of everybody saying that they don’t know how to justify the Dinobots’ Dinosaur forms. Is everybody stupid? Grimlock and his Autobot mercenaries are hardened bounty hunters scouring the universe in protoform for their Autobot brethren and destroying Decepticons. They happen upon Optimus’ message from the end of the first Michael Bay movie and come to Earth. They don’t care about disguise as they don’t care who sees them. All they care about in an alternate form is something bulky, combat ready and intimidating. Not satisfied with Earth’s machines and vehicles as an alternate form, Grimlock takes interest in Earth’s animal life, but looks back to a time when Earth’s life was huge and terrifying, the Jurrasic period. Grimlock and his team (Swoop, Slag, Snarl and Sludge) scan fossiles of their chosen forms, alter them to their preference, and become the Dinobots, ready to take on any threat with their new powerful bodies. Add in a story arc where Grimlock disagrees with Optimus’ less aggressive methods against the Decepticons, breaks off from the Autobots on his own destructive path but eventually learns that he is doing more damage than good and becomes a team player with the Autobots, and you have an enduring character that borrows heavily from his cartoon and comic heritage and still remains fresh. Too bad they don’t give any personality to the robot characters in these Transformer movies though.




Quintessons:

Five-faced, tenticaled aliens who come to Earth promising to fix our problems with their superior technology, but bare a terrible secret. They want to bring new life to Unicron and use him to control the Universe. They also reveal a link to the Transformers’ past, where they had attacked and colonized Cybertron eons ago and enslaved the Transformers. The Transformers had rebelled, driving the Quintessons off their planet and the Quintessons have been seeking revenge ever since. The Transformers have to team up to stop the Quintessons from re-activating Unicron and fend off the Quintessons’ army of Sharkticon troopers.

Jhaxius:

Iron-fisted, self-appointed new ruler of Cybertron from G2 continuity who believes in Transformers as Cybertronians, not Autobots and Decepticons, and vows to destroy all Autobots and Decepticons who oppose him. He also “mechaforms” planets, recreating organic planets in the image of Cybertron, destroying all life on them. He sets about remaking the universe this way, setting his sights on Earth, until Optimus and crew can stop him.

Liege Maximo


Introduced on the last page of the last issue of the G2 comic and expanded in the unofficial Simon Furman penned novella Allignment, Liege Maximo is a fallen god who is the father of all Decepticons and wants to ascend to godhood, a process that could destroy the universe altogether. The Autobots and Decepticons would have to team up to stop him.

Nebulos:

This is the planet from the American cartoon and comic continuity inhabited by humans that inherit the Autobots and Decepticons’ war accidentally. Some Autobots flee to this planet to escape the war and hide in peace, but he Decepticons follow them there and discover a world ripe for conquering.

Head Masters

I was never fond of the American version of this concept, where Nebulons and humans fused with the heads of characters and could transform from that character’s head into another robot while the character can turn into whatever vehicle they transform into. I perferred the Japanese version where Transformers learn to deal with harsh conditions by uploading all of their processing functions into their heads and ejecting their heads from their bodies in an elternate, smaller robot form to escape sticky situations or evade capture. They can also switch heads and adopt the powers of different character’s heads, so a more intelligent or powerful transformer can swap their head with someone else’s body and embue that body with their abilities to get out of a jam. This would be an interesting addition to the movie lore, but may go over the heads of audiences weened on testical and pot jokes.

Characters I would like to see done right for once:

Fortress Maximus and Trypticon

They already effed up Scorponok, so let’s get these other giants right. Enormous, rolling battle stations that form gigantic robots! What the hell is more spectacular than that?? And Fort Max was the leader of the Autobots in the American Headmasters comic and the Japanese Headmasters series for eff sake!

Scorponok

Getting back to Scorponok, can we please bite the bullet and bring him back as the huge scorpion battle station/robot? He had a striking design and was extremely popular. If you’re all woried that you’ve used the name Scorponok already, then just call him Zarak or Mega Zarak like in the Japanese G1 series. He was the leader of the Decepticons in the Japanese Headmasters series (he even blew up Cybertron with Galvatron stranded there!) and played a huge roll later in the Japanese Masterforce series. Heck he was the leader of the Decepticons in the American Headmasters comic. And that little crappy robot in the beginning of the Michael Bay movie is how you pay tribute to that??

Scourge and Cyclonus

You already screwed up the trio that was Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave. Don't screw up Galvitron, Scourge and Cyclonus. Scourge the Tracker can be an experienced bounty hunting Transformer who joins the Decepticons with his team of Sweeps, drones who serve Scourge to hunt his prey. Cyclonus would be a loyal and powerful right-hand-man of Megatron/Galvatron.


Star Saber

Future leader of the Autobots in G1 Japanese continuity (from the Transformers: Victory series), he respects all life and would fight to the death to defend it. Could be a successor to Optimus for a movie or two. I always liked this guy.

Deszaras

Leader of the Decepticons in G1 Japanese continuity (from the Transformers: Victory series), I always thought he was a cool leader, with his chest plate that pops off and transforms into two different flying characters. Could be a successor to Megatron/Galvitron for a movie or two.

Devil Z

Evil entity from the far reaches of the universe who leads the Decepticons in the Japanese Masterforce and Zone series. This character would have to have a back story developed as he was never really explained in the Japanese series, but that shouldn’t be too hard and would serve as more fodder for movies.

There are other characters and concepts, but really Transformers can go in so many directions. I’m really getting fed up with the lack of creativity and interest coming out of Hollywood. It destroys franchises that could go on past 4 movies if the studios put some thought and care into them, rather than piling on memos of what trend or pandering idea they can shoehorn into the next film to make that opening weekend boxoffice and appease their shareholders. You’ve already run roughshod over two movies and you can’t sustain that attitude for long until the audience feels it’s had enough. Let’s buckle down with the next few Transformer films and really tell great stories with blistering action and enduring characters (robot characters – eff Sam and Mekaela!). Come on guys, let’s really pull this one out of the gutter before it's too late (which it might already be).

-Deceptisean

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comic adaptation review

I haven’t seen Transformers 2 yet. No real rush. I hated the first one and all the stupidity I keep hearing about with TF2 like the sambo-bots, Devastator’s testicles, Bumblebee crying and still not able to speak, not being able to differentiate Megatron from the other Decepticons, sex jokes, pot jokes, etc. really soured me on wanting to see it. I’m a big Transformers fan – and when I say fan, I don’t mean that I saw the first Michael Bay movie and ran around proclaiming I was a fan, like James Thoo on Joblo.com. I mean I’ve known the TF franchise and all its moving parts since I was 5 or 6 and Transformers first appeared in North America. Now, I’m not a pig about it. I know that because there have been different incarnations of Transformers and different generations to experience them at different times, there will be those out there who have their favourite. Some people are fonder of the Beast Wars era than G1 or what came after. Some probably liked the one-off Robots in Disguise series. And there are young ‘uns who will worship Armada, Energeon and Cybertron (the so called Unicron Trilogy) when they’re older. And – Lord help us all – when kids today grow up, there will be a fan base for these trashy, non-sensical, disrespectful Michael Bay Transformer movies.

I picked up the comic adaptation for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen because I was curious to see this sequel with all the jokes, the noise, and most of the action distilled out. Let’s just look at this thing from a story perspective.

Overall, in comic form, Transformers 2 isn’t half-bad. The plot holes and logic leaps aren’t as gaping as G.I. Joe. The story is generally what you know: Thousands of years ago the Primes stole energy from suns of uninhabited solar-systems to supply Cybertron with power to run their planet. One Prime (the Fallen) wanted to steal energy from a particularly juicy sun (Earth’s sun) and the other Primes refused because our planet was inhabited. So, the Fallen kills all the Primes save for one. That Prime hides the Matrix so the Fallen can’t power his sun destroying machine and seals it in a tomb contructed of parts from the other Pimes and seals it with his “own life essence”. Anyhoo, there is a young Prime who is constructed around this time who turns out to be Optimus and doesn’t know his connection to the matrix and sun destroying machine. In current times, the Decepticons are still hanging around Earth, the U.S. government blames it on the Autobot presence, but really the Decepticons are looking for Megatron. They find him and somehow Megatron is able to communicate directly with The Fallen, like the Fallen is the Emperor to Megatron’s Darth Vader. Optimus is defeated by Megatron, Megatron is looking for the Matrix of Leadership in order to power a sun-destroying machine that is covered by the Pyramids (yes, those pyramids), Sam finds the Matrix first, radios the two military guys from the first movie to drop off the dead husk of Optimus at the Pyramids so he can use the Matrix to revive him, he does and Optimus goes toe to toe with the Fallen.

As a story, all the fundamentals are sound here. This adaptation seems to come from a script stage before all the jokey ad-libbing and animation flourishes like Devestator’s testicals and Skids and Mudflaps’ jive-talking attitude were thrown in. Gone are the pot jokes and stuff. The only stupid thing I didn’t like was Bumblebee blowing up the Witwickeys’ house in the beginning because a couple of household appliances came to life via the All-Spark shard that Sam has (not only does Bumblebee not speak, but he is apparently a dumbass too). Skids and Mudflap add absolutely nothing to the story, only appearing alongside Bumblebee throughout. This might explain why the filmmakers felt the need to beef up their appearance in the movie, so you knew they were there, by adding all the “cap in yo’ ass” language – for the “kiddies”. Megatron gets a lot of speaking lines in this adaptation, along with Optimus. Optimus is shown to be a hero that everyone from human to Autobot respects and leans on in a crisis, which I like. As for Megatron, he and Starscream bicker in one scene (after Megs is revived), then Starscream fights alongside Megatron for the rest of the movie. There is one scene I liked in the adaptation where Megatron takes over all of Earth’s communications and appears on every TV at once demanding that Earth hand over Sam in 24 hours or the Decepticons will rampage through Earth. This reminded me of General Zod in Superman II when he calls out Superman on TV. Is this in the movie? If so, that's frickin’ cool! Just Megatron threatening Earth on the world’s TVs is cool. All other characters get short shrifted. Soundwave speaks alot in this adaptation, but he's still a stupid satelite, so he just hovers over Earth telling the Decepticons where to find everything. What a waste of a popular character. Ironhide and Ratchet are back and do nothing. Arcee disappears after the first scene. Bumblebee still doesn’t speak. Another thing that struck me was how serious the Agent Simmons character was (John Tuturro) in this adaptation. He still works at a pizzeria like in the movie, but gone are references that he lives with his “mummy” and he’s the one that actually kills Devastator (this probably happens in the movie too – as I’ve said I still haven’t seen it) but he’s actually useful in this comic. The two army guys from part 1 are pointless except for carting Optimus’ lifeless body to Egypt.

After reading this adaptation, I couldn’t help think that Transformers 2 could have been awesome had they went in the direction of this comic (which represents some sort of early script stage) and just beefed up the robot characters more, like give Ratchet and Ironhide more history with Optimus and more importance in the Autobots’ operations. And give the Decepticons more screen time to actually speak and develop personalities, like maybe teasing human “fleshlings” for sadistic fun, or have some Deceps join with Starscream while others are more loyal to Megatron. As it is, Devastator appears at the very end and the Constructicons never appear before that scene. And Fallen hovers somewhere for the entire movie and shows up at the end when the Matrix is finally taken from Sam. It’s stuff like that that makes me shake my head. There was certainly room to add more depth to the robots if they cut most of the useless human stuff (do we need a five-minute pot-gag?). If they concentrated less on the stupid human characters like Sam, skanky Mekaela, Alice the useless Pretender Transformer who fails, Leon or whatever Sam’s friend is called, Agent Simmons, etc. and more on the Transformers whom this movie is named after, this could have been much better. And stop with the stupid jokes already. This adaptation doesn’t have any of that stuff and it’s fine!

Anyhow, this adaptation is okay. It still didn’t make me want to see the movie anytime soon. It also makes me wonder how much longer this current run of Transformers movies lasts with the already flimsy foundation they’ve built for it. As I said, the movie seems like it could have been much better had they concentrated more on fleshing out story and characters. I’ll still watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen eventually, plugging my nose and holding my breath.

2.5/5

Deceptisean