The Cars the Transformers Were Based On

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Insert Clever Title Here (Maybe "Too Much Meets the Eye"?)

While ripping apart the new movie, Roger Ebert very adroitly explains the problem with how the movie Transformers look:

From its origin as a children’s toy through its evolution in TV animation (1984) and the 2007 movie. It has grown steadily more complex, apparently feeding on larger and larger junk yards. [The movie Transformer] is now too much to comprehend, especially in Bay’s typical average shot length of not much over one second.

I don’t entirely hate how the new ones look. I get that Bay wanted to move away from the blocky look of the original series, but in doing so, all the bots look the same. They’re just a mess of tubing and metal. It’s hard to tell them apart during frantic action sequences, and they’ve gone so far from their original forms that it robs me of some of the fun recognition of a childhood toy brought to life by movie magic.

Peter Cullen’s voice still does it for me, though.

Links: Ebert’s review and essay, and io9’s must-read review.

(I don’t know that I’ll go see the new movie, by the way. For my $10 Moon would be an unquestionably better choice, but maybe I’ll be in the mood to kill a few brain cells this weekend.)

Transforming USB Flash Memory (2 GB) - Ravage

Transforming USB Flash Memory (2 GB) - Ravage

Dear Santa…

Stan Bush Wants "The Touch" In Guitar Hero, Rock Band

Stan Bush Wants “The Touch” In Guitar Hero, Rock Band

Hear, hear.

Video of Transformers costumes

Video of Transformers costumes that actually transform.

Transformers

Transformers is a straight action movie, and in being an action movie it succeeds wonderfully. Certainly the script could have benefited from some more work. Hot computer hacker girl and her wise-cracking black friend eat up too much screen time while not advancing the story whatsoever. John Turturro’s government agent character is simply lame. There are too many cheesy lines. They say “more than meets the eye” twice. But robots blow each other up. The action is just perfect. Big, loud, exciting.

It isn’t the cartoon you watched as a kid. It’s just not, and don’t expect it to be. A few of the robots have enough of a resemblance to the original that it’s still Transformers, but it is an action movie version of that cartoon, not an adaptation of it. In this regard I think Michael Bay was right in making the robots look more alien and less like the original characters. It removes them a bit from needing to be what they were in the cartoon.

There’s a cliché in monster movies where Godzilla shows up, the army comes in and fires its useless weapons, and then the scientists find a way to stop him. Transformers, not terribly subtly, turns this around. The film opens in Iraq with a Decepticon blowing away an army base. Josh Duhamel and his squad escape and, by the climax, get to blow up their own Decepticon. It’s like Michael Bay is saying, “Hey America, I know it’s depressing that we can’t win in Iraq, but our military still kicks ass! They can blow up Transformers!” In fact, one of the key climactic Transformer-on-Transformer battles happens off-screen while Josh Duhamel and his squad get to do the ass-kicking.

In the hands of a better director the movie could have been a deconstruction of monster movies and 80s nostalgia. Instead Bay blows shit up, and does it spectacularly. I’d have loved it to have been smarter, but wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice any of the wall-to-wall carnage for it.

Interview with Peter Cullen about voicing Optimus Prime again for the movie

Interview with Peter Cullen about voicing Optimus Prime again for the movie

New Transformers Trailer

New Transformers Trailer

Looks pretty awesome, actually.

bwtf.com: Ben's World of Transformers (Generation One)

bwtf.com: Ben’s World of Transformers (Generation One)

Pics of just about every classic Transformer ever released.

Slashdot | Peter Cullen Chosen to Voice Optimus Prime (Again)

Slashdot | Peter Cullen Chosen to Voice Optimus Prime (Again)

This, I’m ashamed to say, is a giant relief.

WR-07 - A Real Transformer

\WR-07 - A Real Transformer

Independence Day for Transformers

Independence Day for Transformers

Release date for Michael Bay-directed live action picture set for fewer than two years from now.

How tall is Optimus Prime?

More importantly: who’s taller, Optimus Prime or the Pink Power Ranger? I’d like to take just a few minutes here to answer this simple little question.

The two clearly have very different images. One is the fearless leader of a race of transforming robots from another galaxy. The other is the high-kicking female member of a superhero team who in her spare time is a good friend of Felicity.

Taking a quick look across the internet I find a good bit of information on the Power Rangers. We will of course be using the original Pink Ranger in this article, the lovely Amy Jo Johnson. According to Celebrity Wonder’s little page about Amy, the Cape Cod-born actress stands a towering 5’2”.

Figuring out Prime’s height was a little harder for me. For one, I don’t own Optimus Prime’s toy. I do have him at my parent’s house, but it seems that at age five I managed to break him and lose all but his torso, so that isn’t much help. I do have, however, the recent Toys ‘R’ Us re-issue of Rodimus Major, a.k.a. Hot Rod. (Hasbro managed to lose the copyright to “Hot Rod” at some point between 1986 and 2002.) Doing some quick measurements, I’ve found Hot Rod to be 5 inches long in vehicle mode and 6 inches tall in robot mode. This will be useful, because now I just have to find out how long he would be in real life, perform some simple division, and I’ll have an answer for us.

Looking at Hot Rod’s vehicle mode, I’ve decided that he’s probably about the length of a Lamborghini Countach. In fact, many Transformers had that exact car as their vehicle modes (like Sideswipe and Red Alert), so I think I’m pretty justified in thinking that Hot Rod is just a futuristic version of that sort of low-to-the-ground really big sports car. A quick trip to everyone’s favorite terrible search engine, Ask Jeeves, with the question “How long is a Lamborghini Countach?” provides the answer: 165 inches, or 13 feet, 9 inches. Now, since his robot mode is 6 inches tall, we can do some math to figure out the right scale.

A few minutes more of searching tells me that Optimus Prime’s toy (the 1984 version) is 6.3 inches tall in robot mode. Now some quick math will give us an answer:

5/165 = 6.3/x 5 * x = 165 * 6.3 5 * x = 1039.5 x = 1039.5 / 5 x = 207.9 

Assuming that Hod Rod’s toy is in scale with Optimus Prime’s, this would give us a Prime who’s 207.9 inches tall, or 17 feet, 4 inches. This makes Prime over three times the height of the Pink Power Ranger.

So there you have it folks! Now onto the matter of deciding who has hotter boots, Amy Jo Johnson or Princess Allura.

My dad's doesn't do that!

Those of you who know me know that I’m going through a bit of a Transformers phase right now. And why not, huh? They’re really cool. If you don’t believe me, check out this site and give your imagination a rest.

As kids we could name every Transformer...

Now as an adult I find my ability to tell Skywarp from Thundercracker sorely diminished along with my once comprehensive internal enyclopedia of every dinosaur that ever walked, swam, or flew. No, this will not be a rant about the loss of youth, but instead a reaction to a happy cultural phenomena going on right now. You see, every once in a while the world lines itself up and produces something precisely tuned just to you. I guess it would be like having all of your favorite baseball players suddenly traded to the same team, or finally having your chance with the girl you had a crush on in high school the day after you get left at the altar. For me, it’s the 80’s nostalgia revival. In a few hours Cartoon Network will air a re-make of He-Man. Late at night you can sometimes catch syndicated GI-JOE episodes. But most excitingly for me is the recent completion of Dreamwave Productions’ first Transformers: Generation 1 mini-series.

I’ll rewind a few months. My friend Jay-1 is all aflutter about the new Transformers comics. For some reason I don’t realize how big a deal this is. Then I go to the store and pick up the preview and the first two issues. I have to say that I was blown away. First of all, the comics themselves are printed on very nice paper. Also, Dreamwave doesn’t run ads every few pages like Marvel and DC do. All you get are a few ads for other Dreamwave titles at the center page, and announcements for next month’s releases at the end. But on top of that, Pat Lee’s artwork is utterly top-notch. I’ve never really cared much for manga-style art, but they employ it perfectly here. The Transformers (though we don’t really see them until issue 2) look great. The artists accomplish what the show rarely did because it showed the Transformers mostly interacting with each other: these things are HUGE. Not only do they just look cool because I’m seeing icons from my childhood, but they just look freakin’ great. The inker, Rob Armstrong, uses computer colors to make all of the artwork look smoother and more vibrant than a live-action movie might appear.

As for the writing: it’s good. I don’t think the story is as strong as others seem to, but I also don’t think that’s the point. I do have to give credit to Chris Sarracini for coming up with a creative way to bring these characters back without just starting where the cartoon or last comic series left off. The basic story is that, three years ago, the Earth got fed up with the Autobot/Decepticon war. They had been fighting for years and people just kept getting caught in the middle, so the humans agree to devote all of the their resources to help the Autobots. They win, defeating the Decepticons. The Aubobots pack their bags and board a giant spaceship, the Ark II, with the deactivated Decepticons in captivity, along with a small group of Earth’s great scientists who are going to Cybertron to study its technology. For some reason, though, the ship explodes, killing the scientists and, the world thought, the Transformers. Now, three years later, a covert bad guy has discovered Transformers buried in ice and has learned how to reactivate and control them. Society’s only hope is the lifeless form of Optimus Prime, but no one can figure out how to get him working. The story works, and turns out pretty well once you get into it. But it does come off feeling a little bit too complex for itself. They’ve got a mysterious villain, an over-zealous military general, the re-activation of the Transformers, poor Spike caught in the middle, and some weird techno-virus that doesn’t get nearly enough explanation. Nonetheless, the momentum does hold up and builds very strongly into an exciting fight. At one point we get a marvelous two-page splash of Devastator rising out of the San Franscisco bay and you realize just how terrible a force a Decepticon attack would be.

I really can’t recommend this new series enough. If you liked the Transformers as a kid, you just have to read it. Dreamwave just finished the first 6-issue arc and plans another in early 2003. In the meantime, go out and pick up the trade of Transformers: Generation 1. You won’t be disappointed.

It doesn’t stop there…

Along with the G1 series come two more titles: Transformers Armada and Transformers: The War Within. The War Within only just started so I don’t have a big impression of it yet, but it starts off well. The idea is that they’re going back to tell how the war started. Optimus has only just become Prime and the Decepticons right now are just rebels starting a coup. One of the cool things is that we get to see the robots’ various “Cybertronian Forms.” It makes sense, because it isn’t likely that Cybertron would have cars and airplanes that look just like those on Earth, so we get cool things like Grimlock as a tank instead of a T-Rex and Starscream as a, well, space jet of some sort. Armada sadly doesn’t worry about that too much, but I think that it merits a bit more attention than some are giving it. Admittedly, the cartoon sucks. I like it despite that fact, but that’s just me. The comic is better, judging from the preview and the first three issues that is. The premise is that there’s a race of robots called the Mini-Cons who the Decepticons are using to boost their own power. Using Mini-Cons the Decepticons are basically unstoppable, and the Autobots don’t like that. Neither do the Mini-Cons, because being attached to other robots in such a way amounts to torture for them. A small group of them escapes and rescues the rest and together they blast off into space to of course become stranded and end up one earth. And I think that it works very well. The artwork, like in Gen 1 and The War Within is superb and you do get a flash of horror when you see the poor little guys getting thrown into cages screaming. Armada also has a very good line of toys accompanying it with some very neat features. They’re bigger than Transformers used to be which provides more detailing and better articulation so you can actually pose the toys instead of just having them stand up straight and do nothing. They each come with a Mini-Con, and when you attach them to the Transformer they activate cool features like lights, sound effects, and guns that flip out of nowhere and fire. The Optimus Prime toy has a trailer that transforms itself into a base automatically when you change his body from truck cab to robot. Very cool

So the Transforms are back and this is a good thing. Get excited, check it out, and remember not to be an uptight adult. Play with toys, read comic books, watch cartoons, and be merry.