Ode to Soundwave -or- No Decepticon Left Behind

Here's your fair warning: This is going to be a dorky post. But, since I've had this conversation twice in the last two days (once with Ramya, and she was a trooper about it) I figured it deserves a little exploration.

Okay people born after 1980, this is Soundwave.One of the original bad guys of the Transformers universe, Megatron's right hand man, and general badass. Sure, most transformers turn into cars or planes, but what does Soundwave get to be? A micro-cassette player. This is a little reminiscent of "Big" ("Who wants to play with a building?"), but it was pretty sweet to have a toy robot that turned into something that looked like a properly sized real-world object- even if it didn't actually do anything (the Japanese kids got a version that did play sounds, but I digress). Plus, since he was a tape player he could hold tapes that also transformed into other characters! This spawned a whole new sub-group of the toys that included the ever-popular Rumble, Ravage, and we can't forget Laserbeak. If you can't grasp how awesome this is to a 7-year-old boy, then I can't explain it to you. In any case, he was a staple of the toy line, the comics, the cartoon and my childhood for several years. However, he has recieved suprisingly little love in the new incarnations of Transformers. There have been a few attempts to work him back in over the years, like his odd Cybertron version, but check out the latest:Transforms intoTo be perfectly honest, I love this. He's no longer a tape player (more on that later), but check out the paintjob on the truck! Not only is it an appropriate blue, but the decoration on the side looks like a cassette. Plus, look at the front bumper- it looks like the tape player controls! Brilliant. As a robot, they've clearly gone out of their way to make him look like his generation 1 roots- he has the tape deck/controls on his chest. You even get Laserbeak, who tranforms into a...uh...guitar...that stores on the...roof. Okay, so it's not perfect. But you have to love the way they acknowledge the character's roots. Because if you think about it, parents that are buying truck Soundwave for their kids probably played with tape player Soundwave when they were younger.

It makes me wonder though, do kids today even know what a tape player is? I ponder this, but at the same time I went through childhood getting annoyed everytime an adult mentioned records. They'd always say "I had a record of that. You kids have probably never heard of records- they were like big black CDs." I was born in 1978, okay? We had record players! I had Disney read-along books that came with a record that stuck in the back cover. I remember when the McDonald's menu song came on a record in the Sunday paper. Much like when they released that re-mix of Magic Carpet Ride in the late '90s- I remember several adults saying "You probably don't know this, but this song is actually older than you!" Well, duh, it's Magic Carpet Ride. It came out 10 years before I was born, but it's a classic! I turn on the '60s station on XM and I know most of the songs. Then again, I see high school kids listening to a song from the early '80s and I think "How do they know that song?" This is how it begins.

In any case, this is not the first Transformer to out live his namesake. Back in the day I had one named Camshaft who transformed into a Mazda RX-7. A few years ago when they started up the awesome Binaltech line, they made an RX-8 version that they were marketing as "Meister" in Japan, but naturally they were going to call him Camshaft in the states. The irony here being that the RX-8 has a rotary engine, and therefore has no camshaft. Hasbro/Takara eventually settled on making the RX-8 Jazz and made Camshaft an Acura RSX.

My question is why they couldn't just make Soundwave into a CD player or something. Maybe because they wanted to have a vehicle mode that was more in-line with his robot mode. In the dreadful Transformers movie they even had a main character that turned into a CD boombox, and they didn't call him Soundwave (they settled on Frenzy, who was one of the less-popular tapes). Of course, in finding that link I just read his Wiki entry. It says that the movie character would have been Soundwave, but it evolved too much and the personality resembled Frenzy more closely. This is true, and I give Michael Bay a little credit, but that movie still stunk. By the way, this post is now the #1 result if you Google "Transformers Sucked."

And there you go: More about Soundwave than you ever wanted to know. Good thing I already have a girlfriend.

Transformers Sucked. There. I Said It.

Okay, hopefully everyone has seen Transfomers by now. If you haven't, and you don't want any spoilers/downers, don't read this post! The thing is, I really, really wanted to like this movie, but I thought it was awful. Before I saw it I was cautiously optimistic- I knew it was going to be a departure from the toys and the cartoons I loved so dearly as a kid, so I planned to enjoy it as a separate entity. The problem is that other than the special effects, there wasn't a whole lot to like.

This opinion has made me an outcast among my peers. Everyone seems to love the film, even my friend Mike who is the biggest Transformers fan I know- he was 100% determined to hate the new movie, and he loved it! It wasn't until Carly and Daniel called me to share their disappointment that I started to feel better. Honestly, I felt like I was taking crazy pills. What was everyone else seeing that I missed? In any case, here are a few of the items that ruined my enjoyment of the movie:

1. In the original cartoon, the Transformers had one alternate vehicle they could change into. In the movie, they can scan anything they want and transform into new vehicles at will. That's fine, if they stick with the premise. But in the heat of battle, is a Camaro or Solstice really the best choice when all the enemies are jets and tanks? That just didn't make sense. Speaking of which, if they can turn into anything they want (including advanced Cybertronian space craft) why do they have to result to crash landings that destroy baseball stadiums?



2. So in turn, these robots can automatically reconfigure themselves into whatever devices they want. And yet Bumblebee's vocal circuits are damaged so he can't speak- and no one can figure out how to fix them. So, why can't they just regenerate like every other time they get damaged? And if they are damaged beyond repair, why can he all the sudden talk at the end? Mike theorized that his vocal circuits were repaired when he touched the cube, the way Frenzy (the boombox guy) was. Okay, but then why did he still wait several hours to talk?



3. "Okay, we have this all-mighty cosmic artifact, and the fate of the world rests on getting it to the top of this building immediately. Who should take it up there? Not you, giant warrior robots. Not you, platoon of combat Marines. Ummm...You! 16 year old boy!" Though in his defense, he did really haul up there.



4. When Prime is fighting Bonecrusher (the military truck Decepticon) he decapitates him with a blade that pops out of his wrist (which was awesome, by the way). So, where was that the rest of the movie? Weren't there about a hundred other times that would've come in handy?



5. They explain in the beginning that the Cube creates life, but some life forms choose to be evil, while some choose to be good. So why did every new transformer created in the movie (Cell phone, X-box, Mountain Dew machine) instantly start attacking everyone? Were they upset about being shameless marketing tie-ins? If they were, tell it to the poor Autobots, who were all stuck being GM products (sorry Andy).



6. It didn't seem like they knew who they were making this movie for- there was death and profanity, yet it was full of immature fart and masturbation jokes and juvenille dialog. This came to a head during the excruciatingly bad scene in which the kids are looking for the glasses while the Autobots hide outside. Why couldn't they have just stayed transformed out on the street? It already felt like the Transformers were only in token scenes in the movie, so how come in one of them I have to listen to the mom saying "We could call it 'Sam's happy time'" and Ironhide asking "Can I eliminate the parents?" while Prime responds "No Ironhide, we do not harm humans, remember?" It was hard to make it through that sequence without clawing out my eyeballs. And speaking of which...



7. At one point Bunblebee flips up a cap on his crotch, and pees lubricant on one of the governments agents. This was that point where the movie became like a troubled relative: I wasn't angry at it for doing dumb things anymore- I was now simply disappointed in the choices it made. Really, Transformers? You're resorting to robot pee humor? I expected more from you. I...I can't look at you right now.



8. And then, in the final shot, we see Sam and Michaela making out on the hood of his car...WHICH IS BUMBLEBEE. They are making out on top of a sentient being WHILE ALL THE OTHER AUTOBOTS WATCH. I can't be the only one who thinks that's creepy.

Transformers is one of the many movies that makes me think I should move to Hollywood and become a "common sense consultant." Seriously- Just let me run through your script to screen out lame dialogue and robot pee humor before you spend billions of dollars making the movie. Loads of movies have correctable mistakes- like The One (Jason Statham's American accent stunk, so give up on it) or The Forgotten (Easily the most troubling good movie with a terrible ending-change it)- that I'm amazed no one in the business can figure out. I know there's more- feel free to leave other ones in the comments!

I think the easiest fix for Transformers would have been to make it a kid's movie. If that's what it was, lots of these things would have been forgiven. It's almost as though that's what they were shooting for, but then at the last minute they decided to beef it up to R, then backed it up to PG-13 to maximize profits (which I'm sure it did). Unfortunately they were left with a movie that just didn't fit together. That's the main problem- inconsistency. You want to change the entire premise of Transformers? Fine. But you have to stick with it.

I liked both Bad Boys movies, even though they weren't actually "good." Still, after The Island I thought Michael Bay might have the chops to pull this movie off (plus, let's not forget the legendary The Rock). But instead of making it to Bryan Singertown, it looks like he's headed for Brett Ratnerville.

Best. Gift Card. Ever.

There are times in my life when I think I should stop buying Transformers. And then there are times when I see things that leave me absolutely no choice. Behold: a Target gift card that TRANSFORMS INTO OPTIMUS PRIME.I saw it in the store, tried to determine if anyone I knew had a birthday coming up, came up with a goose egg, and thought "screw, it- this one's for me." I did put $5 on it to avoid suspicion from the checkout girl, but whatever- I'll just spend it next time I go shopping. Of course, that presents the issue that I'm going to have to use a transforming gift card to buy my Target-brand cereal, and then ask for it back. I just hope no one I know is around- unlike the time I ran into my boss and had a five-minute conversation while holding a stick of deodorant, two packs of underwear and two bags of jumbo marshmallows.

Word Verification

I'm about to head out the door, but here's a quick Blogger note. You know how you have to do that word verification thing to leave a comment? Check out the one I got the other day:
Seriously? I have now idea what that's supposed to be. Obviously I didn't get it right (I deleted the question mark) so the world may never know.

I'm actually heading out toward Dulles early (my flight is at 9:47 pm), because we discovered long ago that you're much better off going to Tysons Corner before rush hour, killing some time at the mall, then heading to the airport rather than fighting traffic. I think Shelley and I are going to see Ratatouille, because I didn't get to see it last week like I planned.

Speaking of which, I did get to see Transformers and Live Free or Die Hard. Transformers was worth seeing, especially if you're a fan like me. I was surprised by how childish some of the humor was, and yet there was also violence and profanity. It was kind of like they couldn't decide who the intended audience was. I was disappointed, but it was still a nice spectacle and I recommend checking it out. Die Hard, on the other hand, exceeded my expectations in every way. I thought it was going to be one of those cop-out, just to make money sequels, but it was a really fun movie. They went all out, and it's quite possibly the best one of the series. They even have a nice scene involving the JSF (sorry, I mean the "Lightning II"). It's not quite right, and they could've talked to me for like 2 minutes and fixed about 5 glaring errors, but what are you gonna do? Only a real dork like me would notice. But if they're going to spend millions of dollars on a scene, why don't they start with a simple internet search to check the facts? This is another reason I should be a consultant in Hollywood- the first being to screen out horrible dialog.

Allright, I better run. If anyone's wondering what the weather in Wolverhampton is going to be the next few days, it looks a little like this: rain, cloudy, light rain, rain. In other words, just like always. I'll update you next weekend!

Transform and Rock Out!

In the ongoing attempt to blend the old with new, Takara has introduced the Optimus Prime iPod dock. I can't say I'm surprised, what with all the Operation Pens and that Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots commercial that they show 80 times per football game. Seriously- I couldn't bring myself to watch the commercial when I added the link, because I'm so sick of it. In any case, nostalgia is in!

The fun part of this is that yesterday two of my friends e-mailed me links to this thing within 15 minutes. It could be that I'm easy to read and easy to please, or maybe my friends just really know me.

So, I have to weigh in on this guy. First of all, that is the exact same mold they used for my Optimus Prime that I got back in 1985. I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it. However, by going with the white iPod color scheme, he looks much more like Ultra Magnus- and I can't be the only dork who noticed. What were they thinking?

In conclusion, I would pay maybe $50 for this, but not $144. I going to go out on a limb and say they probably didn't focus on sound quality.

This is also as good a time as any to show the greatest t-shirt that I've seen in a while.