Optimus Prime Revealed!
September 6th 2006 15:31
As a child of the 1980s, I was naturally obsessed with Transformers. If it was made from cheap cast-iron and changed from a vehicle into a somewhat convincing humanoid form, I was all over it. Naturally, my hero was a big red truck - I worshipped Optimus Prime. There's a big-budget Transformers movie due for release next year, and they've released this picture of the big red guy:
Jesus H. Christ, talk about your robots in disguise!
For the uninitiated out there, here's a brief rundown of what the Transformers are all about. On the planet Cybertron, every living thing is a machine. There are various reasons for this that are completely different depending on what version of the story you're reading, but I'll ignore that headache for now. Everything on Cybertron is a machine, and all of these machine life-forms can transform into vehicles and animals and stuff. There's war on Cybertron, though, between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, and eventually the war spreads to other planets including Earth. Optimus Prime is the classic good guy Autobot leader - noble, courageous, confident, inspiring. I may just declare him the most inspiring truck-based life form ever.
Transformers has been through more incarnations than most franchises, but they all follow the basic pattern established above, and the most enduring version seems to be the very first. Now they're getting a highly anticipated live action movie directed by Michael Bay, and fan reaction is mixed to say the least. Anyway, to put things into context, here is a before shot of Prime:
This is far from the first redesign Optimus has had. I can think of at least eight or nine, and there are probably more. So why is this one making people so irate?
Movies seem to do this to people. If Prime is redesigned as an eyesore in a new cartoon, it gets a bit of public complaint and grumbling, then the fans shuffle back to their message boards to mumble bitterly to each other. Do it in a movie (and make no mistake, that redesign is an eyesore of the first order) and all of a sudden it's War. People want to kill Michael Bay even more than usual. I swear that if the internet weren't so full of crap and bluster being a movie director would have the highest mortality rate of any job in the world. We'd be seeing spates of Prime-related uprisings in Bolivia by now. Is it the money? Are people angry that someone out there is getting paid to deface artistic genius? "You know, Michaelangelo's David is very nice and all, but it would be much better if we painted flames on his torso, hmmm?"
The rage began when Michael Bay was announced as director, but I was fine with that. It's a movie about big robots hitting each other, which Bay seems adequately equipped for. It's continued through the announcements of a number of redesigns. There's one character that once transformed into a gun, and is now a jet. Names have been plucked from characters and slapped on robots with no connection to their original identities. Out of a possible 500-odd robot characters available the movie will contain about ten. About the only piece of fan-pleasing news that has been released is that Prime's original voice actor, Peter Cullen, is reprising his role.
I often wonder what this urge is in Hollywood to redesign and reconfigure franchises for no discernible reason. I can understand when it's done for accessibility - movie's cost a whole load of cash, and they have to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. That's the reason so few Transformers are being included in this movie, and I think it's a good choice. The other stuff leaves me bemused, though. I can't fathom the Prime redesign. Does it look cooler? Is it that I'm an old fogie, and I don't know what's cool anymore? If anyone out there has kids, I'd love to know their opinion on which Prime is the best one.
For all the anger floating about, though, I can't work myself up about this one, really. I mean, how many distinct incarnations of Transformers have their been now anyway? Seven? Eight? I can chalk this up as another one. The makers of the film never said they'd be adapting Generation 1. In fact, one guy involved stated that this would be 'like nothing you have seen before!' and on that score he's accurate. It helps that I already have a perfect Transformers movie, and I've had it since 1986. Indeed, the animated Transformers movie is quite probably my all time favourite piece of cinema, which shows the intellectual level I'm operating on here.
That's not the major reason for my apathy here, though. I've developed an immunity to all this by disassociating it from Transformers. In my head, it's a Go-Bots movie. Remember the Go-Bots? They were like cheap Transformers knock-offs, and you could buy one that kind of resembled a Transformer and use it to represent that character until you got the real one. The Go-Bots movie may very well be a masterpiece of the Giant Robots Punching genre, but all signs point ot it not being a Transformers movie. I don't care. I am at peace, and if other fans would follow my lead the internet would be a happy shiny place with lambs and rainbows, and possibly mechanical lambs that transform into rainbows. They shouldn't be threatening Michael Bay's children. They ought to know that Optimus Prime would not approve.
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, but I'll kick the arse out of whoever redesigned me!"
Jesus H. Christ, talk about your robots in disguise!
For the uninitiated out there, here's a brief rundown of what the Transformers are all about. On the planet Cybertron, every living thing is a machine. There are various reasons for this that are completely different depending on what version of the story you're reading, but I'll ignore that headache for now. Everything on Cybertron is a machine, and all of these machine life-forms can transform into vehicles and animals and stuff. There's war on Cybertron, though, between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, and eventually the war spreads to other planets including Earth. Optimus Prime is the classic good guy Autobot leader - noble, courageous, confident, inspiring. I may just declare him the most inspiring truck-based life form ever.
Transformers has been through more incarnations than most franchises, but they all follow the basic pattern established above, and the most enduring version seems to be the very first. Now they're getting a highly anticipated live action movie directed by Michael Bay, and fan reaction is mixed to say the least. Anyway, to put things into context, here is a before shot of Prime:
Transform and roll out!
This is far from the first redesign Optimus has had. I can think of at least eight or nine, and there are probably more. So why is this one making people so irate?
Movies seem to do this to people. If Prime is redesigned as an eyesore in a new cartoon, it gets a bit of public complaint and grumbling, then the fans shuffle back to their message boards to mumble bitterly to each other. Do it in a movie (and make no mistake, that redesign is an eyesore of the first order) and all of a sudden it's War. People want to kill Michael Bay even more than usual. I swear that if the internet weren't so full of crap and bluster being a movie director would have the highest mortality rate of any job in the world. We'd be seeing spates of Prime-related uprisings in Bolivia by now. Is it the money? Are people angry that someone out there is getting paid to deface artistic genius? "You know, Michaelangelo's David is very nice and all, but it would be much better if we painted flames on his torso, hmmm?"
The rage began when Michael Bay was announced as director, but I was fine with that. It's a movie about big robots hitting each other, which Bay seems adequately equipped for. It's continued through the announcements of a number of redesigns. There's one character that once transformed into a gun, and is now a jet. Names have been plucked from characters and slapped on robots with no connection to their original identities. Out of a possible 500-odd robot characters available the movie will contain about ten. About the only piece of fan-pleasing news that has been released is that Prime's original voice actor, Peter Cullen, is reprising his role.
I often wonder what this urge is in Hollywood to redesign and reconfigure franchises for no discernible reason. I can understand when it's done for accessibility - movie's cost a whole load of cash, and they have to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. That's the reason so few Transformers are being included in this movie, and I think it's a good choice. The other stuff leaves me bemused, though. I can't fathom the Prime redesign. Does it look cooler? Is it that I'm an old fogie, and I don't know what's cool anymore? If anyone out there has kids, I'd love to know their opinion on which Prime is the best one.
For all the anger floating about, though, I can't work myself up about this one, really. I mean, how many distinct incarnations of Transformers have their been now anyway? Seven? Eight? I can chalk this up as another one. The makers of the film never said they'd be adapting Generation 1. In fact, one guy involved stated that this would be 'like nothing you have seen before!' and on that score he's accurate. It helps that I already have a perfect Transformers movie, and I've had it since 1986. Indeed, the animated Transformers movie is quite probably my all time favourite piece of cinema, which shows the intellectual level I'm operating on here.
That's not the major reason for my apathy here, though. I've developed an immunity to all this by disassociating it from Transformers. In my head, it's a Go-Bots movie. Remember the Go-Bots? They were like cheap Transformers knock-offs, and you could buy one that kind of resembled a Transformer and use it to represent that character until you got the real one. The Go-Bots movie may very well be a masterpiece of the Giant Robots Punching genre, but all signs point ot it not being a Transformers movie. I don't care. I am at peace, and if other fans would follow my lead the internet would be a happy shiny place with lambs and rainbows, and possibly mechanical lambs that transform into rainbows. They shouldn't be threatening Michael Bay's children. They ought to know that Optimus Prime would not approve.
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