Transformers vs. Flash: Nostalgia Wars! (a Comparison Review of Two Venerable IPs)

 First, The Flash was a genuinely good movie, as superhero movies go, and I was overall quite impressed with it. I also like to note that I am an old DC fanboy and I have a lot of history with the IP in general, so it would have been hard for this movie to fail with me. That said....Ezra Miller was great in the movie, and it was fun to see Michael Keaton back as a retro Batman again. The core conceits of the movie captured the entire Flashpoint concept of the DC multiverse quite well. It had some rough spots, but overall this was a more generally enjoyable movie of its sort than the last few I have seen (with the caveat that Guardians of the Galaxy is unique in its role as a film that transcends its own medium). 

The week before we also caught Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. I spent a lot of that film's runtime just mildly bored as I watched the director try to merge the Michael Bay style of excess with the more human level of development found in the Bumblebee movie. It sort of fails at both styles as a result, but that's okay, because about 20% of the way in to the movie I started cataloging all of the little "childhood" logic moments that basically made this a kid's movie (or at least a teen film). It was operating on the fuel of a story told for kids, with the logic that makes sense to kids (and audiences with mild expectations). 

In the end, the new Transformers movie was a bust for me personally but it entertained my son (a bit; he's not really in to the Transformers). My wife liked it, but she is a bit younger than me. My entire Transformers experience is encapsulated in a time period from about 1983-1988 and is especially focused on those old "original generation" cartoons and the Marvel comics of the time. Anything after that point is more or less lost on me. She, however, grew up loving Beast Wars Transformers or whatever it is called, so she was looking forward to seeing more of those characters (even though all but two got precious few lines in the film).

Anyway.....I realized that the Transformers film was destined to fail for me because my nostalgia for the giant transforming robots is limited to a roughly 5-6 year window in my youth, after which I effectively left it behind. Indeed, my general lack of excitement for the modern movies is probably due to this; no modern conception of the film is going to come close to embracing my recollection of those early days, which is clouded by my own Transformers headcannon of collecting all those figures. The movies today need to reflect decades of the franchise, and the totality of a vast audience with many, many different takes. The only certainty is that they have successfully captured the inherent lack of overall logic or consistency in the many, many variations on The Transformers. It was never, ever the most consistent or plot-hole-free series (though the old comics certainly made an effort).

Meanwhile, The Flash is reflective of my obsession with both comics in general and DC in particular, especially Batman, which started when I was a tiny kid dressing up as the caped crusader, all the way to my thorough embrace of collecting DC following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and my largely (mostly) successful effort to collect various DC comics for going on four decades now. My familiarity with the vast range of stories, characters and variations used to construct, like Frankenstein's monster, a movie out of the DC comic universe makes more sense to me. Seeing a return to an aged version of Batman from the 1989 film, now a reflection of a broken timestream by Barry Allen, is a genuine treat, as that movie informed much of my entertainment experience in 1989, along with the increasingly amazing Batman comics of the day, such as Dark Knight Returns and Arkham Asylum, both of which I used to write multiple papers on the transition of comics to film back then in one of my college classes, as well as an argument for how film noir had informed comics as a medium and Frank Miller in particular. So yeah, The Flash is not only better able to capitalize on the long history of its own universe, but I am also better suited to embracing it due to my own immersion.

It also helps that The Flash was just a better overall story with more vivacious actors who were given better lines (and Ezra Miller effectively steals every scene except when Keaton is present). If Transformers had better writing, I might be thinking more about how I enjoyed it.....but alas, it did not. 

Anyway, take this as a positive review of The Flash and if you are not a DC hater or burned out on superhero films I give it an A+! But for Transformers....go see if it you have kids who want to see it, too, but I can't say its really all that worth watching, except as pure family entertainment. 

Short Film Reviews: Things I Learned from Watching The Mummy and Transformers: The Last Knight

...that just because I have the cash and opportunity to take the family to see these movies, doesn't mean I should. Both of these should rightfully have been $1 specials. Sigh!!!

SPOILER ALERT (not that these movies are good enough for anyone to care)

The Mummy has so many things wrong with it, but equally fascinating is how many things it could have gotten right. The best part of the movie was thinking about all the interesting ways that the story could have gone, if only they had better screen writers and weren't married to Tom Cruise and the Dark Universe concept.

This movie's problems can boil down to so many specific and obvious issues: Tom Cruise plays an unlikeable jerk. The Mummy as a woman is cool but efforts at her back story are so painfully simplistic. Iraq instead of, you know, Egypt for the location of the Mummy. Convenient plot luck to insure things happen. A total lack of understanding of what the audience wants from this film (it caters neither to the original black-and-white film nor to the Branden Frasier fans). Too much time spent on Prodigium and Dr. Jekyll, who was admittedly a high point in the film when Mr. Hyde comes out (even though it raises lots of questions about what Prodigium or whatever the organization's name is considers a viable "leader" for their obscure cause against/for/whatever evil and monster hunting).

Compared to the Transformers, The Mummy was at least not headache inducing, and you could follow the plot, as thin as it was. In the course of watching this movie though you will see what happens when a film series tries too hard to try and emulate (without understanding) the Marvel Movie effect. D+

What my son thought of it: He loved this movie, he liked Nick (Cruise's character), and he loved the concept at the end in which Nick gains the power of Set. He spent a lot of time after the movie explaining to me the kinds of monsters he can turn in to (Slender Man and Killer Croc are the top two right now). He was riveted to his seat the whole movie. Bathroom breaks = 0. The film was short enough for a kid, and Cruise's annoying juvenile behavior was more appealing to a kid. I'll check back with my son when he turns 14 in a few years.

Transformers: The Last Knight was actually the best King Arthur movie of the year (heh) but was once again a literal grand clusterfuck of incoherence, spectacle and madness that actually makes all prior four films look sensible by comparison. Slices of a good film about the actual Transformers are jammed in between long sequences involving insanely stupid or bizarre and often useless plot bits, annoying human characters necessary to get the full sympathy of all family members in the audience, and frequent guest stars by series favorites from prior movies for no particular reason that I could discern other than "because Michael Bay can."

It annoys me so much when there are this moments when the film appears to actually be about the Transformers in all their incoherent sci-fi-fantasy-woo-woo glory and then....shaky cam jets explode and black ops dudes start running around. Oh god it's painful.

My favorite moment, though, was when Megatron decides to blow up Anthony Hopkins, knocking him into a hole where he lies, without any of the primary cast particularly concerned for him other than the bizarre Cogman who is (near as I can tell) there just "because Michael Bay Can." Cogman is simultaneously am amusing high point of the movie and a physical manifestation of the definiton of "needless excess." But I digress.....for no reason I can discern, the thought of Megatron targeting Hopkins specifically amused me a great deal.

I accepted long ago that the actual Transformers comics and cartoons I grew up with were fantastically, gloriously incoherent....but they had their own internal logic. I have no clue where this series is going now, but can safely say it is diving deep into their future movie plans with plenty of little bits floating about to suggest we should expect Unicron in a future film, and if they don't make a movie about Bumblebee in World War II and other eras I will be shocked (yes, that is probably going to be a thing).

My wife was very annoyed that we got some Grimlock/Dinobot love early on in the movie but they completely disappeared by the time we got to the grand finale. While she was worrying about that I was mulling over how the moon-sized Cybertron wasn't wreaking havoc with Earth's gravity by its mere presence (antigrav magic I guess?) and also finding great amusement in the fact that one of it's pieces somehow took out the pyramids, which anyone who survived watching the second movie will recall is the source of the Magic Sun Energy Sucker Device Thingy that the "Fallen" made for Reasons that make less and less sense with each subsequent movie.

Also, this movie if anything shows that the human protagonists all have enormous luck at not being killed in the presence of transformers, falling from great heights, crashing in ospreys, or functioning at 21,000 feet up in an intense firefight.

I like to imagine my 13 year old self (who was obsessed with Transformers) would have fully understood this movie and loved it. But I don't know......I was always a fan of the Transformers. I was never that exited when Buster Witwicky or the other humans showed up to provide the human element to the stories, such as they were.

Try imagining this movie with a different director, aimed at a 2 hour run time (or less!) with a focus on some sort of effort at coherent plot and storytelling. Just imagine! D-

What my son thought of it: I think if someone sliced this up into just the cool bits with robots he, too, would be happy. As it is he was practically shooting from his seat with excitement....when robots were on screen. Bathroom break = 1. This movie was too frickin' long for the kid crowd, but the film was packed. I was near an aisle seat and got to watch a literal, absolute never-ending stream of dads taking their children to the bathroom the whole film.

Remembering the Transformers

Yousef Tanha recently interviewed me for his blog and he just posted it (located here), about an ancient tether I have to the Transformers comic, a letter I wrote as a young teen back in the 80's. Back then, Transformers ranked #2 on my list of interests, right behind D&D, and when Yousef contacted me it was like a floodgate of ancient memories I had long ago forgotten came rushing back to me. Anyway, check out the interview for a side of me you don't hear about on the ROC blog!

I'm referring to these guys, of course

Botcon: A look down the rabbit hole for Camazotz

Weird! Apparently Botcon is a real thing, and there really are some hardcore, dedicated fan collectors out there. I mean, I figured this existed....but its funny to realize that there's yet another branch of geekdom (that I once, loooong ago had a connection to) which still exists. This must be what it's like when I talk to some guy at work or in a decidedly non-geek context and mention I am into RPGs. "Like, D&D? Wow, I played that back in high school. People still play that?"

That conversation happened in February, while moving. We donated a fish tank (with fish) to our neighbors. The husband came over to our almost completely vacated apartment and said, "You must have played D&D in high school."

Rather than get into the "Well I still do" component with someone I barely knew, I simply said, "Yeah, my wife and I both were into it. How did you know?"

Turns out he'd spotted a D10 next to the fish tank that had escaped our notice. "I played that game to death in High School. Absolutely loved it. Good times." and that was that.

Anyhoo.....

So when I was about twelve the Transformers arrived on the scene. I meticulously collected all Transformers, and even got a few imports from WorldCon and WesterCon (and other cons, when I attended). Hasbro/Takara had a release schedule that produced a specific set of figures annually, likely in stages (I forget now) over the year, no doubt with an emphasis on holiday sales. I was very efficient at this, spending all of my allowance money on Transformers. And RPGs. And books. I recall that by "season three" I had all of them but two. All Of Them. Thousands of dollars' worth of figures.

Those of you who might have seen my fanzines from those Middle and High School days may recall that Transformers and giant mecha seemed to crop up a lot thematically. I even published a little-known RPG called Mechanical Men that sold mostly at conventions I attended. Despite my love of the genre, I didn't advertise it much, however. It felt like one of those nasty little hobbies back in the 80's that you weren't supposed to be into, unless you were maybe seven years old. That might shock some kids today (and by kids I mean anyone under the age of 24), in an era when toys are specifically marketed at an older audience with money, or at kids who have parents pining for the nostalgic days of their youth.

So by the time I turned seventeen in 1988 I was still collecting Transformers but was also torn by other interests and a rapidly developing fascination for the opposite sex that it started to fall by the wayside. I think by the time I headed off to college they had sort of run the toy line into the ground, releasing non-transformable action figures that were cool looking but sort of defeated the whole point of the toy line.

In the end, many childhood hobbies I had went to the wayside, my fanzine died and I repurposed my existence to being a good student. My sole release for entertainment for years would boil down to only three elements: women, RPGs and movies (a majority of my college reading was study-related). I didn't even own a TV, and my aging PC was having trouble running stuff like Eye of the Beholder. I actually played no computer games in college, which ultimately was a Very Good Thing. I can't even imagine how students today pull it off (being poor may be the only saving grace, I imagine). (That's a whole different issue, too; my fascination for computer games today is very much a modern thing; my opinion of 99% of the computer/video game market prior to 1996 was very, very low).

So anyway, stumbling across this network of existing modern Transformers fans and collectors just sort of reminded me of that time when I at last shelved the whole collector-of-toy-robots things as I moved out of house and home and off to college. It was a worthy venture back in the day, as my desire to be a good student, develop a social life and meet women far outweighed my desire to collect toys. I have to say, I am glad that RPGs didn't go to the wayside. For whatever reason, when I started playing at age 10 I knew that this was one thing, one hobby that would mature and grow with me as I went along. It could carry its own prestige and not look scary to the stiffs and the mundanes, provided I was careful not to get carried away with it (or at least masquerade as someone who wasn't deeply obsessed about RPGs).

Anyway, I couldn't even imagine getting back into the giant-robot-toy-collection hobby, but its nice to see that others have kept it alive and well. It does make me wonder what life would have been like if I'd decided to keep the collection (and not sell it to a woman in Tucson who ran a used goods shop--she gave me a nice deal for the time, but I bet she made a killing on collectible reasales) and continue to pursue the hobby. Probably very expensive, and probably not the easiest thing to bring a date home to. Just sayin'. I don't care how much the movies tried to Sex it All Up.

And just between you and me, lapsed and former Transformers fans still have it good: we've got the movies (which I find perfectly enjoyable; I am under no illusions that we're dealing with sophisticated literature in the genre of giant transformable robots here) and the even better video game (Transformers: War for Cybertron, which was a real blast to play).