New Video Games/ Movies

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

I don't know, you'd think that he'd get the core "it's about robots fighting" part down a bit better and have less of the boring puny humans and extremely awkward physical comedy. Plus the confuso-cam fight scenes where it seem the cameraman is the third combatant are entirely his fault.

I went back and watched a few episodes of the original Sunbow series. By today's standards, it wasn't great, and it definitely benefitted from the rose colored glasses of nostalgia. (Sepia colored glasses?) Given the source material, I think the writers and Bay did a decent job of it.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

I went back and watched a few episodes of the original Sunbow series. By today's standards, it wasn't great, and it definitely benefitted from the rose colored glasses of nostalgia. (Sepia colored glasses?) Given the source material, I think the writers and Bay did a decent job of it.

Oh yeah, I mean the old series is goofy as hell when you're not a kid anymore, but nostalgia is about remembering things as they should have been, not as they are. Though some of those episodes were utterly hilarious.

"It will take more than your puny arm to stop Devastator!"
"Riiight...Which is why it's lucky that the hand at the end of that arm...Is holding a gun!"

City of Steel, goddamn wonderful it was.

Anyway, I don't think it's as much a case study in point-missing as, say, John Frakes' absolutely godawful Thunderbirds movie, I'd just rather have had a director who was willing to let me see what was going on in fight scenes and mechanical designs that weren't confusing jumbles of tens of thousands of tiny moving parts. And for Bay to sign a declaration that he does not understand comedy and will stop trying to perpetrate it anyway.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

And for Bay to sign a declaration that he does not understand comedy and will stop trying to perpetrate it anyway.

Or race relations.

My God, "City of Steel" was TERRRRRIBLE. It had to be some of the worst animation of the entire series, and that's saying a lot given the hit or miss quality of the animation. (If you want a really gorgeous episode, check out "Call of the Primitives.")

Who exactly was the intended audience for the Thunderbirds film? And if you were going to make one, why wouldn't you make it with marionettes?

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

My God, "City of Steel" was TERRRRRIBLE. It had to be some of the worst animation of the entire series, and that's saying a lot given the hit or miss quality of the animation.

Oh, it's bad, but there's also the one part in Atlantis, Arise! where Optimus watches Optimus run towards the Washington Monument, and of course this shot for your dose of "wasn't there supposed to be one more cel here eh probably doesn't matter."

Could be worse, could be Energon. That cartoon is truly amazing in its limitless ability to find new ways of sucking.

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

Who exactly was the intended audience for the Thunderbirds film? And if you were going to make one, why wouldn't you make it with marionettes?

My theory has always been that it was conceived of as a Spy Kids knock-off and the script hastily adapted when they got the Thunderbirds licence. It's either that or the standard belief in media that kids can't identify with a movie unless there's a kid character, even though everyone who was ever a fan of Thunderbirds as a kid wanted to be one of the pilots, not some kid tagging along and getting in the way. And I guess it's the same live-action-uber-alles idea that's made Hollywood do any number of cartoon adaptation movies that only really showed why the original was a cartoon to begin with.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

My theory has always been that it was conceived of as a Spy Kids knock-off and the script hastily adapted when they got the Thunderbirds licence. It's either that or the standard belief in media that kids can't identify with a movie unless there's a kid character, even though everyone who was ever a fan of Thunderbirds as a kid wanted to be one of the pilots, not some kid tagging along and getting in the way. And I guess it's the same live-action-uber-alles idea that's made Hollywood do any number of cartoon adaptation movies that only really showed why the original was a cartoon to begin with.

"Hey, you know what kids would love? A big budget live action movie based on a short-lived British children's series from the sixties!"

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Oh, it's bad, but there's also the one part in Atlantis, Arise! where Optimus watches Optimus run towards the Washington Monument, and of course this shot for your dose of "wasn't there supposed to be one more cel here eh probably doesn't matter."

It wasn't just the often shoddy animation. There were a lot of inconsistencies that I noticed as a kid, like why it took them like ten episodes to sort out whether Autobots could fly or not, or why everyone's robot form look exactly the same on Cybertron even though their vehicle forms were different. Watching them as an adult, you notice even more, like the one episode where the Autobots DROVE TO AFRICA in a few hours, or why the wheelchair bound Chip insisted on always going with Bumblebee, the smallest car available. (And on another tangent: Wheeljack and Ratchet could build whole Autobots from scratch, but they couldn't give Chip cybernetic legs?)

[Evil Tim]

Still, it's not nearly as embarrassing as lover-of-all-things-military Michael Bay not knowing which state The Pentagon is in in Revenge of the Fallen, or the plane graveyard in Tucson Arizona being accessible by the back door of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

[funkychinaman]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Still, it's not nearly as embarrassing as lover-of-all-things-military Michael Bay not knowing which state The Pentagon is in in Revenge of the Fallen, or the plane graveyard in Tucson Arizona being accessible by the back door of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Well, you're the UK, so I understand why you wouldn't know about that massive desert aircraft boneyard at Dulles International Airport. I mean, where do you think they filmed Die Hard 2?

Yes, Transformers 2 might've been 15% better if someone had just handed Michael Bay a globe.

And the most alarming thing about Transformers 2? Someone from the Pentagon actually signed off on that script.

[The Wierd It]

Originally Posted by funkychinaman

(And on another tangent: Wheeljack and Ratchet could build whole Autobots from scratch, but they couldn't give Chip cybernetic legs?)

Because then they wouldn't be able to beat the "It's OK to be disabled" horse corpse.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by The Wierd It

Because then they wouldn't be able to beat the "It's OK to be disabled" horse corpse.

I recall the dumbest one of those I ever saw was a He-Man episode where he meets a blind kid, is struck blind himself, and briefly needs the blind kid's help to get through a maze or something before getting his sight back and beating up Skeletor or whoever. Moral of the story: it's ok to be blind, unless you're the protagonist.

That or that wretched Extreme Ghostbusters series which seemed to take the "disabled people can do anything able-bodied people can" to the point one of the team was a guy in a wheelchair. That always struck me as kind of cruel, really: telling a kid with no legs he can do anything he wants doesn't really change that there's a shedload of things he'll never be able to do.