#and y'all can make fun of me for exclusively caring about characters with no dialogue

[lorianbladeoflothric]

I wonder how much Radagon actually loved his kids and if the part of him that loved them was bigger than the part of him that was dedicated to Marika and how badly those parts clashed against each other when Ranni was declared an Empyrean.

Because whether or not he was there the last time there was a new empyrean he knows how that ended, and he probably knows how hard it was to defeat her when she'd already raised an army and fully come into her power.

[plague-stricken-marionette]

So! I feel like rambling and gushing about everything I love about this comic which means... y'all know what time it is

Below the cut is my passionate ramble which is stupid long (and took three hours to write according to my drafts if you were curious). You have been warned before you open that

I got to The Dummy's Dummy pretty late all things considered because I came in after Season 2 wrapped up (at the time of writing this, there is no Season 3 yet so I will be exclusively gushing about everything that was shown up to the Season 2 finale). I found out about it because a close friend convinced me to start checking out some Webtoons they love and started going through their rec list

I've really enjoyed all the ones I've read so far and have a lot of thoughts about them too (maybe I'll dump those in a different blog one day), but THIS ONE- This one has just completely gripped my brain with the force of a vise grip. I'm in love with everything about it to the artwork, the plot, the character design, and of course the characters themselves

I love Paris and Yumi and Lily. I really do. I love all three as individual characters but I love them even more when they're all together because I love their dynamics together and how it progresses over the course of the comic

Lily is absolutely hilarious at times and such a freaking mood too which makes her super fun to watch- And she's so good with Yumi too from keeping an eye on her to backing her (and Paris!) up when crap hits the fan

Yumi is adorable in a lot of scenes, but she also gets up to a lot of cool stuff too. And scary stuff! Poor kid is eleven years old (at least according to the old canvas/tapas version of the comic) and basically has the weight of the world sitting on her shoulders right now because she also happens to be a psychic who gets premonitions of people that might get hurt soon or die

And then there's Paris. The damn puppet that's consuming most of my free braincells

I'd be lying if I said Paris isn't my blatant favorite character, but make no mistake that I still love the rest of the cast too. Paris is so... His design aside, he's just fun to listen to because of the way his dialogue is written and he's- an extremely complex character that has a lot of layers to him. He's not a good person (or at least not a perfect paragon of good/a selfless hero), he even says so himself during the comic, but he's not evil either. He's so perfectly morally gray imo and he's- well- he's learning

A lot of his behavior is hardcoded into him by virtue of how Ivan's curse works and how it animated Paris (though even then, even more of his personality was shown to be influenced by his past experiences), but you can see that he can do kind things and he grows even kinder and perhaps a tiny bit softer over the course of the comic as he comes to care about Yumi and Lily and they start to break down a lot of the walls he's built up around himself

And I think that's beautiful. I love a character that isn't the perfect embodiment of good or evil. It ironically makes him very human and I think the storytelling is great because of that on an individual character arc level

That's not to say the overarching plot isn't good though because, make no mistake, it's incredible too. Yumi went seemingly her entire life seeing things that terrify her but when she meets Paris, she realizes that she can use those powers of hers to save people

And that's a lot of what the plot is. A lot of the early plot is them dealing with the things she has premonitions about until the big bad is introduced. BUT EVEN THEN- There's just so- So much going on and it's scary and it's terrifying and that's why Paris and Lily's dynamics with Yumi is fun

Paris and Yumi sort of settle into this big brother-big sister relationship and it's just... God it's so sweet. It's everything to me. Yumi trusts Paris completely and she worries so much about his wellbeing and wants him to be okay. And she calls him her hero!! HER HERO!

And Paris is just... He worries about her too. He admits with his full chest that he was just using Yumi for her psychic abilities earlier on, but by the time he admits that in the comic? He follows it up with the fact that he now cares about her so much to the point where he'd rather be destroyed than see her hurt or let her get hurt. He cares SO MUCH even if he's struggling with and/or refusing to admit that

And that's so... So... It plays into the last time he really cared about a human (his creator) and everything that came out of it. ESPECIALLY given how things ended with Ivan by the time Paris was put into that trunk for 80 years and left to be found and freed all that time later by Yumi

That's all just gushing about Yumi and Paris too. That's just touching on the two characters we see the most of. There's so many more unique and colorful characters in this comic I haven't even touched on yet- Like Lily!

I mentioned Lily already but I need to deep dive on her for a minute too because she deserves it as much as Paris and Yumi do. Lily is Yumi's babysitter which is how she winds up as involved with the other two as she is (besides the fact that they had to rescue her from a scary situation too)

And because she's her babysitter... That means we get a lot of big sister Lily vibes in there too because she's absolutely ready to kick ass on Yumi's behalf and protect her from creepy things. She routinely voices the fact that she's creeped out and scared by all of this weird creepy stuff and ghosts and possessed toys and all of that but she keeps putting herself out there anyway because she won't let Yumi go it alone

That extends to Paris too! Lily and Paris definitely have a rivalry in the beginning and Lily absolutely does not trust Paris at first when it comes to things with Yumi. But she comes to care about the guy too because she rushes straight into danger on Yumi's behalf to save Paris' life later on

And that's not even counting the way she immediately jumps to Paris' defense when everyone is talking after an encounter with the big bad and Paris is telling his backstory. Without even hesitating, she jumps right in to his defense to tell him that he's not broken for having the choice to act how he wants to act. That he's not broken for being a person with thoughts and feelings

I just- I can't with these three. They all work so well together and their friendship is something to behold. I need so much fanart and fanfic of these guys together and doing stuff as a team

AND THAT'S JUST THE THREE MAIN CHARACTERS- All of that rambling and gushing is literally just for the main characters. Even the freaking side characters have a lot going on with them or have a lot of depth to their characters

Let's take Darla and Dorothy there as an example. The Darling Dolls. Dorothy in particular has a lot of interaction with Paris and proposed a major character defining moment/question to Paris in the past, but we see some of Darla too and what we do see of her is just...

They both got mixed up with the big bad, right? Our introduction to them is that they're mixed up with the big bad. Dorothy is helping the big bad because he threatened Darla. Darla, her sister, who outright told Dorothy to run and bought her time because she didn't want Dorothy to get hurt too

So there's some big character stuff right there. And while we're on the topic of the big bad...

Even he's got a lot of depth behind him and his motives if you start to read between the lines and think about some things based on other plot clues we get. He's horrifying and he very much does pose a threat to our main characters as well as everybody else around him, but...

He's not pure evil either. First of all, he's dealing with an absolutely terrifying situation of his own (that I'm not sure if he even fully understands what's happening to him) which does drive the villainy he's getting up to, but that's the thing. He's being driven to do what he does because he is- Uh- He's not doing great actually!

And second of all- The big bad was made by the same guy that made Paris and the rest so in a way... The big bad is as much of a victim as some of the others in the sense of Ivan's curse took him and twisted his mind and made him turn out the way he did

Because the kicker is that the big bad guy thinks or at least thought he was doing good and bringing justice to people. He says he was designed and specially created to be a hero, so anything standing against him has to be evil, right?

That makes for... a really complicated villain of the story if you sit there and put all of these things together (and interpret them the way I am, at least). Just like how Paris isn't the picture perfect of good, this guy isn't the picture perfect of "evil villain without a cause" either

Personally, I don't think Ivan helped either. It's clear that he wanted to stop his wayward creations from hurting people (read: other humans) which is why he created Paris. But... I think in his doing that... He managed to hurt people like Paris and our big bad by failing to see them as the complicated and complex people they are too

And that gets into even more morally gray stuff because Ivan wants these toys rounded up before they can kill humans... but his insistence and way of going about it kind of bulldozed the people he created and was using to get the job done. You can absolutely draw connections between present Paris' behavior and cageyness to his experiences with Ivan in the past once the backstory reveal comes up

It's just an absolute mess. The whole backstory with Ivan and Paris and our big bad is just... It's just a mess and I don't mean that in a bad storytelling kind of way. I mean that in a good storytelling kind of way because it's so freaking emotionally complicated and hard to pin the blame on any one person.

Do people deserve blame and should they take blame for how some things turned out or what some of their actions were? Oh absolutely. But it's more complex than just "this guy was bad and only ever bad"

That whole stretch of backstory episodes is just... exhausting to read in a good way. At least if you're the type that really sinks into a story and empathizes with the characters like I do. It is draining and it hurts and it is beautiful in its tragedy

And that's all just what we see in the first and second season. I don't know what's going to happen next in the comic but that's everything I've seen thus far

I may think of more thoughts to add to this later or make a second post to ramble in, but I think I got it all out for now. This comic is just... It's gripped me in a very strong way and I want to talk endlessly about it and make a lot of fan content for it

Anyway ahem yes this is basically my long winded way of saying you should go read The Dummy's Dummy if you haven't already. It's 100% free to read and costs nothing but your time to read it

[hershelchocolateart]

Hey y'all! Sorry for the bit of silence over here. Just got through the busiest part of the busiest school term I've ever gone through in my life. But I'm here, drew a bunch during break, and now have Monday art posts queued up until March! Funny how that works when I have a few months of art saved up haha

I'll try to be posting on here more regularly, mostly at the scheduled Monday time, but as always I'm open to asks, prompts, and questions at any time! Especially about Whisper Court, my graphic novel currently in production! (Some character profiles here contain spoilers so if you'd like to avoid those please be careful!)

I'm also trying to get more support through my Patreon, as I'll be graduating soon and that's my main source of income at the moment. $1 gets you all the art I made that month at once, without waiting for the queue to get around to it in March! $5 gets you the chance to earn a Patreon Exclusive adoptable design (currently working out the details now, if you have any ideas on how to fairly run this please send them!), $10 gets you discounts on all adopts and commissions, and $15 gets you ALL the Whisper Court in-progress pages! Every page excluding dialogue at every step, including the 5 I'm focusing on for my thesis proposal that just reached full lineart! (This post will be going up tomorrow!)

I really appreciate all the support everyone has given me, and sorry again for the occasional silences! I'm really making an effort to connect with you all and share the stories I've worked so hard to create! If you think one of your friends would enjoy a fun graphic novel about ghosts trying to find a sense of identity that includes Blue Raspberry the ghost cat, fun evil ghost lesbians, Funny Science Man, conversations and themes about how being othered from the group that is responsible for your wellbeing can negatively affect you and how you view these people, and Kisaragi the conductor of a Ghost Train, then feel free to show them my work! More Whisper Court content will be coming up very soon, and I can't wait for you all to see more of this world I'm creating!

Thank you for reading this far and have a lovely day <3

[acourtesanofedgewater]

Open Heart 3 Ch. 8 SPOILERS for Bryce/Raf/Jackie Stans

I know I'm one day late. Blame PB for releasing the scripts so late. Why they even did that? Idk. It's not like this chapter is good.

Oh, here we are again. Honestly guys? I'm pissed off lmao. And you will be too when you're done reading this. But enough talking, let's begin. Beware, spoilers below the cut

Let's start with Bryce

•He DOES make an appearance this chapter AND has a diamond scene. Should we celebrate? Nah. It seems the only options with characters who-are-not-Ethan in this book are not having appearances at all or having mediocre little plots when they do appear. He makes his cameo at the begging. He's in the lobby with a friend of his, who's sick and wants Bryce to operate on him but Bryce seems reluctant to do so because it's a dangerous surgery. Does it have anything to do with his failed surgery? We won't find out, because instead of his premium scene being about... idk, having a coffee while he tells us about the consequences of his mistakes (not only at work, but also mentally), it is about... visiting a Escape Room with him and his friend? Um, ok. Should I mention that Bryce's pal call MC his 'friend' twice? Yep, PB still refuses to acknowledge MC's relationship with Bryce, even though they've been together for two years and shared a tender moment when MC was about to die. When I was reading the scene, I was like "uuugh, let me guess? we get this corny funny scene and near the ending Bryce and MC find a hideout to make out". Turns out I was wrong lmao. I expect nothing and I'm still let down. They just share a little kiss I front of Bryce's friend when they are leaving the Escape Room. It is mentioned they all are gonna have dinner after this, but we don't get to see that because that would mean PB has to actually write interesting dialogue and develop Bryce and that's sacrilege.

Ok, Jackie's turn.

•She doesn't show up in this chapter. She's not even mentioned. Silly us, Jackie already had her crumbs of development last chapter, there's no need to give her more screentime this chapter lmao. Not when that screentime can be used developing Ethan.

And lastly, Raf.

•He turns up too, but it's a situation similar to Bryce's. He's rehabilitating a little boy who's sad because he will miss his birthday, so enter the bonus scene where MC has the idea of recruiting Sienna too and organizing a surprise party for the kid in the Pediatric Ward. It's actually a cute scene, and spending time with Sienna is always good, but that's the problem. The scene is about the little boy, zero Raf development or plot, and I even feel he wasn't even needed here. We know Sienna visits the PW every once in a while so they could've made her be the one who came to us with the little kid situation and everything would have turned out to be the same, except for some dialogues. Then, near the end, Raf and MC share some flirting words and a little kiss, but everything is in front of the kids, so it's over pretty quick.

And... that's it for our LIs. It sucks, but it's not the worst thing abour this chapter. I'm gonna leave some spoilers of the general plot here below so you can be as angry as me.

•MC confronts Ethan about the trial thing. You can choose to go soft on him or be outraged and point out he's a piece of shit. I recommend the second option. Anyway, if you end up agreeing with him about his decision, he says something like: "I knew you'd understand me, you care about these patients as much as I do" which, for me, given the fact he's older than MC and their boss (and being a victim of grooming myself by someone older than me and that was kinda in a position of power above me too) IS FUCKING GROOMING. If you had any doubts the lead of this book is a creep.

•Yadda yadda, we get Bryce and Raf's mediocre scenes, and back to the main plot, MC and Tobias have to diagnose a patient together. The patient is the most annoying character on this series, only below Ethan. Seriously, she's worse than that Nigel guy from Book 1 who called Bryce "Ken doll". Tobias is kinda shady with her (but... light and funny shady. He's never mean or anything) and we're supposed to be like "ugh, Tobias is the worst" but the patient is annoying so yeah, I loved Tobias' actitude.

•There were lots of Tobias moments this chapter, and he's honestly really nice. I hope we can keep him in Edenbrook. We could even kick Ethan's ass out in order to raise his salary❤.

•Ok, and now the cherry on top of a shitty chapter. Do y'all remember how we were afraid PB was gonna make Harper MC's rival? It seemed like they had dropped that plot and we were safe... but it turns out they haven't. Harper finds out our patient has cheated their way into the trial and while Tobias and MC are bonding in the DT' office, she comes in furious as hell, and starts blaming the MC and insulting them, assuming they're the one who did the trial thing. Harper' screams are so loud that Ramsey, who was in the hall, listens and comes in running. Harper explains what "MC" did and we have three options: blame Ethan, insist we're not guilty but not blame Ethan, and ignore the accusations. Either way, Harper keeps on with the accusations (she's even more enraged if you blame Ethan)

•Ethan lets her mop the floor with MC a bit more before stopping her and admitting he's the one who cheated. Harper is shocked and Ramsey HAS THE AUDACITY of angrily leave the office. He really thinks he's the one who should be outraged in this situation. He's the most childish character PB has ever created. (Props to Tobias for being the only decent character in this situation, asking Harper to calm down because she couldn't know for sure it MC was to blame in this situation).

•MC runs after him. And sure, irl I'd run after him too, but to confront him and complain about all the mess his shitty behavior has caused (or, how we say in my country, putearlo. I wanna clarify to my fellow Latinoamericans, "putear" has a different meaning in Ecuador than in the rest of Latam lmao for us is similar to "mandar a la verga" JAJSJAJAJSK). But no, MC fucking goes to see if he's alright. And cue to the most ridiculous scene in this series:

•Okay, I know we all made fun of the BDSM outfits when the assets came out, and yeah, they're cringey af, but I was curious to see how the story would develop towards these outfits. Everyone guessed they meant kinky time with out LIs. Wrong again. Ethan is so mad about... well, idk why he's so mad, he's just facing the consequences of his actions, but anyway, he needs to release that frustration and that's when we're offered the kinky outfit. Yep, the kinky scene is Ethan-exclusive. It was so fucking easy to include the other LIs in this. Bryce could be frustrated because he's not the same after his failed surgery, Jackie because she has to lead the interns and Jade keeps screwing up, and Raf... well, he should be mad because PB tried to kill him and then decided not to but kept sidelining him and can't even give him a decent storyline could be frustrated because it's exhausting to try to help the patients when they make little progress and become disappointed. PB just was lazy and didn't care.

•Don't ask me about the BDSM scene, nothing in this world will make me read a sex scene with Ethan. I kept scrolling until I was sure that abomination was over. Although I caught the word "safe word" somewhere there so... yeah.

•The next day after that heated discussion, MC enters the DT' office. Harper doesn't even offer an apology for treating MC like shit, she acts like nothing happened. MC notices there's this peace in the air and there's no whining, so they ask where's Ethan

•Turns out, Harper reported MC to their superiors when she thought it was them who messed up the trial and now Ethan had to turn himself in and is meeting with the board. Then, she blatantly admits that if she knew Ethan was the one who did it, she would have talked to him first. She says she regrets telling the board, although, as she doesn't offer MC an apology, it seems she only regrets getting Ethan in trouble, not her awful attitude. Tobias is named the new leader of the DT, and that's the only highlight in this mess of a chapter.

I have more thoughts about everything, but I'll post them tomorrow, when they can reach more people. And I'll catch up with this shitt book just so I can join the mob law tomorrow lmao. See you then.

[revchainsaw]

Bumblebee (2018)

Good Evening worshippers, and welcome! Today the Cult of Cult goes a little more mainstream than usual. It's been a while since i've tackled a big Hollywood superhero film. But I do believe that these sorts of films will be remembered fondly my small groups of people in the future, especially the smaller films that are being overshadowed by the big bad MCU, films like 2018s Bumblebee.

The Messsage

Bumblebee was originally released as a prequel to the Transformers franchise that had started all the way back in 2007. However, reboots had really hit the market as a way to breath new life into struggling franchises, and the Transformers series had already gone to just about every absurd extreme you could imagine. No changes were made to the movie as it was released, but with it's more childish and heartfelt tone, and a new aesthetic that was softer, smoother, and all around just generally more pleasing to the eye, I think it was a wise choice to rebrand Bumblebee as a new beginning.

Our story is of two friends from two very different worlds and how they came together. Our first character is Bumblebee, then known as B- number sign/it doesn't really matter. Not yet Bumblebee is a soldier set with securing a safe location for the Autobots to regroup and make their home as they suffer a pretty serious defeat on cybertron at the hands of the tyrannical Decepticons. Optimus Prime, here again voiced by Peter Cullen and looking so much more like himself, assigns this task to Bumblebee promising him that they will meet him there when the time comes. Then Optimus fucks off for the rest of the run time making way for our little hero.

Bumblebee lands on Earth and is immediately set upon by John Cena and his military goon squad. It probably would have been wise for Bumblebee to avoid John Cena but in his defense, he couldn't see him. Hardy har har. In his attempt to flee his voice box is damaged, he seeks sanctuary by taking the form of a run down little VW bug, and suffers from amnesia.

Then we have Charlie. Charlie is not like other girls. She likes cars, all the retro music, which wasn't retro when the movie takes place, so I'm supposed to just think she's a rocker but it kinda seems like she'll listen to just about anything. I think in 2018 liking Motorhead and The Smiths (who are used ad nauseum in this movie) is perfectly common, but I feel like in the 80s that was a much different and much older attitude to take.

Anyway Charlie's poor family lives in a super fucking nice house and are poor because the dialogue keeps insisting they are so it must be true despite all the shit they have that actually poor people would sell blood and teeth to attain, but hell, this is Hollywood and Hollywood poor is like regular people upper middle class. Charlies family is so poor that instead of giving her a one time graduation/birthday present to buy a part for a car she already has, they just give her a moped, She also spends all her time at a pull apart where the manager (who might be her uncle that wasn't super clear) is willing to just give her a Volkswagen so I don't understand why she didn't already have the project car up and running. Whatever, it's a plot contrivance. All you need to know is that Charlie is tenacious and hard around the edges cuz her dad is dead and she's not yet mature enough to process that in a healthy way. Maybe her character arch will teach her to let others in, we'll have to find out.

There's also a wacky nerd named Memo, and some bad guys, and John Cena. They are all also pretty archetypal and contrived and don't really do anything of note that isn't just filling a beat that this kind of movie needs to walk. Charlie starts Bumblebee up, discovers he's a robot and the two begin to bond. Charlie learns to make a friend, and bumblebee is learning about himself. They get into hijinks and get revenge on a bully girl who makes Regina George look like a saint, she pretty much only picks on Charlie exclusively for having a dead dad.

The moment Bumblebee is woken back up, some technology goof em up that both he and Charlie are unaware of brings two Decepticon baddies into the picture. I don't remember their names, but since I love The Venture Brothers let's say they can be "Jet Boy and Jet Girl". Jet Boy and Jet Girl are sometimes cars, sometimes various flying military vehicles, and they make friends with the deep state and plan to get all the adrenochrome from all the orphans, or just to go find Bumblebee and beat his ass good cuz their bad guys. Let me tell y'all though, Jet Boy and Jet Girl are so bad that they don't even care that the government is listening when they reveal that they are planning on bringing a Decepticon Invasion and after they rough up Bumblebee real good they are going to destroy all life on this planet. So they start by killing a military scientist.

John Cena is after Bumblebee and he's homies with Jet Boy and Jet Girl until the military scientist butt dials him and he hears the evil plan. John Cena goes from heel to face and helps Bumblebee and Charlie save the day. It's a giant CG clusterfuck climax a la any superhero film in the last 10 years and I basically stopped watching. BumbleBee pulls a Hellraiser on Jet Boy, and then he hits Jet Girl with a freaking boat. Charlie uses her diving skills do dive down and save him, but he's a Giant Robot and he was okay and it was literally pointless for her to to except as a way to show that her character has completed her arch by doing the thing that was representative of her connection with her lost father.

Bumblebee turns into the Camaro from the first movie, meets up with Optimus prime, and the stage is set for this prequel to squeeze more prequels out. So it wasn't very creative, but was it bad? Let's find out.

Please Stand to receive the Benediction.

Best Aspect: Transform the Franchise

Bumblebee was directed by Travis Knight of Laika fame and it shows. This movie marks a stylistic change in the transformers franchise, as in it doesn't look like utter dog shit, but it also represents in many ways a tonal shift. It does hold on to a lot of gross sleaze that has unfortunately been forcibly jammed into the DNA of the franchise but it also attempts to be a more heartfelt entry. The characters of Bumblebee might all be sort of a waste of time, but at least they are doing something with emotions, even if the emotions of the characters are only explored as deeply as a children's cartoon I'm glad they are there. In the previous installments the only thing the characters did between running from action piece to seizure inducing action piece was drool over underage girls like a bunch of chimpanzees at the facility where they test experimental E.D. meds. It was nice to see that at least somewhat tampered. This transformers movie feels more like it's for kids and young teenagers, and strangely that more friendly tone makes for a much less juvenile product.

Worst Aspect: Remember I Love the 80s from the 2000s

I hope you really like Stranger Things. I do, but because Stranger Things was so successful it' s going to be everywhere. Not true Stranger Things just 80s nostalgia porn. This 80s nostalgia is going to be forced on you whether you like it or not, and it's not going to be fun. It's gonna be in your shows, in your music, in your Sunday like Bacon in 2010. It's that or Marvel Franchise Brand Whedonisms. Bumblebee is that brave movie that says, "Why not both?" It would seem fitting that a property as quintessentially 80s as Transformers should feel completely comfortable doing a period piece set in the 80's but it's so fucking half hearted it's depressing. It wasn't done to appreciate the roots of the IP, it was done to cash in on a trend and it feels it. All they did was throw up a date and insufferably force an 80s soundtrack down your throat as if that was enough to convince you that this movie needed to be set during this time. Other than that you could have told me this film was set in 2007 and I couldn't tell you any different.

Best Character: Charlie's an Angel

I liked Charlie. Sure her Arc is predictable, her taste is dumb, and she isn't exactly a master of her own destiny to any degree. But at least she is a woman in a transformers movie who's got something going on. Sure she's defined entirely by grief, but that sure is better than pretending that being able to work on cars is a feminist character trait instead of a weird fetish thing. They certainly do that thing with Charlie, but at least it's not the only thing they throw at the wall. Bumblebee is by no means out of the woods in this department, but it garners a lot of goodwill for trying. Like a racist uncle who just started his journey out of ignorance, but hasn't yet realized he has to stop asking mortifying questions to the barista at Starbucks. Okay, maybe that's an extreme metaphor. I'm saying that perhaps Charlie is not a great character but she's a great character for a Transfomers movie.

Worst Character: It's JOOOOHHHNNNN CEEEENA!!!!

Why is John Cena in this movie? I don't hate the guy, but his character seems pointless. You could remove him from the movie completely and replace him with any one of the random military goons at any point and it changes nothing. What was with that dumb salute at the end? It seems like they put him in this movie in post and it was just to pump up cast list. I wish he was given anything to work with. I can't remember his characters name, and it's not like John Cena did a bad job, I was just annoyed every time they kept giving him hero shots. I felt like I was watching a trailer for a different movie.

Best Actor: Optimal Primo!

Every time Peter Cullen speaks I want to listen. There's a reason they haven't had Chris Pratt or somebody with a bigger name come in and take over the role at this point. He's why the audience keep coming back. Peter Cullen IS Optimus Prime, and there's no changing that. He also wins twice. He's the best actor in the movie AND he's barely in the movie. Good call Peter.

Worst Actor: Mean Girls 2, Meaner and Girlier

I don't want to be cruel so I'm not going to go into to much detail, but there's an actress in this film who's performance is so mustache twirlingly evil and stupid that it ruined my suspension of disbelief when i knew going in that i was about to endure a 2 hour toy commercial about robots that turn into cars. Beldar Conehead was a more convincing human being than Tina.

Best Effect: Goo Be Gone

I really appreciated when the bad guys shot the government nerd into a blast of snot. That was pretty fun for me. Best part of the movie hands down.

Worst Effect: Live Action?

Bumblebee is a cartoon. It's a great looking cartoon but it doesn't sell itself that way. If we were doing a Roger Rabbit thing I'd have no gripes. However, I think CG is just getting worse. I'm criticizing this and it's still lightyears better than the previous entry's on the franchise. No transformation or fight sequence in Bumble Bee had me straining to make sense of what I was looking at. I think it was a great idea to start using some basic shapes and outlines to these characters, and return somewhat to their 80s designs. But at certain points, especially when there were no humans in the shot, i was pretty convinced I was watching Clone Wars. There may not be anyway around this, as the Transformers concept might not be able to be pulled off in any more effective manner. It's a minor gripe, but I just didn't think it looked like anything other than a very expensive cartoon, and in this franchise that's a compliment, because it least it looked like SOMETHING!

Best Scene: Space Opera

I am not a Transformers fan. I missed the boat on the cartoon as a kid. I would sometimes catch it at friends houses but I was more into Batman, Star Wars, and Ninja Turtles. By the time I came onto the scene the world had moved on to Beast Wars. I did one day arbitrarily decide that my favorite Transformer was Sound Wave. He looked great in this. I am a big fan of the return to form with a lot of the character designs in this. They really did keep the things that worked from the other adaptations, and they are steadily removing the things that didn't. For this reason, the scenes on Cybertron, particularly the battle with Soundwave (i prefer for personal reasons) looked great and were exciting to watch. I remember thinking Cybertron used to look like a Marilyn Manson shot a music video from inside to dumpster. This is so much better.

Worst Scene: Blocking the Box

There's a scene in Bumblebee where Charlie's family decides the best way to save their daughter was to cause a pile up of vehicles in an intersection, and it's pure contrived writing that saved any character in that sequence from being killed in a horrific traffic accident. It was stupid, played for laughs, and it wasn't exciting as much as it was anxiety inducing. I also thought that there was no reason the covert military group covering up extraterrestrial life wouldn't just disappear this family of fucking morons in their little piece of shit car. The logic of the scene was just so childish like, "No they won't hit me, I'm a good person."

Summary

Bumblebee may be remembered fondly in a decade. I think especially if the Transformers franchise were to end here. It didn't get the publicity of the other films, and that really is a shame. For my money, this was the best Transformers movie so far. I was very tempted to give Bumblebee a C, it does just enough to right what was wrong from the other movies to make me appreciate all that work. This movie has heart, and if you are at all into Transformers then l think you should see it. It's still pretty stupid, and pretty basic. It's not offering anything new to the genre, and it feels like a commercial for more movies. I really wish we could just get movies that want to tell a story. I thought it over and decided that it wasn't fair not to grade Bumblebee on it's own merits. Bumblebee is substantially better than the films that preceded it, but that's not saying a lot, when the films that preceded it are joyless exercises in self abuse.

Overall Grade: D