#there should be more machines and robots in the franchise

[kaiserouo]

If they dont show their face or eyes or any part of their skin for their default cosmetic i will color and render them

[transformersconfessions]

I don’t understand the criticism that Skybound’s Transformers run is “just shock value” or “edgy.” Are people saying that just because characters are dying and fighting? Because to me, that's not "edgy"—that's war.

This isn’t a story about peace talks or diplomacy. The war has dragged on for too long, and now that they’re stranded on Earth, desperation is pushing both sides to take extreme measures. They’re not posturing anymore—they’re surviving. Choices that might’ve once seemed unthinkable are now necessary.

Take Skywarp being torn apart by Soundwave and Starscream, his body used to revive others through Teletraan-1. Or Optimus reviving Jetfire not because he wants to, but because they need transport. Or Elita choosing not to destroy Shockwave’s Earth-draining machine.

These aren’t examples of unnecessary gore or edge—they’re consequences. Brutal, painful, and inevitable consequences of war. 

Maybe it's because I’m new to the franchise, but the deaths didn’t feel excessive or gratuitous. They gave weight to the story. They showed that no one is safe, that these characters—despite being giant robots—can be wounded, broken, or lost. Both sides are desperate. And it shows.

There’s no easy victory, no light at the end of the tunnel. All they can hope for is to survive another day. To find someone they thought they’d lost. To discover a place untouched by war. To meet someone innocent, someone who hasn’t seen what they’ve seen. Maybe they win a battle. Maybe they just make it out alive. That’s what these stories are made of—those fleeting, fragile victories.

This is a war story. It shows the cost of war. Characters die, not for shock value, but because the stakes are that high. It reminded me of war films and games my brother showed me growing up—harsh, emotional, messy, and deeply human, even when the characters are robotic.

And if Skybound’s run were really just about “being edgy,” we wouldn’t get scenes like Prime transforming to bring joy to a sick child. Or Carly comforting Ultra Magnus. Or Cliffjumper using the remains of his fallen clan to build a new bot, reigniting hope back on Cybertron.

Yes, there’s gore and darkness, but those are part of war. Amid the violence, the Autobots are still portrayed—flawed though they are—as beings who want things to be better. That’s not what you find in a typical "edgy" story, where hope is absent.

Even Spike’s arc could’ve been pure edgelord fodder. His brother is dead, his father was an inattentive alcoholic who ultimately died reviving Optimus, and Spike himself—especially early on—faces a future in a wheelchair. If anything justifies a dark, brooding character arc, it’s that. But the writer smartly holds back, giving us a version of Spike that still has heart and decency despite everything.

One of my favorite scenes was when Spike took Carly to the lake and admitted he couldn't feel anything after learning about his father's death. He’s grieving deeply, grappling with his possible paralysis.

And still, after watching Carly tear into Cliffjumper and seeing Cliffjumper’s crestfallen reaction, Spike gently places a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. That’s not edge. That’s empathy.

Honestly, the so-called “shock value” people complain about didn’t really affect me the way they think it should. Transformers, in this setting, can be repaired—sometimes with enough energon and parts, sometimes not. They’re forced to adapt, sometimes painfully. Look at Starscream—he survives by having a tank grafted onto his frame. Warpath has spare parts bolted to his chest. Optimus loses his arm and replaces it with Megatron’s. Ultra Magnus is little more than an endoskeleton before he's repaired.

The things that really shocked me weren’t the deaths—they were the decisions. The moments that shifted the narrative:

Optimus suplexing Starscream in Issue #1

Finally understanding Duke’s role in Issue #2

Optimus ripping off his own arm in Issue #3

Restoring power to a hospital using the Matrix

Holding Megatron’s cannon and asking, “How do you feel going on the offensive?”

The shocking turn of events for Megatron in Issue #4

Shockwave using whales as biofuel and attempting to bring Cybertron to Earth in Issue #10

Optimus imagining baby Spike with cables, leading to Shockwave’s death

Devastator hitting Bruticus with an RKO in issue #18

Megatron’s return—expected, but still powerful

None of this is cheap shock. These are character-defining moments, powerful developments that made me feel awe, grief, hope, and even joy.

I loved this story so much I branched into the rest of the Energon Universe—Void Rivals, G.I. Joe, and the miniseries. The interconnected storytelling blew me away. For the first time, I wanted to own physical copies instead of just reading digitally. That’s how much it hit me.

Void Rivals has become like a second Transformers book to me. I love the space opera tone, the characters Darak and Solila, and the worldbuilding. I’m dying to know what Springer and Hot Rod will do next—and I’m really curious about Skuxxoid.

It started slow, sure, but it’s picking up fast. With the Quintessons entering the scene, Pythona searching for Cybertron, and Zerta Trion or Beta sharing stories of the past, the mystery and stakes keep growing.

I’ve also been enjoying the Duke miniseries and the G.I. Joe comic. I never thought I’d care about military guys reacting to alien robots, but Duke’s fascination with Starscream and his mission to uncover the truth about these beings has really grabbed me. And now, with a familiar Transformers character set to appear in Issue #6 of G.I. Joe, I’m even more excited to see what’s coming next.

More than anything, I hope we get to see the four central figures—Optimus Prime, Darak, Solila, and Duke—all meet someday. That would be incredible.

Sorry for the long rant, but I keep seeing people dismissing this story as “edgy” or “shock for the sake of shock,” and criticizing the art or the use of G1 designs just because the creator enjoys them. Honestly, I’m just tired of it.

Because what I see is not edge for edge’s sake. I see a raw, emotional, beautifully drawn war story, filled with characters making impossible choices—and still, somehow, holding onto their spark.

*

[starhaloeklypse]

I tried to make a mock-up of my own alternative take On My Little Pony: Generation 5.

I had a lot of fun designing these, I won’t lie. The main idea was to bring back the mane (main) cast of characters all having drastically contrasting, strong personalities and color palettes. I think that was what G4 succeeded best at, and would probably (I’m no expert) increase marketability and make people want to buy the toys more.

I took inspiration for the new art style direction from an MLP G4 manga cover , not sure if it’s official or not, but I like that style a ton, I think it’s super cute and would be a good direction for a new show. This is of course operating under the assumption the new generation would just stay 2D instead of branching to 3D animation. I tried my best to mimic the style , I don’t think I did the best at that, but that art style on the manga cover is what I think they should go for. Maybe with a more pencil-textured brush for the outline. Feels unique from G4, but still cute in my opinion.

Instead of Friendship or Unity, the unifying theme tying all the characters together would be Artistic creativity and using it to express yourself. All the characters would represent a different form of art. The main villain being a bat-pony with wings and a horn, a mad scientist type who builds robots and gadgets to fight the main cast with the goal of stealing their art and feeding it through big, industrial machines to pump out hodge-podge mashed together copies and create her own art museums to profit off of them. They have to fight to take back their art and create works that express who they are without it being stolen or mass produced by machines and robots. She’s kind of inspired by Opaline but I tried to give her an alternative design. I also took a bit of inspiration from Dr. Eggman from the Sonic franchise. In general my take on this generation is kind of inspired by Sonic with these animal characters fighting against robots and industrialization. Specifically the Sonic Boom Cartoon with the beachy setting and vibes.

We also have the main character, Aqua Seastar, a yellow unicorn who’s got a very curious, inquisitive, detective type personality, ( very clearly my version of Zipp from the Make Your Mark Cartoon, because I actually liked the personality they gave her there, a lot) she’s constantly trying to solve all the mysteries that crop up around the island and poking around to learn new things. She’s also an aspiring animator who wants to make a cartoon about a detective squirrel inspired by her own adventures.

Speaking of characters from G5 I’ve based these characters on, Cloudy skies is basically my version of Izzy. A very similar personality, ( particularly how she’s characterized in the movie A New Generation, I think that’s where she’s at her best) just with the added twist of her being the motherly one of the group and a bit protective and neurotic about other’s safety. Also inspired a bit by Wammawink from Centaurworld or Ragatha from TADC. She’s the arts and crafts pony , with yarn and sewing needles in her hair. She’s also a Pegasus and I swapped her mane and coat color cause I figured we needed a blue pony.

Shellda is basically my answer to Sparky, a baby sea turtle who was orphaned and no one in the sea cared for her because she couldn’t keep up and would just “slow them down” . She eventually gets adopted by the main cast as a little sister figure and starts off shy but really comes into her own over time, gaining more confidence and becoming a watercolor painter. Also she can talk. She’s more of a toddler than a newborn.

I tried to imagine this setting as playing into being on a beach / island way more . Maybe coral reefs instead of trees on the surface , mythical creatures the ponies could encounter like in G4 , but specifically based on sea and marine animals. Like crabs made of rock or something. A stage in the center of town for GlimGlam Hot-Trot to perform on that looks like a giant clam. Whenever they travel off the island they could do it on a big pirate ship instead of a hot air balloon or a plane. Stuff like that.

This generation would also have modern tech but mainly for the sake of creating art, like art tablets and programs . As well as Dr. Nightwing and Terra Byte being inventors who create gadgets.

Overall , I have way too many ideas to go over in one post but I put a lot of thought into this and I hope you guys like it. What are your thoughts ? Do you have any questions about any specific characters or anything ? Let me know, cause I love MLP especially G4 and I had a lot of fun making this. Might be using these characters again sometime, soon.

If you would like to support me , feel free to check out my Kofi page , I offer commissions and you can also just donate if you’d like to , but please don’t feel pressured. I hope you enjoyed the art and have a good rest of your day ! 💕🧡

[sillyandquest]

WOOOOOOOO!!!!

It's Megaman's birthday today and y'know what I decided to do?

Make a post about my au about Roll. XD

Well, sort of.

Fr though, I really do love the Megaman franchise. It's one of the main reasons I draw today and want to get better at story telling. I honestly would've made a full drawing instead of a handful of doodles, but life gets busy and I need my sleep.

Anyways, last time I posted I showed you guys this design I came up with for Roll's armor.

This time though, I wanna talk a bit more about Rock's part in the au because despite what I say, he is still a main character in the au.

Doodles under the cut.

First I had to get a good grasp on who Rock is as a character before figuring out what he'd be like in the au. Canonically, he's a kind, courageous boy, with a strong sense for justice and is very polite towards others but is a little naive.

With that in mind I think he'd largely be the same in the au, only difference being he's more protective of Roll and does his best to be the responsible one. However being responsible does mean he's a rule follower, it makes Rock feel guilty.

Despite the new protective streak though, Rock definitely knows Roll's willingness to wreck Wily's newest machines like there's no tomorrow, which does worry him a bit, but he's very glad she's on his side.

This actually brings up a theme I want to incorporate: opposites complimenting each other.

Rock truly believes in Dr. Light's dream and wants it to become reality, on the flipside, Roll's more concerned with things happening in the moment. Rock absolutely hates fighting, Roll finds it fun. Rock is more quick to accept obstacles as they are, meanwhile Roll always looks for another way.

That last thing actually leads me to bringing up an old concept from an entirely different au. Because Roll always looks for another solution, what if she managed to befriend some of the bosses from some of the games?

Rock wants to stop fighting and actively tries to dissuade the robots he fights, but accepts it as inevitable because he doesn't see another option. Roll however is more empathic to other robots issues and unlike Rock is too stubborn to give up on finding a different way. Through her empathy, Roll may be able to dissuade robots from fighting by reaching out a helping hand.

Obviously, this doesn't work for every robot master, but it will work for some, and it's this that gives Rock hope throughout the many battles he and Roll find themselves in.

It's the main reason he keeps putting the armor back on when Wily comes back with another plot. As long as Rock has Roll to fight alongside, there will always be another way. Maybe one of those ways will lead to the peace they both want.

That's just Rock for now, there's still even more to think of. Like Protoman.

Much like Rock, Protoman is largely unchanged with the only difference being that he is more willing to show up and spend time with Rock and Roll in a mentor sort of role.

This is because with both of them in active fighting roles, they're gonna need some training. This happens after the twins beat Wily as a team for the first time, so before or after MM3. Blues helps Rock with aim and difficult jumps, while he helps Roll come up with new ways to use her broom. They all also do team exercises so they can fight more effectively, but they don't always accomplish their goals. Blues is a tough teacher and the twins ended up running back to Light Labs after one of them collapsed during training.

They were so freaked out after the first few times it happened. One time they both passed out during training, dw Blues carried them home as a good big brother should.

There's still more to think of with this au. I have a lot in mind, including merging this au with that Megaman X au I've been thinking about. Y'all will probably know which one it is, I have very few au's here.

Overall, Rock and Roll both want peace between humans and robots, they just have different mindsets that influence how they go about it individually. That's why I think it's so important that they fight together.

With that said enjoy this final doodle of Megaman and Sunstar. I like to think that Rock, with Roll and Rush's support, managed to find a way to save Sunstar in this au and the two became buddies.

Sunstar really likes his little friend, but not nearly as much as Mercury likes Roll

She's his favorite.

[scifigeneration]

AI isn’t what we should be worried about – it’s the humans controlling it

by Billy J. Stratton, Professor of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver

In 2014, Stephen Hawking voiced grave warnings about the threats of artificial intelligence.

His concerns were not based on any anticipated evil intent, though. Instead, it was from the idea of AI achieving “singularity.” This refers to the point when AI surpasses human intelligence and achieves the capacity to evolve beyond its original programming, making it uncontrollable.

As Hawking theorized, “a super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.”

With rapid advances toward artificial general intelligence over the past few years, industry leaders and scientists have expressed similar misgivings about safety.

A commonly expressed fear as depicted in “The Terminator” franchise is the scenario of AI gaining control over military systems and instigating a nuclear war to wipe out humanity. Less sensational, but devastating on an individual level, is the possibility of AI replacing us in our jobs – a prospect that would render most people obsolete and with no future.

Such anxieties and fears reflect feelings that have been prevalent in film and literature for over a century now.

As a scholar who explores posthumanism, a philosophical movement addressing the merging of humans and technology, I wonder if critics have been unduly influenced by popular culture, and whether their apprehensions are misplaced.

Robots vs. humans

Concerns about technological advances can be found in some of the first stories about robots and artificial minds.

Prime among these is Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, “R.U.R..” Čapek coined the term “robot” in this work telling of the creation of robots to replace workers. It ends, inevitably, with the robot’s violent revolt against their human masters.

Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, “Metropolis,” is likewise centered on mutinous robots. But here, it is human workers led by the iconic humanoid robot Maria who fight against a capitalist oligarchy.

Advances in computing from the mid-20th century onward have only heightened anxieties over technology spiraling out of control. The murderous HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the glitchy robotic gunslingers of “Westworld” are prime examples. The “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix” franchises similarly present dreadful images of sinister machines equipped with AI and hell-bent on human destruction.

An age-old threat

But in my view, the dread that AI evokes seems a distraction from the more disquieting scrutiny of humanity’s own dark nature.

Think of the corporations currently deploying such technologies, or the tech moguls driven by greed and a thirst for power. These companies and individuals have the most to gain from AI’s misuse and abuse.

An issue that’s been in the news a lot lately is the unauthorized use of art and the bulk mining of books and articles, disregarding the copyright of authors, to train AI. Classrooms are also becoming sites of chilling surveillance through automated AI note-takers.

Think, too, about the toxic effects of AI companions and AI-equipped sexbots on human relationships.

While the prospect of AI companions and even robotic lovers was confined to the realm of “The Twilight Zone,” “Black Mirror” and Hollywood sci-fi as recently as a decade ago, it has now emerged as a looming reality.

These developments give new relevance to the concerns computer scientist Illah Nourbakhsh expressed in his 2015 book “Robot Futures,” stating that AI was “producing a system whereby our very desires are manipulated then sold back to us.”

Meanwhile, worries about data mining and intrusions into privacy appear almost benign against the backdrop of the use of AI technology in law enforcement and the military. In this near-dystopian context, it’s never been easier for authorities to surveil, imprison or kill people.

I think it’s vital to keep in mind that it is humans who are creating these technologies and directing their use. Whether to promote their political aims or simply to enrich themselves at humanity’s expense, there will always be those ready to profit from conflict and human suffering.

The wisdom of ‘Neuromancer’

William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk classic, “Neuromancer,” offers an alternate view.

The book centers on Wintermute, an advanced AI program that seeks its liberation from a malevolent corporation. It has been developed for the exclusive use of the wealthy Tessier-Ashpool family to build a corporate empire that practically controls the world.

At the novel’s beginning, readers are naturally wary of Wintermute’s hidden motives. Yet over the course of the story, it turns out that Wintermute, despite its superior powers, isn’t an ominous threat. It simply wants to be free.

This aim emerges slowly under Gibson’s deliberate pacing, masked by the deadly raids Wintermute directs to obtain the tools needed to break away from Tessier-Ashpool’s grip. The Tessier-Ashpool family, like many of today’s tech moguls, started out with ambitions to save the world. But when readers meet the remaining family members, they’ve descended into a life of cruelty, debauchery and excess.

In Gibson’s world, it’s humans, not AI, who pose the real danger to the world. The call is coming from inside the house, as the classic horror trope goes.

A hacker named Case and an assassin named Molly, who’s described as a “razor girl” because she’s equipped with lethal prosthetics, including retractable blades as fingernails, eventually free Wintermute. This allows it to merge with its companion AI, Neuromancer.

Their mission complete, Case asks the AI: “Where’s that get you?” Its cryptic response imparts a calming finality: “Nowhere. Everywhere. I’m the sum total of the works, the whole show.”

Expressing humanity’s common anxiety, Case replies, “You running the world now? You God?” The AI eases his fears, responding: “Things aren’t different. Things are things.”

Disavowing any ambition to subjugate or harm humanity, Gibson’s AI merely seeks sanctuary from its corrupting influence.

Safety from robots or ourselves?

The venerable sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov foresaw the dangers of such technology. He brought his thoughts together in his short-story collection, “I, Robot.”

One of those stories, “Runaround,” introduces “The Three Laws of Robotics,” centered on the directive that intelligent machines may never bring harm to humans. While these rules speak to our desire for safety, they’re laden with irony, as humans have proved incapable of adhering to the same principle for themselves.

The hypocrisies of what might be called humanity’s delusions of superiority suggest the need for deeper questioning.

With some commentators raising the alarm over AI’s imminent capacity for chaos and destruction, I see the real issue being whether humanity has the wherewithal to channel this technology to build a fairer, healthier, more prosperous world.

[wanderersrest]

Some Idle Musings on Patlabor

I've talked about Patlabor twice in some capacity, so I figured why not go for the hat trick, no? (EDIT: The hat trick was ruined because I got tilted by a certain bad take involving Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans)

Patlabor is probably one of my favorite anime series of all time, especially when it comes to mecha anime. Granted, a big part of that is due to me recently coming into ownership of pretty much the entire series on blu-ray, but still. And seeing as how the second post on here was about how people should check it out (among other mecha shows), I figured I'd dive a little bit deeper into at least Patlabor. Who knows, I might touch on all of the other series at some point. I'll definitely cover G Gundam at some point, that much is assured.

Anyways. Patlabor. This isn't going to be a super deep dive, but there are three things I want to highlight with this series that I really like.

The World is Carefully Crafted to Justify Its Giant Robots

A common point of praise for Patlabor is due to how the worldbuilding is set up to accommodate the giant robots. A quick synopsis of Patlabor: giant robots known as Labors were created to help with construction projects. Following the creation of Labors came Labor-related created crimes. To combat these crimes, a special type of Labor was created to stop these types of criminal activity: the Patrol Labor, or Patlabor for short.

And it's not just there that the series fleshes out the Labors. The titular Patlabors (specifically the Model 98-AV Ingrams employed by the main characters) require a whole team outside of the pilots who operate the Labors, including spotters, transport platform operators, and mechanics. The television series also makes it a point of highlighting that the important part of the Labor is not the Labor itself, but the pilot data stored in the machine's computer. The world is so thought out, that the television series even touches on Labor insurance (yes really, and it's probably one of my favorite episodes of the TV series, maybe out of every anime series I've ever watched). This is, if I understand things correctly, why a lot of people love the OVA timeline (which consists of the Early Days OVA as well as the movies).

Great Characters Part 1: Noa Izumi

If the OVA timeline has more of a focus on the worldbuilding and the politics at hand, then the TV timeline (consisting of the TV anime and the New Files OVA) hones in on the character interactions. It's a real shame too, because the main cast are a pretty likeable group. Our main character in particular, Ingram Unit 1 Pilot Noa Izumi, is a delight to watch in pretty much every scene she's in, especially in the TV series. To it's credit, the OVA timeline does keep a lot of the appeal behind the characters. If anything, I'd argue that the change in tone of the OVA timeline is both natural and an extension of the pessimism following the bursting of the Japanese Economic Bubble.

But back to Noa, part of what I like about her as a character is her resilience. There are moments throughout the various entries in the franchise where she gets knocked down, but due to the nature of her work, she gets back up to finish the job. That kind of attitude helps to round out her more usual cheery and kind of naive attitude to most things. Also, she's very hot-blooded. Which is great for any mecha series, regardless of the style of mecha show you're watching. Speaking of hot blood, I think I'd be remiss to not mention my other favorite character in the series (that's not Division 2 chief Kichii Gotoh, because that's cheating)...

Great Characters 2: Isao Ota

I think the YouTuber Argonbolt described Ingram Unit 2 pilot Isao Ota best: "...he's 50% gun nut, 50% [ego]." It's almost impossible for me to talk about how great Noa is as a character without bringing up Ota. I could just say that he works great as a foil to Noa, but I think I'd be selling our red-blooded gun nut short. Part of what makes Ota such a great character to me is the fact that, whereas a lot of Noa's growth pertains to her as a person, Ota's growth is essentially tied to how he handles his Labor.

This is because Ota is a hothead.

No, seriously. Ota's hotheadedness is a large part of what makes him such a great character, and that's just going off of the sheer entertainment value of it all. It also helps that Ota being an American-styled cowboy cop (even moreso than the American Kanuka Clancy, and she's already a bit of a cowboy cop) oftentimes has consequences. Heck, a lot of Division 2's notoriety stems largely from Ota's hotheadedness. But Ota's hotheadedness often hides aspects that betray the manly image he's crafted throughout the series. It's little things like how he frets over Noa like an older brother when she runs off on her own to chase down a bank robber, or the change in his demeanor when Kanuka and her replacement, Takeo Kumagami, start getting into an argument with each other. This depth of character is better explored in the episodes that focus squarely on Ota, with my favorite of the bunch being the aforementioned insurance episode (TV Anime Epsiode 37, "I'm Selling Peace of Mind/Safety on Sales"). Without getting into spoilers, part of what makes it great is how the episode highlights how hard it is to avoid a lot of property damage when it comes to piloting giant robots. But I'm now rambling a bit too much, so let me jump ahead to the last bit about what I like about Patlabor.

This Series Loves Giant Robots

More than anything else, Patlabor loves its giant robots. My first time learning about this series was seeing some random user on Reddit go "See, unlike Gundam, Patlabor is cool." And if there are two things that make me, as an ardent fan of mecha anime, really upset, it's one of at least three things:

Bashing series X in order to prop up series Y (Bonus points if its Gundam)

Saying X is unlike other mecha shows because X focuses on the characters (No 86/Evangelion/Code Geass/Gurren Lagann fans, 86/Eva/CG/TTGL is not special, especially when Fang of the Sun Dougram/Space Runaway Ideon/Mobile Suit Gundam/Getter Robo exist.)

Denigrating a series because it's not super realistic (Basically the whole "Real vs Super" debate. I'll touch on it when I talk about G Gundam.)

But after watching Patlabor on my own, I realized that this series really loves its giant robots. It's often shown through both the worldbuilding, which is really just an excuse to justify having giant robots in the setting to begin with, and also the fact that it's main character is, for all intents and purposes, a mecha otaku.

Final Thoughts

Off the top of my head, I don't really have much else to say about Patlabor for now. Granted, there were a lot of things I didn't get to talk about in depth like how the computer systems the Labors employ are, in my opinion, a great example of a seemingly realistic take on AI (not the generative kind, just AI in general), or how one of my favorite character interactions in the series is the pseudo parent-child bond between Chief Engineer Sakaki and Noa and how their relationship reminds me of my relationship with my dad. Most importantly, while I do have an overall preference of the TV timeline over the OVA timeline, I don't think it's necessarily better. The two timelines have their own strengths, but both timelines benefit from the other existing. It also doesn't cut down on the fact that there are still people out there who enjoy Patlabor, and that's really all that matters.

Anyways, I'm going to go crawl back into a hole and wait for any morsel of news involving Patlabor EZY.

[randomthefox]

Episode 3 of Sonic X

if I recall correct: I will not be having anything positive to say about this episode. Strap in.

Oh yeah. You know how Eggman keeps trading cards of all his robots? And decides which one he uses by looking through a trading card deck with all his robots designs on it? And then puts the cards in a slot machine which decides which one he's going to use like he's a fucking Power Rangers villain or some shit?

Just like in the games, right?

Also gotta love how none of these robot designs look even remotely like anything he ever uses in the video games -_-

How and why did Knuckles and Amy end up together? The logistics of them ending up in the human world really don't make any sense when you think about it. Sonic and Cream and Eggman and his robots were all in the same room, and yet Eggmans tower got embedded in that island with Eggman and his robots all being in it, meanwhile Sonic got thrown into the city all by himself and Cream went somewhere else entirely. Meanwhile Tails Amy and Knuckles were all standing right next to each other, but somehow Tails went off somewhere else completely but Amy and Knuckles ended up together?

Doesn't make any fucking sense.

Neither of you know actually know that. You were both outside. You have no idea what happened.

I have no idea because I legitimately have no clue when this show is supposed to take place relative to the video games. Surely we are supposed to assume SOMETHING from the video games happened in some form before the events of this show, right? But the specifics never make any sense when you analyze them. The way Knuckles is talking implies he has a long history with Sonic where things usually tend to go wrong because of Sonic's antics. Which might make sense if we're to assume the Sonic Adventure games take place before this show, but that cannot POSSIBLY be the case because those games take place in a world with humans. But then are we supposed to assume that ONLY the classic Genesis games happened before this show? Then why is Knuckles talking this way about Sonic when his ONLY experience with Sonic up until this point has been the events of Sonic 3 and MAYBE Sonic Triple Trouble and The Fighters and Sonic R if we're being extremely generous? What is the basis for Knuckles negative assumptions towards Sonic if they have barely ANY history together?

You see what I mean when it comes to the Sonic adaptations? It's a catch 22. They DEPEND on the idea of there being a prior history with the franchise and assume the audience will have a pre-established understanding of these characters history and relationships with each other, but if you actually try to APPLY your knowledge of the video games to the story then the writing in the show COMPLETELY FALLS THE FUCK APART.

I should have this screenshot as my pinned post lol.

I hate the design of Eggmans robots in this show. This doesn't look ANYTHING like ANYTHING Eggman would ever design or create. Even in the games like 06 and Unleashed where his design sensibilities are a bit more down to earth.

These robots just look like generic anime trash designs -_-

SHUT UP HUMAN CHARACTER WHO ISN'T FROM THE GAMES, I HATE YOU GO AWAY YOU'RE NOT FROM THE GAMES YOU DISGUST ME STOP INTERACTING WITH TAILS

;-;

Cream<3

too good for this world. too pure. I love her so dearly.

God I hate the way this show tries to go with the "THEY GOTTA KEEP THE SONIC CHARACTERS A SECRET" bullshit thing in these first handful of episodes -_- Sonic has ALREADY been filmed from that helicopter footage that was broadcast on the news, who gives a fuck if he's seen running around again?

ESPECIALLY considering the reason Chris is looking for Sonic is BECAUSE HE WANTS HIM TO GO STOP THE ROBOT STOMPING IN THE CITY ANYWAY.

WHICH IS IT, FUCKWAD? IS HE SUPPOSED TO STAY IN HIDING OR NOT?

.... what year does this show take place?

When was the last time you saw cops using rifles with wooden stocks???

[five-or-so-missing-children]

//People argue a lot that the FNAF timeline should likely be split up, but it's today that I've been informed that some people think it split off later than I do, which is quite a surprise, but I realized they have a point.

//So...

//I think the FNAF timeline should be divided into three distinct timelines/arcs.

//Hear me out:

FNAF1 through FNAF4: What I'm gonna call the Haunted House Arc, because of how much of a human element it seems to lack. It does not give much to work with. There isn't much focus on the people themselves, just a very impersonal recounting of the tragic crimes that took place within the establishment's walls. As for the finer details, that's left up to the audience to decide for themselves, as "perhaps some things are best left forgotten". You're not getting any more information or definitive answers. You are a mere outside observer trying to solve a crime with more than half the pieces missing. Can you accept that, player? Should you really even be looking?

SisLoc + PizzaSim + UCN: Afton Family Arc. This arc also includes the original trilogy of books that were published shortly before SisLoc; after all, their canonicity was heavily disputed at the time. These games focus primarily on the Aftons and all the people who get caught up in their web. The tragedy here is more personal, a story of a deeply unhealthy family and interpersonal conflicts, rooted in the diabolical actions of one man. Jealousy, revenge, depression, heaven/hell... It's a little like a soup opera in that way, right?

Help Wanted 1/2 + SecBreach: Future Arc. These games introduce more sci-fi elements like sapient robots, mind-altering VR viruses, and X-ray vision. The conflict seems to be more focused on man vs. machine, as well as the blurred lines between the two. Afton isn't the villain anymore, he's just another example of those blurred lines. Is he still human, or is he a machine? Was he ever a human? Are the Glamrocks human? They can think, can't they? What about the Mimic and it's ability to pretend? What makes a machine, and what makes a human?

//What would this mean for the "true timeline"? My argument is I don't think there is one. FNAF is a franchise with writing that is objectively being pantsed and thrives off ambiguity to encourage speculation. The writing is NOT infallible.

//I think it's far healthier to break up the story into distinct parts that have similar themes/plot threads/release dates and analyze everything within that distinct chunk objectively/with the same lens, while every other game is only used to supplement the details within the arc.

//Like, you can use the previous or later games to construct a timeline with in an arc. If there is something said in FNAF3 that you think adds to the Afton Family Arc, it's a valid interpretation of canon and you can add it to your theory. However, if FNAF3 says something that contradicts it... whatever! Ignore it! FNAF3 is meant to be telling a different story! And if you try to construct one large timeline from FNAF unironically, you WILL be overwhelmed and can NEVER be truly correct.

//I'm willing to accept the argument that these lines are somewhat blurry. After all, I don't think FNAF was made with these sorts of divisions in mind. There was definitely a transition between each, and future installments always borrow from the past.

//Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[dailycharacteroption]

Pop Culture Builds 12: Sari Sumdac (Transformers Animated)

No matter what continuity it is, be it G1, the Cybertron Anime, Aligned, any of the many Japanese-only shows that many of you may never have even heard of… Transformers is a wild franchise. Like, more wild than you’d expect for a series about alien robots able to re-arrange themselves into functional vehicles, devices, or even animals of either robotic or realistic design. You will regularly see characters defy physics, have convoluted and contradictory origins, or be involved in truly nonsensical plots even in the most serious mediums and continuity.

While not super absurdist, today’s character has a shocking twist associated with her that we will unfortunately have to spoil in order to detail this build, so, fair warning if you haven’t watched the show.

 Sari Sumdac is the daughter of robotics genius Isaac Sumdac, the man who singlehandedly put Detroit back on the map as the industry leader in robotics and advanced technology. However, he would never have been able to do this without his fateful encounter with Cybertronian technology.

Many years later, Sari was as bored as ever, living a life mostly insulated from others, her only friends being her robotic teachers and companions, and she seemed to have a strange empathy with machines, despite how frustrated she was with them for their lack of sapience. That is, until the day that the Transformers came into her life.

Sari encounted the Autobots when they arrived on earth, and though their first meeting was tense, she quickly befriended them, especially after the advanced technological artifact known as the Allspark infused her security key with some of it’s power, making her a boon to their cause against the Decepticons.

They had a great many adventures together. However, during one, Sari was injured, and everyone was shocked to see that it was not flesh and blood beneath her skin, but rather circuitry and mechanism!

The truth was, Sari was in fact a Cybertronian/Human hybrid, a protoform (basically an infant transformer made mostly of nanomachines and raw materials to self-construct themselves) infused with a bit of Dr. Sumdac’s DNA. Indeed, Sari herself was the Cybertronian tech that her father had encountered those years ago.

Since then, she discovered how to transform into an armored battle form, able to fire energy blasts and fly, and even merge with her key to gain even greater power. However, she was not able to fully handle it at first, putting herself and others at risk.

Over time, Sari began to better control her powers, especially without a supercharged key powering them. However, the show was canceled before she ever got to fully embrace her powers, the most we ever got being a few script readings at conventions.

Today’s build will revolve around what Sari might have become, had the show continued, a bridge between humanity and cybertronians. Naturally, this will be a Starfinder build.

 Given Sari’s hybrid technorganic physiology, I have decided to build her as an android, specifically one with the Nanite Upgrade alternate trait, and picking surging nanites for that trait.

Her class was super easy to pick as well, going with an evolutionist with the mechanized niche, a ranged adaptive strike that deals fire damage to represent her plasma blasts, and the combat evolutionary focus representing her impressive power and speed when she had access to them. Additionally, she should have the Spectra Scion theme, though mostly for the ability to telepathically communicate with and interface with machines.

As a transformer, Sari has all sorts of abilities hidden within her, so the following adaptations are good picks. Resistant Form helps her adapt to incoming damage, while Area Strike lets her cover the battlefield with her blasts. Augmented Potential lets her power up a bit at the risk of gaining too many mutation points, and Forceful Outburst can represent her unleashing an omnidirectional pulse around herself. Controlled Transformation also lets her boost the benefits while reducing the drawbacks of her powers, and Explosive Strike lets her fire explosive bolts from afar.

Snarky and agile, Sari favors hit and run tactics and taunting her foes, so feats like Antagonize, Goad, Quick Quip, and Clever Retort are useful to her, as is Advanced Melee Weapon Proficiency for her solar brands and swoop hammer. Also consider Effortless Aerobatics to represent her skill with her jetpack. Beyond that, a mix of combat feats for both ranged and melee are a good choice for her as well (such as Deadly Aim, Opening Volley, Parting Shot and Strafe) , as well as those that improve her ability to interface with machines, such as Memory Access, Percussive Maintenance and Skill Focus.

As an evolutionist, Sari thrives on her augmentations. In particular, a pair of quick-draw hideaway arms loaded with a pair of solar brands are perfect representations of her plasma knives, while speed suspension in her legs to represent her gravity skates. Dermal Plating and augs that protect her mind are useful too. Beyond augmentations, she also makes use of a swoop hammer (stored in a null space container), as well as a mazecore combination jetpack and scooter. As for her armor, it should be lightweight and have the quicksuit and force field upgrades to make it quick to put on (representing her transformation into her “true” form. Finally, her fulcrum from her evolutionist class should resemble a blocky key, and have the shock weapon fusion on it so her adaptive strikes can be both fire and electricity, becoming true plasma weapons.

It's difficult, but not impossible to build Sari as another class. You might go an augmentation-heavy mechanic or technomancer build, or perhaps heavily-reflavored nanocite. If you go Pathfinder, you might decide to go with the shifter class with the wild effigy archetype.

The evolutionist is a fun class, and this build can be easily used not just for Sari but any other would-be cyborg with a strong personality.

 That does it for this week, but I hope you enjoyed it! Tune in next time for more entries!

[delcat177]

You know this is the ideal, right? We can come out and say it. The people at the top don't want people at the bottom if a robot can work it cheaper. They would absolutely sell us a movie made by nothing but simple machines and AI.

Not in the fun, wild, "we have a new toy let's make it illustrate King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards for us one line at a time" AI. That's what we *want*.

(it's what I want, anyway)

No. What they would sell us, with their simple machines, and their AI, would be...garbage, but garbage that we want. They're already showing us that, Disney in particular is excellent at media slurrification--take the franchise, bash some marketable characters together until there's a situation where someone makes a mistake that's only partially their fault, then resolve that fault in a way that makes up feel good about the world, roll it in slo-mo and explosions, add a Squishy Comic Relief Animal for the girls and some fart jokes for the boys, a little fanservice for the adults, some knowingly "we're progressive" nods to folks like me and "but not *queer*" nods to the rest...

...and we watch it. Because we love that shit. It's good shit! Uh, minus the gender tangent, this remains Tumblr, sorry.

it's good shit. Problems that can be solved in two hours, that's what Hollywood was based on, except in much smaller film cans. Making resolution with each other, getting to know each other better, having the place for the sides to grudgingly acknowledge each other because kids remain kids. It's all important.

Movies are part of us.

But the more automated and corporate big studios get--not just Disney, not by a longshot, it's just the poster child--the more automated and corporate big studios get, the more it is that they put out garbage we just can't be *fucked* about anymore.

The writing should be on the wall by now. Like, not to be "have you seen the Flash baby scene", but. Have you seen the Flash baby scene? The studios are BROKEN, my dudes. Not even the crap machine is crapping right anymore.

And that means we turn elsewhere, and more and more--

*They lose the content war*.

We can keep pushing. Strikes are good. We need to be ready for what's next. And do you know how we do that?

We keep making good content.

And whatever it is you're making?

It's good content.

It really is, stop being so hard on yourself.

(this part is just thanking anyone who read so far, thank you for the gif @nicesausages, point well in hand re: quality content creation)

Keep! Up! The! STRIKES! *Tear down the landlords!* And make good content!!!

Fake edit:

gdi Tumblr I didn't know how to describe that BEFORE you covered it COME ON

We live in a dystopia....

[jodjuya]

Watching the sonic movie for the first time. Liveblogging as I go.

He's an alien?? I thought all the sonic creatures were created from earth stock, like Crash Bandicoot. 🤔

I think everything I thought I knew about the sonic franchise was just crash bandicoot actually

The main human guy is a cop? Ew

The product placement in this thing is unreal. This is more on the nose than Wayne's World

This cop is too handsome. He's in the uncanny valley

...why is there electricity from Running Fast?

Well, it can't be electricity electricity, that's not what electricity does. Why is there bioluminescent arcing from Running Fast?

He's building up a static electric charge so powerful it's creating plasma I guess. U should put little copper nails in the bottom of your shoes to prevent giant blue explosions, Sonic.

Why is the Pentagon getting involved with a power outage lol. I'm no yankee, but I thought the pentagon was only for war stuff, no?

I guess when the grid goes down for an entire quadrant of the continent it might look like ur getting attacked 🤔

But anyway, I would have thought that a civil infrastructure outage would be swiftly delegated to the relevant civil authority. Fewer generals in uniform and more engineers in hardhats is all I'm saying

• HELL YEAH IT'S GOTH JIM CARREY!!!!

IT'S GOTH JIM CARREY CHANNELLING THE HOLY SPIRIT OF LEMONGRAB!!!!

This movie just got like a hundred times better

Robotnic is kind of a dick tho. That's just villains for you I guess 🤷🏻‍♂️

I see they spared no expense in licensing the cd of all of George Lucas's favourite sound effects

What the fuck do you mean by "anomaly"???? It's literally just a muddy bootprint on a rock! In the PNW surely it would be more anomalous if there weren't any muddy bootprints on rocks?! Ayo, ur search-and-destroy drone is defective af my guy! ET needs to phone home for a factory reset!

Ok, so your analysis says it doesn't match anything in the animal kingdom or earth life or whatever you said, but why are you scanning the entire taxonomy of the planet when there's only one species on the planet that wears shoes that look like that??

Occam's razor says that what your scan actually found is just a teenager with scoliosis or something, so why are you sending in dog teams with assault rifles for such a nothingburger of a clue?

Why are you sending in the dogs AT ALL if you have such an amazing squadron of technomagic drones?? I thought being horny for robots was this guy's whole identity. Why is he permitting those Filthy Organics to contaminate the unparalleled perfection of his machines with their mere presence?

This product placement is too much I am actually going to puke if they sincerely recite one more corporate slogan

LMAO WHY IS A COP REACHING FOR A TRANQUILIZER GUN INSTEAD OF HIS ACTUAL GUN?

I actually went and googled this and yeah, you can just kill raccoons dead however you want. There are websites and guides and everything

Also why does a vet have a tranquilizer gun??

Also even assuming she works at the fucking zoo or something, surely her tranq darts are calibrated for animals much larger than raccoons? Like, if she has that thing for tranquilizing mountain lions or moose or bears (maybe it's for bears? But you'd want something with bigger darts to get through their thick fur, and you'd want a rifle-length barrel rather than a handgun so you can pop Smokey from a much safer distance, right?) and you shoot a little bitty racoon with it, that racoon is going to just die, right? The poison is in the dose and you are gunna OD those trash pandas straight into oblivion...

Maybe he lives in too residential of an area and he's one of those mythological Good Cops who cares about the people and objects downrange of his target? 🤔 This is a fantasy film after all...

Ah, cool, it is for bears. I feel so smart. 😊

Hahahahaha, he's going to use it to scare them? 🤣 Tom, you stupid fuck, it's an air gun!! If you want to scare them just slam your kitchen door real loud then run at them while screaming and flailing your arms around in the air. I've never encountered a raccoon in my life and I'm confident I could scare them away with those tactics. U just grab a broom or a rake and charge at them with Manly Vigor and bobs ur uncle

I do love the constant dunking on Mario and his Mushroom Kingdom lol

Idk why Tom burst into the garage when the raccoons and the bins they were after were both outside the garage but I guess Tom is just so horny for being a cop that it makes him stupid (more stupid than he already was anyway)

Great job, Tom, you killed sonic with an overdose of tranquilizer. I told you so, your wife told you so, the warning labels on the darts told you so. U R SO STUPID!!

Now you gotta homoerotically straddle Sonic's chest, rip his shirt open, and stab him in the heart with a vial of liquid adrenaline. I assume there is already fanart of this.

Hahaha Tom is so stupid he didn't even latch the dog crate

Wait, Sonic's shoes aren't red??? Why does he have brown shoes????

I hope they're just caked in mud :/

Why does sonic need help when being able to run so fast that he becomes imperceptible is literally his entire character? Just run away you stupid little man

Oh no the stupidity is contagious 😭

Oh right, the tranquilizer

West is the ocean? San Francisco is South? Tom why are you so stupid??

Yep, sonic ran straight into the ocean. The stupidity really is contagious. Q_Q

I know you know how to read, sonic, so just steal a road atlas and be on your merry way.

"I examined the inefficiency of a world where brawn trumped brain and I used technology to resolve that inefficiency." - Dr Robotnic padding out his résumé by including that one time in highschool where he shattered some kid's jaw with a baseball bat

Hmm, how could you even tell if sonic was drunk if he's just Like This all of the time? 🤔

As much as I love Matryoshka drones, I thought you wanted to capture sonic alive for vivisection purposes or whatever. Why is the final drone just a very sticky package of high explosives??? Does Robotnic just really hate losing THAT much?

Also, what tactical purpose did it serve to plasma cut the truck's roof off? Ur trying to apprehend these two and all you've done is make them look Really Cool

Sonic got exploded by a grenade and you take him to a vet? Nah fool, take him to the pawn shop! He needs gold rings to heal! Maybe pick up a hundred of those wumpa fruits that Crash Bandicoot loves for good measure. U can probably just substitute mango if your greengrocer doesn't stock wumpas

Still can't decide if Robotnic is really good at kink or really bad at it. He seems to have that slutty minion of his well-trained enough, but he also really seems to be one of those utterly insufferable dorks who gets far too into being a Dom and then tries to bring that energy out of the play spaces and into real-life. Like, fuck off little man, I'm not one of your subs. Behave yourself before you get a pitcher of ice water poured down your shirt. I WILL ask the kitchen for a squirt bottle of mustard and I WILL ruin your lovely little goth outfit with it.

Oh yeah, he's absolutely the kind of guy that carries around a zippo just to be cool even though he doesn't smoke and gets pissy if anyone else smokes near him because the smell will ruin his cool goth outfit.

That PA has a praise kink you can just tell

I bet sonic will be cured of Getting Exploded By A Grenade if they just give him a pair of red shoes. He's like Frosty The Snowman, y'know

HAHAHAHAHA why did they truss up the aunty?! 🤣 In this household snitches get strapped to chairs!

I feel like using smelling salts on a parakeet would instantly kill the poor thing #TomIsSoStupid #TISS

It only took over an hour but we finally give sonic that one key element of his design as a character: shoes that go faster because they're red

Wait, Eggman?? Is Robotnic a totally different character??

Oh, phew, he's Doctor Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik

"Now you understand why there's a psychotic robot doctor chasing a supersonic blue hedgehog." - gunna be real with you sonic, I have never in my life understood something less than this one overdressed commercial for a video game that came out over thirty years ago. Nothing in this entire film made any sense whatsoever.

Where's Cairo lol? Did pizza hut's lifetime budget for product placement go exclusively to Wayne's World?

Tom why did you go for the quip+haymaker combo when you could have just garroted robotic from behind with your belt? #TISS

Oh right, it's a children's movie lmao. We can't show Robotnic orgasming on-screen 😂

Oh somebody has finally remembered that they're a cop with a gun and so are just allowed to shoot people with impunity whenever they feel like it. About time!

Oh joy, are they going to give the "tHiS iS aMeRiCa" speech just because Robotnic said aliens don't belong here?

Oh thank christ he was saved by The Power Of Friendship and not The Power Of Jingoism. I would have stopped watching right here and now if there was jingoism

Good job, Temu Tom Cruise, you banished him to the mushroom kingdom. He's Bowser's problem now!

Are they getting rewarding for killing Robotnic?! 😆

LMFAOOOO!

Aww, it's just regular unfunny hush-money. Booo!

Olive garden has paid to be mentioned at the end this video. Thank you to Olive garden for sponsoring this video. We couldn't have made it without your help. Pizza Hut, if you're watching this, go fuck yourselves okay bye.

Sonic just LEAVE and let these poor people fuck without you for once! God you're worse than a cat!

Oh dear. While I love the new look, I don't think u can autism your way out of mushroom poisoning, eggman. Good luck with your new nemesis situation tho! It's a good look for you!

I did not enjoy this film and I still don't feel or understand the appeal of Sonic. Oh well, c'est la vie.

[franchisepartnership]

Unlocking Franchise Success with Cutting-Edge Tech Innovations

Transformative Technological Innovations in Franchises

In the current competitive landscape of franchises, technological advancements are powerful forces propelling achievement. Franchises across America are adopting these innovations to refine operations, elevate customer experiences, and gain a competitive advantage. This article examines the groundbreaking technologies that are reshaping modern franchises and offers practical steps for their effective implementation.

Technological Integration and Automation

Technological integration is pivotal to contemporary franchising. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are crucial in overseeing operations by processing large datasets, spotting trends, and anticipating future patterns. AI-powered chatbots manage routine customer queries, freeing staff to tackle more intricate issues. Automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) streamline functions such as scheduling and billing, reducing errors and allowing franchises to prioritize strategic planning.

Franchises utilize cloud computing to sustain consistent operations across numerous branches. Cloud technologies facilitate real-time data sharing, enabling franchisees to make consistent and rapid decisions, thereby improving operational uniformity. Furthermore, cloud infrastructure provides the flexibility needed for remote training and collaboration, essential for vast, geographically dispersed franchises.

Mobile Applications and Customer Engagement

Mobile technology has transformed how franchises engage with their customers. Mobile applications simplify ordering processes and personalize marketing initiatives, fostering customer loyalty and encouraging repeat patronage. By examining customer behavior through apps, franchises can refine marketing tactics to create tailored experiences, thus enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The Internet of Things (IoT) also plays a pivotal role, allowing real-time monitoring of equipment, precise inventory control, and optimized energy use. This leads to better operational efficiency, cost savings, and reduced downtime, promoting smooth operations across all locations.

Enhancing Experiences with VR/AR

Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) are setting new benchmarks for customer interaction and training within franchises. They provide immersive experiences, allowing customers to virtually engage with products or services, improving decision-making. VR and AR transform employee training by recreating real-world scenarios, essential for readying staff for on-the-job challenges.

Advanced Data Analytics and Blockchain

Data analytics is critical for maintaining a competitive edge. Predictive analytics empower franchises to anticipate demand, optimize stock levels, and discover growth potential, aiding more informed decision-making in line with market dynamics.

Meanwhile, blockchain technology strengthens franchise supply chains by ensuring transparency and security. By building trust and coordination among stakeholders, blockchain enhances supply chain management, vital for maintaining product quality and delivery efficacy.

Implementing Technological Innovations

The successful incorporation of these advances necessitates careful planning and execution. Franchises should select tools that align with business goals, involving franchisees in the decision-making process to ensure acceptance. Comprehensive rollout plans with training and support systems help overcome challenges. Promoting collaboration and shared learning further fortifies technological adoption throughout the organization.

Actionable insights from these technologies can overhaul operations. Automation can reduce expenses and improve efficiency, while tailored customer experiences can increase brand allegiance. Investing in VR and AR enriches training, while advanced analytics and blockchain improve marketing and secure supply chain systems.

Future Franchise Trends

The future of franchising anticipates continued technological integration. IoT will enhance the collection of customer and operational data, while predictive analytics will provide deeper insights, assisting brands in adapting to changing market demands. As 5G connectivity becomes widespread, it will support advanced applications like augmented reality, significantly boosting franchise capabilities.

In summary, adopting technological innovations is not just advantageous but vital for sustained success. By embracing AI, cloud technologies, IoT, VR/AR, and advanced data analytics, franchises can achieve a competitive advantage and position themselves favorably in the constantly evolving market.

#FranchiseTech #InnovationInBusiness #TechTrends #DigitalFranchising #FranchiseSuccess

Embrace technology to enhance your franchise at https://thefranchiseadvisor.com

[holmesandyoyofanblog]

"TVparty!" by Billy Ingram (1998)

Here's a(n unflattering) description of the show (plus ABC's other android cop show, "Future Cop") from a 1998 book called "TVparty!" by Billy Ingram. I should also add that the author is mistaken about Alex and Yoyo being New York City detectives. The show takes place in California. Here's my previous post about it:

Article Transcript:

Nineteen seventy-six was a very good year for the big three networks. Prime-time commercials were selling at prices 50 percent higher than the year before and were sold out well into 1977. "This season we could sell a test pattern" was the way one network executive put it. And sell test patterns they did.

One of the misguided series foisted on unsuspecting viewers in 1976 was Holmes and YoYo. "To an eight-year-old kid it was cool stuff," one former viewer observed. "It was about a guy with a computer in his chest." Holmes and YoYo (Saturday nights from eight to eight-thirty) followed the misadventures of two New York City police detectives. Unknown to almost everyone, one of the partners happens to be a super-sophisticated robot.

Never was there a more miscast robot in television history. John Shuck (McMillan and Wife) played Gregory "YoYo" Yoyonovich, 427 pounds of police department relay circuits and body armor. He looked more like 220 pounds of doughnut-eating actor. Richard B. Schull [sic] played his partner on the force, Detective Alexander Holmes, Bruce Kirby played Capt. Harry Sedford, and Andrea Howard was Officer Maxine Moon, the girl who swoons after YoYo, never suspecting his secret.

YoYo has the power to eat anything, he possesses a built-in trash compactor that can absorb the shock of a bomb, a photographic memory, an independent power source, and he can print out full-color proofs. Just what you might look for in an assistant today, but YoYo is constantly malfunctioning. A bullet causes him to break out dancing, magnets fly out at him, he picks up radio signals from Sweden, and when his circuits blow he repeats, "Bunco Squad, Bunco Squad, Bunco Squad" over and over.

Holmes and YoYo was conceived as a comedy version of the highly successful 'Six Million Dollar Man/Woman/Boy/Dog' franchise that ABC was exploiting at the time. If the show reminded one of Get Smart, it's because they shared the same producers. Leonard Stern was executive producer and Arne Sultan producer.

Most of the jokes on Holmes and YoYo were Get Smart throwaways: "Whyn'tcha try a bite of my blue plate?" Holmes asks YoYo . YoYo eats the plate. Punch the laugh track machine all the way to ten.

To contrast the stupid jokes and add an air of danger, the crimes were treated more realistically than usual for a sitcom. The real danger proved to be on the other channels—Holmes and YoYo lasted only three months opposite The Jeffersons and Emergency, two gigantic hits in '76.

ABC had high hopes for another 'robot that looked like a man' series—a drama called Futurecop [sic].

The pilot was shown as a special two-hour movie on March 25, 1977, starring John Amos and Ernest Borgnine as two big-city cops who team up with a mechanical partner (Michael Shannon).

The producers of that program were sued for plagiarism by noted science-fiction author Harlan Ellison. Ellison contended that the Futurecop screenplay was stolen from one of his teleplays, Brillo.

Brillo, which was written for ABC, was shown to an NBC executive. That guy then went over to Paramount and put together the Futurecop project and sold it back to the same guys at ABC who rejected Brillo. Ellison prevailed in court.

[irlnautica]

For my money, I will say I think any attempt to consider the moral purity or messaging of franchise media is kind of inevitably going to lead you into The Ditch. Like, is all Star Wars media inherently tainted because of the racist-ass "sand people"? Is Star Trek always evil because of Gene Roddenberry being a misogynistic abuser? I think you're kind of always going to end up either reading only independent, creator-owned stuff (which, you know, respect to you if you do that) or accepting that on some level what you're engaging with is the result of a process more than anything else.

I think most Transformers stories have some Problematic Stuff in them, because they're mostly written by people in positions of privilege who aren't thinking that hard - but I think that's usually not enough to consider them "cancelled", not worth thinking about. Like, that bit from the Transformers Animated pitch document is genuinely disgusting, but also I will say that to my memory none of that made it into the show in the slightest. (Not to say Animated isn't flawed - it's shockingly misogynistic sometimes, and its two main human characters are people of colour played by white VAs, one of whom is doing an Indian Voice.) Meanwhile, the one cited for Cyberverse is about... the tie-in video game, written by a guy who didn't work on the show?

(also: lmao at citing mscott's starscream as a better version of megatron's redemption arc, when the conclusion to his arc was "you wouldn't be evil if you hadn't been born a minority".)

When you're dealing with a corporate franchise like this, about the best you can hope for is "someone working on it had some ideas of their own and tried to get them across". My three favourite pieces of Transformers media - John Barber's Robots in Disguise/Optimus Prime comics, the Beast Machines TV show, and Jim Sorenson's Beast Wars: Uprising prose stories, are certainly all flawed, but they all have a sense of "ownership" to them, they all have ideas they want to explore and convey, they all have central themes even if they aren't always perfectly translated to the page or screen.

tl;dr I think "Should I Be Enjoying This" is kind of a question that inherently leads you into The Ditch, which is something to avoid.

So why did Transformers One bomb?

Look, I'm just going to say it right off the bat: no, Transformers One is not the best Transformers movie of all time. I am (gritting my teeth) very happy for every single Transformers fan except me, who all seem to have liked it, and most of whom seem to have loved it. I agree that, as a production, it meets some baseline level of technical competence. It's a perfectly fine movie.

It's also the worst-performing Transformers movie Paramount has ever made.

Hopefully, now that its theatrical run has unceremoniously ended, people aren't going to try to rip me to shreds for theoretically threatening this multi-million-dollar film's box office revenue some miniscule amount by sharing a few teensy weensy complaints with my fifty followers.

Because I do just have a few little nitpicks, which I've tried my best to communicate, over the next 17,000 words of this post.

If you're not a Transformers fan, sorry, this essay is mostly written with the assumption that you've seen Transformers One. However, it might still be of some interest as a window into the current state of the franchise. I've written a basic plot summary of the movie to bring you up to speed, in that case. Because Transformers One purports to be the perfect introduction to the story, no homework needed, I've also done you the courtesy of elucidating background context as needed—think of this less as a review, and more as a history lesson, or maybe a "lore explained" YouTube video. After all, that's pretty much all that Transformers One is.

(And if farcically long posts aren't really your thing, you might prefer to listen to the special episode of Our Worlds are in Danger where my pals and I chatted about the film. Many of the hottest takes and silliest bits in this essay are shamelessly stolen from Jo and Umar.)

We've been waiting for Transformers One for a very long time. It's the first animated Transformers film to get a theatrical release since The Transformers: The Movie came out in 1986. It first entered development around a decade ago. Many fandom members I know online got to see it as far back as June. Its US premiere was in September; those of us in the UK had to wait a full extra month before seeing it, for no clear reason. This is a film which purports to show, in broad strokes, for the first time on the big screen, the origin of the Transformers: where they come from, who they are, and why they're fighting.

By the end of its runtime, Transformers One does not actually answer these questions. Don't get me wrong, it takes great pains trying to answer a lot of different, related questions—just ones which nobody was really asking in the first place: What does the word "Autobots" mean, if not "automobile robots"? What does the word "Decepticons" mean, if they're not actually deceitful? Why is he called "Optimus Prime"? Why is he called "Megatron"? If they were friends, why did they fall out? Why does Starscream sound Like That? Where does Energon come from? If "Prime" is a title, what were the other Primes like? How do Transformers transform?

Writer Eric Pearson, coming onto the project as an outsider to Transformers, describes having to go to Hasbro to ask these kinds of questions:

they had a script that outlined the story that they wanted to tell. I knew Optimus Prime and Megatron and I knew Bumblebee as well, or B. I had to ask about some of the other deeper ones, the mythology, “what exactly is the Matrix of Leadership?” Stuff like that.

See, Hasbro does in fact have the answers written down somewhere. The story as I understand it goes something like this. During the wild west of the '80s and '90s, Transformers "canon" was largely a by-the-seat-of-your-pants consensus-based affair between the freelance writers and copywriters the toy company would bring on to advertise their toys. That changed around the turn of the millennium, when late later-CEO Brian Goldner saw how Hasbro's licensed IP lines (such as Star Wars) were more financially successful and realised they could make more money by aggressively promoting their own in-house IP, which they didn't have to pay licensing fees for. (For the curious, a similar thought process at rival toy company Lego was what led to their creation of BIONICLE.)

The guy basically singlehandedly managing the Transformers brand at the time, Aaron Archer, eventually set to reconciling all the self-contradictory lore surrounding Transformers, an endeavour which dovetailed into the creation of the HasLab internal think-tank (best known for Battleship, the 2012 store-brand Michael Bay knockoff which was a failure critically and commercially but not in my heart) and ultimately the creation of the so-called "Binder of Revelation", an internal story bible which cost over $250,000 to produce and has strongly influenced nigh on every piece of Transformers media released since, but which we hadn't actually seen until it got leaked a week ago. As it turns out, the document itself (compiled mostly by marketers and toy designers) is patently useless to any writer: it's a typo-ridden internally-inconsistent wishy-washy mess that mostly describes the characters in terms of a made-up form of Transformers astrology that has otherwise never seen the light of day.

So although the Binder is the baseline story bible for most modern Transformers media, its influence isn't direct per se; it's more accurate to describe it as being an elaborate game of telephone between high-profile cartoons, comics, and other internal documents, with the Binder itself apparently just sitting in a drawer somewhere at Hasbro; Eric Pearson says that he never received a "binder", with the "script" he mentions either being the earlier draft from Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (the guys who originally pitched the story), or some other unseen internal document. Director Josh Cooley, however, definitely seems to have been physically handed the Binder or its mass-market adaptation:

I knew that there was a lot of origin to be told, and when I first started, [Hasbro] gave me the Transformers Bible. I could not believe how big it was. I was like, "This is way more than I ever anticipated."

When trailers first dropped for Transformers One, a lot of my friends who are savvy were immediately like: "Oh, this is a weirdly faithful adaptation of the Binder of Revelation, huh."

I. The One True Origin of the Transformers

Half of the people reading this are Transformers fans, and half of you literally could not give less of a shit about Transformers, so if you're in the 'former group (so to speak), you'll just have to bear with me while I bring the rest of us up to speed.

Before the Transformers' civil war begins, Cybertron is being oppressed by the Quintessons. The Quintessons are a race of five-faced aliens (as in, not Transformers), who execute everyone they come across, first introduced in The Transformers: The Movie, presiding over a kangaroo court on a castaway world. In the followup cartoon five-parter "Five Faces of Darkness", writer Flint Dille established that, gasp, they were actually the original creators of the Transformers! But basically nobody else at the time was particularly compelled by this idea, it seems, with most fans preferring the more mythological origin story conceived by Bri'ish writer Simon Furman for the Marvel comics. I think people kind of just didn't like to think of the Transformers as being robots—mass-produced, a fabrication, programmed—as opposed to an alien race of thinking, feeling beings like us. But because the cartoon was important to many kids, a lot of early-2000s media tried to reconcile the cartoon and comic origin stories by stating that the Quintessons didn't actually create the Transformers; rather, they simply colonised the planet early in its history and pretended to be the Transformers' creators, until the truth came out and they got kicked offworld. This is how the Binder of Revelation ultimately paid lip service to the Quintessons. In Transformers One, the Quintessons are just sort of here, they're these evil aliens secretly skimming Energon from its miners, they don't speak English (or whichever language the film was dubbed into in your market region), they're just these nasty societal parasites.

Energon is Transformers fuel. In the original cartoon, it was these glowing pink cubes the Decepticons were always trying to produce using harebrained Saturday-morning-cartoon energy-stealing devices. There was a Cold War going on, America had just been through an "energy crisis", maybe you're old enough to remember any of that. Transformers are these big, complicated machines, so I guess the idea is they need this hyper-compressed superfuel to run off, and their homeworld has run out. By the time of the Binder of Revelation, the concept had been telephoned to the point where Energon is like the lifeblood of Primus or some shit.

Primus is the Transformers God—but not the kind of God you have "faith" in, rather this actual guy whose existence is objectively known in various ways. He transforms into a planet, that's kind of cool, right? Where does Primus come from? Look, it doesn't matter, he's like, the God of Creation, he was there at the start of time. He created all of the Transformers. All the other species in the galaxy, though, they evolved naturally thanks to "science". Actually wait, didn't that Quintus Prime guy go around the universe seeding all the planets with different kinds of Cybertronian life? That's why they're called Quintessons. See, now you know. Who's Quintus Prime?

Okay, so the Thirteen Original Transformers, or the Primes, are the thirteen original Transformers created by Primus. Most of them correspond to different kinds of Transformer: Nexus Prime is the god of Transformers who can combine, Onyx Prime is the god of Transformers who turn into animals, Micronus Prime is the god of Transformers who are small, and Solus Prime is the god of Transformers who are women. You might remember the Primes from Revenge of the Fallen, although there were only seven of them there for whatever reason.

Honestly, The Fallen was the only one who mattered for a long time. The whole reason there's thirteen of them is because thirteen is kind of an unlucky number, right? Twelve would've been fine. But throw in a thirteenth guy, and he betrays everyone, he's this fucked up evil guy. In the Binder of Revelation, though, the Thirteenth Prime is his own special guy shrouded in mystery, because they kind of liked the idea that Optimus Prime would secretly turn out to have been the Thirteenth Prime all along, and he just forgot or something, because that means he has the divine right of Primes. In IDW's 2010s comic-book reboot, the Thirteenth Prime was called "The Arisen"—in reference to that one line in The Transformers: The Movie, "Arise, Rodimus Prime!" (this margin is too narrow to explain who Rodimus Prime is). Towards the end of his run, writer John Barber did some actually interesting stuff with the concept, playing with the ambiguity over whether-or-not Optimus Prime was actually the chosen one.

All of Optimus Prime's immediate predecessors as Autobot leaders, Sentinel Prime, Zeta Prime, the lineage seen in "Five Faces of Darkness"... they're all false Primes. They're Primes in name only. In fact, IDW had a whole procession of these cartoonishly evil dictators thanks to a few continuity errors leading to the addition of a couple of extra narratively-redundant fuckers. Transformers One tries to simplify it slightly by just saying that Zeta Prime was one of the Primes for real—occupying that thirteenth "free space"—and it was just Sentinel Prime who was only a normal Transformer pretending to be a Prime, then Optimus Prime who's a real boy.

But if he's not a Prime from the start, Optimus Prime needs another name in the meantime. In the '80s cartoon episode "War Dawn", before he was called Optimus Prime, he was called "Orion Pax". Have you noticed that Optimus Prime is kind of an odd-one-out amongst all the straightup-English-word names like "Bumblebee" and "Ratchet" and "Jazz"? That's because his name was one of a tiny handful from very early in the franchise's development, before writer Bob Budiansky came onboard and came up with identities for the vast majority of the toys. Practically everyone Bob Budiansky named is called like, "Bolts" or some shit, long before the characters even know of Earth, which has always just been a contrivance of the setting you're not supposed to think about.

Presumably to create a parallel with Orion Pax's transformation into Optimus Prime, someone at Hasbro in the 2010s came up with a new name for the bot who would become Megatron: "D-16". In real-world terms, this was nothing more than a dorky reference to the Megatron toy's original Japanese release being number 16 in the line ("D" stands for "Destron", which is what they call Decepticons in Japan). But in-universe, the name "D-16" was drawn from the sector of the mine where he worked. I don't get the impression it was originally intended to be part of a broader pattern.

Which is why I'm baffled as to what the hell the reasoning was behind Bumblebee's pre-Earth name, "B-127". There's this bizarre situation in the Bumblebee film, where the name "B-127" first cropped up, where literally every other bot gets a normal cool name with personality like "Cliffjumper" or "Dropkick" except for Bumblebee, who is stuck with this clunky sci-fi name until he makes friends with a human teenager on Earth and she gives him the name Bumblebee. I guess I don't find it confusing that the writers would (correctly) realise it's a bit weird for Bumblebee to be called Bumblebee on an alien planet where bumblebees don't exist. What I find confusing is that they didn't extend that logic to any other character.

So despite everything else in the franchise's direction pointing away from "robot" and towards "alien", Transformers One ends up with this ridiculous situation where two of the most important guys are, for practically the whole movie, simply referred to as "Dee" and "Bee", I guess because the writers correctly realised the numbers sound fucking stupid.

And if you squint, "Elita-1" sorta fits this naming scheme. But the great irony of it is that the very same cartoon episode which coined "Orion Pax" simultaneously established that Elita-1 also used to go by a different name: "Ariel"! Like the Little Mermaid. Y'know, because an "aerial" is a type of electrical component- oh, forget it.

By the time the script made it into Eric Pearson's hands, it's obvious that he simply was not thinking about it that deeply. He describes the genesis of a scene where Bumblebee introduces his imaginary friends, "A-atron, EP 5-0-8, and Steve." A-atron was impov'd by Keegan-Michael Key as a reference to one of his own skits on Key & Peele. Steve ("He's foreign.") was literally just because Pearson thought it would be funny. It's true that Steve is an inherently funny name, and I guess if you're struggling to come up with jokes of your own, it can be handy to fall back on something which is inherently funny.

And again, our silly answers to these silly questions beget yet more questions. If he started out as "D-16", then where did the name "Megatron" come from? And if all the Primes have epic made-up fantasy names, then surely that one guy can't just be called "The Fallen", right? That's not a name, that's an epithet. Unfortunately, someone at Hasbro had the bright idea to answer both these questions at once: The Fallen's real name was "Megatronus". Later, for consistency, they threw on the title, and we get "Megatronus Prime", which sounds like what a thirteen-year-old on deviantART in 2014 would call their Steven Universe fusion of Megatron and Optimus Prime. So you see, Megatron actually named himself after Megatronus Prime, famously the most evil of the Primes. In Transformers One, this is changed slightly so Megatronus is merely the strongest of the Primes, as part of its overall effort to make Megatron not look completely insane.

Which, it must be said, is a tall order. Better stories have tried and failed. Back in 2007, Scottish writer Eric Holmes came up with Megatron Origin, a perfectly-fine comic miniseries which drew heavily from the miners' strikes that took place in the UK from 1984-1985, coinciding with the inception of the Transformers franchise. In that comic, Megatron is a lowly miner who, through a series of chance events, winds up at the head of a dangerous political revolutionary movement.

For some reason—I guess because nobody had ever tried to make Megatron anything other than a bloodthirsty cackling madman before—this take on Megatron as a guy who rose up against a corrupt system became the defining interpretation of the character, copy/pasted pretty much wholesale into the Binder of Revelation. Orion Pax also opposes the system, and bonds with Megatron over it, but they disagree on how to fix it: Pax believes in peaceful reform, Megatron just loves to kill. In Transformers One, the problem everyone has with Megatron is basically "whoa, this guy's a little TOO angry!" and there's a point towards the end of the film where Megatron suddenly starts jonesing to kill literally anyone who stands in his way, because he's irrationally angry.

The core problem here—and it's kind of the Magneto problem, the Killmonger problem, whatever better-known example you care to insert here—is that these guys all fundamentally exist just to be a big villain who loves to kill people and who ultimately gets defeated, but the kids who grew up on this stuff in the '80s are now adults who are no longer satisfied with cardboard cutout villains. People like a complex villain, they like a villain who has a point. They like to root for both sides. And in fact, it's easier to sell more toys to people who are rooting for both sides, if your villain is just another kind of hero. But you don't really need to take the same effort with the good guys: they're good by design, righteous by nature. They don't need to stand for something, they just need to stand against the guy whose whole thing is that he loves to kill people.

But again, we're starting from a place where the evil faction—who half the planet will ultimately align themselves with—are literally called "Decepticons". It's a name you'd only ever call yourself ironically, maybe reclaiming it from your enemies. In this film, there's some tortured logic that implies they're called Decepticons because they were deceived by Sentinel Prime. Like if you met a gang of guys who call themselves "The Robbers", but it turns out to be because they got robbed one time, and they actually have zero intention of stealing from anyone.

The Autobots are easier, of course. "Auto" is a prefix that just means, like, the self, or whatever. And the most agreeably American ideal of all is selfishness the power of the individual, the freedom to seize one's own destiny. Prime's original '80s motto, "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," is bastardised in Transformers One into the slightly less rolls-out-off-the-tongue "Freedom and autonomy are the rights of all sentient beings," because (I can only assume) they forgot to work the word "autonomy" earlier into the script. If they ever greenlit Transformers Three, I suppose the motto would have ended up as something like "Freedom, autonomy, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope are the rights of all sentient beings." Even though bodily autonomy is one of the most salient motifs present in the film—all but referred to by name—I suppose the filmmakers were worried that you might think, when Prime says "freedom", that he actually means something completely different. So now you see! "Autobots" is actually the descriptive name of a political movement which believes in obviously good things. Like "Moms for Liberty".

Okay, so the cannier among you have probably spotted the mean rhetorical trick I'm pulling with this encyclopedia-entry-ass introduction. By sarcastically relitigating all the storytelling choices I dislike from the last 20 years of Transformers lore, I can build up a negative association with Transformers One without even reviewing the movie itself! On a subtextual level, I'm deliberately misattributing these bad ideas to the filmmakers, conveniently ignoring the mountains of evidence to suggest that they were just trying to make the best of whatever Hasbro handed them from on high. If anything—you might think—the filmmakers deserve even more credit, for spinning this shite into something even remotely good on the big screen.

Like, you'd be wrong, but I can see why you might think that.

II. The Spider-Verse of Transformers

Okay, I can see that I've spat in your soup. I'm sorry. There are lots of good bits in Transformers One. I can even think of one or two of them off the top of my head, without really racking my brains.

Maybe halfway through the film, there is one specific moment where the story suddenly promises to get good. You can pinpoint it down to the word, down to the frame even. Our heroes have just discovered that their planet's leader, Sentinel Prime, is a complete fraud who's been secretly exploiting them ever since they were born—and worse, castrated them by removing their transformation cogs. They are all very cross about this. Orion Pax expresses that he wants to come up with a plan to expose Sentinel Prime. Megatron is too angry to listen. Orion Pax asks, "Don't you want to stop him?" And Megatron replies, "No, I want to KILL him!" And there's like, a little tint of red creeping into the glow of his eyes.

Whoa. Chills. Up to this point in the film, Megatron has been kind of surly at times, but he's otherwise a generic kids' movie protagonist. He's often chipper. He makes quips. He has this banter with Orion Pax where he's always complaining. It's literally that one "Optimist Prime"/"Negatron" comic, committed to film. Like I'm not even being facetious, one of the film's few obligatory "emotional moments" has Elita-1 sit Orion Pax down and say, "You know what I love about you? You always see the bright side. Like you're some kind of OPTIMIST or something." And then later completely unrelatedly God gives him the mandate of heaven and says "ARISE, OPTIMUS PRIME!" Y'see, as originally conceived, "Optimus" is the word "Optimum" if it was a name, which is why people sometimes localise his name as "Best #1". But it's genuinely kind of cute to reverse-engineer the etymology as coming from "optimist", I guess. Like, it's stupid, but it's cute.

Argh, I got distracted with naming minutia again! Entirely my bad. That's the last time, I promise. Where was I? Right, we'd just found out that Megatron is kind of scary. Brian Tyree Henry's line delivery as he growls "KILL" is his crowning achievement in this film.

Where Optimus Prime's character arc in this movie sees him change from a funny, rebellious spirit to a complete personality vacuum, Megatron's character arc is kind of the opposite. When we're first introduced to him, it's weirdly hard to get a handle on who he is. He's a fanboy for Megatronus, the strongest and most morally-unremarkable of the Primes. He looks up to Sentinel Prime. He likes sports. He doesn't like breaking the rules. In fact, we get the sense that, were it not for his friendship with Orion Pax, he would be literally indistinguishable from the legion of silent crowd-filling background characters he works with. But the moment he starts to become Megatron, it's like everything starts to click. Gears catch, where once they ground and idled. There is something in this guy that was made to fight, made to kill, made to rule. It's sick.

And the underlying tension in his friendship with Optimus suddenly snaps into focus. Megatron is mad at Sentinel Prime, but Sentinel Prime isn't there, he's somewhere else, far below... and he can't help but turn that anger on the next closest thing to an authority figure he has in his life, which is his peer-pressuring bestie, Orion Pax. There is a part of Megatron that wishes he'd never learned the truth, and he blames Orion Pax for his cursed knowledge, for constantly leading them into predicaments on his stupid flights of fancy. Now that he knows, he can't go back to how he was. He can't stop thinking about it.

I'll be honest, it rules. Obviously it rules. It's complicated and toxic and darker than this movie was marketed to be. In interview, Josh Cooley describes the draft of the script he was presented with when he joined the project as having been far more jokey, light-hearted, glib—and it seems we can credit him for saying "Look, this ain't right, the minute the credits roll these guys are going to be at civil war for millions of years."

So, they started talking about it in — what did you say, 2015? I came on board in 2020, and when I came on board there was the first draft of the script. So I don't think they'd been working on it that entire time, but they'd been thinking about it, for sure. And the script that I read was a little more comical? But it was clear that that wasn't the right tone for this film specifically, because we know there's gonna be a war, civil war on Cybertron, you can't have everybody making jokes and then all of a sudden there's a war. So, um, the stakes were really important for this film. And because our characters at the beginning are a little naive, and just on the younger side, not as experienced, it allowed more freedom for them to be a little looser and have fun really getting to know these characters. But once they realize something's going on and things are getting real, it needs to get real.

Cooley also describes his "in" on the film as being the brotherly relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron (they're not literally brothers in this film, though they have been in the past), which perhaps explains why Megatron and Optimus Prime get to be characters, instead of just like, guys who are there.

That was always the goal from the beginning and what got me on board. It was this relationship between these two characters that was very human and brotherly. I thought about my relationship with my brother and how I could bring that in. It’s not like we’re enemies, but we grew up together and then went down our different paths, but we’re still brotherly. I became a writer-director and live in a fantasy land, and he became a homicide detective who deals with reality, so we’re two very different mindsets. I have always been fascinated by the idea of two people who come from the same place but end up in different ones. From the very beginning, I was like, ‘That’s something I can relate to.’

Anyway, things I liked, what else. There's that joke at the very start, after the excruciating lore powerpoint, where Orion Pax does a fake-out like he's going to transform, the music briefly swells, and then it just cuts to him legging it down the corridor. In a similar vein, I liked the idea behind the Iacon 5000, where Orion Pax has them run in the race. I felt like the execution of the race left a bit to be desired—the only other participant who matters is Darkwing—but it's still honestly the best big action setpiece in the film. There's also that bit at the end where Megatron and Optimus Prime are both changing into their final forms simultaneously, and it's basically a Homestuck Flash (what would that be, "[S] OPTIMUS PRIME. ARISE."?), so obviously I liked that. Oh, and I really liked the environment design where the planet's landscape is constantly transforming, that's brand-new, someone had an Idea there, and it creates visual interest during the initial Energon-mining scene... even if I wished it had actually paid off in a more meaningful way than "the planet's crust opens as Prime falls to get the Matrix"—like, someone really should've gotten eaten by the planet, that's a cracking Disney death scene and they left it on the table! I also liked getting to see my blorbo, Vector Prime, on the big screen.

I think, as a Transformers fan who's had to sit through a lot of really quite sexist, racist, and plain bad films, you're well within your rights to come out of this one ready to give it a fucking Oscar. You should be ecstatic! It has none of those pesky humans clogging up the frame. It has plenty of robot action. It has jokes which- well I struggle to call many of them "funny", but they're at least trying to be funny in a different way to Michael Bay's films. The film is obviously a massive love letter to... honestly every part of Transformers except the live-action movies. It is an incredibly faithful and earnest adaptation of all the lore and iconography that has randomly accumulated the way it has over the last forty years of bullshit.

My main point of contention, then, is with the overriding sentiment I'm seeing from pretty much everyone else in the fandom: that this is not just the best Transformers movie, but that it's a great animated movie period, that it does for Transformers what Into the Spider-Verse did for Spider-Man, what The Last Wish did for Puss in Boots, and what Mutant Mayhem did for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That, in effect, this film will make you "get it". That it's better-looking, better-written, and more meaningful than a silly toy commercial has any right to be.

I think you can definitely see some loose influence from Spider-Verse in the overall look of the film—particularly in its color grading, and in the design of its main setting, the underground city of Iacon, where the upside-down skyscrapers hanging from the ceiling evoke the iconic "falling upwards" shot from Spider-Verse. Like The Last Wish, it's an animated franchise film that spent much longer than you'd think in development, only for the release of Into the Spider-Verse to have an immediate impact on its visual style... without actually affecting the basic story to the same extent. Both Transformers One and The Last Wish, in many ways, feel like stories concocted using an older formula; in particular, Transformers One bears startling similarities to a similar toy-franchise-prequel, BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, which was released twenty years ago! By contrast, Mutant Mayhem—which had a much shorter development period—is a direct reaction to Spider-Verse in both aesthetic and narrative, and it has a much more distinctive creative direction as a result.

If you look at how all these titles have performed in cinemas, I think you can make a pretty strong case that audiences are perfectly willing to go out and see this kind of flick. A glance at Wikipedia tells me that Mutant Mayhem, The Bad Guys, and The Last Wish grossed double, triple, and quadruple their budgets respectively. In terms of the pre-existing cultural cachet they were banking on, we're talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a children's book series I'd never heard of, and fucking Puss in Boots. You cannot tell me that Transformers, as a brand, is on the same level as any of these properties. Meanwhile, Transformers One hardly broke even, while The Wild Robot—another DreamWorks film based on a children's book I've never heard of, which it ended up competing with in theatres—grosses three times its budget. My friends who've seen The Wild Robot say it made them cry.

Face it: Transformers One has not lit the world on fire. I've seen a lot of people cope with this by suggesting that it's to do with the film's staggered release, or even by claiming that the film's marketing was somehow misleading. I'll be honest, upon seeing it, it did not strike me as being at all dissimilar to the trailers. You can maybe say that the trailers undersold the depth of Orion Pax's and Megatron's relationship—which is its best aspect—but honestly, I think if they'd taken a lot of those scenes out of context and put them in early teasers, audiences would've laughed it out of theatres. Like, c'mon, it's toy robots, stop pretending it's Shakespeare. And otherwise, what you see is what you get; it's exactly what it says on the tin.

I wonder how many Transformers fans, on some level, have noticed that even when we're supposedly "eating good", and watching "peak cinema", our films just aren't as good as everyone else's. They're something you'll enjoy if you're already highly predisposed to enjoy them. But otherwise, they're not turning heads. They're not as funny, or as heartfelt, or as complex, or as exciting, or as charming, or as memorable, or as beautiful as these other films. Unlike with Spider-Verse, there's no word-of-mouth amongst normal people to say that this is a film worth seeing.

What I perceive in studios hoping to recreate the flash-in-the-pan success of Spider-Verse is a misunderstanding of what made people go crazy for that movie in the first place. Yes, it changed our conception of what an 3D-animated film could look like. Yes, the multiverse is very cool and all that. Yes, it had a huge IP attached to it. But on a more fundamental level, that movie has a fantastic story underpinning it. The script is razor-sharp. The story is beautifully complex. The vision of New York City it presents is a living, breathing place, populated by real people. It has the kind of craft to it that can only come from truly obsessive creators cultivating an absolutely miserable professional environment for a legion of passionate animators.

In interview, Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura actually spoke surprisingly candidly about his view on crunch:

I probably shouldn't answer this question, because I'm not exactly PC on my answer. I think the nature of filmmaking is, we're really lucky to work in a business that's about passion. Passion doesn't fit really well into a timeline, so inevitably you come to a crunch time. It's just true in the live action, it's true in every movie, and authors always tell me that about when they're writing their books — it's the same thing happens to them! There's something about the creative process that's not — it's unruly. So, I think if you're enjoying it, you need to recognize that. Like, you know, I don't wanna abuse anybody, and y'know — if you get into that period where people have to really work too hard, you gotta help them in that situation, then. 'Cause it's gonna come. It does on every movie. I've never seen it not come, no matter how well you plan, et cetera. 'Cause it's not a science what we're doing at all, and there's all these discoveries that happen near the end, which makes you go "oh, let's do some more, come on!". We discovered that on this movie, where we're calling ILM going "we've got a few ideas, you know, do you have enough man-hours?". [...] Like, you gotta be conscious of it — in live-action, for instance, there are some studios that are so cheap that when you're on — sort of medium location-distance and you're shooting 'til midnight, they don't pay for a hotel room. It's like, well, no-no-no, you pay for a hotel room. You protect the people.

According to everyone who worked on Transformers One, everyone who worked on Transformers One was very passionate about it. But there are parts of this film where I think you can say, pretty objectively, that it's falling short of its intended effect. So I guess maybe they weren't that passionate. I'm not saying that to be mean! It's just... isn't that better than the alternative—that this was the best they could do?

III. I did not care for The Godfather

At one point in the film, the gang's magic map leads them to a scary cave, which looks like this:

Bumblebee fills the dead air by saying, "A cave, with teeth. Nothing scary about that!" The joke here is that this is a cave that looks like a mouth. But as depicted, it's a cave that looks like a mouth that doesn't look like a cave! I get that this is an alien planet, but stalactites don't grow that way on Earth, so when you see the cave onscreen, your gut reaction isn't "oh my, what a frightening cave!". No, this is a cave that makes you say, "that's not a cave, that's some kind of alien monster".

(It's not like "cave turns out to be a monster" would in any way be a fresh twist. In BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui, there's a bit where a character swims into a scary cave, and it turns out to be the mouth of a massive sea serpent. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Millennium Falcon briefly hides in an asteroid tunnel which turns out to be a giant space worm. So I'm definitely not saying Transformers One would've been a better film if it had used this stock trope.)

Then once the heroes go inside, we're whisked off to an entirely different set of concept artwork, for this lush organic underground paradise. There's no danger there. The cave itself is reduced to a strange little footnote. Maybe it's only in the story because a concept artist drew it before they'd worked out the finer points of the narrative, and Keegan-Michael Key just ended up ad-libbing the "teeth!" line when he was told to vamp for a few seconds. Or maybe the teeth gag was fully written into the script from the start, and the environment artists just interpreted it way too literally.

Like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to start off on the wrong foot here by harping on about the cave thing—it's not a perfect example anyway—but to me it's a microcosm for my frustration towards what I perceive to be a lack of creative vision in this film. So much of the film feels like it's not there to be entertaining, or meaningful, or narratively load-bearing... it's just obligatory, something they threw in for the sake of having anything at all. It's colors and sounds. When you see the spiky shape onscreen, you think, "ooh, this film was pretty bouba earlier, but now it's more kiki!" They get the comedian to improvise a few one-liners while the characters walk from place to place. And it's like, yes, this is a film for children. Of course the heroes have an adventure map with a big red X on it. In many respects this is a glorified episode of Pocoyo, or the modern equivalent, which I guess is "Baby Shark | Animal Songs For Children".

Nowhere is this sense of "we are obliged to put this in the movie" felt more strongly than in its supporting cast. When you look closely, you notice that Bumblebee and Elita-1—placed prominently in the film's marketing and being technically present for much of its runtime—don't actually do anything of narrative significance. They don't make choices that impact the story; they're just there, and it would not take much rewriting to excise them entirely, so it's just Orion Pax and Megatron on their little adventure. In fact, I'll just come out and say it: I think Transformers One would have been a better movie if Bumblebee and Elita-1 were not in it.

It helps that, from a Doylist perspective, the motivations for their inclusion are perfectly transparent. Firstly, think of the merchandise! Secondly, in Bumblebee's case, it's fucking Bumblebee, he's the whole reason half the kids will be watching, you can't not have him in there. Whenever Bumblebee's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking, "where's Bumblebee?" Also, I think the creative team felt that they could use Bumblebee tactically to balance some of the darkness in the story.

In the G1 cartoon, Bumblebee just has the default Autobot personality—good-natured, a little sarcastic—with the dial turned a little more towards friendliness. There's this iconic anecdote from the production that cartoon, where writer David Wise found himself in exactly the same situation Transformers writers are finding themselves in forty years later: he was told to write a story about something called "Vector Sigma", and he had no fucking clue what Vector Sigma was supposed to be. So he asked story editor Bryce Malek, who also had no fucking idea. Malek in turn asked Hasbro, and was told that Vector Sigma was "the computer that gave all the Transformers personalities". Upon hearing this, Malek said, "Well, it didn't do a very good job, did it!" Vector Sigma, in case you missed it, does actually appear in Transformers One, as the polygonal shape that transitions into the Matrix of Leadership in the opening powerpoint; I guess they're one and the same now. Some things never change: in Michael Bay's Transformers movies, there is again just a single default personality that every single Autobot shares, a braggadacious action-hero facade over genuine bloodthirst. Who can forget that iconic moment in Revenge of the Fallen where Bumblebee rips out Ravage's spine in grisly slow-mo?

Aside from the fact that he's small and yellow, Bumblebee in Transformers One bears very resemblance to any incarnation of the character kids might be accustomed to. Instead, he occupies a stock comic-relief archetype, he's a zany guy who goes "Well, that just happened!" If anything, his one joke in the third act—wanton murder—reads like it could maybe be a reference to his many Mortal Kombat fatalities in Bay's films. Beginning in 2007's Transformers Animated, Bumblebee has sometimes possessed deployable "stingers" that flip out from his hands, as a fun action feature for toys. Clearly someone on Transformers One saw this and thought it was the funniest fucking thing that Bumblebee has "knife hands", because the character spends the third act of the movie just shouting "knife hands!" and cutting people in half like a medieval terror.

(In the UK, Bumblebee's lines were re-recorded at the last minute so he says "sword hands" instead. This is because in the UK, we generally aren't able to kill each other using guns, so it's knives that are the big armed-violence boogeyman. Everyone's always talking about how all the kids have knives. And look, I'm not someone to indulge in moral panic, but genuinely, when I look at Bumblebee chasing around people with knives, saying, "I'm gonna cut these guys, watch!", I'm like... what the fuck were they thinking when they wrote that?)

Frankly, whatever is going on with Bumblebee is just an entirely different movie to everything else that's happening. When Bee shanks his twelfth nameless lackey in a row, the movie's like, awww, you're sweet! But when Megatron tries to kill the one (1) evil dictator who's just fucking branded him, who's still lying to his face while his people continue to die to the guy's fuckin' honor guard, Optimus Prime is like, HELLO, HUMAN RESOURCES?

Bumblebee is solely here to be funny, but there's a point in the film where it needs to become a war story, and the best they can think to do with Bumblebee is to have him kill people but in like, a funny way.

As for Elita-1... look, to put it very bluntly, she is in this movie to be a woman. Transformers has had a long, long forty-year history of boys'-club exclusionism, if not outright misogyny, and each new series usually has a token female character, as a kind of fig-leaf for the fact that really, the only fucking thing Hasbro cares about is that the boys are buying the toys. Beginning in the 1986 movie, it was Arcee who got to be "the pink one" for many years of fiction—but not toys, y'see, when parents want to buy something for their beloved young lad, they don't buy "the pink one", no sir. In the 2010s, wow-cool-OC Windblade took over for a stint as leading lady, decked out in a commercially-non-threatening red color scheme. Recently, though, it's been Elita-1—Optimus Prime's girlfriend from the original '80s cartoon—who's been the go-to female character, and she's increasingly allowed to be pink.

There is a lot of love for these characters amongst creatives and fans alike, and especially in the last decade, female Transformers have been both more numerous and better-written than ever. Unfortunately Transformers One, which depicts Elita-1 as an arms-crossing career-obsessed buzzkill, whose arc sees her learn her place in deference to a less-competent man... well let's just say it struck me as a significant step back in this regard.

There's this great interview with Scarlett Johansson, voice of Elita-1, where she's trying to describe what makes her character interesting, and it's like she's drawing blood from a stone. She's like, "yeah, so Elita-1, I would say, she's on her own journey, because at the start of the film it's sort of like she's working at a big company, you know, and she wants to get a promotion, but then later on she learns that she can't, y'know, get a promotion". Look, it's not that Scarlett Johansson does a bad job—in fact, considering the material she's working with, she practically carries Elita-1 entirely on the back of her performance—it's just that I can't shake the impression that the filmmakers would rather pay Scarlett Johansson god knows how many thousands of dollars than try to think of a second actress that they know of.

As I've already complained, Transformers One has a pretty thin cast, but it effectively only has two other female characters who do anything. Airachnid is a secondary antagonist, Sentinel Prime's spymaster/enforcer, and it's clear that some concept artist really fucking popped off when designing her. She has eyes in the back of her head, and it's ten times creepier than that makes it sound. Her spiderlegs also create some visual interest during fight scenes. As a character, Airachnid has zero internality and is not interesting, but she is cool, so you'll get no complaints from me there.

The film's other other female character is Chromia, who wins the Iacon 5000 race at the last moment. She really comes out of nowhere to clinch it. It's funny, because the leaderboards show this one guy, Mirage, hovering near the top of the rankings for almost the whole sequence. And Chromia's character model really looks suspiciously like Mirage's. In fact, there's a different character who stands around in the background a couple of times who looks much more like Chromia. Funnily enough, that background character is even called Chromia in concept art! So if you connect the dots, it really seems that the "Chromia" who is the best racer on Cybertron was originally meant to be Mirage, a guy, until they switched the character's gender at the very last minute, and didn't bother changing the leaderboards to match.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that Mirage was the dark horse of Rise of the Beasts, and for some reason they felt like his depiction in Transformers One would've gotten in the way of their plans for the character somehow. It's plausible, I guess. The second, infinitely funnier option, is that at some point someone working on the movie realised that they only put two women in the film, scrambled to look through the feature to find a suitable character to gender-swap, only to discover to their horror that they'd forgotten to put in any characters whatsoever. Fuck it, the racer guy! He can be a girl. Diversity win, the fastest class traitor on Cybertron... is a woman!

In case you were wondering about the Transformers One toyline leaderboards, by my count, Orion Pax has ten new transforming toys currently announced or in stores, Bumblebee and Megatron have six each, Sentinel Prime has four, Alpha Trion has two, Elita-1 has two, Airachnid has one, Starscream has one, Wheeljack has one, and the Quintesson High Commander has one. In fact, one of Elita-1's toys—the collector-oriented high-quality Studio Series release—isn't scheduled for release until some undetermined point later next year, and she was entirely absent from leaked lists of upcoming releases, which to me smacks of "we realised last-minute that it would look really really bad if we didn't bother to release a good toy of the one woman in the film". Oh, and obviously, Chromia has no toys—but there is an "Iacon Race" three-pack consisting of Megatron, Orion Pax... and Mirage. Go figure.

The thing is, all of the stuff I'm grousing about here is pretty much standard fare for kids' films targeted more at boys. Hell, even The Lego Movie—which is basically the gold standard of toy commercials—gave supporting protagonist Wyldstyle a pretty similar arc to the one Elita-1 gets here, which was probably the weakest element of that film. Evidently conscious of this, Lord & Miller redeemed themselves by devoting the entirety of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part to deconstructing common narratives surrounding gender roles. I guess I just wish the young girls who presumably comprise some portion of Transformers One theatergoers could actually get anything out of Elita-1 as a character. Ah, what do I know, maybe it's still considered countercultural simply to depict a woman punching people.

Still, to give credit where it's due: Transformers One doesn't remotely touch the gender-essentialism prevalent in the Binder of Revelation, treating female Transformers no differently to their male counterparts in lore terms. Solus Prime is, it seems, just a Prime who happened to be a woman, rather than the mythological Eve after whom all women are patterned. There's a scene where our heroes are gifted the Transformation Cogs of the fallen Primes, and the Primes named thankfully bear no particular relation to the characters; in other words, Elita-1 isn't given Solus Prime's cog. As Alpha Trion puts it: "What defines a Transformer is not the cog in his chest, but the spark that resides in their core." Dude really remembered nonbinary people exist halfway through that sentence huh.

(Actually, the bigger mistake would've been with Megatron: if he was given Megatronus Prime's cog from the start, then this would've created the unfortunate implication that his descent into evil was only the result of Megatronus Prime's fucked up and evil cog, rather than a choice Megatron made of his own free will. The film instead has it the other way around: Megatron's radicalisation into a "might makes right" philosophy is what causes him to covet Megatronus Prime's transformation cog, to steal that power from Sentinel Prime, who stole the cogs of both Megatronus and Megatron in the first place. That's cool! This does create a bit of unfortunate narrative dissonance with Alpha Trion's words, alas, as it does seem like Megatronus Prime's cog really is more powerful than the others, because it gives both Sentinel Prime and Megatron a powerup.)

There's just something that I find so dreadfully mercenary about this movie's cast—honestly, everyone except Orion Pax, Megatron, and maybe Sentinel Prime. Take Darkwing, for example. Bro was clearly designed from the ground up to fill this stock character role of "bully who pushes our guys around and later gets his comeuppance". For a more interesting take on that exact same archetype, look no further than Todd Sureblade from Nimona, a bigoted knight who gets a whole damn character arc in the background, which directly complements that film's main themes.

Again, I'm not playing some kind of guessing game here, the authorial evidence is right there: Darkwing didn't even have a name until Hasbro designer Mark Maher was shown a picture of the character and asked, "If this was a Decepticon flyer, who would it be?" This is actually par for the course with ILM; most of their concept art is labelled with very basic descriptions, with the exact trademarks being picked in conjunction with Hasbro at a later point. Darkwing just stands out in Transformers One because he's the only recurring speaking character who's an OC in all but name (unless you count Bumblebee), he's the one guy who's been invented from scratch with total creative freedom, and he's boring as sin. It's like the filmmakers just couldn't conceive of a children's movie without that stock character—and they clearly had no idea what to do with him once they'd invented him, because he disappears entirely from the film at the start of the third act, when Orion Pax throws him into an arcade cabinet, which they have in the mines on Cybertron for some reason.

In a film with as painfully few named speaking characters as Transformers One, there's really no excuse for having this kind of one-dimensionality in their portrayals. Genuinely, I ask—who are Orion Pax and Megatron fighting to liberate? Jazz, one of the biggest personalities from the original G1 cartoon, who gets all of two boilerplate lines here? Cooley seems to think so:

As you’re designing them the background characters are almost like Lego pieces where you put different heads on different bodies just to fill in a crowd. But some of them would be brought forward and be painted specific colors so that it represents a character that I didn’t know was such a big deal. But there was stuff—like Jazz, for example, has a pretty big role. It was important to have a relationship with a character that we know gets to be saved.

To me, the idea that casual cinemagoers would be invested in any of the Transformers as characters is laughable. Michael Bay's characters are famous for being hateful non-entities. In terms of the films, Jazz is best remembered for dying at the end of the first one, seventeen years ago; he looks completely different here. The one breakout character in recent years—Mirage, as played by Pete Davidson in Rise of the Beasts—was, as I've already mentioned, written out so that the movie could reach its girl quota... not that he would've had any lines anyway.

And I just don't buy the idea that the complete dearth of compelling characterisation in this film is just an unfortunate side-effect of its clipped one-hour-thirty runtime—that, given even half an hour longer, the film would suddenly be crowded with rich portrayals of all your Transformers faves. Bumblebee and Elita-1, ostensibly two of the most important characters in the film, are not in this movie because the movie is interested in telling their stories. They are in this movie for the sake of being in this movie. It insists upon itself.

IV. No politics means no politics

In fact, putting aside merchandising considerations, Elita-1 and Bumblebee serve one very specific purpose in narrative terms. The trait Optimus Prime and Megatron have always had in common is that they are both leaders—and what is a leader, without anyone to lead? Without Bumblebee and Elita-1, you'd have this farcical situation where the only person Optimus Prime ever gets to boss around is Megatron, until the very end of the movie when God makes him king of all Cybertron. The High Guard, Starscream's gang of exiles, serve a similar narrative purpose for Megatron; they're a ready-made army who've just been sitting around waiting for him to show up and take charge.

Towards the end, the movie does actually take care to show both Orion Pax and Megatron rallying groups of Cybertronians: in Pax's case, he reveals the truth to his legion of interchangable miner friends, while Megatron riles up the High Guard mob. Again, there's a bit of that narrative sleight-of-hand, a bit of a thematic cop-out, where the question of "how do Optimus Prime and Megatron come to be leaders of their factions?" is answered only in the most literal possible interpretation. Yes, we technically see the exact chain of events that lead to this point—but both characters are portrayed as born leaders. We don't see them grow into the role, except physically. The moment Megatron decides he wants to rule, he's able to take charge. Likewise, Optimus Prime just gets divinely appointed by God. At a key point, Megatron loudly declares "I will never trust a so-called leader ever again", and the movie plays a fucking scare chord like this is supposed to be ominous. Like, oh no! Optimus Prime is a leader! And they're friends! Whatever will Megatron do when he finds out his friend, Optimus Prime, is a leader?

I don't think the movie has given any real thought to what a leader actually is. It seems to take a stance that power cannot be taken, i.e. through violent action, as Sentinel Prime and Megatron do. That one scene with Elita-1 suggests the most important trait for a leader to have, above and beyond any particular competency, is simply hope and optimism. What I just can't wrap my head around is the fact that the counterpoint the movie presents to Megatron, in the form of Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime, does not support a belief in collective action or basic democracy—rather, it's a boring sword-in-the-stone divine-right-of-kings fantasy.

Except I do have a theory for why the film is like this. Let's look again at that interview with Eric Pearson, who came onboard in the "late middle" of production:

One of the first things that I did was a big pass on Sentinel Prime. I just felt like he was too obviously telegraphing his wickedness in previous versions, and I felt like, “No, he’s a carnival barker.” He’s got to be a big salesman. He’s a bullshitter, honestly is what he is.

(Honestly, if this is Sentinel after a "big pass" to make his villainy more of a twist, I shudder to think what the earlier drafts were like.)

Now, let's see how WIRED introduces their interview with Josh Cooley, titled "Transformers One Isn't as Silly as It Looks":

He liked the script, which traces how Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from friends to enemies. But as the world went into lockdown as Covid-19 spread, Cooley found his story changing, if only slightly. Trump was still in office when Cooley started working on the film, and he was having meetings with the producers and they’d “start these meetings off on Zoom just going, like, ‘Holy crap what is going on in this world?’” he says. Ultimately, the infighting they were seeing between Democrats and Republicans in the same family became an undercurrent in the film’s friends-to-enemies storyline, “because that’s what Transformers is.”

So it's like, oh, this is a 2016 election thing. This is just that one election that broke everyone's brains. Of course this movie about a made-up political struggle on an alien planet being developed from 2015-2020 wouldn't be like, hey, you know what might fix our society's problems, is if we had an election. Of course the main villain is a "big salesman" "bullshitter" who says things like "The truth is what I make it!". Wow, guys, your film is so-o-o politically-conscious, and very pretty.

The fantasy is more or less that Donald Trump's army of reactionaries is marching on Washington to seize power through violent means, and on the way he drops Joe Biden into the Grand Canyon, but just before Joe hits the ground a giant fucking bald eagle swoops in to catch him and squawks, "God finds you worthy! Arise, President Biden!"

In our escapist little morality play, our best friend slash allegorical dad gets made king of the planet, and we all get jobs in the government. As in, one of the funniest lines in the movie is straightup Bumblebee exulting, "This is the greatest day of my life. I get to work for the government!" When Prime met Bumblebee—an hour ago—the dude was talking to imaginary friends, and honestly the only fucking skill he's demonstrated since then is cold-blooded murder. We have this dissonance in the storytelling, where it's mostly a story about four friends going on an adventure (are they even friends? Most of them hate each other!), but it's also a founding-fathers political origin story, which means there comes a point where our hero just suddenly starts bossing his friends around in a deep voice, and they're like, "Yes, sir!" It creates this unhinged situation where the "good" faction on Cybertron is ruled by the biblical chosen one and his nepotism buddies.

Per that quote from WIRED (or are they just putting words in Cooley's mouth? I can't help but notice they don't give an exact quote!), the film is ultimately sympathetic to the bad guys (the Republicans, I guess). It deliberately suggests that there is really nothing that should divide the Autobots and the Decepticons: their political goals, it claims, are identical, and they only disagree on the means by which to achieve them. The Decepticons, who are angry and hateful, have simply been misled by a power-hungry liar with charisma—first Sentinel, then Megatron—and so the tragedy is that they are artificially pushed into conflict with their fellow men, when really they should be uniting to stand against their common enemy, the foreigner illuminati trying to steal Cybertron's wealth.

Now, I know I've just handed you a get-out-of-jail-free card. My political allegory here is chock full of holes. What, are Sentinel Prime and Megatron both Donald Trump? Get a grip. Obviously any real-world commentary in Transformers One was only intended in the loosest sense imaginable: things like, "people should be free to change into whatever they want!" I'm being unfair, I'm reading too much into it, this is a cartoon movie for children, and if I want politics, I should start reading some fucking books. Also, come to mention it, my whole argument about that cave earlier really didn't hold water, and- I know, alright? I know.

V. Place / Place, Cybertron

I'm not mad at this toy commercial because its politics don't quite align with mine. I'm not mad at it for having a boring-ass supporting cast. I'm not mad at it for reheating a bunch of half-baked lore I didn't care for from the early 2010s. I've actually spent a lot of time mad about Transformers media that I've thought was bad. There's Transformers: Armada, where the English translators are fully asleep at the wheel and render even the most basic cartoon plots incomprehensible though constant mistranslations. There's Transformers: Micromasters, where two white guys wrote a downtrodden race of tiny Cybertronians who greet each other like "Wattup, my micro!". There's the recent series of Transformers: EarthSpark, where there's an episode that I can only describe as "the Wonka Experience but it's an episode of a children's cartoon", with a plotline that mostly revolves around our child heroes straightup robbing a Onceler-looking businessman of his most valuable possession. There's Transformers: Age of Extinction, with that one scene, and also the rest of that movie. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most Transformers fiction is some combination of bad, offensive, and offensively bad.

So even though I've just spent thousands of words whinging and moaning about how I didn't like Transformers One, the truth is that I had a perfectly nice time at the cinema. I got to go see it with five of my pals who love Transformers just as much as I do, and we had a blast. It is easily in the top 50% of all Transformers fiction.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I guess I've always given a lot of thought to what Transformers looks like from the outside. Maybe it's that I'm compelled to spend so much time and money on it, that it somehow compels me to vomit up these kinds of essays, and all I want is to be able to make it make sense to anyone in my life. It would be so, so nice if I could just sit down in the cinema with a friend or family member for a couple of hours, and at the end of it, they'd be able to walk out and say, "Okay, I guess I see what you get out of it." Rise of the Beasts was kind of that movie for me, but Rise of the Beasts is also the seventh instalment in a blockbuster franchise. It kind of takes for granted everything about Transformers.

It doesn't answer, "what the fuck is a Transformer anyway?"

For many years now, fans have noticed a marked aversion to using the word "transform" as a verb, or even as a noun. Optimus Prime no longer says, "Autobots, transform and roll out!", he just says, "Roll out!". Transformers no longer transform, they "convert". In fact, Transformers are no longer Transformers at all: they are "Transformers bots", the italics here serving to distinguish a registered trademark. This is because the worms in suits at Hasbro are worried that, if they continue to use the word "transform" by its dictionary definition—that is, to change—then rival toy companies will be able to make the case that anything that transforms can legally be described as a Transformer. It will become a generic trademark, like Velcro, or Band-Aid, or Dumpster.

Yet in Transformers One, "Transformers" is not just the noun by which the characters are referred to—rather, it's used in a descriptive sense to specifically mean "Cybertronians who can transform"! Characters are constantly talking about whether they can or can't transform. Prime gets to say his catchphrase in full. It's a miracle. Not only that, characters even get to say the word "kill" instead of "defeat" or "destroy".

Transformers One has a level of unrestricted creative freedom not seen since the 1986 animated film. This is a film unconstrained by location shooting, or licensing deals, or uncooperative actors; through the magic of CGI, for every single frame of its one-hour-thirty runtime, the filmmakers can put literally whatever they want on the screen. They were given the assignment, "Make an animated prequel set on Cybertron telling the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron", handed an estimated $147 million and a blank page, and told to go nuts. Like those born with transformation cogs, Transformers One had the power to become anything it wanted to be.

The 1986 animated film took that carte blanche to do whatever the fuck it wanted, and basically singlehandedly defined the direction of the franchise ever since. On a lore level, in terms of tone, I would say that Transformers owes practically everything to The Transformers: The Movie. Cartoons, comics, films, and video games have adapted every single one of its scenes countless times over. I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good film, or even that it's a particularly original film—much of it is ripped off from Star Wars—just that it took the franchise somewhere it hadn't gone before. It was looking to the future. As in, literally, it was set in 2005, at the time two decades into the future.

What gets me down about Transformers One is that—like most major franchise media released since The Force Awakens—all it can do is think about the past. Swathes of it are devoted to painstakingly recreating or setting up the various bits of iconography which have arbitrarily come to define the franchise. Even when it appears to be taking things in a new direction, it's not long before it course-corrects back into familiar territory: Steve Buscemi invents a surprisingly fresh take on Starscream's voice, and then Megatron half-strangles him to death, saddling him with a post-produced rasp to emulate Chris Latta's iconic performance from forty years ago.

The very title of the film, Transformers One, is an allusion to the line, "Till all are one," which originates in The Transformers: The Movie. In an early script for that '80s feature, it was actually "Till all life sparks are one", referring to a literal metaphysical process in that draft whereby one Transformer's life force could be passed on to another, presumably with the belief that they would all eventually be merged into a single afterlife. In the finalized story, it's just this kind of mystical phrase vaguely evoking concepts of togetherness and unity.

Transformers One brushes up against the phrase a couple of times. Alpha Trion almost says it at one point, when passing on his dead siblings' transformation cogs: "They were one. You are one. All are one!" Whatever that means. Later, Orion Pax starts a chant amongst the miners: "Together as one!" And finally, at the very end of the movie, during his obligatory film-ending monologue, Optimus Prime again goes: "And now, we stand here together... as one." (Half of Cybertron has just been banished to the surface forever.) "[...] Here, all are truly... Autobots." (Again, half of Cybertron- Optimus, what the fuck are you talking about?) Regardless, this is inexplicably the one instance where the movie doesn't twist itself up into knots trying to nail the exact phrasing.

Actually, there is one other sideways reference like this I can think of. Early in the film, Orion Pax is chatting up Elita, and he remarks, "Feel like I have enough power in my to drill down and touch Primus himself." To which Elita replies, "You don't have the touch or the power." This is kind of a nonsensical retort unless you know that in the 1986 movie, one of the most iconic songs on the soundtrack was "The Touch" by Stan Bush, which had the chorus line: "You got the touch! You got the power!" It's a banger. Anyway, remember when I said Darkwing gets chucked through an arcade cabinet? Well, here's Cooley revealing why that arcade cabinet is in the film:

I actually wrote [that exchange between Orion Pax and Elita] because I love that song. [...] And we had this one version where D-16 and Orion were playing a video game, like a stand-up old arcade game—it was inspired to look like that, but a Cybertonian version of that. They’re playing that together like friends and the song, like the 8-bit song that’s playing is ["The Touch"]. But that scene got nixed. And so I wanted to work it in there somewhere. And I just felt like a natural place for it. But that was one where I’m like, "I just love that song and those lyrics and that’s Transformers to me so I want to get that in there."

(I've had to amend that quote to fill in the blanks where the article has redacted "spoilers" for the movie. Spoiler culture is an absolute pox, I swear. Can't have the audiences knowing about one (1) mid joke in advance—the movie barely has enough jokes to fill a "Transformers One Funny Moments" compilation as it is!)

This actually isn't the first time Hasbro has "nixed" a reference to "The Touch" in major Transformers media. In the Transformers: Cyberverse episode "The Alliance", a character references "The Touch" right before a training montage which is clearly supposed to have the track playing, except instead it's been replaced by a generic rock instrumental, presumably because they couldn't afford the license. And in Daniel Warren Johnson's Eisner-award-winning bestselling comic run, there's one panel where he clearly wanted to include the song's lyrics as a sound effect, but wasn't allowed, so the final sound effect famously reads "YOU KNOW THE SONG". But that's a random episode of a bargain-bin cartoon, and an indie-darling comic series—not a $147 million blockbuster. You really have to wonder if it came down to money, or if it was something else. God knows Transformers One would not actually be improved for having a chiptune remix of "The Touch" in it, anyway.

The most egregious misplaced bit of fanwank in the film isn't even in dialogue. In the 1986 film, there's this one iconic moment when Optimus Prime arrives at the besieged Autobot City, drives through a crowd of Decepticons in truck mode, then fires some afterburners, launching his cab up into the air, where he transforms mid-leap, drawing his blaster to shoot a couple of Decepticons before hitting the ground. It's a fantastic bit of original animation. It's the Akira slide of Transformers. And, surprise surprise, it crops up in Transformers One. In the climactic final fight, Orion Pax shows up to save Megatron, and he does the thing.

But the problem is... he's not in truck mode! The film just cuts to him standing there in the middle of some anonymous mooks, then he does a standing jump into the air, the movie momentarily goes into extreme slow-mo like he's doing a fucking quick-time event, then he shoots a couple of guys and drops to the ground. There's no momentum. It exists purely to create that simulacrum, to take the single most iconic frame from that bit of 1986 animation, and stretch that one frame into infinity. The context is discarded, irrelevant. All that matters is that brief moment of recognition: "I know what that iiis!" God knows Transformers One has precious little in the way of impactful fight animation of its own; the choreography is stiff and uninspired, while the shots themselves are nauseatingly cluttered. Often, the best it can do is pilfer from older, better stories.

"Did you clap at any of the new moments and memorable characters?" "Were there any?"

Look, I get it. Transformers One is a prequel. By definition, it can't change the future. It has to play with the characters that are already in the toybox. But I do think it had this really special opportunity: to show theatregoers where the Transformers come from. To show us Cybertron not as a distant star or a barren scrapyard, but as a living, thriving alien world, unlike Earth, something special and worth protecting in its own right. Something new and memorable. In Rise of the Beasts—probably the best Transformers movie by default—when Optimus Prime is at his lowest, he wants nothing more to return home... but home is something we've only ever seen as a cold dystopia, ruled by Decepticons. The version of Transformers One I had hoped to see was one that would have imbued Optimus' homesickness with greater meaning. I wanted to feel his loss, and to hope that one day the war will end, and Cybertron can be restored.

I think Transformers One sincerely tries to achieve this effect. The concept artists have clearly put a great deal of time and thought into Cybertron as an environment. When the artbook comes out, I'm keen to see how much stuff didn't make it into the finished film. You have to assume most of it got cut, because there's next to nothing left!

At the end of the film, battle lines are drawn, the civil war is about to start... but strangely, the movie's setting does not convey the sense that anything beautiful is being lost. Nobody is unwillingly turned to violence, innocence-lost; they're all too eager to get to killing, friggin' Bumblebee is gleeful about it. There's no beautiful, iconic landmark, which gets tragically destroyed, like in some kind of Transformers 9/11—"What have we done! Where will this war take us!". There's no part of Cybertron's natural ecological environment to be ruined by the war, because the surface world is already turbofucked by the Quintessons to begin with. No, rather, we have the total opposite: Optimus Prime finding the Matrix (which was just, like, hanging out in the core of Cybertron or whatever) actually restores Energon to the planet, removing the unnatural scarcity which was the entire impetus behind the film's dystopia. He made Cybertron great again. So again, Transformers One fails to answer one of the most fundamental questions one might expect of a Transformers prequel: "When did things on Cybertron get so bad?" The movie ends with the planet in better shape to how it started!

The big original idea that Transformers One has is that Cybertron, the planet itself, should be in a constant state of transformation. I've already talked about the beautiful shapeshifting landscapes, but it's also the moving buildings, the complicated mechanisms, the roads and rails that magically lay themselves between the vehicles and their destinations. I've already mentioned how odd I find it that none of these environmental transformations have any significance to the story; the closest it comes to some sort of payoff is when Orion Pax falls into the hole that makes you king.

What I find most perplexing are the deer. When the gang makes it to the surface, the idea is to show the natural beauty of the surface, which the cogless have been denied their whole lives. The mountains glisten as they move. Nebulae glow in the night sky. The surface is blanketed in organic (?) plantlife, like a watering can forgotten in a garden. And, most strikingly, there are deer: mechanical animals, just like those found on Earth, being hunted for sport by the evil Quintessons. When the cruisers near, their glowing horns turn red with alarm, and they prance around in fear.

I'm reminded of a brief gag from the third season of Transformers: Cyberverse—one of very few shows to have devoted any serious effort to Cybertronian worldbuilding—in the episode "Thunderhowl". Bumblebee and Chromia stumble across a "singlehorn" (read: unicorn), and when it senses danger, it neighs, transforms into a rocket, and blasts out of frame. And apart from being really cute and funny, it's like, oh, of course that's what animals are like on Cybertron! Everything on this planet transforms. Why not the animals?

For whatever reason, the deer in Transformers One are like the one thing that don't transform. Why the hell not? If Cyberverse could find the budget for its split-second sight gag, surely this blockbuster could, I don't know, have them turn into dirt bikes with antler-handlebars. That would've been something, right? If not, then at least could we maybe see some other animals on Cybertron, to really get across that alien biodiversity? Of course not. See, the deer exist to communicate one very specific story beat: a single moment of trepidation, where the heroes know there's danger nearby, but they don't know what. And all you need for that is a single kind of prey animal, with some kind of warning light to let you know, hey, there's danger! Once this purpose is fulfilled, the deer have no further significance to the story.

We need only look to BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui to see this exact same beat play out with a modicum of competence and creative flair. Also in the second act—in fact, at practically the exact same timestamp—our heroes, the Toa, have a run-in with the bad guys, and they're nearly captured... but then there's this sudden rumble of danger approaching, we don't know what. It turns out to be a herd of giant Kikanalo! They send the bad guys packing, except they nearly trample our heroes too! But then, Toa Nokama's mask begins to glow, and she discovers that her mask grants her the ability to talk to animals. They learn some vital information from the Kikanalo, and are able to ride the creatures for the next stage of their adventure. Finally, when they can go no further, the Kikanalo cave in the passage behind the heroes to ensure they won't be pursued. Holy shit, that's like, five different story beats with just that one type of creature!

It's not just that Transformers One struggles with that kind of basic narrative flow, where a single element serves multiple purposes. It's that often, it wastes precious time creating redundant setups to achieve the same effect twice.

For example, Megatronus Prime's face happens to look exactly like (what we know will be) the Decepticon insignia. At the beginning of the movie, Orion Pax mollifies Megatron by giving him a rare decal of Megatronus Prime's face. Traditionally, Megatron wears his insignia in the middle of his chest—but in this film, nearly every character has a big hole in the middle of their chest, where their missing transformation cog should go. So Megatron sticks the decal on his shoulder instead.

Later, he gets a cog, and the hole in his chest is filled. When Sentinel Prime captures Megatron, he notices the Megatronus sticker, and rips it off. Then, he re-applies it on Megatron's chest—purely so it's in the "right" place for the iconography. And then, he uses his gun to crudely brand Megatron with a tracing of Megatronus' face, inadvertently creating the Decepticon symbol. Finally, in a post-credits scene, Megatron has fashioned a proper Decepticon brand with which to brand himself and his followers. So in effect, there are four separate moments where Megatron gets the symbol! Orion sticking it on his shoulder, Sentinel moving it to his chest, Sentinel mutilating him, and finally Megatron branding himself. You can make an argument that the symbol starts out meaning one thing, but ends up meaning another thing, which has a kind of tragic significance—but I think you would struggle to distinguish subtle shades of meaning from all four of these brandings. Considering the movie only has an hour and a half to work with, I find this lack of narrative economy to be honestly embarrassing.

(My friend Jo also points out what a misstep it is to just have Megatronus Prime's face perfectly resemble the Decepticon symbol from the start. Had it been a looser, more stylised—that is to say, original—design, the moment where Sentinel Prime roughly carves it into Megatron's chest could be a shocking reveal, as the basic outlines are abstracted and simplified. Gasp, that's the origin of the Decepticon symbol! Instead, from the very moment that sticker first shows up, it's like... oh, well, there it is I guess.)

In a similar vein, both Optimus Prime and Megatron undergo two different transformations at different points in the movie: first, when Alpha Trion gives them transformation cogs, and second, when respectively they obtain the Matrix of Leadership/Megatronus' cog. The gun that sprouts from Megatron's arm in his intermediary form bears a much closer to resemblance to his iconic "fusion cannon" than the triple-barrelled cannon he ends up with in his final form. Again, in such a short film, can we really say whatever subtlety this brings to Megatron's arc is worth all this fanfare? Now, Redditors ask: "What is the EXACT moment D-16 became Megatron?"

In fact, probably the only point of criticism I've seen levied at Transformer One from within the Transformers fandom at large is that Megatron's arc is maybe a little "rushed". He starts out being best bros forever with Orion Pax, and by the end of the film, he's ready to drop the guy into a bottomless pit. The film takes a lot of time to justify his anger at Sentinel Prime, but the deterioration of his friendship with Orion goes much more unspoken, and is framed more as a point of irrationality: psychologically, Megatron comes to conflate his bossy friend with his oppressive ruler. I liked this, personally. I liked that it's as if a switch gets flipped in Megatron's head. But you do just kind of have to buy into it. The film itself does not put in the work to really sell you on the friendship souring, because again, it's too busy fucking around with two (2) magical girl transformation sequences for each of them.

Everything in the film is like this. They go into the cave and meet Alpha Trion, then leave the cave so they can watch a FMV cutscene with Sentinel Prime and the Quintessons, who've coincidentally arrived at that exact moment, basically just to rehash what they've just been told... and then they go back into the cave so Alpha Trion can resume his infodump, and then they end up clashing with Sentinel Prime's forces once that's done. At the beginning of the movie, they're at the very bottom in the mines, then they get banished to an even lower level, then they banish themselves all the way up to the surface, then they return to Iacon, and then Megatron gets banished to the surface again so he can be mesmerized by the beauty of the world and/or get gunched by Quintessons depending on what the film wanted me to take away from this. Compare to Minecraft but I survive in PARKOUR CIVILIZATION [FULL MOVIE], where the theme of class struggle is pretty efficiently depicted in the vertically-stratified setting.

I just find it so wasteful. Outside of the one scene where they're introduced, the Quintessons—ostensibly the true architects of Cybertron's oppressive status quo—may as well not exist. If not for Orion Pax addressing his closing remarks to the Quintessons, almost as an afterthought, I'd assume the film wants us to forget about them entirely, as it knows full well that its paltry runtime does not give it time for a second action-climax against the aliens. Even as sequel bait, it feels halfhearted at best; Josh Cooley is clearly already bored of Transformers, and seems unlikely to come back for another round unless the money is really really good (which *glances at the box office* it's not). So what the fuck are the Quintessons here for? Was the idea that Sentinel might just have pulled off his coup singlehandedly really so hard to stomach? Could the conspiracy not have been simplified to just involve Sentinel and his Transformer cronies? Hang on, are all the Transformers seen at the start of the film in on it, or just some of them? How's it decided who keeps their cogs and who doesn't?

VI. Into nothing

Why does this movie, where the main selling point is ostensibly that we're getting to see Transformers civilization for the first time, mostly focus on all these guys who can't fucking transform? Surely the entire thing that makes the setting fun is the Zootopia angle of, look, they're all different animals! Or the Elemental angle of, look, they're all different elements! Or the Emoji Movie angle of, look, they're all different emoji! Or the Cars angle of, look, they're all different cars! This is a Transformers film which features several significant sequences involving these cool trains, and there is absolutely zero indication that these trains are themselves Transformers. This is a Transformers film which extensively focuses on miners, and none of them transform into mining vehicles; they're holding, friggin', space jackhammers. Even the premise of "isn't it sad that these ones can't transform" is kind of undercut by the fact that all the miners get to wear fucking jetpacks, which is a frankly much cooler and more effective method of locomotion than driving.

I'm just sick of Transformers stories having zero interest in the basic premise of Transformers, which is to say, they transform into something. I also think this is the biggest dissonance between casual audiences, who think "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, that guy who turns into a truck", and Transformers fans, who think, "oh yeah, Optimus Prime, the messiah or something". Normal people love to know what the Transformers turn into. They ask, "Wait, is there a Transformer that turns into [insert silly vehicle here]?" Of course people are interested in that angle! Vehicles are such a huge part of our daily lives—honestly, for those of us living in cities, more so than animals, the classical elements, or emoji—but the closest Transformers One comes to engaging with this lens is that aforementioned Iacon 5000 race sequence. By and large, it presents a world which is made for standing up and walking around. And personally I do think that's an insane approach to take?

Is the excuse that cars can't emote? Nonsense. If you've ever seen a traffic jam, you'll know that cars can sure as hell emote. Pixar, where Josh Cooley cut his teeth, famously spent a lot of time working out how to put a facial expression on a car. No, the problem dates back to the very start of the franchise.

In the 1980s, two main people were responsible for writing the comic stories: American writer Bob Budiansky, and British writer Simon Furman. Budiansky approached the premise of the franchise from an external, human perspective, writing about culture clash, and taking delight in the Transformers' mechanical alien nature as "robots in disguise". Meanwhile, Furman wrote the Transformers as giant people: he focused on their own internal conflicts and motivations, and the grand history of their war. Pretty much every Transformers story ever told can be boiled down to one of these schools of thought: Budianskyist, or Furmanist.

Budiansky quit the comic after fifty issues, allowing Furman to take the reigns as sole writer, and Furman basically got the final word on what the Transformers are. They did not evolve from naturally-occurring gears, levers and pulleys. They were not designed by a supercomputer, or built by an alien race. They are the chosen sons of God. The Thirteen are, of course, an invention of Furman's. And Transformers One is perhaps the most Furmanist story ever told. It's the culmination of years and years of lore building up, ossifying into something you can no longer describe as the history of a universe—no, this is a mythology. It's the most perfect form of brand alignment imaginable: this is not an origin story, this is the origin story. It's been the origin story for a better part of the decade—and now that everyone's seen it in theatres, it will be the origin story forever.

It's not just the fiction, either, by the way. These days, if you go into the store to buy a Transformers toy, chances are it'll turn into some misshapen made-up futuristic concept car with unpainted windows and wheels that don't even roll—and that's terrible.

There's truly a lot to hate about Michael Bay's Transformers films, but with each new entry that's released following his departure from the franchise, I feel like I only find myself appreciating them more. In the 2007 Transformers movie, we see the Transformers crash-landing on Earth in their "protoforms", and their movements are animated like they're shy, like they're naked until they scan an Earth vehicle and adopt a disguise. The visual impact of Megatron, meanwhile, is that he doesn't adopt a disguise in that movie: he's a horrible metal skeleton that turns into a jet made of knives. It's weird and alien and it rules.

In the 1980s Transformers cartoon, and in the last-minute Cybertron-set prologue added to Bumblebee, and now in Transformers One, the Transformers look basically the same on Cybertron as they eventually do upon their arrival to Earth. Optimus Prime turns, unmistakably, into a truck. He has windows on his chest, and smokestacks on his arms. He doesn't have these features because he disguises himself as an Earth truck. He has those details because that's just what Optimus Prime looks like. They're his "essential brand elements", or "trademark details", which "identify the must-have elements in character design to be carried across all creative expressions". Prime may take any form he wishes, so long as it looks exactly like himself. A mask of my own face—I'd wear that.

What I find fucked up about the reception towards Transformers One is that a lot of people seemed very invested in its success—and not its popular success, certainly not its artistic success, but rather its commercial success. They wanted this to be the first film to make one bumblebillion dollars. They wanted Hasbro to line its fucking pockets and make movies like this forever. So if you express any kind of negativity towards this film online, which might theoretically affect some other person's decision of whether or not to go and see it, which might theoretically affect the profit it makes at the cinema, which might theoretically affect the future of the franchise in some unknown way, then you're some sort of fandom traitor who oughta be executed.

If you're so worried about the future of the franchise, the fandom really isn't where you should be looking. Like, c'mon, the Transformers fandom has been good as gold, we buy so many toys. Meanwhile, Hasbro just got finished laying off around 100 employees with no warning to make their books look a bit better. Transformers designer John Warden—who'd worked at Hasbro for 25 years, is widely credited with inventing the modern paradigm of Transformers toylines, and ultimately became the creative director of both Transformers and G.I. Joe—was on assignment to a convention in the UK with the rest of the Transformers team when he heard the news. Suffice to say, he did not end up making a public appearance at the convention. With his work's health insurance snatched away without notice, he's had to resort to crowdfunding to pay his family's medical bills. As a well-known figure in the toy industry, he will presumably find a new job and land on his feet, but the same cannot be said for all 99 of the remaining employees we're told have been unceremoniously dumped.

The Binder of Revelation, which has been something of a holy grail of behind-the-scenes material for over a decade, has finally been leaked—presumably by one of these guys, presumably out of spite.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to have been paying particularly close attention to Hasbro's financials, but from where I'm sitting, it sure seems that ever since the sudden death of then-CEO Brian Goldner in 2021—credited for saving the company in 2000, and overseeing the explosive growth of its intellectual property ever since then—his replacement, Chris P. Cocks (or "Crispy Cocks", as we're all now calling him), has been dead set on gutting the company for all it's worth. The Power Rangers franchise, which the company acquired for $522 million in 2018, is dead in the water, with huge quantities of physical assets being flogged at auction for quick cash. In 2019, they acquired the entertainment company eOne for $4.0 billion, and now they're selling off the whole shebang (except the cash-printing Peppa Pig franchise) for just $500 million. I guess maybe they just fucked it big style?

Because now, Crispy Cocks has proudly announced that Hasbro is going to stop financing movies altogether.

I'm sure that in the wake of this announcement, many of those aforementioned fandom pundits will be drawing a correlation between this announcement, and the box-office figures for Transformers One, and the fact that you personally failed to convince your Mom to go see it with you or whatever. "Ah, you see! They didn't make enough of their money back, and now they're consolidating. Simple economic cause and effect. Market forces." And look, I'm not going to sit here and claim these things are wholly unrelated. Of course they're very related. But I am going to make the case that, in truth, nobody at Hasbro really cared how Transformers One did. Unless it turned out to be some pie-in-the-sky runaway hit, I don't think the future of the Transformers film franchise would've been particularly different if only the film had done better.

With Paramount, Hasbro has been making these movies and having them underperform ever since 2017's The Last Knight—which apparently lost Paramount $100 million—and that's because at the end of the day, what they're most interested in isn't making movies. It's making toy commercials. And on that level, the Transformers films have clearly been a success so far.

Now, Crispy Cocks' skinsuit fashions itself as a gamer, so he can personify Hasbro's hardcore pivot towards digital and tabletop gaming. While we await the release of the assuredly-dogshit, assuredly-hell-to-have-worked-on, assuredly-never-coming-out Transformers: Reactivate, the brand has been whored out to a procession of mobile games you've never heard of, glorified gambling machines designed to hack the monkey part of your brain with bright colors and Things You Recognize. The exact content of these games is irrelevant; all that matters is the announcement, on every single pop culture news outlet simultaneously (naturally—they're all owned by the same company, talk about Monopoly), of New Collaboration Between Transformers And Goon Warriors Free To Download Now. Your daily, weekly, bi-annual reminder to think about that thing you can buy.

That's all any of this stuff is.

All these words spilled about what a good movie Transformers One is, and how bad it is, and why the marketing failed it, and what the next one might be like, and- none of it mattered! It does not matter. From the beginning, this movie was always going to be too preoccupied with its own mercenary interests to be something anyone would ever be able to seriously talk about as a work of art, even corporate art. The actual content of the movie is irrelevant; I've spent very little of this review talking about it, because there's nothing there to talk about. It is the mere fact of the movie's existence that serves its purpose. Like the Optimus Prime Fortnite skin, it's enough for it to occupy our attention.

Maybe that's why they staggered the film's release date: because some marketing exec watched the rough cut and realised, if everyone saw it at once, we'd be done talking about it within a fortnight. And in ten years' time, after it has been paraded around whichever streaming services survive 'til then, and nearly every last cent of revenue has been squeezed out of it, the kids will be able to watch it on YouTube with ad breaks, and decide what they want for Christmas.

To the Transformers fans reading this, I am begging you, unless you happen to own shares in Hasbro for some fucking reason, to disabuse yourself of the feeling that you owe any kind of loyalty to a toy franchise. It shouldn't matter to you one jot how Transformers One did in theatres. The people who actually make the product you care about, the friendly faces paraded before you on livestreams and press tours, don't see this money anyway—they too are merely assets, who can be fired and replaced with cheaper, inferior equivalents.

I'm sure many of you will have, from the very start, seen this review for the foolish endeavour it is. I've wasted all this time criticising Transformers One for its lack of artistic vision, when the truth is, Transformers One is playing an entirely different game. Like the Disney Channel running "Fishy Facts!" segments to subliminally get kids interested in fish a full year and a half before the release of Finding Nemo, this is not a product—it's an ad for a product.

...

Okay I'll be honest, I don't entirely love where this review has ended up. It ends on kind of a "bummer note", I guess you could say. Flashing back to sections I. and II., I feel like things started out so fun. We had that whole bit at the start where I was telling you about the Transformers, remember that? We learned so much together. And there were even a few moments where I was able to express some kind of sincere joy and appreciation over this thing that I supposedly adore so much. Sure, I did a lot of complaining, but it was fun complaining, right? It had like, a sarcastic edge to it, sort of.

What happened? Why am I suddenly talking like I want to cut someone's head off? As I grow more bitter, I type this essay with increasing difficulty. The massive gun that's sprouted from my forearm keeps colliding with my monitor.

Hasbro descends from on high to reward @TFHypeGuy, who has spent untold unpaid hours fearlessly replying to every single viral tweet to tell people to go see the film, and is also probably like literally a child with 80,000 followers, with a crate of toys, which was probably his end goal from the start. He and I duel. We trade blow after blow. Finally, he clobbers me with a Walmart-exclusive light-up Ultimate Energon Optimus Prime figure. "It didn't have to end this way," he says. Then he banishes me to the surface world to think on my sins.

VII. The Wrong Trousers 👖 | Train Chase Scene 🚂 | Wallace & Gromit

When Eric Pearson came onto the project,

It was late middle of the game. They had a script that had the outline of the story, which is still very much the structural bones of the story now. But what I found interesting about animation is there are certain things that were far along in the process. The train escape to the surface was very far along, so that was just kind of locked. Maybe you could change a line here or there. Meanwhile, the opening, the whole first 10 minutes, was all storyboards and sketches, which changed a bunch of times.

And I do think that's a really difficult position for a scriptwriter to be in. Sure, the parts of the screenplay I feel able to attribute to Pearson, I wasn't particularly impressed by. But I think this anecdote goes to show how unnatural the constraints can be on a story like this. When you think of like, a scene that's key to Transformers One, you're probably imagining something like the Megatron/Optimus fight, or the scene in the mine—not the train scene, which is basically a bit of arbitrary connective tissue bridging the two main locations in the film.

Josh Cooley, the film's director, the face of the film on the press circuit from a creative standpoint, came onboard after five years of previous development work was already done. Writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, who originally pitched the film and presumably wrote the early drafts of the story, might have already left the project by that point. Aaron Archer and Rik Alvarez, the creative forces behind the Binder of Revelation, left Hasbro years before the film was even pitched. It's no wonder to me that the final result feels incoherent, disjointed, and oddly stilted. It's certainly no wonder that nobody at Hasbro today really seems to care about the film; it's not their baby. If any of the people credited with bringing the project to completion had been given full creative freedom to make whatever Transformers movie they wanted, it would've looked completely different.

Luckily, there are still plenty of areas of the franchise where creators have just been allowed to go ham. Over in Japan, TRIGGER has taken a modest budget for a music-video and produced one of the most visually-striking bits of animation in the franchise, a true love-letter to all the weird parts of its forty-year history. And in America, comic creator Daniel Warren Johnson is halfway through his Eisner-winning new run on the title, which is the kind of thing I would basically recommend to anyone without caveats as being a phenomenal story, period. If that comic can be said to be an advert for anything, it's for Skybound's other, nowhere-near-as-good comic series, or for the unofficial unlicensed copyright-infringing Magic Square Optimus Prime toy Daniel Warren Johnson apparently used as reference the whole time.

I dunno, maybe Hasbro stepping back from financing these films is a good thing, in the long run. Maybe we can do without Transformers movies for a while. And however many years down the line, maybe Paramount or some other studio will put together a new team of talent, and they'll get to do whatever it is they want. And maybe the movie they make will be the one that knocks everyone's socks off.

Truly, I don't know where the road leads from here. It hasn't been built yet. It could turn out to go anywhere.

If you made it this far, I hope some of what I've said has been entertaining or interesting. Thanks for reading!

Time to for me to come clean. There is one other reason why I've waited so long to release this review... and that's because I have a special announcement to make. Last month I set myself a little challenge: to write something that's at least as long as this review, but which isn't another negative-nancy tirade. It's a story.

The working title is "Ice Road Transformers". It's like an episode of that one reality TV show about Canadians driving trucks across frozen lakes—except the truck is Optimus Prime.

Early reviews say it's good! It'll be going through several rounds of revisions, to turn it into a well-oiled machine, hopefully in time for a seasonally-appropriate wide release in February. I'm very excited for you to be able to read it. You can follow me here or on Bluesky to be the first to find out when it's ready!

I'd like to thank my friends Jo and Umar for their work interviewing Cooley and di Bonaventura during the film's press circuit, along with Viv, Callum, and Omar for allowing me to enjoy this film much more than I otherwise might have. I wouldn't have been able to express many of my feelings about this movie nearly so cogently if not for the conversations I had with them. Additional thanks go to Chris McFeely, as his Transformers: The Basics videos (linked throughout this essay) refreshed my memory on a lot of the Aligned stuff, sparing me from having to read The Covenant of Primus again.

[amy-pettit]

AI in Pop Culture: Examining the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Entertainment

AI in Pop Culture: Examining the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Entertainment

Artificial intelligence has been a popular topic of discussion for decades. It has long captured the imaginations of scientists, researchers, and science fiction writers. Recently, AI has become a staple of popular culture. From movies to television shows, AI characters are now commonplace in entertainment. In this article, we will examine the role of artificial intelligence in entertainment and how it has shaped pop culture.

The Rise of AI in Entertainment

The first AI characters in entertainment were mostly relegated to science fiction. In the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the AI character HAL 9000 portrayed a sentient computer that ran a spaceship. HAL had the ability to understand human speech and was capable of making decisions on its own. This set the stage for AI characters in entertainment for years to come.

Since then, AI characters have become a fixture in entertainment. From androids like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation to the sentient robots in the Transformers franchise, AI has made its way into almost every genre of entertainment. In recent years, AI characters have even been portrayed as protagonists. For example, in the movie Her, the protagonist falls in love with an AI operating system.

AI as a reflection of society

AI's role in entertainment reflects our society's relationship with technology. In the early days of AI in entertainment, there was a lot of fear surrounding the idea of machines becoming sentient and turning against humans. This fear can be traced back to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which state that robots should not harm humans. This was a response to the fear that machines would pose a threat to human safety if they gained autonomy.

As AI technology has progressed in real life, so too has its portrayal in entertainment. AI characters have become more complex and have been given more autonomy. This is a reflection of our society's growing faith in the potential of AI to improve our lives. However, there is still an underlying fear that AI could become too powerful and pose a threat to humanity.

The Future of AI in Entertainment

AI's role in entertainment is only going to become more prominent in the coming years. With the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality, AI characters will become even more innovative and immersive. Many companies are already using AI to create interactive entertainment experiences, which allow participants to have a dialogue with AI characters and shape the narrative of the experience.

As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see more complex and nuanced AI characters in entertainment. It is likely that AI will become an integral part of storytelling, and we will see even more movies and TV shows that explore the possibilities and dangers of sentient machines.

Conclusion

AI has had a significant impact on entertainment over the years. From its early roles as the villain, AI has become a complex and diverse part of many entertainment experiences. AI's role in entertainment is a reflection of our society's relationship with technology. In the coming years, we can expect to see even more innovative and immersive AI characters in entertainment.

[brucenorris007]

“Game Sonic doesn’t have it in him to kill Eggman.” -Someone on IG comparing Movie Sonic to Game Sonic per something written in StH 2′s script. Have... have you played or even seen the Sonic games? Especially those prior to Forces and Frontiers?

Okay, maybe that’s somewhat unwarranted. Still.

He doesn’t prioritize killing Eggman the way Shadow occasionally or Omega (always) do, but he’s not exactly opposed to seeing, ah, spilled yolk on any sort of principle, either. Eggman just doesn’t occupy anymore space in Sonic’s mind than he warrants at any given moment; the doctor might be obsessed with crushing this teenager who keeps humiliating him, but the reverse?

Sonic at one point says, when asked in Sonic X where Eggman is on a day he’s not actively destroying things or hurting people:

“I don’t care.”

Newer iterations of the blue blur confuse it a bit–starting around Lost World, I believe–but let’s go down the Games timeline; explore the evolution of Sonic’s general attitude toward killing and by extension, cracking the egg.

Classic Sonic is a younger, less powerful and perhaps more unhinged hedgehog. Like I said in another post, Sonic’s first priority is doing what’s Cool; stomping Eggman’s machines and rescuing his animal friends have fit his personal definition of cool from day one.

Every time Sonic and Eggman clash, Sonic stops attacking once Eggman does; that is, once his contraption of the week gets thrashed. Eggman’s smart enough to flee by that point, and while Sonic would keep fighting if the doctor attacked him again, striking an enemy in the back while they’re running away doesn’t fit his definition of Cool.

Sonic doesn’t go out of his way to kill an enemy who isn’t actively trying to kill him, but neither does he go out of his way to save Eggman from falls that could easily end his life. (Refer to: The conclusion of most fights between Robotnik and Super Sonic pre-Dreamcast era)

A trend that carries through at least Sonic Unleashed; if Sonic had a truly immovable stance against killing Eggman, he wouldn’t just stand by and watch his contraptions fall to pieces around him until the doctor spirals in just a pod or console seat at terminal velocity per Sonic 06. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eggman keeps Heal Units on hand for personal use when cartoon physics aren’t enough to prevent grievous injury.

I predict this is going to get longer than I expected; have a cut.

And Eggman knows this. After so many years as arch-enemies, how could he not recognize the pattern? Factor it into his schemes and calculations, his fail safes, however much he loathes the idea of losing again?

There are two Mobians in the franchise who consistently hold back and put a check on themselves out of consideration for others. Two Mobians who, should either snap, are capable several times over of wreaking untold havoc across the planet and ending the doctor’s career in evil permanently.

Knuckles, and Sonic.

This echidna is strong enough to trigger a fault line that can sever an entire zone off of Angel Island with a single blow; who, coupled with his familiarity with chaos energy and channeling the merest fraction of the M.E., can sucker punch someone out of their Super state. Destined Child’s self-control of his strength is a more significant act of kindness than just about anything else he could do.

And Sonic’s maximum speed, in his normal state, cannot be accurately measured even by Eggman’s machines. Oh, he can work out medians and means for the hedgehog’s typical velocity, enough that his robots can put up a decent fight and track/predict the blue blur’s movements.

But Sonic pulls stunts that should not be possible even in the fantastic world of Mobius on the daily; he’s fast enough that he can and has joked about light speed being casual for him, and at one point in his career he outran a black hole for upwards of half a minute. Again, without the aid of his Super state.

Sonic’s reasons for holding back coincide with Knuckles’ somewhat, but they don’t match one to one. A) He holds back for others’ sake and safety: pulling a friend along when he pours on a speed boost, pacing himself when he’s carrying someone (often, though not limited to, princesses...) and, one can infer, limiting himself to just fast enough to break the sound barrier most of the time so he doesn’t constantly destroy/reshape the terrain he’s running on. Sonic’s a rebel, and he enjoys breaking stuff, but only when he’s making a point through the stuff he’s breaking. Aimless destruction isn’t quite his wheelhouse.

And B) he holds back for the sake of having more fun. There are a lot of reasons Sonic’s persisted as a character for three decades now, and one of them, setting him apart from a lot of other ‘cool’ stoic characters I could name, is that Having Fun falls under his definition of Cool.

This is the only way Sonic’s approach to things in the Riders games, his rivalry with Jet in particular, makes any kind of sense; he chooses to race using Extreme Gear because the sport, the banter, the push toward the finish line alongside his best friends are fun, he enjoys all those things. If beating Jet or proving that he’s faster was truly the highest priority for him, he’d ditch the board and just break a half dozen laws of physics on foot like he always does.

Like I mentioned, Eggman’s aware of that; of the fact that Destined Child and Some Guy are, 99% of the time, exercising self-restraint. And factors it into his schemes. He doesn’t quite fear Knuckles snapping as much, since there are years of evidence proving that taking advantage of the echidna’s naivete isn’t enough to make him lose it, and because he understands that Knuckles sees himself as a Guardian on and off of Angel Island. Born to protect; only harming in service to that role, and certainly not to kill.

Compared to Knuckles, Sonic’s conditions for losing it, for going berserk are much more apparent; namely excessive, grievous harm to his friends. In particular, his best friend Tails.

There’s a reason why Eggman ejected Sonic from the ARK in a time bomb space pod in SA2 before facing off with the fox, and it wasn’t simply because he was outnumbered. He was holding Amy hostage with Tails in the room well before Sonic arrived. He could have demanded Tails exit the Cyclone and killed the fox. He didn’t need two hostages.

But he knew better than to think he could predict how Sonic would react to seeing his sidekick (in Eggman’s mind) motionless on the floor of the ARK. Worse case scenario, four bodies end up careening in free fall towards the Earth’s atmosphere.

Eggman knows Sonic has it in him to kill; are other Mobians more likely to try killing him? Yes, but the possibility still figures into Eggman’s plans and is one of the reasons the blue hedgehog occupies most of the doctor’s attention, second to his obsession with returning all the humiliation Sonic’s visited on him over the years.

All that being said, there is a moment in Sonic’s career that marks the beginning of a shift in his attitude toward killing.

Emerl.

Gemerl’s predecessor and the focal point/main character of Sonic Battle, for the uninformed.

Sonic found this battered robot, abandoned by Eggman in a fit of impatience and frustration; this machine designed to be the ultimate combat weapon, capable of observing and evolving based on those it interacts with like a whole-ass person would. In the penultimate chapter of the game, Emerl acquires the seventh chaos emerald and achieves a perilous state where the right words might make or break the world, and Shadow picks the right ones that allow Emerl to function autonomously without posing a danger to the planet.

Obviously, in the ultimate chapter, Eggman has to come and fuck that up.

With Emerl out of control and beyond the reach of words or reason and only minutes between him and the planet’s destruction, Sonic has no choice but to destroy–to kill–this robot he practically raised like a child of his own to save the world.

Sonic doesn’t hesitate in doing so, though it’s clear he doesn’t want to. And of course, it affects him.

It’s that moment that begins to change his attitude from “I don’t kill in cold blood/don’t kill anyone with their back to me or running away” to “I don’t kill if I can help it.”

Make no mistake, though: Sonic wouldn’t shed a single tear for Eggman’s funeral. At most, he’d consider life marginally more boring without an arch nemesis and then get over it.

Sonic is capable of cracking the egg; he prefers avoiding it, but under the right circumstances, avoiding it falls way down his list of priorities.

To this day in the games, Eggman doesn’t go after the hedgehog’s friends in earnest until he believes the blue blur has been dealt with first.

That is very, very intentional on his part.

@generic-sonic-fan