A Very TRANSFORMING American Artwork

The Transformers movie came out two years ago, and its sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will become a part of our memories and lives on June 24.

I saw the Transformers movie (un film de Michel Be) twice, both times on tiny screens, and both times I felt a delight inside.

Reasons

1. On a small screen, you cannot tell what's going on for about half the movie.
It's like a beautiful loud moving painting; crayola-colored computer graphics made to look like space metalplastic whip around and fight each other and scramble about the Earth and her structures.

2. TRANSFORMERS appears to have been written by actual Transformers.


EVIDENCE OF THIS:

a. The dialogue.

b. As near as I can tell, the Macguffin that sets the whole plot in motion is a cube. The Autobots and Decepticons are fighting over a cube. The cube is power, it's raw power and if you put in it a transformer he dies.

Yes, a cube. There it is. Any wasteful specificity or detail (like if the cube were a secret code that could activate the Universe's Most Powerful Transformer, and the UMPT would then guarantee either eternal universal rule to the Decepticons or eternal egalitarian paxtimes via the paternal watch of the Autobots) would be the purview of weaker-willed, "realistic" Hollywood product. TRANSFORMERS DO NOT NEED YOUR BULLSHIT EMOTION-PRODUCING NATURALISTIC DETAILFLAGS, YOU PATHETIC FLESHLINGS.

(sidenote: I just spent 30 minutes on wikitransformia, it's called the All Spark)

That the new Transformers film has a title as proudly unoriginal as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen gives me hope that the sequel was also penned by Transformers. Transformer screenwriters probably transform into Macbooks. And then fold out into tiny white transformers who speed-wheel over to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and plug themselves into the espresso machine.




3. Characterization of Transformers
For a culture with daddy issues, there's Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime. Me personally I have a father, but I just really get the sense that Optidad Pops is here to help lost Americans deal with the pain of generational change. Has there ever been a voice so dominating yet gentle/kind as that of Optimus Prime? And Peter Cullen, FYI, is the O.O.P.-Original Optimus Prime.

Jazz. Jesus Christ. I get that Transformers, cause it's a product of 1980s white people, can't have a black transformer without being tokeny, but the execution here is just ridiculous, and yet therefore hilarious. IT IS POSSEEBLE that the Transformer DiabloCodies who wrote the '07 movie see the racial divides of our young species as worthy of parody. Was the name RapstarBasketball too many syllables? Check out the awkwardly unsmooth CGI moves of Jazz as he acts like Mr. Coolguy when the Autobots meet Samuel Witwicky (random human name generator on the fritz, is it, Scriptotrons?). And of course, in realistic 80s token character style, Jazz is the only major Autobot to kick the bucket. In the final battle:

JAZZ
You wanna piece a me?! You WANNA PIEC-

MEGATRON
No! I WANT TWO!!!
(rips Jazz in fucking half)

Megatron, voiced not by Frank Welker, the original Megatron from the 80s series, but by Hugo weaving. I kinda think Hugo Weaving did an amazing job as Optimus Prime's evil Decepticon brother, Lord High Protector Megatron.

You can find a clip of the Jazz murder scene on youtube (it's been recut for horrible emphasis). Has there ever been a voice so dominating yet rageful as that of Megatron? In the final battle scene, which I found confusing and awesome, Megatron shouts STARSCREAM!! at Starscream, and that angry bassy yell has been stuck in my head for months.

SPOILER


Frank Welker will be Megatron in the TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN this summer, by the way. My ears are peeled.



END OF SPOILER


So that's basically Transformers and why it was fun to watch. I'm still not sure if I want to see the sequel in theatres. I DO want to check it out, but if I can tell what's happening, what's the point? I like my Transformers Pollock, not Vermeer. So I may wait until I can somehow watch it on my laptop or TV, but I don't want to wait too long. They're getting restless:


Except Jazz there up front. He's dead.

PS this time more Starscream (the jet) please. Look at Starscream. Look at that. He makes Optimus Prime look like a a shetland pony.

Details on Portal 2 Surface, World Grinds To A Halt

Ooh boy. Grab some paper towels, Portal fans, cause this link may literally make you drool. Kotaku brings us the casting notice for a primary character in PORTAL 2, that's right, the sequel that Valve has been super tight-lipped about, that they said wouldn't be coming out until 2009. This notice includes a LOT of info about what we can expect from the sequel and one of it's main characters, who is neither GLaDOS nor Chell. It IS, however, someone that will ring a bell for crazyfans, but I won't say any more in case you think you can wait a year without getting spoiled about this sort of thing. You're only fooling YOURSELVES, people! Hit the link for the pic and character description, then come back for some classic Geekanerd analysis...

Fan theories and conjecture after the jump...


The character description indicates pretty strongly that the writers be using a similar format to the original; it sounds like Cave Johnson will guide you through the game much like GLAdOS does, as she could also be said to go from "sidekick to principal antagonist". I'd even go so far as to guess that we never see him (he is described as "dead", after all), and our only visual clue is portraits like these throughout the game. The fact that he's dead might be intended as a surprise, but whatever, I knew the ending of Portal Classic before I played it, and that did little to dampen the impact of how it all unfolded.

As the Kotaku article says, this sounds like a prequel. I think that's an excellent way to go about expanding the franchise, since both in-game dialogue and the aforementioned website give a ton of implied history to build on. It does present a possible problem in giving us new features of the Portal Gun, since presumably the model we've played with would be the best of all possible Portal Guns thus far. Maybe we'll see an experimental prototype with features that were later deemed unreasonably dangerous. And will we see a bustling new vision of Apeture labs, with labcoated people milling around? I kind of hope not, but we'll see.

And in all of this excitement, wither GLaDOS? And Chell, for that matter. Maybe we'll see in the background of Aperture Science at some point, verifying my personal theory that she's was a janitor. But since Cave is the "principal antagonist", we can assume GLaDOS will be regulated to a secondary role, if not less. I don't know if I can handle that kind of disappointment. But I can't believe the writers could resist the chance to give us a look at GLaDOS in her early stages; as the Aperture website states, she was originally created as an AI unit to run fuel-line de-icers. So depending on how far back in the Portal chronology we are, a glimpse at her first Neruo-Toxin massacre may be too much to ask.

This rant can also be found on our Portal Round-Up page, Portal Authority.