Cartoons vs. anime – Part 1

Or at least when I was a kid we had some great cartoons. During the 80s, when I was young, we had some memorable shows. Transformers, GI Joe, and the Smurfs, just to name a few.

While, like most children’s programing, the toons we had were often lacking in plot, they made sense to the viewer. These recent imports from Japan make little to no sense. The characters for each show are interchangable weirdos with ridiculous hair. They seem to always be screaming about this or that with more overacting then a trashy horror film.

At first I found the animation style of anime to be refreshing and amazing. Though I feel it has certainly gone downhill a bit since comming to America, it is still better than much of the 80s toons as far as its technical brilliance. The anime art lacks the variety and feeling put into those old cartoons of my youth. It often feels manufactured. Those old 80s toons were obviously less refined in their art, but they brought, and still bring, those farm fuzzy feelings.

Its no contest. Those cartoons many of us children of the 80s watched beat this new crop of anime hands down.

Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 63

Not exactly “more than meets the eye”, and you’ll be thankful for it. If you’re hoping for a bizarre twist, or even a surprise within this film, I feel confident that I can dash those hopes for you. If, however, you want to see the best darned big-budget popcorn movie in years if not decades, you must not miss The Transformers.

For those who fondly remember the original toy line and cartoon, the pleasure of perfectly executed nostalgia is almost too much to bear. For those unfamiliar with the original source material (TV-by-way-of-Hasbro-by-way-of -Takara-toys)strap in and prepare yourselves for the greatest cool-fest in memory.

A lot of actioners aspire to use the velocity and intensity of their happenings to illuminate characters and their development. With The Transformers, this is unapologetically reversed. The human characters are only really used as a point of relatability for the audience,a common thread to unite the massive strands of awesomeness.

I may have had a better time in a mainstream movie, but I don’t remember when.

For Shia LaBoeuf fans, he’s endearing but underused. The rest of the cast is either virtually nonexistent or gloriously, blissfully metallic.

I promise you will learn nothing, think little, and enjoy more fun than you have any right to expect from a summer blockbuster.

Roll out!

Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 57

Toymaker Hasbro must be delighted that their ‘Robots in disguise’ range will be introduced to a whole new generation through Michael Bay’s live action movie version. The question is, what does this mean for the fans who loved the show/toys the first time around (and there is a thriving community of them) and the rest of the audience who have never picked up a transforming robot and tried to fold it back into the car it started out as.

This is a movie about giant robots beating the living daylights out of other giant robots, so anyone who goes in expecting to get anything more than a lot of big robots hitting other big robots shouldn’t be so foolish. It’s also a Michael Bay film for heaven’s sake, so nobody should be expecting anything as sophisticated as believable characters, a plot that can’t fit on the back of a stamp or dialogue that wouldn’t make it through any decent editing process. That said, anybody who does go in expecting only to see giant robots hitting other giant robots is going to find themselves well catered for.

In the absence of a stamp, here’s the plot. A cube of immense power is hidden on earth and two races of giant robots want it. One will destroy the human race, the other will try to protect it. The kid who holds the secret to the location of the cube is targeted by both.

That’s it, let the demolition begin.

There’s very little point talking about the human cast as they are all very pretty and are required to be little else (with the exceptions of John Turturro and Jon Voight who both resort to scenery chewing on a scale that would make Jaws’ shark envious). What the audience are going to see are the robots and it is fair to say that they are impressively rendered. They don’t seem to have personalities, but then they are giant alien robots so what do you expect?

They also move very fast. When these things transform from their car/lorry/plane/helicopter/wha tever alias there are thousands of moving parts all moving at the same time and moving quickly. It’s too much for the human eye to assimilate all in one go. As a result, you can’t really appreciate it. The Peugeot TV ads that convinced director Bay and producer Spielberg that the technology was finally here to transform robots provided much simpler, slower transformations that were more effective. A bigger budget brings faster computers able to move more objects and so that’s what we get.

It’s also a problem in the action scenes where everything is moving so fast that it’s hard to tell which robot is doing what to which other robot. Not that you really care much.

Suffice to say that TRANSFORMERS is crafted for the kind of kids who were brought up on MTV and anime. Action, destruction on an epic scale and lowbrow humour are all that they’re looking for and TRANSFORMERS provides all of that in spades.

If you can switch off your mind and go with it, you’ll have a good time, but if you want more than giant robots hitting giant robots go look elsewhere.

Movie reviews: The Transformers (2007) – Part 13

When I was a child, one of the most popular animated series on television was the Transformers. Detailing week after week the battles between Optimus Prime and Megatron, the series was fun to watch, and always exciting.

So, when I heard a couple years back that they were doing a live-action version of the show, I was naturally excited. However, my excitement was tempered with caution. After all, who hasn’t seen a show from their past turned into a crappy movie?

Well, from the opening of the film, I knew I was in for a treat. With the original voice talent of the old show’s Optimus, I got goosebumps.

Like all adaptations, it drags a bit in the first few minutes, as it sets up story lines. But with the first attack on the U.S. military base, the movie’s action is non-stop.

The characters interact well, with the tongue-in-cheek humor inherent in the cartoon. Ironhide is STILL trying to blow everything he can find to smithereens with his huge guns, Bumblebee of course still has to communicate through his in-car stereo, and the Decepticons still fight amongst one another.

Of course, now the computer animation is so sophisticated, that you can actually see the machines transform-not just suddenly appear as robots. The effects are smooth and flawless, and the interaction between CGI and real-world objects is without equal in recent memory.

The acting shines unusually brightly in this film-unusual because its an action-adventure, traditionally NOT known for outstanding performances. The voice acting is perfect, and the humans are good, particularly the two young leads.

The only time, in fact, that the acting level dipped was during the climactic battle between Prime and Megatron, where the two of them trade barbs that seem ripped right out of the old show

Transformer Profile : Devastator

This is because six Decepticon minds try to agree on which moves Devastator should pull off next at the same time. This gives Devastator his simple and brutish personality of instinct, destroying everything in site before even thinking about the consequences. One of his primary weaknesses is that he’s lumbering and slow, making him an easy target to trip over.

In the Marvel Comics edition of the Transformers the birth of the Constructicons is rather straight forward. Decepticon Commander Shockwave ordered the creation of six new Decepticon beings which where given life by the Creation Matrix, extracted from the then captured Optimus Prime. The Constructicons were given life and no time was wasted. They built a gigantic radio dish which Soundwave used as a communications devise between Earth and Cybertron. The Autobots tried to jam the giant disk, but they were defeated by the Constructicons who combined into the all powerful Devastator to get the job done with ease.

The Autobots where quite impressed with Devastator’s combining ability, thus they attempted to imitate the creation of a similar Transformer who could combine into a bigger and more powerful being. However they were only able to make an Omega Supreme made from the combination of three non sentient machines. This drove the Autobots to lure Transformer Devastator out of the Decepticon base and isolate him to gather more information about his composition. When this was accomplished the Autobots could at last create Superion who was made from the combination of the new Aerialbots.

As opposed to the traditional cartoons and comics in the 2007 movie Transformer Devastator appears as an individual character that transforms into a heavily armed tank. Although this Decepticon was supposed to be Brawl, in the film it can clearly be appreciated that he names himself Devastator. Further confusion arises in the merchandise arena where he’s marketed as Brawl. The movie writers confess that this was an error and that it was intended for him to be Brawl in the movie. On the other hand, Michael Bay insists that Devastator was a much more suitable and stronger name for the insanely tough Decepticon.