Looking Back at The Transformers

Does an old toy commercial have the Touch?

Before I begin - since I will be discussing a Hasbro property, I want to bring up the fact that staff at Wizards of the Coast, a Hasbro subsidiary, have successfully won a union and are now bargaining for a contract. You should support the union here.
  
                                      

The 1986 Transformers show lurked over my nerd-dom for a long time. I got into the franchise in the early 2000s as an impressionable preschooler who dove headfirst into the 2001 Robots in Disguise show (does anyone else remember that one?), and then loved Armada and was more intermittently into Energon and Cybertron. I got rid of my Transformers toys in 2006ish, and then was left to look longingly and regretfully at the toys released for the Michael Bay movies. Even then, I could tell there was something off about those films (I rewatched them recently and concluded that they’re not terrible but they are seriously hampered by being late 2000s blockbusters but that is an argument for another day), but I enjoyed them as impressionable boys do. All of those, though, I knew ultimately came from this cartoon from before I was born: The Transformers, released in 1983.

I wasn’t entirely unaware of the contents of that show when I was a kid; my parents bought me a video tape of the 1986 movie as well as another with two episodes (City of Steel and A Prime Problem), which together formed my view of that show for a long time. I remember being spellbound by the animation of the movie, and bits of those episodes stayed with me as half-remembered snippets for over twenty years (like Long Haul’s line in the former of the aforementioned episodes “Remove! Remove! Always remove! I didn’t join this outfit to be a dump truck! For whatever reason, I also remembered Mixmaster’s particular verbal tic in that episode and that episode alone). But then, last year, I finally got around to playing War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron, both great games that take a military science fiction approach to the basic conceit of Transformers, and I felt that, at some point, I should actually get around to watching the cartoon that started it all (along with the eighties Marvel comics, of course). And then, to my joy, it turns out Hasbro put the entire show, excepting the movie, on one of their YouTube channels. I went on this quest in earnest.

The thing that struck me again and again about this show is how clearly very few people involved in its creation actually gave a shit about it as a work of art. Every comment one of the writers, Donald Glut, made about the show in retrospect sounds like more polite versions of “why do you still give a shit about this?” Glut, whose most prominent work is probably the novelization to The Empire Strikes Back, nevertheless created several characterizations and wrote several memorable episodes, which to me is a sign of how good he is; even his phoned-in scripts are entertaining. The animation is often clearly phoned-in, with many, many obvious errors with little regard to consistency or continuity. More broadly, there’s a sort of slap-dash quality to the writing, not necessarily the dialogue (which is usually serviceable if never particularly deep), but rather the coherence of the world. You have Atlantis out of nowhere in one episode, never mentioned again, and in another episode the main characters are sent back to Arthurian England for no particular reason.

But it’s this potpourri of SFF influences on the different episodes that I think ultimately made the cartoon, and from there the franchise, the success that it was. As I watched it, I came to understand why so many kids came to love this show, as the sheer variety of situations, the sheer diversity of the little nooks and crannies of this universe both on Earth and on Cybertron as well as elsewhere, comes together in a way that feels vast rather than inconsistent. Sure, we have talking, transforming robots at war with one another, so why not Atlantis? Why not time travel to Arthurian times? I have a hard time putting my finger on why, precisely, this worked out the way it did, but it did.

Somewhat surprisingly, most of the time the show is not obviously a toy commercial. Yes, the robots look cool and can do things, but for the most part the fast-paced adventure plots don’t feel too contrived to sell a toy (there are, of course, exceptions). The toy-driven nature of the show is much clearer when you take a look at the broader narrative arcs. The show starts with the Autobots’ ark stranded on Earth, and there is a fairly small cohort of both Autobots and Decepticons for the first season and the opening few episodes of the second season. But, after those few episodes, for no reason whatsoever there are more and more new robots, on both sides of this war, that were never established previously. The cast grows and grows, to the point that the Protectobots, a team of five Autobots that can combine, are inelegantly squeezed into the final episodes of the second season, the last before the 1986 film. This is also at the expense of human characters, several of whom appear only a few times but could have been turned into series regulars to its profit. The one who comes to mind first is Raoul, who appears in two episodes set in New York, a city which is given a certain grotty atmosphere that is ultimately a kid-friendly pastiche of a Scorsese film of that era. He is a product of that particular era in the city’s history and as such he feels rooted in a way that few human characters do. I wish we got more of him. Likewise, I wish we got more of Carly, the girl who eventually gets romantically involved with Sam Witwicky but is ultimately both more intelligent and more daring than he is (it’s why, after finishing the first two seasons, I came to see how Dark of the Moon was a massive character assassination on Carly. She is far too interesting a character to be reduced to eye candy).

Another reason the show has endured as long as it has is the voice actors. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker are legends for a reason, after all, and the voice actors more generally are one of two groups of people involved in the production of this show who are clearly giving it their all. It can be very surprising to see how certain actors provided so many voices; both the rasping voice of Megatron and the breathy voice of Soundwave are both Welker! All of these voices are unique, all capable of giving their characters a vibe, which provides a certain depth.

The other group of people who clearly gave a shit about their jobs are the composers. There were but two of them: Johnny Douglas and Robert J. Walsh, who produced the wide variety of background music in the series. What struck me, looking on from forty years in the future, is how much of it is orchestral. You’d think that your giant transforming robot show would have a lot of synthesizers, more electronic music, to go with the artificial nature of the protagonists. There is some of that, yes, but for the first two seasons the score is overwhelmingly recorded via orchestra, which felt like a sixties World War II movie - tell me this doesn’t sound like something out of the golden age of those films. There are even leitmotifs! There are bits for triumph, and for planning, and for panic. The spacier third season changed this, halfway through, to a soundtrack with more synthesizers that quoted liberally from the score of the 1986 movie, which worked for the pulpier feel (the particular sound of the old score just felt out of place in the new setting, feeling less John Williams and more Ernest Gold).

I didn’t binge this show and I think that was the right call; I watched one or two episodes a day, mostly, with the exception of multi-episode events which I watched the whole way through in one sitting. These older series, with less connective tissue between episodes (and frankly a raft of continuity issues), benefit from letting the characters stay in your mind a while, so that the underlying repetitive structures don’t become too obvious. I started in January and ended in April, and remained mostly consistent to the one episode per day rule. It became a ritual I looked forward to, for as long as it lasted.

And this, of course, brings us to the movie, and what a movie it is. The movie is the first two seasons of the show, but more epic - better animation, better voice acting, better writing (none perfect, mind you, but definitely on a higher plane). It’s a better movie than it is a toy commercial, seeing how Hasbro treated its characters like the disposable toys they thought they were, rather than the beloved icons of childhood the children in question did. And so, the deaths of Optimus Prime and so many other stalwarts of the cartoon were decreed with no thought to the fact that people actually loved them, to be replaced with shiny new toys with not enough writing done to make them lovable.

(in fairness to them, Hasbro has tried to make up for it)

I had watched the movie on VHS as a kid several times without the benefit of familiarity with the series before it; now that I have, I realized what I was missing. The conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons in those early seasons is a conflict fought under conditions of utter scarcity; their wars are fundamentally for fuel, regularly raiding power plants and the like for the bare necessities of their continued existence. There is a sparseness to those seasons that doesn’t really come into relief until you compare them with the movie, which begins with a lush view at a fully functional Autobot base on the moons of Cybertron with the stated intention of soon liberating the planet from the clutches of the Decepticons. The music in that sequence, a soaring number by Vince DiCola, is designed to highlight the awe of this new state of affairs, the rough-and-tumble Ark of the series replaced with Cybertronian civilization in its resplendent glory. The same goes for Autobot City, which is more detailed than anything that came before it, and the battle for that city is a crowning achievement of the franchise.

I have a vivid memory of watching this movie as a kid and finding the Quintessons to be terrifyingly fascinating, all through that one scene where Kup and Hot Rod are thrown to the sharkticons. The way that these various scary faces coexist around a central bulb with tentacles, each a personality that bickers with the others, lodged itself in my mind and never really let go. That’s why I found the way the Quintessons were portrayed in the third season to be so disappointing; none of them get a name, none of them really get a personality, and as such they are just sort of a blob.

After the movie, the third season felt like a step down. The movie wasn’t free of animation errors but neither did it look as shoddy as the rest of the cartoon could look. The third season, the one that is the most openly space opera, looks all too fake. This is unfortunate, as the upgraded animation of the movie really sold the vastness of space and therefore the vastness of the story, something that the third season is lacking. You have the growing pains of the new cast; this season has a strong idea for a cast dynamic, with the rookie Rodimus Prime contrasting the experienced, firm-handed Optimus, while leading and serving the more experienced Kup and Ultra Magnus. There’s also one of the few female transformers, Arcee, and the first to be a major part of the cast. Not unlike Avatar: the Last Airbender, Rodimus’ arc is about the burdens of being the chosen one.

In terms of deeper themes, there are two major ones beyond the obvious one of “buy Transformers toys.” Much of this show, if you think about it for a bit, is about anxieties regarding the nature of industrial civilization as something capable of both great accomplishment but also great destruction. This becomes very obvious when you consider the Constructicons; I find it very telling that construction vehicles were chosen to be Decepticons. All six of them have vehicle modes that can be used to create things, oftentimes good things, but together they can combine into a gigantic robot literally named Devastator. This suggests a dialectical relationship between the positive and negative aspects of the second industrial revolution; that which creates can also devastate.

There’s one particular episode in the earlier part of the second season that has a heavy subtext about this, namely The Master Builders. In this episode, Autobots Grapple and Hoist, who turn into a crane and a tow truck, respectively, are possessed by the idea of building a solar power collection device, and in the process of doing so are offered help by aforementioned Constructicons, who claim to have defected. The episode bounces between these two groups, one building for altruistic reasons and the other building for sinister reasons. Again and again, you are confronted with their fundamental similarity. The difference is the choices they make with their awesome powers of creation. Throughout this episode, I was reminded of The Bridge on the River Kwai, particularly the character of Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, the British engineer captured by the Japanese whose love of building is harnessed by his captor and used against his own people. Both Nicholson and the two Autobots are entranced by the act of creation, but refuse to think about on whose behalf they are creating, and to the detriment of their own.

The other big thematic category that appears a lot in this show is the cost of warfare on the environment and on the combatants. The conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons is a resource war for their own survival. Their sustenance is energon, and energon can be created from terrestrial sources of energy, such as oil or hydroelectric power. A surprisingly high percentage of episodes in the first two seasons are about raids on power plants and the like, and the results are always destructive to the environment around them. One episode has the Insecticons running roughshod over Indonesia, and another features Constructicons drilling into the Earth’s core. Both sides of this war are concerned with survival, but they differ in what they are willing to justify in its name.

I finished this show with an understanding of just why this toyline became a cultural juggernaut. When you get down to it, the show is simply fun, and in a way that creates a universe that feels like it could be endlessly explored. It’s rough around the edges, yes, and it’s a bit janky, yes, but by the end I found it quite charming if you can stomach something which was obviously created to sell toys. By the end of the last episode, there was part of me, somewhat surprisingly, that was sad it was over.

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POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy

'Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' is just as cheerfully chaotic as your most memorable game sessions

This movie is what you get when your only writing guideline is Rule of Cool

Your average gamer isn't necessarily a professional writer, so an RPG campaign full of clichés is an expected part of the deal. How many times have you created a character whose backstory can be summarized as "marauders burned my village and I had to learn to survive alone"? In keeping with that not so venerable tradition, the D&D movie adaptation Honor Among Thieves draws from la crème de la crème of tired story beats: it starts with a threat of prison rape and soon after reveals that the entire plot rests on a fridged woman (complete with the most generic domestic look and bland under-the-blankets flashback). Not very promising for a fantasy movie produced in this century, but as an adaptation of the game, it's depressingly accurate. Backward storytelling choices aside, Honor Among Thieves is undeniably fun. The action is riveting, the humor is sincere, and the attention to detail is commendable. It will certainly recoup some of the goodwill Hasbro clumsily squandered earlier this year when it tried to squeeze more money out of players and independent game designers.

If each viewer brings their own interpretation to a movie, this death-of-the-author approach applies even moreso to the freeform experience of RPGs. There's a unique appeal to this curious form of interactive improvisational theater with occasional murder and pillaging. Now, the curious thing about adapting D&D to the screen in the era of 5e rules is that the game designers have grown averse to settling on any specific lore. The (very ill-advised) goal of D&D 5e is to be as nondescript as possible, to lend itself to any kind of story, to be all things to all people. In a truly generic system, that design choice can work wonders. In D&D, it detracts from the flavor of the story and punishes the players. Rules alone won't sustain a game that declines to adopt a distinctive identity because, to be brutally honest, 5e is not a terribly well designed system. To be successful, Honor Among Thieves couldn't just be a generic fantasy movie, and definitely couldn't rely too much on game stats.

This need to balance the faithful with the interesting adds difficulties to the adaptation process. As happens with videogame movies, the rules of the fictional world are constrained by very specific expectations that players bring to the viewing experience. The casual viewer of action cinema may not care for the Dificulty Class of item attunement or what it means to give birth to a tiefling, but those are the small details that D&D enthusiasts will be looking for. Can we nitpick this movie with the rules of D&D? Sure we can: the sorcerer's personality has too little Charisma for him to cast any spells; the druid isn't supposed to put on metallic armor; the paladin's ability to detect evil shouldn't be constantly active; the evil wizard casts too many spells per turn of combat; a fiery explosion can't harm a red dragon... but does any of that really matter for your enjoyment of the movie? Absolutely not. (Maybe D&D designers will watch this and finally learn that infinite spell slots don't break the game.) While Honor Among Thieves draws heavily from the geography and fauna of the official Faerûn setting, it isn't written to follow Monster Manual stats. It's written by Rule of Cool. That's what makes it excel above previous, and best forgotten, D&D movies.

One more factor in its favor is the media landscape it's made in. Although the superhero story structure has become exhaustingly ubiquitous these days, it still sells tickets. What this means for a D&D production is that it arrives into a moment in which once obscure geeky obsessions are finally perceived as cool, in which a basic, lazy, predictable Hero's Journey can still sustain an enjoyable blockbuster. Furthermore, where the movie fails to follow the narrative conventions of adventure cinema, RPG fans will know to read those deviations as normal. Plans and backup plans that fail one after another, endless interruptions for backstory infodumps, minor side quests, an ensemble of heroes who just so happen to share compatible motivations, a totally improvised winning strategy... that's just how the game goes. In any other fantasy adventure, those quirks would be marked down as amateur screenwriting mistakes. But they're precisely the quirks that give an RPG campaign that special flavor of constant uncertainty. Where a traditional narrative relies on causal logic and character consistency, RPGs are at the mercy of the dice. Just like when your Dungeon Master allows an action not specified in the manual because your idea is too awesome to care for game balance, Honor Among Thieves gives itself permission to ignore good screenwriting advice and go for what feels cool to do.

The unfortunate result is that you need previous immersion in the specific RPG flavor of collaborative storytelling to fully enjoy the experience. Many viewers will get a sense that the pieces don't quite fit, some cuts are too abrupt, some sequences go by too fast, characterization is implausibly flat, backstory is excessive, choices are too convenient. The thing is, that's exactly how a gaming session is structured: bite-sized chunks of unrelated plot stitched together by authorial fiat. If you're in the niche audience that has been waiting for a decent D&D adaptation for decades, this is finally the movie you were asking for.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Thursday Morning Superhero: SDCC Exclusives Edition

We are only three weeks away from the 50th San Diego Comic Con! I am fortunate enough to be returning to provide coverage for Nerds of a Feather and will  be bringing my son for the second year in a row. While details on programming are slowly starting to trickle out, the floodgates have been opened on what exclusives fans can hope to pick up at various booths throughout the convention. Here are my top five most wanted SDCC exclusives in no particular order.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes Captain Marvel and the Asis:

Holy flerken!!!  Look at that Lego Goose! Captain Marvel has been my favorite superhero movie I have seen this year and this set is a must have! Featuring minifigs of both Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau, this set will run you $45 and has 271 pieces. This set will be available to attendees who are fortunate in the lottery which should be opening any day.

Funko Pop! The Black Cauldron: Taran and the Horned King:

There are a wealth of amazing collectibles in Funko's SDCC lineup, but this two pack was the most surprising to me.  The Black Cauldron was one of my favorite childhood movies and I have fond memories of playing the amazing Sierra computer game as I tried to stop the Horned King from raising an army of the dead. When I revisited this movie with my son I was surprised how dark it was, but happy that he liked it and to share this Disney classic that doesn't get as much love as it should.  Could a Gurgi Pop! be down the road?  This two-pack will be a shared exclusive with Amazon and available with the SDCC sticker to those who win lottery access.

Star Wars: The Black Series 6-inch Boba Fett by Hasbro:

This might be the most Comic Con toy in my selection. An exclusive Star Wars figure on a vintage card back of the famed bounty hunter Boba Fett. This is a true beauty and will only set you back $24.99.  Hasbro has some other nice looking exclusives (a razor scooter?), but none as pretty as this beauty. I am not sure if Hasbro is participating in the traditional lottery, but I may try to swing by the booth one afternoon and hope I am lucky enough to add this fella to my Star Wars collection.

Action Vinyls from The Loyal Subjects:

Featuring exclusives from Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, My Hero Academia and more, The Loyal Subjects have grown by leaps and bounds since I started collecting their action vinyls a few years back and I am stoked for this year's lineup. This is only page one of the heat they are bringing, but I am most excited about the Hot Wheels. Vinyl Hot Wheels seemed like an odd pairing, but I saw some rolling around on Instagram and am excited for this blast of nostalgia. I grew up on Hot Wheels and have enjoyed passing that love onto both of my kids.  Super stoked to finally add some TLS Hot Wheels to my collection. Limited to 200 pieces on the SDCC floor, keep a close eye on the schedule to make sure you don't miss any drops.

Spittin' Contest Tiny Ghost by Bimtoy:

Reis O'Brien and his Bimtoy brand are partnering with Fugitive Toys and bringing a summertime twist to his spooky lineup of collectibles to SDCC. Bimtoy is a labor of love and one that has seen tremendous growth over the past few years. In addition to expanding its vinyl offerings, the Tiny Ghost variants are sure to make your shelf 100% cuter. In addition to this stunning piece, Bimtoy will have some pins, mini ghosts, and other possible surprised located at the Fugitive Toys booth. If they distribute these like last year it will be via lottery at the booth.


POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

Thursday Morning Superhero: SDCC Edition

It is hard to believe that my annual excursion to San Diego is a mere four weeks away.  One of the biggest draws to SDCC is the exclusives.  I try to pay it forward in terms of exclusives for family members and friends who aren't able to make the trip themselves.  I tend to go for the exclusives that I know I have a chance of getting and for those that won't break the bank.   This week I will discuss the exclusives that I am going to try to pick up, and those that I covet.

My heart's desire:
Certain booths, due to their popularity, I don't even attempt until Sunday.  Things might change for me this year, as Funko has announced an exclusive Gold Bender Pop! Futurama holds a very special place in my heart and I would love to add this piece to my collection.  Odds are I will not want to attempt the craziness that is a popular booth at SDCC and try my luck on Sunday.  Hasbro, another booth that I have yet to attempt prior to Sunday, announced The Combiner Hunter Series.   This three pack of female
Transformers who are taking on the Devastator in an upcoming IDW comic arc.  The final item I covet this year is the Gentle Giant R2-D2 Droids Jumbo Figure.  I have not attempted to buy anything from Gentle Giant, but it is a bit out of my price range, but it sure is glorious!


My plan:
Thanks to the great pre-order system that Mattel uses, I will be bringing home the Monster High Villain 2-pack.  This marks the first Monster High exclusive that I have been able to score and she is excited to add two new characters to her collection. For my wife, my plan is to pick up the SNL Weekend Update Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Action Figures from Entertainment Earth.  She is normally the hardest person to shop for, but I think these will be a hit.  For my son, I am back on the Mattel bandwagon and preorderd him a pair of exclusive Halo BOOMco. Blasters.  He has other BOOMco. blasters and we always enjoy going to battle with each other.  The guns look great and there is one for each of us!

Pick of the Week:
Saga #29 - When I heard that Brian K. Vaughan was going to write Saga in a way that would make it virtually impossible for a film or TV studio to produce, he wasn't joking.   Despite the truly shocking panel, Saga continues to stress me out as I am losing confidence in whether Marko and Alena will ever be reunited.  The robots continue to be my favorite group in this series and when the Prince had to shoot in front of Hazel I loved that he put a smiling flower on his monitor.  Moments like that make this book very special.

The Rest:
Other noteworthy books this week included major developments in Birthright, Commissioner Gorden filling in for Batman as Convergence is happening, and an uplifting Walking Dead with an unexpected twist.

POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

SDCC Most Wanted Exclusives

The nerd mecha that is San Diego Comic Con is less than 2 months away and the tension is growing.  The bloggers are busy scooping rumors, studios have begun to make some announcements, and I am prepared to spend four days waiting in line.  I love it! With the Matty Collectory Presale (June 4) around the corner, I thought I would take a look at my top 5 most wanted exclusives.  As a father of two who has established the norm that my kids can each choose one exclusive for me to bring home, I will talk about their selections first and then move to the top 5.

What my kids want:

Catwoman Barbie:

In not too shocking news, my three-year old daughter wants the Catwoman Barbie doll from Mattel.  I try to encourage them to select from Mattel because of the ability to preorder.  With a lack of Polly Pockets this year, it is none too surprising that she was swayed by the Barbie.  I think she made a good choice.

Rokkon and Stonedar:
Keeping with his love of Masters of the Universe, my five-year old son selected the two-pack of Rokkon and Stonedar.  These figures have removable panels for when you want them to either be an action figure or a rock and look great.  I think he also made a wise decision and I hope the presale treats me well.

Top 5:

1. Chew #35 variant - I am a huge fan of Chew from John Layman and Rob Guillory and they have delivered again. While Layman was originally hesitant to go with another homage to Tarantino, I am happy he trusted Guillory to deliver what is sure to be a sell out.  I just hope I can make it to the Image booth before this beauty sells out.

2. Star Wars Black: Boba Fett with Han Solo in carbonite - When you combine the wordsexclusive, Star Wars, Comic Con, and Boba Fett you have something that people will be interested in.  Given the high quality of packaging that Hasbro is known for and the amazing photos of what this toy looks like, it is high on my list.  The only problem facing me is that I don't have the patience to wait in the line to score this before it sells out.





3. Wrath of the Rancor - Hallmark has well established itself as a mainstay at SDCC.  The line for its exclusive ornaments wraps around the side of the floor beginning on preview night and the booth is buzzing throughout the convention.  If I am fortunate enough to make it through the line before this is sold out, then the Wrath of the Rancor will be mine.  I am always a fan of Star Wars ornaments, and if you add in the quality that Hallmark produces with the exclusiveness that nerds love, you have a winner.





4. Jason from the NES "Friday the 13th" game from NECA - I love the retro feel and creativity that NECA took in this figure with very distinct coloring.  A fan of both the movie and the game, this would be a great toy to add to any collection.

5. Hot Wheels® A-Team Custom GMC Panel Van - The fans at Comic Con go crazy for the exclusive Hot Wheels® and this one warrants enough nostalgia to catch my attention.  The notion of playing A-Team with my son is something that I haven't quite wrapped my head around.  I think I will try to pick this one up.