Autobots, Roll Out!

I went to see Transformers (Revenge of the Fallen) yesterday with my wife, son, and mother at Trinoma.

Summing it all up, I enjoyed it. My wife liked it quite a bit (despite not being a fan of robots), and so did my 63-year-old mother. My three-and-a-half-year-old son... well... he fell asleep about halfway through the movie.

Here's what I liked about the movie...

• Megan Fox (I know this is rather unfair. We all know the main reason why many people... errm, men like her, it's definitely NOT because of her acting. And Wheelie couldn't have made the point any clearer!)
• Shia LaBeouf
• the giant effing robots especially Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Devastator, the "Ancestors", Megatron, Demolisher, Sideswipe (he deserves more screen time), and (I-didn't-expect-liking-him-but-I-did) Jetfire
• the ONLY true comic refief (in my opinion), Wheelie
• Optimus Prime not being the ultra "clean" goody-two-shoes anymore
• the voices of Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Jetfire, Megatron, and the Fallen

My dislikes:

• some of the main robot characters in the first movie were pushed to the sidelines (ending up as sort of extras)
• many robots were needlessly added (including the twins... I loved Wheelie though)
• was it just me or did the movie score also take a back seat?
• how the "Matrix of Leadership" worked (C-H-E-E-S-Y-!)
• the three sisters (motorcycles)
• a few cheesy lines here and there

Anyway, the story... well, it was fine. It was DEFINITELY NOT a five-star two-thumbs-up kind of thing, but it was generally ok. But really, for me it all came crumbling down with the Matrix-of-Leadership bullcrap.

Some notable scenes - in no particular order, I'll list them as they come into mind (contains spoilers, stop reading if you don't want me spoiling the movie for ya):

• transformation/union of Devastator
• Devastator climbing to the top of the pyramid
• chopper flying above Mikaela as she was crying over Sam
• union of Optimus and Jetfire
• Soundwave scenes
• the forest scene
• chopper dropping Optimus at the airbase
• destruction of the aircraft carrier
• Demolishor scenes
• Sideswipe scenes

One more thing I'd like to mention, I like what they did to Jetfire. I can still remember what I thought of him in G1... a pushover. He's now got my respect... too bad he had to go.

My personal rating... four out of five stars (largely due to the awesome effects and nostalgic quality). There's a 50/50 possibility that I'll change my mind on some of these if I would watch the film again.

Before there was Transformers, there was Diaclone...

And, I was fortunate enough to own one. :) AND, moreso, to still have it with me after 24 years and with everything still intact!

As you will probably notice in one of the pictures, there's a price tag stuck somwhere on its box that has the figure "70.00" printed on it. I can't say for certain if that was its selling price back in 1985 but it's possible since G.I. Joe figures were sold for only 45 to 60 pesos at the time, and now they're selling for like what... 300? 400 pesos?

Notice that the miniature guy is sitting

inside the car in the above photo.

Anyway, I believe this guy's name in the G1 Transformers series is "Tracks", an Autobot, and he transforms into a Chevy Corvette. He's colored blue in the Tranformers, by the way.

From Wikipedia:

Diaclone was a toyline by Takara Toys launched in 1980. It consisted of transforming vehicles and robots piloted by miniature, magnet-shoed figures spun off from the prior Microman toy line that were in turn called an Inch-Man.

The toys in the 1980 line were designed by future Macross designers Shoji Kawamori and Kazutaka Miyatake (both contracted from Studio Nue), who designed the mecha and the figures respectively. Unlike Microman, which featured "full-scale" toys of its 10 centimeter tall alien cyborgs, the figures in Diaclone represented full-sized human (and enemy alien Waruder) pilots, and were in approximately 1/60th scale.

In 1982, the line later featured the Car-Robots set of transforming robot toys, invented by Koujin Ohno with some initial designs by Kawamori and others. While the original series featured fanciful robots and vehicles, Car-Robots added the feature of the robots being able to disguise themselves as various late 20th century-era contemporary vehicles. In 1984, Hasbro licensed the Car-Robots toyline along with the Microman "Micro Change" toyline from Takara and merged the two series of toys to create the Transformers. Most of the original Autobot vehicle-based characters came from the Car-Robots set of Diaclone robots. Other Transformers characters that came from the Diaclone line included the Dinobots, Insecticons (from the enemy Waruder toys), the Decepticon planes (originally from 2 "JetRobo" toys, produced in the colors of future Decepticons Starscream and Thundercracker) and the Constructicons, who also came from the Car-Robots set. The Constructicons came from near the end of the series, at which point Takara was starting to abandon the Inch-Man pilot figures and being limited to the 1/60th scale. The 6 TrainRobo were also produced in the same sub-line as the Constructicons, but would only become Transformers (as the Trainbots) in Japan's 1987 line.

Takara eventually discontinued the Diaclone and Microman toylines in 1985 in favor of the more successful Transformers rebranding.

WOOHOO!!!

I finally have them!!! And I got them for only a third of their original prices!!! Megatron's from SM Manila and Prime's from Gateway (thanks to my good friend, Arnel).

Live-Action Film Version of 80s Cartoons

Seibertron.com has posted something about a G.I. Joe live-action movie coming up. Well, Seibertron.com’s source is actually ComingSoon.net, but since I’ve been a regular visitor of Seibertron.com, that’s where I got the news from.

I’ve also stumbled upon some news somewhere before about a live-action Robotech movie being in the works, as well as one for Astroboy.

Sounds exciting… though, maybe not as exciting for me as when I heard that a live-action Transformers movie was going to be made more than a year ago. That’s when I got hooked on Seibertron.com.

I’m not a fanboy, though I’m probably near the edge of being one. I still remember watching Transformers in the 80s as a kid and drooling over the toys that were being advertised every time it’s aired (the same goes with Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and G.I. Joe).

I’ve got only two Transformers toys which my parents bought me (which I still have, by the way)… an Insecticon (I already forgot its name) and the Corvette (Stingray, I believe, is what it’s called but I have the Japanese version which is red colored and not blue as it was in the American version of the cartoon). I got them not because of endless nagging but because of passing in the quarterly school exams. For my brother and I, that was the only way to get something we wanted. But getting passing marks in the major exams didn’t give us license to demand for what we wanted. We had to wait for an offer. If no offer came, well, life went on. That’s because we were made to understand early on about money matters. Get the connection?

Hmmm… that reminds me of the time when, as a grade school student, I gathered all the old (Manila Bulletin) Panorama Magazines I could find in our house and cut out all the application forms from the advertisements of insurance companies thinking that I could help my parents get more money if I filled out and mailed those forms. All I could understand from those advertisements that time were the numbers, and they had BIG numbers printed in BIG BOLD fonts. I thought those companies were giving money away! That was the time when I was still clueless about what bouncing checks were. By what they’re called in the local language, I thought they really explode.

Anyway, going back to my original topic… I think I have one up there somewhere…

The excitement I felt for the live-action Transformers movie actually came not from being a Transformers fan, but rather out of my curiosity about how they were going to make it realistic and believable. Like how Optimus Prime would transform in the “real world” without having a gaping hole on his back (as he did in the G1 toy which I was able to play with only once at my brother’s rich friend’s house).


I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the movie was not going to be faithful to the original cartoons as far as the robots and cars were concerned. But all the changes that were done were, I think, understandable and acceptable (at least after I saw the making of the movie).

I almost got influenced by the nay-sayers into bad mouthing Michael Bay when I was following the movie’s progress. But when I finally saw the movie on the big screen, I can’t find anything about it that is worth thrashing (being honest to myself). The opening narration (by Peter Cullen) was particularly powerful for me, not for what was said but for how it sounded. For me it felt like hearing something, or someone, from my past.

There are still a lot of haters out there, but as far as I’m concerned, I like the movie quite a lot. So much so that I asked my sister-in-law, who’s living in the States, to buy me a copy of the two-disc special edition DVD release. And after watching the movie for the second and third time on DVD, I only have praises for it, more so for the technical side of it (behind-the-scenes). I have yet to watch the movie with the commentaries track.

Having all that said, I doubt the upcoming G.I. Joe and Robotech movies will have the same effect on me as the Transformers had. For one thing, although I have watched the G.I. Joe cartoon regularly as a kid, I can’t seem to remember anything about G.I. Joe that’s as memorable as Cullen’s voice in Transformers (except for the plain white Storm Shadow who was my favorite toy for a very long time). Also, IMO, the G.I. Joe movie might just come out like any other war movie(?). Well, maybe if they use the same opening theme and sequence, I’d probably change my mind somewhat. As for Robotech, well, I wasn’t a regular follower of that, I only watched it whenever nothing else was on. I’m sure a lot of people out there are saying that I’ve missed a lot, and I agree. So, as far as these two movies are concerned, I’d probably just take them for what they are now (or will become when and if the movies do come out) and not relate them to their past incarnation.


For Astroboy, well, I just hope they’ll stick to his original appearance.