Well, I watched the preview (I refuse to use the USianism "trailer" - these things haven't been tacked onto the end of a film or VHS tape for most of my lifetime now...) for Transformers One.

I really rather liked what I saw. Energetic, humourous, no bizarrely bitty / insectoid faces...

As this point my only negative response (beyond disliking the American-ness of everything, but what are you going to do when it is made by and for Americans?) is that it seems a shame its only a film, not a series. And, well, TMNT Mutant Mayhem started as only a film, but then got approved for a series.



Anyway, my thoughts here are less about how I liked what I saw, and more about how droves and droves of self-declared fans seem determined to hate almost everything about it. I just don't get it, to be honest.

I mean, sure, I greatly dislike Bay films now, but in 2007 I loved what I saw on screen (subject to a few dislikes that have since grown to overshadow all enjoyment I might otherwise have derived from it). I was open to whatever was coming, because I'd not experienced new TF stuff for something over 15 years at that point (the cartoon never got repeated out here, the comics ended in the early 90s, and we never got BW or RID or Armada out here either). Plus it was a whole movie of TFs, and CG, not cartoon. Let's give it a shot, I figured.

Today... Well, I like to think that my approach to things hasn't changed (I was quite open to the Skybound comic, reservations about the overall plan for a shared universe thing and a writer/artist obsessed with wrestling notwithstanding, and despite those things I'm enjoying it), but I'm staggered by the number of people who claim to love TF as a general thing and yet shit all over every new individual thing we get.

I spent some time yesterday reading the now 120-something page thread on TFW about TF One (possibly a mistake, I know...), and came away with this...

-someone who seems to think that all TF storytelling must forever be beholden to the barely-thought-through concepts literally tossed together as needed back in the 80s, and that if a new story does not toe the line then it must perforce be rubbish. And then there was the other person who similarly could not wrap their head around an Optimus Prime who isn't some sort of father-figure to Bumblebee.

-people who have entirely fixed ideas of what Megatron sounds like, as if Megatron was a real person ("ooh, that doesn't sound enough like Christopher Walken, your impression sucks"), and also as if Megatron, by dint of being the evil leader, ought to sound a very specific way (because, y'know, all villains are immediately marked out by their voices); and as the actor playing the part doesn't sound like whatever's in their head, the whole thing sucks (and so does the actor; but there I think it has a lot to do with the actor's skin tone...).

-piles of people who genuniely seem to have expected (not merely desired, but really expected) some adult-oriented grim-dark war-porn, and are therefore crushed that Hasbro has made another kid-oriented adventure story with liberal dashes of the kind of humour current children are accustomed to. It seems a mystery to them why Hasbro might have made this choice in order to sell ... children's toys.


And those are just the things that stuck in my mind the day after reading (not going back to look for more ). Sure, there were plenty of people who liked it, or were willing to see just how it turned out, but overall I am left shaking my head.