The Soapbox XIII: Necessary Evils


It's our 25th anniversary and what better way to mark it than with the ultimate big screen blockbuster that would shatter record after record. Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) has been an unqualified success. In terms of sales, that is. But there is much doubt that hovers over the success of ROTF in other terms, more specifically to us, the fandom. Is the success a credible one that adds to the tapestry or is it a cringeworthy one that would be better left forgotten in the depths of Unicron's bowels? That's the question this Soapbox seeks to answer.

Let's start from base one. Michael Bay. One should generally be able to surmise by whoever is at the helm of the directorship of a flick as to what the flavour of the movie is. Did anyone really expect much more than that from the outset? Did anybody really think for the moment that this was going to be a Star Trek or Star Wars shattering, universe building movie? Given his track record, you'd have been rather naive to expect otherwise. So from this point of view, if you approach the movie with expectations of what type of movie this will be given the director, ROTF definitely isn't a great departure from those expectations. It's a rather soulless flick with lots of explosions and some attempt at humour. In that sense, it achieves what it set out to do and can be hardly considered a failure..To level accusations that it failed because it was an unintelligent, soulless and lame movie are completely unfair. One doesn't cross a dog and expect it to meow.

Sneaking our way towards base two. The more difficult part. While we can all agree the movie isn't very meaningful, the question is does it add to the mythos? Is it a success in that sense? Why's this important? B/c what you often find with successful franchises is that people hold onto those little nuances that are additions to a mythos and take it in directions for years to come, opening new possibilities and conjecture. In this regard, I think ROTF has succeeded or in many ways exceeded our expectations. The concept of a combiner has been turned on its head with the ROTF Devastator. The discussions and the paradigm that a combiner must be individual robots has all been but turned on its head. ROTF Devastator is a giant who is a combination of a whole lot of vehicles that form one sentient being. In turn this raises questions as to sentience though. Do each of the vehicles have a sentience of their own? Or is it collective? And how does that play out? Is it slowly to react as a whole? Can it choose as it pleases the vehicles that it's a combination? Moving past the combiner concept. The Matrix. The 13. The Seekers. The explorers who sought out different worlds. Can TFs be grown from little cocoons as Starscream did? TF history. How long have the TFs been on Earth? Who else is out there? The Matrix's own sentience. Twins. Sacrificing of sparks. Many of the events in ROTF put those elements of TF on show, raising questions and opening new dimensions simultaneously. Certainly, the story doesn't bring it together effectively but one cannot deny those elements and layers being added to the TF mythos and that's certainly a win for us.

At third base, we've got a larger complication. It's a movie about TFs but you'd be hard pressed to not think it was about the military and how oh so glorious and coordinated they are. Not to mention their state-of-the-art technology that's armed with absolute precision. You know, across 2 movies how much more do we really know about the TFs? How much layers have they added to the characters? As sad as it is, not very damn much.

Autobots
Optimus - okay, that's a win
Bumblebee - not much really, other than that his attachment to the boy's a bit worrying when he bursts into tears
Ironhide - okay, pretty G1. Hard, grumpy and uncompromising but completely tied to the cause. Nice.
Ratchet - team medic, bit of a sense of humour
Jazz - stereotype galore, then he got maimed
Sideswipe - my personality oozes from 1 line; but i'm as cool and bad@$$as i look
Jolt - WTF? and "W" stands for who in case ur wondering. Geez, I described him with more words than he uttered in the movie
Mudflap - stereotype galore
Skids - stereotype galore
Jetfire - awesome but still rather generic

Decepticons
Megatron - a fair bit actually though it really sucks to see him all of a sudden willing to be second in command
Starscream - okay that's a win
Barricade - dunno, cool cop car though
Brawl - zilch
Blackout - more zilch
Sideways - if you call running and then getting sliced in half "personality", sure
Alice - hot... oh wait, we're talking personality and character here
Rampage - nada
Ravage - silent brooding type, generic, G1 esque though
Soundwave - hey i sit up here and broadcast all day
Scapel - borderline fail, he's got a lot more lines than most of his counterparts tho
Demolisher - more nada
Mixmaster - even more nada
The Fallen - generic i wanna take over the world bad guy
Long Haul - why am I even bothering?

It's pretty damn inexcusable to be honest. The core characters to a movie yet there's so little of their character. That's an unqualified fail if I've ever seen one. Sure, it might be a soulless Michael Bay movie but surely at some affording some of your characters with a bit of personality and lines couldn't have hurt. Really why is that Mark Ryan guy even needed to do Bumblebee's voice. He never even says a word.

Heading onto the home straight now, it certainly appears ROTF was not a success from the point of view of the fandom. It's addition to the mythos aisde, it doesn't offer too much. But that's a fairly tunnelled view of things. While sales success, look at box office receipts, merchandise and toy sales, isn't always a gage there's one very significant factor we cannot overlook. Longevity.

The longevity of TFs is critical to its success as a franchise. What ROTF does is make Transformers big. It makes the brand big. It keeps in the minds of a generation. Much like you still see Matrix or Pirates of the Carribean still on the shelves, it will keep TFs on the shelves. Those who don't even become fans will grow into parents and what they'll still remember the movie, recognise the brand. That will certainly influence the toys they purchase for their kids. And this, my friends, is where we win. By securing the longevity and strength of the brand that gives Hasbro/Takara the ability to keep developing TFs. More specifically b/c of the strength of the brand they'll be able to offer us the fans more. They'll be in a better position to talk with car makers for brands like alternity or Human Alliance. They'll have a stronger market and therefore a bigger budget available for R&D. They are able to do that with confidence b/c they have a blockbuster movie that blew the pants off of ever other movie in the cinemas and were unprecedented successes in the space of 3 years. ROTF helps and contributes to that and that is not a contribution that we can ignore.

Certainly, it's easy to lose sight of this massive contribution that ROTF makes given the lame characterisation and the subpar quality of the movie. Many of those failures are cringeworthy and ROTF will never be the same as G1 or Beast Wars or heck even Animated, but it's place and contribution we can never understate. In the long-term for the next 10-15 years, we have a strong brand. The cost of that is that to make it mainstream to the public of both genders, a lot of the integrity of TFs was compromised. That we got a soulless creature. That we had some awful stereotypes. That we had lots of humans who were more important that the TFs that the movie was supposed to be about.

And that is why as sad as it is, ROTF is the necessary evil that we had to have.


The Soapbox Archive
The Soapbox I: TFM or TFTM?
The Soapbox II: The Problem with Jets
The Soapbox III: Price-Matching
The Soapbox IV: The Top 10 Characters of All-Time
The Soapbox V: What makes a good Transformers?
The Soapbox VI: Don't like gimmicks? Start dealing with it.
The Soapbox VII: The Top 10 Transformers toys of 2008
The Soapbox VIII: 2008: A Year in Review
The Soapbox IX: Budgeting Basics
The Soapbox X: A Prime Problem
The Soapbox XI: Battle of the City-Formers
The Soapbox XII: The Convenient Truth