Subject: Optimus Prime in Age of Extinction.
Author:
Posted on: 2016-04-16 14:36:00 UTC
I don't care what Dad says on the matter, that Optimus was COMPLETELY OOC. He's robot Jesus, he doesn't get that ferociously angry. The moment he said "I'll kill you all" to humans is exactly when I finally realized "hey... Michael Bay really freaking sucks at Transformers."
A character is just...butchered and has all the originality sucked out of them?
Context: (Minor Spoilers for the CW show Legends of Tomorrow)
Last night was the Jonah Hex episode, something I had been looking forward to for a while. Jonah Hex is one of my all-time favorite comic book characters, and I - naive waif that I was - assumed the actor would be right for the role, the personality would be more thought-out than "Growly Clint Eastwood Clone", and he'd actually be the two fisted, pistol-usin' character he had been for almost forty years.
Apparently I am a silly because...yyyeah, that was...that was bad.
Sometimes I really wish we could tackle Canon works, I must say.
But I can't be the only one who's terrified of the upcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell movie, can I?
It's a Japanese story set in Japan about Japanese characters, so they made one of the least Japanese women I've seen in my life play the lead (Japanese) character.
They've whitewashed the name, too. Just Major - no Mokoto, or anything foreign or scary like that.
I'm curious to see what else they'll whitewash.
P'raps they'll whitewash the setting, so it's in the proper, good old USA.
Maybe they'll whitewash all the robots, so that they're just very large white men with very stoic faces.
Perhaps they'll whitewash all the themes of transhumanism and existence, and make them something more comfy and western, like, I don't know, the incredible honour and power of the American military.
Shouldn't judge though, right?
Full disclosure, I haven't seen the original Ghost in the Shell or any trailers for the new one. (I have seen that picture of ScarJo with a black wig that looks straight out of "Lucy", though.) I'm saying I'm suspicious because whitewashing a film has a track record of ending badly for a film's publicity, box office, crew, and creators. As evidence, I present:
http://www.themarysue.com/ridley-scott-exodus-whitewashing/
http://www.themarysue.com/gods-of-egypt-whitewashing-fail/ This particular movie about Ancient Egypt was also an actual box office bomb.
http://www.themarysue.com/geopolitics-of-horror-natalie-dormer-the-forest/ As another white person interested in Japanese culture and history: No. Absolutely not. You shouldn't have done that, or been allowed to do that.
http://www.themarysue.com/pan-panned-panic/
Among plenty of others, including that live-action Death Note movie that might or might not still be a thing.
I mean, you can only run down so many old women before someone takes your car keys off you, right?
For the record they whitewashed the whole cast, and the writer's reasoning was that "there are no good Asian actresses". For the record, the writere, Max Landis, is the same guy who gained notoriety for going on a twitter rant about how no one likes original movies after every other movie of his bombed.
Here's a source, for those interested: http://bossip.com/1304167/ghost-in-the-shell-writer-defends-whitewashing-new-movie-by-claiming-there-are-no-good-asian-actresses/
I was getting a tad worried with throwing accusations of racism around, so it's nice that he just sort of stepped up and outright said 'Ayup, I'm racist.'
'Blame the culture, not the film industry!' He says.
As we all know, modern culture and modern media are completely separate, so much so that light observed is distorted and when one looks at the other, they're actually looking 300 years into the past.
But there is one, no two things like this in my mind: Wrhammer End Times and Age of Sigmar, aka 'Let's destroy one continuum with bad changes so the pigeons... eh, consummers stop talking about advancing the stoyline or more creative stuff' and 'Let's sell more Space Marines, in Fantasy and ever more pricier.'
Their ducking loss. If you're also a disgruntled Fantasy fan, check Kings of War, or Warhammer for half the price, and Mathias Eliasson's work. This guy has more creativity than their whole studio.
I don't care what Dad says on the matter, that Optimus was COMPLETELY OOC. He's robot Jesus, he doesn't get that ferociously angry. The moment he said "I'll kill you all" to humans is exactly when I finally realized "hey... Michael Bay really freaking sucks at Transformers."
IF Optimus would EVER get angry enough to yell at Humans, that's all he'd do - he'd yell. He wouldn't threaten, he wouldn't pull his weapons...he'd give them one HELL of a talking-to.
Thankfully, Matt Ryan saved the character in the TV show.
One that would be almost worth talking about it with the alien furball of Hell. Before killing them 100 times.
Ducking Rebellion and ducking need for some sequel we're still waiting...
The way the omniscient and omnipresent Madokami (canon by her own admission, episode 12) was pretty much taken by surprise and "split" by Homura into Madoka and Law of Circles (Homura who had pretty much no reason to have the power to do that), is a plothole big enough to fit the Death Star in.
That's aside the fact that there was no need to take Homura, who we know hss got a psyche that can be defined as "in pieces held together by paper tape", and put her into a freaking grinder. No wonders the dust that came out, Homurakuma, bears no resemblance to Homura Akemi... after all, if you take a cristal and grind it, the dust often is of a different color.
There's a point beyond a character's trials and suffering become meaningless, and Rebellion got well past it.
If at least they finally released it, we could see if they were up to something which could salvage the situation... But no, we ended up with more and more manga spin-offs. Not that I complain about them, but they could have fielded that sequel a long time ago.
And I am as a principle viciously biaised against pointless suffering inflicted to any characters, or even intense suffering, for that matter. DeusAngstMachina is the trope I hate the most with Karma Houdini and its relatives.
Yes the plothole is quite large here. Reminds me of Matrix (Why the duck plug humans to this Matrix? It only gives them means for rebellion, attacking the machines, and reaching other humans easily. Why the machines maintain this useless expense of energy that only help rebels?)