Spending Spree

Thankfully, I actually got my bonus this month - all £500 worth for the last two months' work - as it came just in time to take the edge of the insurance payment for my flat. It also left me with some spending money above that of my usual pay packet.

And so...

I caved in and bought Demolishor and Sideways while food shopping in Sainsbury's (hey, it happens, OK?), then proceeded to take advantage of the special Toys'R'Us offer where £45 worth of TransFormers Movie merchandise nets you one free Deluxe (worth about £13), equating to near enough 25% extra free. I picked up RotF Leader Megatron (to make the bulk of the £45), Scout class Dirt Boss (to take me over £45) and claimed Deluxe Breakaway as my prize. I also managed to snag TF:Animated Swindle while I was there. Some of the new Robot Heroes were tempting, but they're cute rather than worthwhile. I may yet grab some... just not this month.

Impressions? Why not...

The abiding impression of Demolishor is that he's tiny. Surely one of the smallest Voyagers to date. He looks tiny in the box, and even smaller out in the open. Considering this guy's size in his brief appearance in the movie (Optimus Prime is only a little taller than Demolishor's head), I'm not sure Voyager was the right size class for him. Certainly, they'd never do a Leader Class version or a Supreme (which is the closest size class to what he'd need), but this thing isn't even in scale with Legends class figures. It seems strange that Starscream seems to fit his size class (though even he feels a little small) but, other than him, it's only the Movie 1 re-releases like Ironhide and Ratchet that really feel like Voyagers so far. Then again, Blackout was way too small two years ago, so I guess some characters just lose out.

Sideways is another one who doesn't last through the intro to the movie - he's literally sliced in half by Sideswipe. Nevertheless, he received more than adequate handling in Deluxe format. His car mode is close enough to the Audi in the movie, and robot mode looks suitably weird. There's something vaguely Insecticon about him - I can see kitbashes into Kickback. The red plastic used is way too bright, and is out of place when one considers the movie model... but a lick of paint will cover that up nicely.

Dirt Boss is based on one of the Decepticon Drones from the game based upon the first movie - he's a small forklift. The drone's large red eye is supplemented by a proper head for this release, but it doesn't quite fit the movie aesthetic... The same could be said for all the Scouts this time round. Overall, it's a decent figure, but the nigh-fluorescent greenish-yellow paintjob is a bit of an eyesore.

Breakaway is derived from the RotF videogame's Deep Six mission - he's the Autobot defending the US Navy against the attacking Decepticons, who are intent on retrieving Megatron from the abyss. He's a very strange model, and the colourscheme (beige, metallic grey-blue and lime green) really does not suit either a military plane or his very awkward robot mode, which is somewhat reminiscent of something out of Macross. He does require some 'surgery' right out of the box, to help him pose properly, but is quite a fun toy.

Leader Class Megatron is another missed opportunity - making it two for two in terms of Movie Megatrons - partly due to the writers insistence on denying Megatron any form of disguise. Thus, he's a Cybertronic Tank this time round. The voyager comes with extra armour plates to make him look like the flying version featured in the movie, but this one has a more accurate colourscheme (apart from the use of black on the the face, rather than a darker metallic colour). He's not a poseable as he could be, partly because the tank tread/heels don't fix in place (the leg features a peg hole, but the peg won't reach it). Tank mode honestly looks like Megatron just laid down. The visible head is part of the movie design, but that just seems like lazy design to me. The big disappointment is the lack of articulation in the gun arm, and the fact that the tank mode's turret can either be fixed and stable... or able to turn, but prone to flopping about and detaching from the body. But, hey, when you push a lever down on his chest, lots of gears spin, lights flash, and he says "Megatron... Ha ha haaaaa!". Just like Prime, the "I am..." part is missing... and it's not a fault with just mine - I tried others in the shop. Strange...

Animated Deluxe Swindle is a wonderful homage to the G1 original. He looks suitably sneaky, has his huge cannon (hero worshipping Megatron, perhaps?) an those big purple eyes from the old days. The light piping on these is particularly effective but there's so much transparent purple plastic elsewhere (upper arms and legs, fingers and thumbs) that I'm worried about his long-term survival.

A mixture of good and average, overall... not a bad haul, but how much more will the RotF line offer? Of the upcoming stuff I'm aware of, I'm only really keen on Mudflap, Jetfire, The Fallen, and possibly Mixmaster and more of the Human Alliance figures.

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On an unusually personal note...

I'm not quite sure what to make of the current storyline in Megatokyo. That webcomic has kept me reading for several years now (and I've bought the books - far more portable than any laptop, longer battery life, and the download speed of each strip easily beats wireless broadband), but the recent focus on the relationship between Piro and Miho, via the Endgames world, has struck a bit of a chord.

My experiences weren't identical. It wasn't so much an online game as a writing group (though it occasionally functioned like a text-based MMORPG, and we'd been chatting online for a while before we got involved in the group because of a gallery on my website)... She became, in a sense, my Muse... started me off in a creative direction I'd never considered, and appeared to believe in me when I didn't believe in myself. I happily reciprocated, and it appeared that our communication - my small part in her life - helped her through some particularly strained times.

Every so often, she'd disappear for days at a time, but always bounced back with apologies and assurances that everything was OK.

At times, back then, and much more in retrospect, the whole experience reminded me of Nick Bantock's Griffin & Sabine trilogy. I'm not sure that was ever a good thing.

When the subject of exchanging photos came up - as it inevitably does - she consistently declined, for a variety of reasons, some of which strayed into contradiction. Call me naive, but that never mattered to me - at the very least, it was obvious that the person I was writing to was female even before we spoke on the phone. But I believed in the feelings she claimed to have (which I shared), to the point that it almost wouldn't have mattered.

The way it 'ended' between Piro and Miho (in quotes because it clearly hasn't truly ended for those two) was almost the reverse of the final communication between me and the girl a couple of my friends now refer to as "the bunny boiler" - having agreed to meet (meaning flying almost literally to the other side of the world for me), she backpeddled a week or so before I was due to fly. All the warnings I'd had from friends, and all of the warning signs I'd spotted myself and happily ignored in my strange, romantic delusion basically hit me all at once, like a particularly icy tidal wave. She announced that she'd just started dating someone ("a really great guy"), when I pretty much already knew it had been going on for at least a month because she had been talking about him in a particular way (later confirmed by a mutual online friend). When she wrote that she'd still like to meet me, I replied that, considering the twisted game she'd played on me, I never wanted to hear from her again and that I didn't believe she existed (whether I meant 'as the person she claimed to be' or 'at all', I am no longer sure...).

When I flew out (the damned flight was booked and paid for, so I took the holiday anyway, somewhat determined to do some of the sightseeing we'd discussed), I'm pretty sure she was at the airport when I arrived. I didn't get a good look, as the young woman seemed determined to stay out of my line of sight... but I had the sense of her presence, a remnant of the connection we had built up... and I didn't feel like giving her the satisfaction of a confrontation.

The whole thing nagged at me for many years since, though. Fairly recently (last year sometime?), at the urging of a couple of friends, I looked her up again on the internet. Turns out some of her art has found its way onto a website or two. Then I was most amused to find that she's on Facebook using her real name (not a common one by a long shot, and certainly not in her home country), and even has a photo there. She's certainly similar enough to the young woman I glimpsed at the airport, and seeing her picture set my mind at ease on the whole, silly affair. When a friend offered me the use of her Facebook account to look into "the bunny boiler" in more detail, I was happy to decline...

...Then I started reading about Piro's 'prior relationship' with Miho, and suddenly all kinds of chords are being struck and memories jogged.

Fred Gallagher's writing has been sensitive and insightful, and the current conversation between Piro and Kimiko (to date, strips 1206-1215) - in particular, Piro's clumsy attempts to veil his mixed feelings - echos many such conversations I've had with friends.

Were it not so dreadful, it would almost be comforting that my experience is not as uncommon as I'd thought, if a similar thing has become part of the plot in a renowned webcomic.

Apologies for blathering.

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Revenge of the Sequel

My old mate Paul got tickets for TransFormers: Revenge of the Fallen at IMAX today. All things considered, he was very lucky, as the film only opened yesterday, and has been selling out. The IMAX cinema in London decided to put on extra shows not only at midnight, but at around 3am as well.

So... Was it any good?

Well, like the first, it's not perfect... but it's a significant improvement on the first, while maintaining its most significant flaw: for a film about TransFormers, it had too great a focus on the humans, Sam Witwicky in particular, and too little on the Robots in Disguise. If the first film was 'a story about a boy and his first car', then this one is 'a story about a boy leaving the family home and finding his place in the world' or, to describe it in more heavy-handed terms, 'a story about a boy finding his destiny'.

Strangely, the bit about The Fallen using a machine to generate Energon by destroying our sun, and a newly-reactivated Megatron effectively being Anakin to The Fallen's Darth Sidious is very nearly relegated to the status of sub-plot. It may be rather more 'in your face' than Sam's story, but the most significant dialogue comes from the humans.

I'd have to concur with the common gripe that the majority of the Decepticons are little more than cannon fodder for the combined Autobot/Human task force N.E.S.T., in particular Sideways is literally cut in half within a few minutes of first appearing on screen, and Demolishor's entire screen time is pretty much covered in the trailers. Shame, as they're both interesting looking robots, and it would have been cool to see them in a bit more detail.

There was barely any characterisation among the robots and, again, Optimus Prime's character wasn't quite what it should be (not as bad as the impatient, thuggish Optimus of the first film, but his tone was still a little off). The twins, Skids and Mudflap, were handled reasonably well but other newcomers were not. Sideswipe had only a couple of lines, Jolt had none and seemed to be in the movie for the sole purpose of electrifying something at a key moment... And Bumblebee was back to speaking through his radio. Even returning characters were not built upon for the most part although, thankfully, the relationship between Megatron and Starscream carried a bit more weight.

The most impressive Decepticon was easily Soundwave - orbiting Earth, scanning broadcasts, hacking networks and violating our communication satellites with his fibre-optic tentacles. After him Ravage would come next on purely technical grounds - his movement was flawless. Wheelie - a mini-bot even more foul-mouthed than Frenzy taking a similar sneak-spy role - probably had the most character (if not the most dialogue) of any of the robots.

Story-wise, it was rather patchy, and jumped around too much. I found it quite disconcerting that Megatron was delivering exposition during a woodland battle with Optimus Prime, and many of the scene-cuts seemed too abrupt.

It was interesting to see the role of Sam's parents was improved upon - yes, they were there for comic relief, but they also has some worthwhile scenes... though the 'significant' scene between Sam and his parents during the final battle was far too heavy-handed and obvious.

Considering Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci co-wrote the recent Star Trek reboot, it seems bizarre that the quality of this story is so far below that of Trek. Perhaps JJ Abrams made all the difference.

There were comments from Michael Bay quoted all over the web about how they were all rushing to finish the movie in time for its release date (not surprising, considering it kept getting pushed forward!), and I suspect the film may have benefitted by a little extra time - vehicle models were apparently reused between the constituent parts of Devastator and a separate bunch of Decepticons who, based on leaked materials, appeared to be equivalent to the G1 Constructicons. It was rather jarring to see the fully formed Devastator wrecking a pyramid, while Rampage, Mixmaster and a back-from-the-dead Bonecrusher were going head to head with N.E.S.T. alongside a host of 'Protoform' Decepticons... That must have been due either to a lack of time or money... possibly both. But, since the Decepticons were there to be mown down, it hardly mattered that many of them didn't even get to take on an Earth form.

All of this sounds rather negative but I honestly enjoyed the movie. After being disappointed by the first, I've kind of adjusted my expectations - this is a whole new continuity of TransFormers, and needs to be viewed as such. While The Fallen, Jetfire, the mysterious 'Alice' and the Matrix of Leadership were largely dealt short shrift, the movie in general was very enjoyable and kept the pace going all the way through. The action was constant and far clearer than in the original, and fewer of the comic relief moments felt tacked-on. I'll definitely be getting the DVD.

As far as the toys go, who knows? There weren't that many new Autobots (the team of 3 motorcycles are, frankly, a bit crappy-looking), and several of the Decepticons may or may not have been new characters with the same alternate modes as robots from the original, so there aren't gone to be that many new toys, other than videogame-only characters and those that are completely made up for the toyline. My bank balance may be safer than I thought...

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