The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Bah Weep Gragnah Weep Nini Bong!

A friend of mine named LaCharizard was once really excited about requesting movies for me to review, but I never really got around to any of them.  I think what kept me from fulfilling her request for today’s movie is that I was worried about it ruining my nostalgia.  I had been a big fan of this franchise when I was a child and didn’t want watching it in my adulthood to make me realize that it was actually a piece of shit as my ill-fated purchase of Bobby’s World on DVD had.  Should I rather not just allow myself to believe I liked it and never find out if I still would?  No!  Mainly because LaCharizard was alphabetically next on my list and this movie appealed to me more than her other requests … and because she’s named after my favorite Pokémon.  And that’s why I decided to watch The Transformers: The Movie, written by Ron Friedman, directed by Nelson Shin, and including the voices of Peter Cullen, Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles, Robert Stack, Frank Welker, Lionel Stander, Chris Latta, Susan Blu, John Moschitta Jr., Scatman Crothers, Casey Kasem, and Corey Burton.

In the far distant futuristic year … 2005 … the giant robot Galactus rip-off named Unicron (Orson Welles) is roaming around the universe eating planets.  The evil transforming robots known as the Decepticons (lead by Megatron [Leonard Nimoy]) leads an ambush on the Autobot city called … Autobot City.  In the fight, Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) gets off a signal to Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), who arrives to join the fight but is mortally wounded in the fight with Megatron.  After the Decepticon retreat, Optimus passes the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus, telling him that it will show them the light in their darkest hour.  After passing on the Matrix, Optimus passes on himself.  In deep space, Megatron is marooned by his second-in-command Starscream (Chris Latta), but is rescued by Unicron, who fixes him and turns him into Galvatron in exchange for the destruction of the Matrix.  Can the Autobots stop them?  CUE SHITTY 80’S MUSIC!

There!  My childhood is ruined!  Good work, LaCharizard!  I am totally gonna sick LaBlastoise on you!!  In truth, this was not a good movie but I don’t really feel as if my childhood is destroyed.  I think I knew this movie would be cheesy, and I was right.  Keeping my expectations low helped me to just watch this movie for the humor of it.  Not the intentional humor, mind you.  The best joke they could come up with was calling the Decepticons “Decepticreeps.”  Good one, bro.  I would’ve gone with Decepticunts, but then parents might have frowned on my choices.  The story of this movie is pretty dumb, but pretty ballsy as well.  They kill off so many Autobots in this movie, including Optimus Prime!  That takes balls.  I don’t really like it because Hot-Rod seemed like a tool and Rodimus Prime was Hasbro stealing my patented porn name, but it does take balls to kill your main hero early into your movie.  And it took even more balls for them to resist the temptation to slap that “You Got the Touch” over the scene when Optimus died.  Speaking of which…

This movie is the 80’s.  I thought the soundtrack was supplied by Ratt, and every other scene of music was a person using his Casio keyboard as a punching bag.  And what’s worse is that they really seemed to have no regard for the music that they chose to make sense or to sound appropriate for the situation where they were using it.  Look at Stan Bush’s classic song “The Touch,” as later famously covered by Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights.  That song was in this movie!  It was like a joke!  What does that song have to do with Optimus Prime transforming?!  I know the second line is “You got the power!” but what is he touching?  And then they use “Dare to Be Stupid” during a big battle with a robotic Mongol horde in a junkyard.  And they definitely did dare to be stupid, but it has nothing to do with the scene, and doesn’t even sound like appropriate music for a fight scene.  That being said, I do love some Weird Al.  I also feel like the animation of this movie doesn’t really hold up that well.  It’s okay, but even Saturday morning cartoons nowadays look way better than this movie.  And the sound mix of this movie never really seemed right.  First of all, it seems weird for the giant, planet-devouring robot to make chomping sounds when it absorbs a planet.  It should be Om Nom Nom or nothing!  And at other points in this movie, it seemed like they just plum forgot to put sound effects in, like the whole scene when Optimus was giving the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus.  Apparently, opening his chest and pulling a glowing orb out is completely silent.  Who knew?

One of the most impressive things about the cast of this movie is that it was one of the great Orson Welles’ final performances.  So Kudos to him.  The voice cast of the movie did a good job.  The only problem I had was with Frank Welker.  I like Frank Welker a lot, but that Wheelie character was annoying as hell.  Every time he had to speak, he had to rhyme.  And I had to sigh.  But there are plenty of problems with the characters.  First of all, Megatron.  He’s the biggest villain in the Transformers universe, surrounded by robots that turn into jets and diesels and dinosaurs and this guy … turns into a tiny pistol that is 1/10^th his size.  …And must be fired by one of his allies.  What could ever be lamer than that?  Oh wait … there’s an Autobot that turns into a microscope.  Okay, you win.  And of course, there are two Transformers that turn into cassette player boom boxes, just in case you forgot this was the 80’s.  Truth be told, I’ve always had a soft spot for Soundwave for some reason, but his transformation is inarguably lame.  Oh, if you did forget that this movie is in the 80’s, the kid in this movie rides a hoverboard.  He probably used to use a pink one like a bojo until he got stuck over a lake, ‘cause those things don’t work on water unless you’ve got power.  Also, the Decepticon Astrotrain turns into a train that looks awfully similar to Doc Brown’s train from Back to the Future 3.  And Astrotrain is stupid.  Not only because his name is stupid, but because the Decepticons were riding inside him fighting about who would take over with Megatron gone and he never thought to suggest the choice between them making him the leader or being jettisoned out of his ass into deep space.

The Transformers: The Movie might still be able to entertain children, but I even doubt that.  The story is pretty simple, but if they have any love for the Transformers going into it, they’ll probably be bummed out by how many of their favorite characters are killed off, only to be replaced by someone that would call himself Rodimus Prime with a straight face.  This movie is also horribly dated by the 80est of 80’s music that has ever 80’sed.  But, thankfully, I did not find that this movie was able to destroy my nostalgic love for the Transformers.  I just regarded it as a goofy movie that was fun to make fun of.  But there’s still not much reason to watch it.  The Transformers: The Movie gets “I’ve got better things to do tonight than die” out of “Did we have to let them detonate three-quarters of the ship?”

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Batman: Arkham City (2011)

A Ruby the Size of a Tangerine

Okay, I’ll do the actual first review of something good, and it’ll be a video game.  That game, of course, is Duke Nukem Forever.  …Just kidding.  BATMAN!!  Not to spoil my review and give away what I thought about it, I bought this game in collector’s edition and I’ve beaten it twice and it’s amazing.  You’ll find out what I think about it later.  First, the summary.  Batman: Arkham City is an open-world, action-adventure game brought to us by the fine people at Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.  Also, I got the game with the Catwoman DLC so that may have changed my story a bit.

Some bald a-hole named Hugo Strange (Corey Burton) has convinced Gotham to release the prisoners of Arkham Asylum into a walled off section of the city and let them have free reign.  They call this place Arkham City.  Bruce Wayne (Kevin Conroy) is not keen on the idea for some reason and campaigns to get it shut down.  The closest thing to a reason I can remember is that his parents were killed behind the theater there.  Anyways, at a rally, Wayne is captured by Strange’s Tyger Security guards.  Turns out Bruce Wayne is Batman, and Strange knows it.  Wayne is released into Arkham City and is quickly recaptured by the Penguin (Nolan North of Nathan Drake fame).  The Penguin is harboring a grudge against Wayne which is probably only made worse by the fact that he ass-kicks his way out of his custody.  Calling in a drop from his butler Alfred (Martin Jarvis), Wayne gets all suited up and Batman’d out.  Time to punch some faces!  First order of business: Two-Face (Troy Baker) has captured Catwoman (Grey DeLisle) and you have to rescue her.  Once you have, a smiley face laser appears on her head and a shot rings out.  Don’t worry, you saved her.  But who would have aimed a gun with a smiley face on it?  I’m sure we’re all surprised to find out it was the Joker (Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill).  Batman goes to investigate but finds only the Joker’s sidekick/girl-toy Harley Quinn (Tara Strong).  She confesses that, after the events of the first game, Joker is dying from Titan poisoning.  This doesn’t concern Batman at all … except that Harley Quinn knocks out Batman and they inject him with some of the Joker’s poisoned blood.  Now Batman must try to cure himself while trying to figure out what Hugo Strange’s Protocol 10 and how he can stop it.

This game is amaz-zaz-zing.  Let’s go through this piece by piece and describe why.  First, the graphics: amazing.  It is almost flawless in it’s presentation.  Batman looks great.  They take a midpoint between the comic book Batman and the realistic armor look of the Christian Bale Batman by having him look like the comic book equivalent with his costume looking like it could have armor on it, he has gauntlets that he can put things into for analysis, and he has pieces that come down over his eyes when he goes into Detective Mode.  His costume also gets beat up over the course of the game as he’s been through some mess and hasn’t had time to change.  Arkham City is dark and foreboding as it should be, and also keeps the damage done to it along the course of the game.  When the church tower is blown up by the Joker, it stays a smoldering mess from that point on.  All of the other characters are captured well and most are made into darker versions of their characters.  Catwoman is made into all appropriate kinds of hot.  Harley Quinn’s outfit is different from her classic one, but still very hot.  Mr. Freeze’s outfit hasn’t changed much, but may have gotten cooler (pun intended).  Penguin looks different from Danny Devito, but is Penguin appropriate, adding one bottle to the eye like a disturbing version of a monocle.  Two-Face, Riddler, Zsasz, Bane, Robin, Poison Ivy, Calendar Man, Ra’s and Talia al Ghul, Mad Hatter, Deadshot, Killer Croc, Hush, Black Mask, Clayface, and other classic Batman characters are all here and captured masterfully.  The only issue graphically is that I noticed they took the easy way out in a few shots.  When Two-Face is drawn up, he’s already tied up inexplicably, and on occasion Riddler’s mouth doesn’t move when he’s talking.  But these are minor problems and barely worth noticing.

The gameplay is super satisfying as well.  The fighting is fairly simple, but ultimately satisfying.  X punches, Y counters, double tap A to jump over someone, B stuns, and you can use your gadgets in combat.  It’s pretty easy to get the hang of and gives you the opportunity to feel like you’re the bat.  Combat amps up as enemies gain weapons and numbers over Batman, but if you get the hang of the combat system, their numbers and weapons will mean nothing to you.  YOU ARE THE BAT!  Arkham City steps it up over Arkham Asylum by giving you an open world to explore, and traversing it is also very satisfying.  Granted, I would’ve liked to be able to get around in a Batmobile, but a grappling system is also good.  You shoot your grappling hook over to places and can glide with your cape.  With an upgrade, your grappling hook will shoot you out over your grapple point and send you immediately into a glide, and that’s the only way to fly.  Catwoman, however, could’ve used a little work.  She has similar controls with different animations that feel like they could’ve been refined a little more.  It might not have been so bad if you didn’t play as Batman first; his controls being so smooth most of the time.  But, switching to Catwoman, you can no longer destroy the enemy weapon that was giving you such a hard time (usually the shield or the stun baton) as you may have gotten used to with Batman.  Her travel system is a big step down as well.  Instead of getting pulled straight over to a point you hit it with your whip and swing down to a point on the wall well below that point and usually exposed to guards that will then shoot at you.  If you have not been spotted, you will have to hit timed-button-presses to make your way up to the point you set.  This is not good when you’re trying to stealthily make your way around the room to clear it of bad guys.  She did, however, have the ability to cling to the ceiling, which Batman does not, and use that to solve puzzles or take out enemies and disappear from sight.  Stealth is a big part of the game since head-on assault can sometimes be suicide, and it’s usually well done.  The Mr. Freeze battle forces you to see how many opportunities you have to take someone out as he blocks you from repeating the same take down you just used.  Batman can hang people from vantage points, pull them over ledges, pop up from out of floor grates, charge through wall grates, blow up a wall on you, use the environment, or just flat out sneak up behind and choke out.  This is usually satisfying.  Catwoman loses many of these opportunities and replaces them with ceiling crawling.  They will also change what they do depending on what’s around them.  If your character is near a wall, he or she may bounce off it to punch them or grab their head and slam it into the wall.  If you interrogate the enemies near a handrail, you will dangle them over it by their leg.

Batman also has more gadgets than James Bond.  You have electrically charged taser gun that can open certain doors and knock over armored enemies.  You have freeze grenades that can freeze an enemy in place to either take down or use as bait or make walkways on water.  You’ve got classic batarang, boomerang batarang, and remote controlled batarang that can hit switches or knock people over edges.  Your line launcher can traverse areas you can’t jump into or be used to kick an enemy over a ledge.  Explosives that can knock out an enemy or simply open a wall, but only if it’s drawn in the shape of the bat symbol apparently.  Maybe even some more gadgets that I forgot.  He has a plethora of tools that can mostly be used in puzzle solving or in combat.  And the best part about them is that, even though there are a lot of them, they are easy to access when you need them and most are easily used in combat with the correct combination of buttons.  My personal favorite was the bat grapple.  Usually used to traverse the environment or to pull an enemy over a ledge, I liked to use it in combat (by holding the Left Trigger and pressing Y) to disarm an enemy with a gun and clothesline the mamma jamma while he stumbled towards me.  Very satisfying, especially if it went into slo-mo because he was the last enemy in the area.  They also brought back Detective Mode, which could be switched to in order to track enemies to set up takedowns and other uses.  Catwoman’s vision, however, was not that helpful.  You could see enemies, but it made no discernible distinction between armed enemies and unarmed, or armored enemies and unarmored.  So that was barely helpful.

Another big part of the game (at least if you’re achievement hunting) is the challenges.  There are 3 types of challenges: combat, predator, and campaign.  Combat challenges put you in a room with increasing amounts and difficulties of enemies and you try to reach a high score for medals by trying not to get hit and keeping your combat multiplier up.  Predator is the stealth approach where you have to try to do the 3 special takedowns for medals.  Campaign is 3 back-to-back missions of the other 2 types mixed with modifiers that can be turned on at different times.  I really only did these with any degree of seriousness because I wanted the achievements.  They could get tedious pretty quickly, especially as they got more difficult, but I found in the second playthrough afterwards I had gotten very good at Batmanning and it was a breeze.

There are a lot of collectables in this game, which is something that can be taken either as a positive or a negative.  I actually enjoyed it for the most part.  There were 400 collectables; which are Riddler trophies, riddles, and special things you need to do in combat or travel.  The good thing about this is that there was actually a reason to do them, besides just the achievements.  The most obvious one is that, if you collect enough of them, you can save a hostage of the Riddler.  You can also unlock artwork and recordings of Hugo Strange interviewing the various villains of Gotham, which I found entertaining.  You can also have them shown on your map if you find the covert Riddler operatives and interrogate them.  Lots of people may not have the patience for these collectables though.

The voice work was all around fantastic.  Mark Hamill does the best Joker voice.  Really creepy and appropriate for the character.  Everyone else fit their characters perfectly with no complaints.  I also think Harley Quinn’s voice makes her extra cute.  Too bad she’s crazy…

I’ve gone on too long.  QUICK WRAP UP!  This game is great.  Go buy now.  Give game “Dark Knight” out of “Batman Begins”.

Hey, peeps.  Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh?  And tell your friends!  Let’s make me famous!