Set that watch

Remember this?










Of course you do. If you're like me, and it's safe to say you are or want to be, you've thought of little else since the movie's end credits. Two thoughts cycle around in your mind like atoms around a nucleus: When Can I Watch It Again and When Will The Sequel Come Out. Well, you can watch it right now if you want to. At work? Hey, thanks for reading while at work! Tell your boss you're suffering from Optimus Primitus, a rare form of what is colloquially referred to as "24 hour Shrieking Giddiness." At home? If you are, you're probably watching Transformers right now and not even reading this anyways. Out with friends? Stop reading your Blackberry and tell these people that they can either come back to your place immediately, stopping only for donuts and Schnapps or go fuck themselves.

It's fair to say this movie, and soon to be movie franchise, gets me more than a little irrational. I can't even give this movie any more than three out of four stars; the fight scene is too long at the end and Anthony Anderson does to his castmates what William H. Macy does to other gamblers in The Cooler. Still, I couldn't even watch previews last year because I got too excited, I almost broke the Boss' hand when I saw the first theatrical trailer, and was pretty sure I had a minor heart attack that lasted through the entire first half of the actual movie. I can't explain it, it's totally irrational to get this excited at this age. Plus, I don't even enjoy the old show anymore, or really any of the new shows, because after a certain point in one's life you run out of capacity to tolerate endlessly taunting. I don't own any toys (though wish I had kept my old ones, like everyone else who sees what they go for on Ebay), don't own the 1986 movie and haven't really kept up with the TV shows since Generation One. And yet...

It's a good time to be in your mid-twenties. Special effects technology has reached the point where it can produce real-life articulations of the stuff of our childhood imaginations. Comic book/Saturday morning cartoon franchises like Spiderman, the X-Men, Batman, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and the new and fabulous Iron Man may have upset some nerds by changing the odd plot point and origin story (something Marvel NEVER EVER fiddled with in the comics, oh NO NEVER) but it's safe to say nobody saw these movies and thought, gee, maybe they should have just animated it so that it didn't look like crap. Transformers will be followed with G.I. Joe to add to our list of childhood nostalgia films, and you can include the upcoming Star Trek prequel and the new Indiana Jones as part of the ongoing effort to exploit audience nostalgia.

There's two things that people just don't understand. First, they seem to think there's something wrong with Hollywood leafing through stacks of comic books and old TV shows for new movie ideas. This is a common misconception, and I'd like to clear it up for you. Comic books have great characters and rich, developed plots while old TV shows, if you strip away all the taunting and often lame main characters, have all sorts of sweet supporting characters and side-relationships. Like Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow in GI JOE, or even Megatron and StarScream, there's plenty of backstory and character histories you can pull out and condense into a two-hour movie, then build upon to make several more. I WANT my nostalgia exploited, and so do YOU. What you don't want is someone else's nostalgia exploited, like when they make a Charlie's Angels or Chipmunks movie, because YOU didn't watch it. Honestly. What's wrong with you. You're just selfish, though certainly armed with better taste.

The other misconception is that a film franchise, or threequel, or series, or whatever you want to call it, are bad things. They're actually awesome. Understand now? No? Okay, I'll explain. Sure, there's lots of bad franchises out there (the Mighty Ducks, the recent Star Wars trilogy, the Scary/Date/Epic/Movie movies. Hey Genre Movie writers: Just Die Already! Thanks!) and even more that had terrific starts but became bloated and ran out of momentum (the Burton/Schumacher Batmans, Pirates of the Carribean, and to a lesser degree the Matrix and Spiderman). Because of this, some people conclude that because some movie series suck, or start out great and then suck, there's something inherent in the multiple movie format that causes this. The reality is Most Stuff Sucks, if you follow Sturgeon's Law like you should. Well actually don't follow it, instead try to improve upon it, if you can. Most movies of any kind suck, whether part of a series or not. Yet the inherent benefit of making a trilogy or a series, is that the audience becomes more committed to the characters and will invariably have a greater emotional investment in their future. If you crammed the Lord of the Rings into one movie, then Frodo's sprint up the rocks to the opening of Mount Doom resonates much less with the viewer. In the Matrix Revolutions, Trinity's death is a far greater emotional blow because of how much time we've spent with her. Making a few more movies greatly enhances any fate that befalls our heroes and villains.

Start counting down, if you haven't already, to June 26, 2009, the target release date of Transformers 2. Keep track of added cast members and new trivia at IMDB. These studios are spending $200 million bucks of their own money to make a best-guess of what we might want to see. They're spoon-feeding us timewarps back to our youth, the least we can do is enjoy the tribute. If the movie isn't perfect, just find a way to like it. It's your childhood memories, don't let Michael Bay ruin them for you. He won't ruin mine, click on the IMDB link and go the FAQ section. Unicron?!?! Are you fucking KIDDING me?!??!!?!