Fight the Fight

I love reliving the good ‘ol days from my childhood from time to time. Insert whatever reference to innocence and purity for your own childhood here, and then think about Michael Bay. Yeah it makes me shiver too.

For those of you who don’t know, July 4th, 2007 will mark the release of the live action version of Transformers into theaters. No this isn’t a critically acclaimed movie staring Felicity Huffman, but an action/adventure film by aforementioned Mr. Bay.

My west coast correspondent at The Sobering Conclusion has been counting down the days for some time… And the guys at Jalopnik have also been devoting much time to posting any little gossip or images they can get about the production of this movie…

So, the picture above is from one of the print pieces included when you purchased a transformer back in the 80′s. This particular Transformer is named Bumblebee, and maybe that’s because of the color and type of car this robot sometimes takes the shape of… This particular toy became one of the icons of the series that probably any person who played with a Transformer or saw the highly popular cartoon (or even one that has half a brain) could tell you what model car Bumblebee was.

So there was quite a bit of “He’s doing what?” when the news came out about there being a live action Transformers film being produced (there was already a animated movie released back in the day). Then it came out that Michael Bay (ever see The Island?) will be directing the movie. The second image is what Mr. Bay has turned Bumblebee into… A stupid looking robot that now has an alter ego of an as yet to be released Chevrolet Camaro…

Now I’ll mention the whole commercialization of our youth en route to the shock and awe that GM is the automotive sponsor of the movie. That’s right… There’s going to a Hummer (the guzzling type… er… the gas guzzling type), a Pontiac solstice, a overly large “like a rock” pickup truck, and who knows what other crappy cars… I wonder if he got a gun company to pay for Megatron to take the shape of one of their firearms.

It’s gone from bad to worse in my opinion… So disappointing to see a beloved part of my childhood bastardized Armageddon style. If only Affleck was in this movie… I’m sure Bay will have a classical score to accentuate any emotion his actors (or animations) can’t portray by themselves. Can robots in disguise even feel anything?