I think I was unfairly prejudiced toward future hopes for the Transformers franchise, given how awful the live action films have been, and the dreadful Transformers Armada and Transformers Animated cartoons left me especially ill-disposed toward last year's Transformers Prime. The fact that it was CG-animation rather than traditional made me keep away.

Now, after a weekend spent watching hours of it on Cartoon Network, I've decided that Prime is great. Maybe it has something to do with switching on at the start of Megatron and Optimus Prime's climactic duel, perhaps it was the relatively mature storylines (for a kids' show about giant robots, at least. But it did feature characters dealing with death and illegal drag races, as well as a zombie apocalypse and much dismemberment). The compulsory child companions weren't annoying! The animation was pretty smooth. There were scenes that put across the awe that a human should feel when witnessing huge mechs in battle right above them (something Michael Bay never managed). Frank Welker! Starscream (spoiler) betrayed everyone!

Mainly though, Bumblebee sounded like R2-D2 and looked like Atomic Robo. Awesome.

Here, besides the box art showing how the creators intended it to be, is the first stage of my putting together and painting a SodaPop bunny mecha.



I made a few changes. The crouched pose looks too passive, not to mention the fact that it doesn't quite line up with how the pilot is seated. Also, what's up with her not sporting bunny ears herself, y'know? Easily rectified by removing the ears that the sculptor had though to install on the mech's hips (huh?) and reapplying them behind the goggles.

Finally, and most noticeably, the cheerful and massive bunny mascot is now standing up there on the mech's outstretched hand, in a traditional "I choose you!" pose.

Painting this thing is gonna be a bitch. You may wonder why I glued the pilot in there, as surely that's going to make it harder to paint. Since the method of assembly to get her on there is to force her onto the saddle until she snaps in, I didn't fancy having to redo scraped paintjobs, frankly.

No matter how many times I look back and tell myself that Ghost in the Shell is a good movie and it's worth watching again, following upon that plan results in disappointment. Writing this down should remind me in future not to even ponder the idea.

I mean, the tank fight is cool,and probably the bit that sticks in my memory the most as a reason to see it. But everything else... How many musical interludes are there? Just when some momentum has been built up in the plot,the movie decides to release it all slowly while some dull choir over some nicely animated irrelevant sequences. Stop the plot,let the audience think over what they've just seen, and lose all interest.

Big opening scene! Pause for five minutes while the credits are rolled. The plot continues, and features a fight, and then we're whisked away to watch some street 'scenes' for a bit so that the background artists feel that their work has been appreciated. Even the car chase is shown as a couple of blips moving on a map while some guys mumble and that choir has at it again!

Maybe,by trimming down these excesses and the philosophical tangents, a decent thirty minutes of material could be sown together.

As inspiration for Eclipse Phase, it's definitely a tone to be avoided.

I mentioned the possibility that someone would do a better review than I, and they sure did.

So, just over halfway through the year, and I haven't used up any of this holiday time. That's five working weeks of vacation to dispose of somehow...

Saying that it's better than the last Transformers movie isn't high praise is it? Still too many human takedowns of Cybertronians for my liking, though.

It's getting harder and harder to identify the robot cameos. Were it not for his name-check in dialogue, I'd never have recognised poor old Shockwave, whose own lines (spoken by Frank Welker, no less!) are buried under whatever hideous mechanical grinding was deemed necessary to characterise him as a machine. Getting the DVD will become essential if only to put on subtitles to understand.

I don't recall Roadbuster ever calling anyone a 'wanker' in the comics. I guess, with Mudflap and Skids gone, they had to find some other offensive characterisation to slap on.

Was that the Mayhem Attack Squad that posed as the three black cars in the motorway attack? I only make the connection due to one of them sporting shoulder tentacles, putting me in mind of Octopunch; a team of three Decepticon assassins... That would make Stranglehold the bestial one and Bludgeon the one with the cool Pred-dreads, possibly the only robot design for the movie franchise so far that I've liked.

Laserbeak was cool. Soundwave... was a car. Megatron's African disguise was badass. Alan Tudyk's marvellous performance was wasted. John Malcovich's was, um, certainly a performance.

Optimus Prime declared that he was going to 'kill them all'. Gak. I'm sure that there are better people than me willing to write more words regarding the many ways in which that's bad and wrong and awful.

The 3D was pretty good, not too distracting. Fight choreography itself still needs work.

The AMOK TIME music gets played, according to the end credits. I missed it! If you see the movie (and this semi-review is by no means a recommendation) keep an ear out for it!

With slightly better quality, here also are the Dragonborn models that I recently painted, courtesy Reaper Miniatures.
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I took these photo's a while ago, but only now am I getting around to uploading them... So, with my typical lame standard of photography, here are the Cygnaran boys and girls I painted for WARMACHINE (not that I've even ever used them in a game).

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