Dear Autobots: An intervention

"YOU LIED TO US!" "On our defense, here's an astronaut who traveled all the way to the moon." "THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!"

I just want to say, that I love you. Well, not love-love, but I did have a fun time watching your first two movies, even if it doesn't make sense that Megatron can fly to a distant planet in a day. Even if your potty-humor seems entirely out of play and your robots curse. I like you.

I brought you here because I saw your new trailer, and I want to say, you have a problem, and I'm not talking about an in-story conflict that needs resolution to deliver catharsis, either. You see, the theme of this trailer, as it where, is that the U.S. government betrayed you. Or rather, that you betrayed yourselves using the U.S. government.

Because I have seen your movies, and in every single one, the Government of the United Stated has been fucking you up your robot asses, possibly litterally in Bumblebee's case.  In movie one they captured and tortured him in a secret base, after all. In movie two they used you for their own personal benefit, and then failed to assist you when your leader died. In movie 3 they straight up sold you to your enemies.

So when movie 4's trailer indicates that the US is again  hurting you, it's not so much a disturbing scenario, but the 2nd direct to DVD sequel to the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog; no cause for surprise.  Autobots cannot continue to be in this horrible relationship with the American Government. I know that their military resources are necessary to maintain your campaign against the Decepticons (and indeed, the intake of cash of this franchise). Most people in abusive relationships are willing to  stay in them, as long as they don't have to depart certain benefits of them.  But you guys can make it on your own.

Lou Diamond Phillips is now the Frog.

In your cartoons, you guys are perfectly able to fend off most of your enemies most of the time. Maybe the silver lining to staying away form the U.S. government would be that you'd get to be more like that: Maybe this time you'd get to be the heroes of your story, instead of  Shia Lebouf, Josh Duhamel, Jon Voight, Mark Whalberg, and Ednik Stero-type. Maybe next movie we could get a look at how the 'Bots relate to each other.

I cannot continue to watch you hurt yourselfs. Certainly not while paying full price for a ticket. Please. You need help...but you can do this without the air force. We don't want to see Transformers constantly put up with government abuse while in constant admiration of the Armed Forces, Michael Bay  Autobots.

Continue

5 Fighting game characters that should have retired already

There is life after round 3.

Fighting game tournaments are not like real life tournaments. Whereas in real life most of the people who compete do so for sport and train for it yearly, character stories in videogames need to be outlandish things full of good vs evil, revenge, and sometimes runaway brides. Those who say that fighting games have no stories really do a disservice to how committed the makers are for giving Mark Joe a reason to be in Mark of Punches 5.

 But in giving characters a motivation, sometimes it clashes with the fact that regardless of the ending, the character will probably come back at some point. If you stick with a fighting game franchise long enough, you will see every character come back at least once, regardless of how resolved their plot arcs are or how dead they where last time. But some of these characters fullfilled their reason to join the tournament years ago. And yet, here they are, still trading blows. Who are this guys?

Tina Armstrong(Dead or Alive)

Tina is one of my favorite characters from this franchise, with her lighthearted personality and enormous breasts. However, her motivation has been weird from the start. And this is from a series that has a character that is trying to defeat a guy who saved her once.

See, Tina is a wrestler, but she doesn't want to be a wrestler. She wants to be in show business. So she gets into the tournament to get enough money to do so.

Can you two let me talk?

Now, let's pretend in this world wrestling isn't staged.  But  the tricky thing is, at the end of each game, Tina succeeds into  getting  into different aspects of show business, while not winning the tournament at all. Which makes no sense. If she breaks into modeling in game 1, why would she need to fight in another tournament to break into acting? If Dwayne"The Rock" Johnson wanted to become a singer, would he have to participate in a tournament, too? No, silly, he's already in!

And if winning was key to her goal, why can she still achieve it even though canonically, she lost?

This is why the movie changed her motivation to the less stupid "I want out of fake wrestling."  And it's always sad when fighting game movies actually make sense of the games.



Sentinel(MVC3)

Sentinel, buddy: come here a minute. I know you started in  a game that was mostly mutants. You hunt those. It's your job. And then you came back in Marvel vs Capcom 2. You where a little broken, but I guess all the mutants where there, so it made sense. If you had to fight Strider and Megaman, well, that's just fine.

If he wasn't a mutant, he probably heard about them.

But why are you in Marvel vs Capcom 3? No, DON'T tell me about your fruit palette shenanigans. In this game there's like 3 X-Gene mutants and arguably two more technical mutants.

And no wonder, man! Last I  heard, Mutants without ongoing comic appearances where extinct. Even Jubilee's a vampire now. Maybe you should hunt vampires and quit this "fighitng game" business. You're not good at it anyway.



Balrog(Street Fighter)

Unlike everyone else in the Street Fighter universe, Balrog is in it for the money. He works for a terrorist in  a military uniform and punches people to death. For the money. But is this paying off?

See, everytime a Street Fighter game ends, Bison is defeated. Well, except if he wins I guess.

I would also guess that Balrog probably goes to jail, or escapes somehow. But why? Does Bison pay ahead, and  is the money that good? And how much money does one  really need that going back to fight Foodtown Bruce Lee and Pink Ryu is worth it?

It's time to retire, Balrog.  If you must fight, then fight. You don't need Shadaloo. And Shadaloo sure as hell doen't need you.

Seung Mina(Soul Calibur)

Seung Mina is a young Korean woman who wants Soul Edge because she doesn't want to get married off by her family and also to defend her country. So she runs away to search for the sword.

Am I missing something, here, lady? YOU RAN AWAY FROM HOME! You don't need to  depend on your parents anymore. Sure, you can't join the Korean Army because you're a gurl, but you could always just join the battle or pull a Mulan.

As for the marriage...well, problem solved. You ran away from home! Just stay away from home and that's it.
You don't need a magic sword, you just need some follow through. It's obvious you're self sufficient if you're traveling to some other country and fighting Ivy.

I think she'll do just fine.

 The thing about Mina is, we don't know if she's back in the series newest, decades after the fact timejump. But I'm guessing she'll be back.


Scorpion(Mortal Kombat)

You could argue that Scorpion is probably Mortal Kombat's most known character. Yet the demonic undead Ninja hasn't had a real reason to fight in years.


See, at first it was revenge for the death of his family as well as himself. And he got it. He killed the guy. Then the guy's brother showed up, dressed the same. This lead to a hilarious misunderstanding that lasted  several games and a spinoff. Finally, in Mortal Kombat 4, he finally caught up with the guy, but He wasn't the killer, this other magic motherfucker was to blame. So he dragged that guy to Hell.

GET OVER IIIIIIIIT!

After that, Scorpion's motivation started to get muddy. He chased the guy out of hell, became a conduit for the Elder Gods, then decided to get revenge against the Gods. Come on, Scorpion, kill the guy and rest in fucking peace already!


Oh, wait, time got reversed?  Well, back to hunting the brother of the guy who killed you then, I guess?

Continue

Horrendous Theory: Optimus Prime is EVIL

You can trust this attempt at a face!

Now, I'm not much of a Transformer G1 fan. Was way more into Beast Wars. But don't you guys find that in the movie's Optimus is a bit...ruthless?

I began noticing in Revenge of the Fallen.  The first action sequence ends with Optimus having this exchange with a maimed and defenseless Decepticon.

Optimus Prime: Any last words?
Wheelbot: This is not your planet to rule! The Fallen shall rise again!
Chief Master Sergeant Epps: [puzzled] That did not sound good.
Optimus Prime: Not today.
[blasts Wheelbot in the head]

"Any last words" is what a character, usually a villain, says when he's about to execute a person. It indicates that what follows is a clear path for the would be victim: "There is no possibility I won't kill you, you are given a final chance to mark our lives before you die." It is troubling that what we assume is a good guy chooses this words. See, in movies, usually the good guys don't "execute"  their villains. They defeat them in combat, either on equal grounds or with the hero at a disadvantage. Normally heroes aren't given the choice of whether or not to kill, and if your good guy is...say, a cartoon icon for children, usually the choice is to let them live.

Why don't you guys learn from the masters?

Second, it really looks like Wheelbot is implying Optimus Prime could be interpreted as to want to rule the earth. This is strange. Why would he think that? Why, of all the words you could put into that robot's spiked mouth, would you put concern that Optimus would rule the earth? Is Optimus the leader of Cybertron or something? Aren't the Decepticons the randomly chaotic ones? Why won't Optimus even deny he won't  take over the earth?

In any case, after several minutes of  Dog humpin, jive talking, Shia Leboufing action, the climax of the film takes place.  And after that, Optimus Prime fights The Fallen and Megatron. Optimus  handles both with ease. And then this happens.

Optimus, again, being a big fan of fatalities, chooses to rip off his opponent's face while saying : "Give ME YOR FACE!"

Now, we like our heroes to mix it up with the killing and making with one liners. But this isn't a Bond pun. This isn't  I lied.
It's not funny or ironic or set up to or a joke. He's saying he will rip his face off. And then he does.

If they where human...this would be a war crime.

Of course, he's just an evil robot who had it, coming you might say. But what purpose does it serve to rip your opponent's facial expressions as you execute them?   What kind of psycho rips away  someone else's face? Is our hero on the same league as  Leatherface and that Chimp that went crazy?

Autobuts, transform and roll out!

And lastly, there's Cry for the Moon Bark at the Moon In the Dark of the Night Dark of the Moon. I haven't seen it, but I have it on good authority Optimus Prime and the Autobots actually let  a city be laid to waste and countless humans die just to teach humanity a lesson. Yes, a lesson.


In the context in which it is offered to me, I heard humans order the Autobots to leave earth , in order to try and negotiate an armistice with their enemies, the Decepticons. Quickly the Decepticons  try to kill the Autobots and lay waste to a city after apparently blowing them up murdering humans all willy nilly, straight up hunting them and exterminating them.


While everyone thinks the Autobots are dead, they eventually come back. But not before Optimus points out they took their sweet time because humans had to understand how evil this evil robots are.

Yeah, I get it now! Go with the colored robots, not the gray robots! Got it!

And again, I haven't seen it, but doesn't that sound like a shrewd political move? You create sympathy and necessity for Autobots when Decepticon's top most powerful leader already had his face removed and his ticker raped, and as I hear by the end of this movie , all the bad guys have died. WHat's the lesson here again?  Don't fuck with Optimus?

Saviors? Buddy, you just got false flagged. Optimus' rise to power is at hand.

Continue