Thursday, June 08, 2006

A Year and a Month Out, the Transformers Ad Blitz Begins, and an Islamofascist Decepticon Dies in Iraq

This is the one-sheet for a movie that's a year and a month away from release: Tranformers. I don't believe they've actually shot anything yet, but they've already got a one-sheet. Good for them. Paramount and Dreamworks obviously have their priorities straight.

Even though Michael Bay is directing, I'm actually feeling a little psyched about this movie. I've seen some Transformer-type animation done by talented computer-animators with no money, so I'm excited to see what a full-blown effects house will be able to pull off with unlimited amounts of cash. What will be most interesting to see is how Bay & Co. manage to take $200 million dollars and make a movie based on a line of toy robots that transform into trucks and cars seem even remotely plausible. I suppose then that maybe Bay is the exact right guy for the project -- About 70% of Armegeddon doesn't make a lick of sense, why should we expect this to? I guess I don't care about that. If all goes well, it will be for the 30-year old me what The Transformers: The Movie should have been to the 9-year old me: mindless kickassery.

On a totally unrelated subject, that Zarqawi bastard finally got a face full of "precision munitions" earlier today in Iraq. While I think this is excellent news, I think the fact that some other vile, sadistic SOB's going to show up and take his place mitigates this victory. I hope we go on a roll and get to Osama, too, but because most of our forces are in Iraq, the possibility of that happening seems worse than remote.

I don't mean to seem overly thrilled by the prospect of another human being's death, and I don't revel in it, but when I heard about it this morning, I was glad. There is something satisfying about knowing a person has died who was, as the world saw in the Nick Berg beheading video, a genuinely disgusting person. I hesitate to use the word "evil" because it simplifies human nature too much and also because it makes it too easy to dismiss a person who's been slapped with that label, but I think the word might be apt in this case. It's all fine and good to subscribe to Islamofascism, as Zarqawi did, but when that Islamofascist philosophy becomes so dominant in your mind that the beheading of an unarmed non-combatant hostage is acceptable to you, you've crossed beyond the pale of what is tolerable human behavior in any society. Optimally, in a civilized setting, you're taken out of that society and put in prison for the remainder of your life. In a war setting, you may be taken out of this life. Though I disagree with our going to war in the first place, I think Zarqawi's death can't be anything but good for that country.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like that commercial. I could actually watch that for 2 hours. You know what I suspect will be the problem with the Transformers movie though? Humans. How do you make them as interesting in the movie as the robots in disguise??? It would be sweet if humans were just frightened, silent backdrops and we spent the whole movie watching the robots do their thing in front of them. But I'm pretty sure that's not going to be the case since it's "our world" which will probably have to be saved from "their war."

That poster is so-so, and almost too subtle I think with that eye. The image works much better animated and with music on the website: http://www.transformersmovie.com/

Everyone should be happy with Zarqawi's death but ultimately I think terrorists are interchangable. Killing them in combat creates a great risk of giving them martyrdom status and I'm sure there is a new line of motivated idiots ready to take Zarqawi's place. Not only that, it creates a false sense of security. Ahh, the bad guy's dead. We can relax now, right? Of course not. The best hope we have with these guys is that we can capture them, put them on trial, and expose them as misguided, mistake-prone humans like everybody else. Look at Charles Manson. Out of prison that guy was creepy as shit. In prison and over time, he's become a cartoon character. This is what should happen with Bin Laden and it's what should happen with Saddam. We have to remove the mystique of power from these individuals. If murder's the only option, then yeah you murder these b-holes. But disgracing them could be far more influential in disarming their followers I imagine.

As for the political ramifications, I'm not quite as cynical as Hinesy. I think the damage of Iraq on the American psyche has been done and won't be reversed by this. Remember, we didn't go to war with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. We went to war with Saddam in Iraq and brought Al-Qaeda to it. Killing Zarqawi is the least we could do; I'm sure he's destroyed more Iraqis than Americans. Hopefully his death will ease the risk of danger involved in the reconstruction of their country, but it won't erase years of missteps and miscalculations there by this Administration. Think positive about all the negative! Change is inevitable! Right???

And by change, I mean the change from George W. to Jeb Bush, naturally.

blankfist said...

You're 30? Nice. Welcome to the old man's club. Jesus, I remember the 18 year old Crane, bright-eyed and eager, wearing his black WaterWorld hat... no pants.

I've gotta burn that image from my retinas.

Yay! We got Zarqawi! He's awesome dead!

Miller Sturtevant said...

Not 30 yet, but I will be when Transformers comes out.

blankfist said...

Your blog looks suspiciously like this blog: http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/

What gives, eh?

Miller Sturtevant said...

Hucksblog is actually really great. I just checked it out. Great writing that makes this blog-writing look like, I don't know, something a writer would write that means excrement. The dude's a screenwriter in Hollywood and I read two posts and each were long and riveting. Definitely worth a look.