Optimus Prime Toaster

July 23, 2023

By NZB3

Returning home last night from watching the film Transformers: Rise of the Beasts I took a tangent away from an image-editing job. This was a kids movie and a kid persuaded me to see it with them. Even movies I do not enjoy can be deconstructed and diagnosed but this film was at least watchable but not as fun as post-cinema criticism on the drive home. Then, in the evening, I was tinkering around with AI generated image-editing software and strayed off into asking the software to create this image (left.)

I ordered kitchens, lounges, letterboxes, and toasters to be designed in the style of Optimus Prime. They all came out fairly good and I thought about how great it would be if someone in China could fabricate these products for me to sell to the Americans via Amazon. Turning back to thinking about the film and about the new Disney-Marvel TV show Secret Invasion I realised that what I’d done with this toaster was quite a bit like what the creators had done with Optimus Prime in Transformers and Nick Fury in Secret Invasion. Instead of having a director and his crew scramble to turn my wishes into media content though I had an online AI (Canva) churn out 4 nice photo attempts per 30 seconds.

(Actually, apparently that’s exactly how Secret Invasion’s opening theme was created too. Someone told an AI to go do it.)

The command would have been something like “Make me a movie in the style of Transformers with Optimus Prime in it and have a plot and a chase and some Diversity and a big explosion at the end…” Or, “Make me a mini series in the style of Marvel that features…” It’s all very formulaic and not all that much more sophisticated than what I did with “my” toaster creations. And like a toaster whatever the inputs are it all gets the same treatment and comes out basically the same with the same creative dearth.

So it was with Rise of the Beasts.

This Particular Movie Toast…

Seems likely that Rise of The Beasts started out with some good plot ideas because you can still see some even after some writers desk committee has picked it apart. Every story of this sort from Sonic the Hedgehog to Muppets to He-Man to Barbie almost always bring the other-wordly product into the contemporary human world. The first Transformers film did this too, in order to be relatable, with a boy and a girl; Sam and Michaela.

In Rise of Beasts they used this device too and another: The new Black Sam and Black Michaela lived parallel lives in Act 1. In both cases they are on the bottom of the pile in a white man’s capitalist world. She’s a coffee-fetcher intern at a fancy museum who, despite being better than everyone, is exploited and not allowed in the smart person’s lab. Her boss takes the credit and gets dressed up for gala dinners while Black Cinderella stays in the office solving mysteries nobody else can. Meanwhile, He is an unappreciated (electronics) wiz too but white people will not give him a break either and he is kept down. There’s a clear message that black kids ain’t got no chance in this competitive material world of white gatekeepers even when they’re talented and hard-working and hungry and poor.

Therefore, as we quickly see, it’s OK to turn to crime. Because, hey, they tried it by the rules didn’t they?

Black Michaela Intern Cinderella has a sneaky night at the museum analysing the movie MacGuffin she’s not allowed to have in the room she’s not allowed to go in with the equipment she’s not allowed to have. She breaks it and then appears to want to steal away with it too.

Black Sam is a street electronics pirate who is rejected even from a job interview with a security firm because they’ve checked his references in advance and don’t trust him. He immediately validates this judgement by turning deeper into a life of crime right away! After all, his single-mother is poor and in debt. And, his plucky brother has some blood disease exacerbated by RSI from playing video games too much despite being warned not to. So Black Sam sneeks into a busy workplace and steals the best car he can find which turns out to be one of the Autobot Transformers. Suppose White Security Guy had hired Black Sam? Clearly he was prone to stealing so why the hell would you want someone like that in a role of keeping people and property safe?

I like the way the story of the 2 black thieves is told in this tight way. Both start their day trying to be good, are beat back by the White Patriarchy, turn to crime, and are drawn into the world of Transformers. It is a worry thought that the movie makers estimate that their audience are morally bankrupt enough to go along with this because they are apparently right about society.

Transformers are no better than humans. The car Black Sam tries to steal turns things around and steals Black Sam instead! Locking the doors so he cannot run away, Sam is kidnapped and taken on a high-speed chase that damages much property and certainly must have killed at least 1 police officer in the wreckage of his own car by tricking him to a concrete barrier. The car lies to Optimus Prime that Sam’s presence could not be avoided and his leader is appalled their cover has been blown this way despite explicit instructions to stay hidden. The car tells Sam they are best friends now after the kidnapping and cop killing and after a fist-pound the Stockholm Syndrome pact is sealed. Again- what’s this saying about our public morals? We fall for this madness?

The Superior Bad Transformers fight and thus unify the Autobots, their new Black Criminal friends, and another group of Good Transformers called the Beasts. Half the MacGuffin has been stolen but Team Good Guys knows where the rest is so set out to find it. They reason that if the Bad Transformers can find the first half of the MacGuffin then they’ll find the rest too. This is absurd. Everyone found the MacGuffin and came running to it only because it was beaming up a giant light beam into space that lit up the sky. The only way to find the rest is thanks to destroyed instructions that Black Michaela happened to have written down in her special book!

It’s not clear how Superior Bad Transformers got here so quickly. The Beasts used the MacGuffin to flee through time and space in order to deprive Superior Bad Transformers from the ability to travel through time and space. It’s reasonable to suppose they have gone a long way in space and time no just down the road a wee bit. Yet, as soon as the MacGuffin is activated (after 500 or 5000 (it changes) years) the Big Bad is right there ready to go. The centuries (or millennia) have been kind to the foes; Nothing has changed about either of them one little bit.

Team Good Guys actually lead Superior Bad Transformers directly to the hiding place. The Bad Guys literally stand up on the ridge looking down saying “Ha ha ha! Those fools will do our work for us.” Indeed, Black Sam and Michaela quickly find the MacGuffin Hiding Spot by activating centuries old stone mechanisms that rotate and open up an elaborate entrance as if it had all been lubricated and serviced yesterday. Black Sam has to strain his face muscles to get it going but Black Michaela doesn’t even twitch as she manually grinds ancients stonework into a new hole in the shape of moving the plot along. Later in the film Her payoff will be credit for discovering the hidden city below ground level and being the expert interview subject on TV as if all the other experts in South American and beyond would just make way for her because…first dibs.

Turns out MacGuffin has been moved to a new spot for safe keeping, least Superior Bad Transformers find it and so end the galaxy. “Come on, I’ll show you.” says the leader of the Beasts now that the whole team is together. Once again, this brainless tactic seems sensible to Prime and to ex-military would-be-security guy Black Sam. Once again, the Superior Bad Transformers who have followed them around the world simply wait and watch until the MacGuffin is revealed whereupon they simply snatch it!

Big Finish. All the good guys make a last play for the MacGuffin so they can save the galaxy. Black Sam and Black Michaela continue to show amazing cardio abilities with yet more running and travelling long distances using leg power. Guess they put on some good shoes at the start of this film. Black Michaela also shows impressive acrobatic skills over lava despite her body type. She kindly takes way too long entering a basic 4-symbol pin number so that lots of CGI battle scenes can take place but ultimately it’s somehow too late. But, as per usual, Optimus Toaster make a sacrifice of himself by manually smashing the MacGuffin despite us knowing that an energy blast from a distance would do. In fact, the MacGuffin was in the open this entire time so a sharp shot from miles away would have been fine.

Boom, smash, crash, good guys win. Beast Leader and Black Sam grab Optimus Prime by the scruff of the neck and drag him back from the abyss. Happy together friend buddy bonding “punch it” got away time. Optimus has learned through vague means from Beat Leader that humans can be trusted after all and cured his weird and irritating depression and self-recrimination from Act 1. Really it made no sense at the time but came to make sense as being deliberately written in so that Prime could have some character development later. Broke something so they could fix it. Beast Leader and his mates get very little character time and go back to eating bamboo in the jungle or something. Black Sam goes home and is sill broke and at Square 1 until he is recruited by a military spook in a process that toys with his brain using misdirection and a blank cheque for medical bills for his brother. Rather than be straight-up Sam is invited to a fake job at a sophisticated military base hidden behind a false front as if he was trying to get a job guarding a budget laundry or something. Apparently it’s a thrill for Spook to do this and probably a good way to manipulate the recruitment subject by overwhelming him with promises on inclusion and resources as if he’s trying to bring him into a cult or a church. Sam Gaslighting that the car did to Sam in Act1 when they became “friends.” Apparently the public watching these movies fall for this stuff. Sam is given a card called “G.I. Joe.”

So that’s why I say it’s yet another slice of toast. Or, if you want an analogy with more moving parts, a toaster. But it’s still a production-line formulaic bit of output, this film. But it’s not the plot holes that make it interesting to me so much as the moral holes. Nobody was virtuous, nobody was good. There’s a major theme of manipulation and gaslighting being OK. There’s a major theme of black exploitation that justifies criminality which ultimately pays off big time. Break the rules, enter the big leagues, solve all your life problems. Never mind the collateral damage.

 

 

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