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smokeybrand · 5 days

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Riding the Eye of the Storm

I am an unapologetic shill for Transformers, specifically Generation One. It was a pillar of my childhood. I’ve spoken about this at length because, like Spider-Man and Godzilla, this franchise shaped my taste in media for years to come. It was my love for transforming robots which lead me to Voltron, which spring boarded me to Robotech, that caused me to stumble down the cyberpunk rabbit hole and come to rest at the foot of Evangelion. Without Transformers, I wouldn’t have given Voltron a second look and probably missed out on my all-time favorite anime. Obviously, that’s hyperbole, kind of. I would have found EVA eventually, especially how saturated that franchise has become, but I would like to think my openness to it stemmed from my love for Optimus and his rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters. I’ve defended my little long form toy commercial for years, knowing that, as an Eighties product to move re-branded Diaclone and Micro Man content here in the States, there was no lore or cohesive story content to be had. I mean, there was, broad strokes of a eons long war, dead planets, Unicron, and whatever else, but not enough to really sink your teeth into. This was a kids show. No one needs character development or world building. Kids are dumb and won’t appreciate any of that. And then BtaS happened and all that sh*t changed. Transformers saw the value of narrative and gave us Beast Wars. From that point on, story and character finally took precedence. Every US developed Transformers show going forward, made it a point to build a lore around their core characters and, for a time, it was glorious. Animated and Prime gave us something really special. The War for Cybertron, with all of their faults, really put in the effort to build out that world. Even Cyberverse and Earthspark are out here, shining way more bright than they have any right to be. Hasbro has finally given proper due to the Transformers on the small screen and I am living for it. That said, theatrically? Theatrically, it’s been rough.

I hate Bayformers. Hate. Viscerally. Michael Bay is a terrible director. He’s great at action set pieces and has a brilliant eye for visual effects, but the man has no idea how to develop a character to save his life. He makes movies from the effects out. The spectacle is the point of his films, not the narrative content. So, for me, as a fan of this franchise for almost four goddamn decades, it was rough seeing the stark decline from the first to the last. Let’s be real right now, the Marky Mark Bayformers films are absolute nonsense. One of them didn’t even have the f*cking Decepticons transform, just explode into amorphous squares and sh*t. Bro, how you have a Transformers film without and transforming? Plus, they replaced the only actual character with an arc in the entire franchise, because Spielberg was offended she likened working for Mike Bay to serving under Hitler. Yo, if you knew how Megan Fox was treated on those sets, you’d know exactly why she said what she said. Ma got stories of the sexist bullsh*t she had to suffer through, going back to Bad Boys 2, when she was an extra on set at sixteen years old. The f*ck? And the way they wrote her out is just lazy. That chick Carly in the third? That was Mikaela, all day. Legitimately that’s the resolution to HER arc. After Fox got released in the off-season, Bay and his braintrust of writers just did a search-and-replace for anything that said Mikaela with Carly, and printed “revised” scripts. Lazy. Just f*cking lazy. I hate the Bayformers films so much, especially because they started with so much potential.

After The Last Knight deservedly flopped (Knights? In my Transformers movie? Really?), we got Bumblebee, which was basically the Iron Giant with our adorable, slug bug, mascot. And it was good. Travis Knight got a shot at this one and you can tell he wanted to do right by G1 and he did. I loved Bumblebee. Obviously, it wasn’t perfect. The aforementioned Iron Giant narrative is a thing but is that terrible? I loved the Iron Giant. It was dope. If you’re going to crib notes from something, make it a proven narrative, right? Avatar stole it’s entire goddamn identity from Dances with Wolves. Skyfall, my favorite Bond film, is just The Dark Knight. I can forgive Bumblebee basically lifting its entire vibe from The Iron Giant, especially with those opening scene on Cybertron. Believe me when I tell you, seeing my G1 inspired designs, mixed with the photo realism of that Bayformers aesthetic, I shrieked aloud. That one scene, was everything I wanted in my Transformers film. That was more than enough to satiate my very bias, very nostalgic, Millennial heart. I saw that sh*t three times in theaters and loved every second. I thought Bumblebee was a strong step forward in the right direction. That is until Rise of the Beasts dropped. Believe me when I say, RotB, was such a letdown after the high of Bumblebee. That sh*t was basically just a Bayformers entry without the goddamn Bayhem. The Bayhem is the point! You can’t make Bayformers with the Bayhem. Trying to imitate that sh*t halfheartedly, especially trying your best to bring in the Beast Wars fans and not alienate the goodwill you garnered from the excellent Bumblebee, was a goddamn mistake. I hate Bayformers because it’s a loud, disjointed, mess of admittedly beautiful visuals. The stories sucked, the Transformers designs are the worst in the franchise, and there story is so f*cking convoluted, it makes X-Men comics look like Emerson, but I was never bored watching them. Rise of the Beasts is boring. It takes the worst aspects of Bayformers and Bumblebee, mashes them together, and sh*ts out a very corpo curated product, with an eye toward a future cinematic universe. You can’t do that. You have to make sure your first entry is strong enough to stand on its own. That’s how the MCU did it. That’s how the Monsterverse did. That’s how it’s done. Which brings me to the point of this essay, Transformers One looks like that entry point.

When I heard we were getting an origin story for Transformers, roughly following the IDW and Prime origin of the Megs-Prime conflict, I was hesitant. That story is so good, and has been told excellently several times, but never in the theater, never in “serious” media. Then the cast was announced. Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax? Bryan Tyree Hill as pre-despot Megatron? Word? The only one that made any sense to me was Scarlett Johansson as Elite-1 because of course. I figured Hasbro f*ckded up again but then something happened. I saw the character designs. They reminded me of that first five minutes from Bumblebee. Then a trailer dropped. It WAS the first five minutes of Bumblebee, mixed with a little bit of Beast Machines, and a whole lot of Transformers Prime. There was humor. There was levity. There was pathos and characterization. You can tell there is strong chemistry within the cast, something that wasn’t necessarily a thing in Bayformers, RotB, but was definitely there in Bumblebee. There was color, life, enthusiasm, and genuine warmth. That short three minutes, sold me immediately on this film and I need so much more. It felt authentic to Transforms, an extension of the very best the franchise has to offer, and really hammered home how this theatrical franchise should have been full CG from the very beginning. I mean, the theatrical continuity for Transformers is an absolute mess now, but this origin film has the potential to clean that up. As long as it’s good. So far, I am loving what I’ve seen. So far, I have hope. It’s weird to say, but I have optimism for a good theatrical Transformers film again.

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smokeybrand · 8 days

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Risky Business

Buckle up, because this is going to be a long one. In my boundless dead time at my job because I am way too efficient at what I do, I came across an article about how Hollywood just doesn’t understand the popularity of anime and manga. Putting that sentiment through the capitalist filter of corporate Hollywood, it basically translates to US executives do not understand how to monetize the fervor anime has across the younger generations. For me, as a fan of the genre going on three and a half decades, it’s a no-brainer for me. Of course the Old Guard can’t wrap their heads around anime, they think it’s for “kids” because they see us, the Millennials and younger, as kids. Bro, I’m forty this year. I have friends with whole ass teenage children. We are not “kids”, just very nostalgia driven and the Zoomers are just now entering “real adult age.” I’m talking graduating from college, entering the workforce, and renting cars without a co-signer. We are not children. We are adults who are shaping, and have been shaping, pop culture for decades. Considering we, as Millennials, have raised our younger Zoomer siblings (or children in some cases), they grew up with anime and video games as a household mainstay, not some niche, geek, fetish to be enjoyed in the dark. Now ask yourself, how many mid-Forties movie executives are there in the industry? Now ask yourself how man mid-Sixties Execs there are? That’s your answer. Try selling the allure of, say, a proper, live action, Dragon Ball Z adaption to Bob Iger and he’ll scoff at the budget necessities. There’s no way something like Reincarnated as a Slime get made here, let alone the likes of the immediately controversial EVA with all of the biblical imagery. There’s no way you can adapt the vast amount of anime based strictly on the fact that the US was founded by closed minded prudes, and that sentimentality has carried over into present day Middle America.

My beef with Conservatism has long been documented on this blog. I don’t understand why so many people in this country, look back with rose colored glasses on an America that was staunched in hate and cruelty. I mean, I do, they’re white, but still. It’s insane to think that, in this, the year of our lord, two thousand and twenty-four, that cats still get their dander in a froth over something as ridiculous as being a Furry, even though bugs bunny in a dress was a sexual trigger for just SO many of these Boomers growing up. Sh*t like that speaks volumes toward the repressed mentality of people in that age range, the people basically in charge of everything. They are set in their ways and refuse to accept anything new. I see a microcosm of that with my mom. I try to introduce her to anime I believe has merit and she just scoffs at it. Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Howl’s Moving Castle (even though I don’t like Ghibli films), and even Vampire Hunter D. She hated all of them. Refused to engage because they are cartoons. And that, right there, is the crux of the issue, I think: Boomers don’t see the difference between Mickey Mouse and Goku, it’s all just cartoons. On the surface level. For those who actually give anime a chance, they’re greeted with some of the most aggressively offensive content, to their very narrow, counter-culture, Reaganomics influenced, Televangelist inspired, senses.

My favorite anime is Neon Genesis Evangelion. My favorite anime character is Rei Ayanami. Or Vegeta. They’re basically one-A and one-B for me at this point but, for the sake of this essay, I’m going Rei I. EVA is brilliant. It’s extremely well written, has fantastic world building, is f*cking GORGEOUS to look at, and deals with some pretty heavy sh*t. I’m talking borderline blasphemous, alternate biblical sh*t. How do you sell a fourteen year old, piloting a cyborg mech with the soul of his dead mom trapped inside it, punching through the Sefirot, in order to trigger the end of humanity so everyone can return to primordial goo, so his widowed father can reunite with said trapped mommy soul in eternal oblivion? How do you market that to a devoutly Mormon trad wife from Idaho or that stereotypical, god-fearing, coal mining husband from West Virginia? There’s no way, and that’s not counting the overtly homosexual (I guess?) Kowru or the hyper sexualized relationship between Shinji and Asuka, or the wildly inappropriate situationship between Gendo and Rei. This sh*t will not fly with US audiences., which brings me to the main reason why anime adaptions fail here: Americanization. The bane of any foreign adaption. Hollywood has this incessant need to change sh*t when adapting anything, which is fine to an extent, but when you butcher the spirit of the source material chasing after US sensibilities, why even adapt the sh*t? To this day, my mom thinks the original Godzilla is dog sh*t but that’s because she saw the version re-cut with Perry Mason. I showed her the original and, while she admitted it was much better than the one she saw as a kid, the damage was done. Tokusatsu was just goofy ass Japanese people., stomping on miniatures with fireworks popping off in the background. Godzilla came out in 1954. The Americanization of Japanese cinema has been poisoning entire audiences for at least that long. Guess who grew up watching those terrible f*cking adaptions? Guess who has a built-in bias because everything they saw coming out of Japan, was treated like goofy, campy, unserious, children’s fair? Guess who’s making the business decisions in adapting this sh*t going forward?

Ultimately, Hollywood can’t make anime adaptions because don’t understand anime. They don’t see the value in the source material outside the superficiality of the admittedly beautifully animated genre. No major studio is going to commit legitimate resources to any anime adaption because of the risk involved. In their minds. Look at Battle Angel Alita. That film was rather successful and stayed true to the overall source material. As an anime adaption, it’s one of the best. However, since it didn’t make a billion f*cking dollars, the studio has refused to revisit it at all. They’ve chocked that “failure” up to not connecting with audiences. No, it failed because you didn’t market it the way you should have. You didn’t believe in the franchise potential and basically just dropped the thing into the theater. Even so, Alita: Battle Angel made a profit and has garners a strong cult following which hasn’t stopped their calls for a sequel to this day. On the other end, you have the disastrous ScarJo Ghost in the Shell. There are a myriad of reasons why this thing sucks but it basically boils down to how lazy the adaption turned out. The original anime film is a staple of cyberpunk existentialism. None of that heady, deep, and challenging content is found in the remake. It’s just generic sci-fi identity thriller but pretty that usual. No substance, all flash. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t fantastic adaptions out there. Netflix has done a brilliant job, by comparison, in turning anime into live action. The Yu Yu Hakusho joint was decent. It felt culturally appropriate and didn’t squander the time they had with the characters. It was definitely on the cheaper side but that was Yu Yu, all day. I think the biggest issue people had was comparing it to the absolutely perfect One Piece outing which released just a few months earlier. That show, that take, was perfect. F*cking everything, down to the last, minute, detail. Brilliance, through and through. But it also cost Netflix a pretty penny. They took on the risk and reaped the well-deserved rewards.

But, as much as they would like to be, Netflix ain’t Disney or WB Discovery or Paramount or any of the major studios. All three of them. They don’t have the cash to drop on a sweeping fantasy adaption of Berserk or high adrenaline, hyper stylized, run at Eyeshield 21. Do you see Disney putting in the necessary resources to make a strong adaption of One-Punch Man? How about Paramount letting Secret Base take a shot at something like Gundam? Wait, I think Netflix has it’s mitts on that already. Alright, we’ll go Macross instead. Imagine if someone gave Tim Burton enough loot to adapt f*cking Big O! How dope would that be? But it’ll never happen. Even though Pacific Rim did gangbusters and the Monsterverse proves there’s an audience for Mecha/Kaiju content, no one is going to drop the sheckles to make that stuff happen. Too much loot, too much risk, not enough appreciation for the source material. It sucks because there are so many US audience friendly franchises out there which are good, can be made on the cheap, and potentially thrive here. I already mentioned One-Pinch, but f*cking Slam Dunk is right there. Overlord can definitely scratch the current DnD itch Baldur's Gate 3 has set ablaze across the nation. Chobits is another one and I think City Hunter can do well here for adults. Appleseed is right there and, if you want to go niche but full of potential, AD police and Bubblegum Crisis. The Castlevania show all but paved the way for Vampire Hunter D to get the live action treatment. There are so many franchises out there ready for adaption, ready for the gamble, almost all of which will pay off. It just takes someone in the big chair to seriously believe in that content. Someone with the foresight to commit the necessary resources to really give these adaptions justice. Believe in what is there and respect the content. Follow those rules, and you will unlock a cash cow of brand new, monetizable, media to exploit. But stay away from Akira. That sh*t is a masterpiece and doesn’t need any grubby American Corpo fingers anywhere near it!

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smokeybrand · 9 days

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Gecko

I live in California where our governor decided to hike the minimum wage for fast food workers from the statewide sixteen dollars an hour, to twenty. There are stipulations which need to be met, of course, the biggest of which is a chain would need more than sixty locations nationwide to qualify for this hike. That means, for the most part, only the nigger restaurants were hit with this increase. I’[m talking your McDonalds and your Jack in the Boxes, joints like that. Applebees and Dennys got a past because they aren’t considered fast foot, even though they are all supplied by a Sysco truck. Now, I’m not here to condemn California for making this move. To be perfectly honest, I think it doesn’t go far enough. This wage increase is only for a specific section of the overall workforce. Most people still make the sixteen an hour wage. I think that twenty should be available to everyone, not just burger-flippers but, at the same time, it’s not their fault that legislation has been hobbled politically for almost a decade. My personal beef aside, I’ve been seeing a TON of vitriol for these workers finally getting enough money in their check to pay bills AND buy groceries in the same pay period, because forty of their chicken nuggies cost twenty-six dollars. That sh*t boggles my mind, man.

Seriously, you’re mad these legitimate food service workers are making a decent wage, just because you’re fetid baboon butt cheek burgers are costing more than you want? Someone showed me a price grab of a McDonald’s Big Mac meal costing something like eighteen dollars and the outrage was palpable. You’re telling me the value of that food you want isn’t worth eighteen dollars, and you’re right. That sh*t is trash in every way possible. The aforementioned chicken nuggets aren’t even made of real meat. They’re made from chicken slurry, which is exactly what that sh*t sounds like. No fast food is worth the money you pay for it, and you should absolutely feel some kind of way about it, but that ire is misdirected at the sixteen year old trying to save money for prom, that twenty-two year old working their way through college, or that single mother just trying to make ends meet. You should be mad at the major corporations passing on that way overdue pay increase to you, when their CEOs are making millions a year. I mean, there is a certain societal stigma when it comes to fast food worker, I literally just referred to them as burger flippers, which sees that profession as less than.

We have been conditioned to believe that these fry cooked don’t deserve money to live, because they work a fryer and not a backhoe. I’ve worked at a McDonalds before. I know what goes into that sh*t. I lasted a day. Too much work, too little pay. I, personally, feel like they still don’t make enough with how many hats those cats have to wear, but this new wage is a strong step in the right direction. Those cats, the people on the ground serving you, more than earn that twenty an hour and then some. You know who doesn’t deserve their salaries? Corporate. Corporate doesn’t deserve that loot and they’re the reason your QPC is forty-three dollar, not that twenty an hour California is forcing them to pay their workers. McDonald’s made fourteen and half, BILLION dollars last year. Their CEO made nineteen million last year, alone, and eight percent increase year-over-year. At twenty dollars and hour, that roughly translates thirty eight thousand a year. Let’s say that CEO takes half that nineteen, which is still nine million and change in his pocket, and divide that by said newly minted minimum wage and you get three thousand, four hundred and twenty. Let me throw those numeric in there so I can be very clear, that’s 3,420 people HALF the McDonalds’ CEO can fund for a year. Half of that man’s paycheck, could pay the full years’ worth of wages, for 3,420 of his employees. And that’s just the CEO. That’s not the CFO, the COO, or any of the upper executives who are probably making six figures themselves. The reason your Filet-o-Fish is so goddamn expensive, is corporate greed and I can prove it. In-n-Out exists.

I’ve been seeing so many of these articles and sh*t on Right wing sites (the MSN at my job seems to think that I’m some sort of MAGA cultists but whatever), and they’re claiming the In-n-Out CEO is “standing up” to the draconian Gavin Newsom over his egregious, anti-business, wage increase. And, just on a personal note, f*ck yes we should be anti-business! Being anti-business is why monopolies and child labor are “illegal”, the f*ck? Anyway, the thing is, In-n-Out has always been ahead of the curve in regards to their employee pay. Way back when I worked for McDonald’s in the early Aughts, I was making the freshly minted sever and a quarter an hour. Animal Style was giving their guys two dollars more than what I was making back then. Right after the pandemic, there was one close to me shelling out nineteen an hour. They were paying that post-pandemic, when inflation was starting to ramp up crazy (Thanks. Trump), so I know for a fact why weren’t too far off the twenty. And guess how much they increased their menu? A quarter. Twenty-five f*cking cents. Your Double-Double is a whole ass quarter more than it was in March, and that kid pounding out fresh fries in that wall mounted Veg-o-Matic, made from real potatoes, sourced right here in the good ol’ US of A, can make a substantial wage to maybe impress his crush with a little movie date, followed by put-put, with a enough left over for some ice cream. All on a menu increase of actual chump change.

How is that possible, you might ask? The likes of McDonalds, by far the largest fat food conglomerate in the world with billions served. And billions made, can’t do it, but lowly, California based In-n-Out can while serving actual beef and potatoes in their burgers, can? It’s because In-n-Out is privately owned company. It helps, tremendously, that their CEO is only forty-one, my age, and took the big chair at twenty-seven after literally working her way up through the company. Ma is the legit In-n-Out heiress but made the decision to work on the ground to better understand what her workers were going through. That experience informs her decisions and, fifteen years later, she’s able to pay her workers fairly while treating the customer’s pockets with just as much care. There are no shareholders to appease, no buybacks for and stock packages for executives. Sure, she makes millions, but it’s organic in a way that McDs, and a lot of these other places, don’t. I cannot, for the life of me, find anything on what she makes, but most of her top executives only make in the mid hundred thousand. A comfortable six figures, not seven or right. SO I ask you, if In-n-Out can keep their workers happy, rein in executive pay bloat, and still pull in nearly two billion last year, all in California, why the f*ck can’t anyone else do it? In-n-Out is the blueprint. The only difference is the fact that those Corpos are greedy and there isn’t a check to balance them. Just ;like the In-n-Out thing, I got receipts to prove that sh*t.

You see, in Europe, where unions are strong and Labor has proper representation, workers are supported and the wage reflects that. They have contracts which put stipulations in on where, how long, and what age employees can work. There are night shift differential and increased pay for weekends. There is still traditional overtime but most companies try to avoid that as it taxes pockets hard. As it should. They are able to do all of this, while charging prices comparable to what we pay stateside, and no one complains. No one is standing against the work force, demanding cheaper prices for food that legally has to meet a certain nutritional standard that just doesn’t exists here in the States. Places like McDs are basically just like In-n-Out in terms of overall food quality, because the EU makes them be. That’s because there is regulation over yonder. There are unions. There is basically a worker’s bill of right and all corporations must follow them or they face consequences. Just ask Elon about that when he tried to export Sweden over a Tesla plant. Sh*t did not go the way he wanted and no one cared. In fact, the neighboring countries refused to receive the material to build his cars, in their ports, out of solidarity. And their Big Macs are, like, nineteen dollars apiece. They also have universal healthcare, universal day care, can take a month of paid vacation, and drink from the holy grail whenever they feel like it. That last bit is an exaggeration but the other stuff isn’t. It’s wild seeing so many people here, across the country, licking the f*ck out of that corporate boot, advocating for a system that is telling you they do not want you to have enough money to live, that if they must pay that wage, they’ll get it back by charging you a premium for food it costs them pennies on the dollar to provide. Don’t be mad at the worker for finally getting their due, be made at the corporation for making you pay for it.

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smokeybrand · 12 days

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