06.24.09 MICHAEL BAY DEFENDS HIS MINSTRELBOTS
Poor Michael Bay. You use a couple jive-talking, gold-tooth wearing, breakdancing illiterate robots as comic relief and suddenly everyone’s calling you racist. Maybe it’s you who’s racist. Racist against awesome stuff.
Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling ‘bots are just good clean fun. “We’re just putting more personality in,” Bay said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. [Oh right, I forgot] These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”
TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids. Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”
Script excerpt: “Optimus Prime walks up to [HILARIOUS RACIAL STEREOTYPE TK.]. OPTIMUS: ‘Hey you worthless [HILARIOUS ETHNIC SLUR TK.]s, why don’t you get off your asses and get a job instead of blowing all your robot welfare money on [HILARIOUS ETHNIC FOOD TK.]?’ Hold for laughter.”
“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay’s lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely. [Yahoo]
Orci and Kurtzman added that they weren’t able to squeeze in a few of Bay’s other ideas, like Squint, a “math bot” who’s bad at driving, or Grease Spot, an Autobot who can transform into a Puerto Rican flag and spends all day on his stoop “being loud.” And then there was Tiger, Bay’s beloved but ultimately abandoned idea for a tiger who can transform into “a bigger tiger.”
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There are 24 comments about:
MICHAEL BAY DEFENDS HIS MINSTRELBOTS
Black robots transform like this….
Was there ever any doubt that someone named Reno Wilson wasn’t black?
Bay is also catching flack for having the “mcguffin” of this film be the Autobot Goldchain of Leadership.
I’m not comfortable with the direction this thread could go in.
*transforms into Benetton ad*
After watching it is pretty terrible to listen to those two but who would you replace them with? The motorcycle sisters? It’d be like “The View” speeding at 200 mph.
Michael Bay’s favorite British food?
Bangers and mash.
It’s not like Bay included a 2011 Prius that calls his boss Otimuh Plime.
It’s not racist until an Autobot named Robama tells Mudflap he can be PREZ-O-DENT!
Optimus: Autobots. Transform and roll me a blunt.
*Michael Bay rattles his tambourine*
Bay: “Gentlemen be seated. Mr.Mudflap are you going fishing?”
Mudflap: “Yassuh Mr. Bay I sho is.”
Skids: “You got worms?”
Mudflap: “Yassuh Mr. Skids but I goin anyway.”
*cue banjo music*
Due to hard times, Optimus has to hire Autobots WetBuick and Browndip, who will work for only half a tank of gas.
At least none of the Autobots transform into a Peugot. Or if they did they’ve long since surrendered.
If you think Transformers is racist wait til GI Joe. They have a weapons expert in it named Spear Chucker.
So do the minstrelbots get real bitchy and bloated for a few days each month before they minstrelate?
If Michael Bay became a serial killer who killed women by stuffing grenades in their cooch’s, he’d be called the BoomBox Killer.
Michael Bay waxes down his robots with Afro Sheen.
“…kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”
Because it makes WHAT more accessible to them? Giant robots? An education in racism?
BTK, I still love you, but “Squint” bad at driving? Isn’t that familiar, joke whore.
His original draft also included an armored car who transformed into a dredlocked robot called Jar Jar Brinks.
Late to the party? Late to the party…
Fact: Bumble Bee is Asian. *SPOILER ALERT!*
it’s not racist, the robots just really liked grits.
If you want to connect to kids, have an angsty depressed suicidal white robot.
Come on Transformes were always racist. Only white kids played wit them cause black kids couldnt afford them . Oh yeah I went there !
Hmmm, I guess what’s most troubling to me is many peoples natural assumption that these characters are “black” in the first place. I think this may actually say more about your mindstate than that of the movie’s creators. Why would you automatically associate a gold tooth, bad grammar and ignorance with being black??? Obviously you never seen some of the rednecks down South. Now, to be truthful, my first natural association of these characters was with being Ghetto, which means they could be of any “race”, just Ghetto. So people lets check ourself first and stop giving others the power to define you…. Now if the characters had 12 foot mechanically penises and were cited in the movie as the forefathers of all autobotkind, well then I might have assumed them to be black…LOL!!!
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