There are roughly a gajillion books based on Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and pretty much anything related to sci-fi, and I’ve never been brave enough to go down the sci-fi fan-fiction wormhole.  As they say, when you dance with sci-fi fan fic, sci-fi fan fic doesn’t change, sci-fi fan fic changes you.  But today MTV Movies Blog published an exclusive story to promote the release of Transformers: Exodus, a Transformers novel by Alex Irvine.  They’re running an entire short story that doesn’t appear in the book, but purports to tell “how the Autobot Bumblebee came to lose his voice.”  I could not. Look. Away.  I had a really hard time choosing an excerpt:

“Can we win…” Alpha Trion repeated, seemingly to himself. After some time he returned a question. “Can we not?”
And Optimus Prime didn’t have an answer.
Of course they had to win. The future of all Cybertronians depended on it. “When I was a clerk I never had to worry about lives,” Optimus Prime said.
Alpha Trion chuckled. “It was never going to be any other way, Optimus,” he said. “I knew you were destined—“
“To trade the caste system for Decepticon tyranny?” Optimus said.
Again silence fell in Alpha Trion’s study.
“It could be,” he said after some time, “that the war does not end here.”
“I don’t follow your meaning, Archivist,” Optimus Prime said. Where else would the war end? The Space Bridges were collapsed. It had been teracycles since any Cybertronian had traveled to the stars or contacted the lost colonies and outposts that speckled the cosmos.
“I am thinking of the AllSpark,” Alpha Trion said. “It does not just give us life. It is the living record of all that has ever happened on Cybertron. It is our past, present and future. I would rather see the planet destroyed utterly than have the AllSpark fall into Megatron’s hands.”
“I will protect it,” Optimus Prime said. [via MTV]

NOT THE SPACE BRIDGES!!  IN THE NAME OF IACON, WHO WILL HELP ME PROTECT THIS ALLSPARK FROM THE DECEPTICONS??  OUR ROBOT RECORDS COULD BE LOST IN THE CYBERWINDS FOR KILOCENTURIES!!!   Oh man.  I have to respect sci-fi authors for being 100 times more creative than I could ever be, but I can’t get three words into this without wanting to tear the fingertips off my leather gloves and shout “NERDS! NERDS NERDS! NERDS!”

And I’m a BLOGGER.

Michael Bay has confirmed on his official website that the racial caricature bots, Mudflap and Skids, those lovable, breakdancing, gold-toothed illiterates, would not be back for Transformers 3.  In light of there being a Transformers 3, that’s sort of like “a super volcano will destroy the Earth in 30 seconds, but I gave you free extra cheese on your nachos” on the good-news-to-bad-news scale.  If you’ll remember, inseparable screenwriting tickle-fight partners Kurtzman and Orci basically blamed Bay for the bots, and Bay defended them as “good clean fun.”  This week Bay said they were out of “T3″ without comment:

“The Twins are not back in T3.”

I’m a little conflicted on this topic. While there’s nothing more fun than piling on to Michael Bay for comedic purposes, were his minstrel bots actually racist? Most of the people who’ve written about it seem to agree with /Film:

I still find it difficult to believe that the studio and its automotive corporate partner Chevrolet didn’t red-flag these two characters before they got out of the animatic stage. To me, they scream racist caricature, and not in any vaguely defensible way. There’s no commentary being made through them. They weren’t funny, entertaining, or otherwise worth keeping around. I’m no fan of the second film by any stretch, but in a movie that has a great many problems, Skids and Mudflap stand out as outrageously pointless ideas.

Me, I don’t think they were “racist” necessarily.  They were about as idiotic as everything else in Transformers 2, such as Shia LaBeouf dying and going to robot heaven, or the idea that robots can sexually reproduce.  Asking Michael Bay to think about the historical implications of his characters would be like trying to teach a cheetah to throw hand grenades, which Bay has attempted unsuccessfully for more than a decade.  Michael Bay, like Jeff Dunham, is not a racist, he’s just kind of a moron. Look at the twins through Michael Bay’s eyes, ie, completely divorced from context and without any purpose or agenda that you thought about for more than five seconds: what are they?  Breakdancing, gold-toothed, illiterate robots.  If you’ve never read a book, that doesn’t remind you of a minstrel show.  I’ve seen plenty of breakdancing, gold-toothed, illiterate white people too, and they’re usually Michael Bay fans.

I don’t care if this YouTube video has 400,000 views, I hadn’t seen it and it’s Halloween weekend and this is my site so suck it.  This guy’s Bumblebee costume would be awesome simply for looking like that and for having flashing lights.  But the best part is, he can actually transform into a car.  The sad part is, that means he (or whoever actually made it) spent way more time figuring out the actual logistics of this than anyone on the Transformers movies.

MICHAEL BAY: MAKE ME A FOUNTAIN PEN THAT TURNS INTO AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER, AND BRING ME A LATTE!

Megan Fox and Michael Bay have been engaged widely-publicized affair in which they flirt with each other through the media.  But apparently, the Transformers crew has taken to the internet to set the story straight, because they don’t understand flirting.  Which, if you think about it, is what you’d expect from a group called “The Transformers Crew.”

[Via ONTD (original source was apparently Bay's official site, but it's since been pulled)]:
This is an open letter to all Michael Bay fans. We are three crew members that have worked with Michael for the past ten years. Last week we read the terrible article with inflammatory, truly trashing quotes by the Ms. Fox [sic] about Michael Bay. This letter is to set a few things straight.  Yes, Megan has great eyes, a tight stomach we spray with glycerin, and an awful silly Marilyn Monroe tattoo plastered on her arm that we cover up to keep the moms happy. Michael found this shy, inexperienced girl, plucked her out of total obscurity thus giving her the biggest shot of any young actresses’ [sic] life. He told everyone around to just trust him on his choice. He granted her the starring role in Transformers, a franchise that forever changed her life; she became one of the most googled and oogled ["oogle" isn't a f'cking word, a-hole. -Ed.] women on earth. She was famous! She was the next Angelina Jolie, hooray! Wait a minute, two of us worked with Angelina – second thought – she’s no Angelina. You see, Angelia is a professional. [ho snap!] We know this quite intimately because we’ve had the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox on both Transformers movies. We’ve spent a total of 12 months on set making these two movies. We are in different departments; we can’t give our names because sadly doing so in Hollywood could lead to being banished from future Paramount work. One of us touches Megan’s panties, the other has the often sh’tty job of pulling Ms. Sour pants out of her trailer, while another is near the Panaflex camera that helps to memorialize the valley girl on film. Megan has the press fooled. When we read those magazines we wish we worked with that woman. Megan knows how to work her smile for the press. Those writers should try being on set for two movies, sadly she never smiles. The cast, crew and director make Transformers a really fun and energetic set. We’ve traveled around the world together, so we have never understood why Megan was always such – the grump of the set?

Read the rest of this entry »

(Bay keeps pressing the “make boobs bigger” button.  He takes that remote everywhere.)

Megan Fox and Michael Bay need to cut it out with this flirting-via-the-media stuff.  You’re not fooling anyone, you two, just screw already.  Anyway, here’s Megan Fox in a recent interview with Wonderland Magazine in which she compares him to Hitler.  If that’s not a thinly-veiled “I want to F you,” I don’t know what is.

What are your most favourite and least favourite things about working with Michael Bay?
MF: God, I really wish I could go loose on this one. He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. ["I wish I could be completely honest here, but I really have to bite my tongue and compare him to Hitler." -Ed.] So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him. He’s vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he’s a tyrant. Shia and I almost die when we make a Transformers movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do. [via MovieLine]

Reached for response, Michael Bay pointed at his crotch and said “Hey, Megan, I think my Ferrari could use another wash.”  Then everyone laughed at gilded butterflies.

“So then the gilded butterfly says, ‘Well, I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy!’  I’m tellin’ ya, that bug’s alright.”