Transfailures

July 2, 2009 Jared

**SPOILER ALERTS**

As I was sitting on my couch tonight, watching The People’s Court with my mom while occasionally mulling over some College Algebra, I happened across the following Facebook status by fellow Korked Batsmen A-Huff:

“BIG DAY TODAY – It’s my parents 37th Anniversary, today was game #50 without Manny (he’s back on Friday), I’m working at Dippin’ Dots, and I may just go see Transformers 2 tonight. Oh, and Korked Bats is boomin’! http://korkedbats.blogspot.com.”

While this is funny on many levels (the fact that Austin is famous for posting a link to KB by no less than 15 different means a day on Facebook, for one), the best part of this status was that it launched me into a delightful thought process in which I started thinking about all of the unintentionally golden comedy moments from Revenge of the Fallen (“I rise, you fall” and the Power Rangers Megazord-like fusions, to name a few) and started coming up with new ways in my head to despise what Michael Bay did after a solid first movie.

Ultimately, I arrived at the following conclusion: there are a startling number of parallels between Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the 2009 Kansas City Royals. Allow me to elaborate:

Both suck.
Both feature a desert- The Royals had Spring Training in Surprise, AZ, and Transformers’ broken broken plot takes it to Egypt. Both trips to the desert brought confusion too- in Transformers it was A) the mysterious Star Trek-esque beam that got them there (what’s the point in flying if you can do that, again?) and B) the fully-rapped cast that appeared on Sam Witwicky’s hand upon arriving (nice driving, Shia!). The Royals’ trip to the desert was confusing because they were A) hitting home runs and B) taking walks. Very confusing.
Both feature crummy new characters that are the human/visual personification of what happens when reckless men- namely Transformers Director Michael Bay and Royals GM Dayton Moore- are given larger budgets and- get out!- fail to make good use of the increased cash. When the twin Transformer (an epic failure in comic relief) was being sucked into that lame giant sand-sucking Decipticon, I found myself hoping it would stay in that thing’s belly until the inevitable 3rd movie. If I were to see Mike Jacobs being sucked into a similar contraption, I’m not sure that my reaction would be any different.
Both have a poorly behaved star performing below their potential. I’ll give you a hint: their names rhyme with Lia MaKuff and José Guillen.
Both had me raucously exited going in and sent me home snickering to myself at the futility.
Both suck.
Serioiusly, just fire Trey Hillman.
Both feature way too much of an annoyingly bad supporting cast member: Sam’s mom and Kyle Farnsworth.
Both had good cameos that will be overshadowed by the epic failure of the overall product: Rainn Wilson as Sam’s professor and Coco Crisp’s pre-injury performance.
Both are multi-million dollar disasters.
You can find countless moments in both so horrific that all you can do is laugh to keep from crying. To name a few from the Royals: the Sea Gull Game in Cleveland (on my birthday, coincidentally) and this mesmerizing series of substitutions last night (seriously, look up all of those guys’ career numbers). To name a few from Transformers: Prime Heaven, the return of Linkin Park for the sequel, my buddy Austin audibly saying “I hope they died” in reference to Sam, Mikaela, and Jetfire before they appear in the desert after the mysterious beam out of the Smithsonian, “Give me your face!,” Woman Decipticon-thing’s unfathomably dumb tongue, the “Matrix of Friendship” (SERIOUSLY, WHO THOUGHT THAT NAME WAS A GOOD IDEA? MICHAEL BAY’S 6-YEAR OLD SON?!), and every scene involving Sam’s roommate.
Both suck.
I shouldn’t have liked either after 8th grade.
Both have one incredible thing going for them that no one really takes notice of because the rest of the product is so horrific. For the Royals, it’s Zack Greinke. For Transformers, it’s every time one of the aliens transform in mid-run. Seriously, I’ve watched the first Transfomers movie a dozen times- and am 20 years old- but I still get blown away every time they do that. I would’ve rather watched a 2 and a half hour long Transformer chase scene than suffer through that movie.
I ignored a million red flags going into each.
Neither follows a consistent, sensible plot.
No matter how hard I try to fight to avoid doing so, I’m going to be just as raucously excited for the next sequel as I was for these versions.
Both suck.