TF now stands for TOTAL FAIL

I've been waiting to jump into this blog until substantial aspects of the movie were revealed. Well, today I woke up and went to tfw2005.com, and saw a big honkin' substantial aspect staring me right in the face.

The "Twins" have been revealed.

And holy shit are they a mess.

First off, I didn't have a problem with the character designs of the first movie, except for the first version of Megatron. He looked like a robotic Ent from Lord of the Rings. But they revised him, and in all fairness, it made sense for him to look that way because he was an alien, and that's how they roll. Mouths, flames, etc... I never really gave a shit. Optimus was a truck who transformed into a robot.

But a few months ago, a small picture leaked online. An orange head that looked like Wall-E's Appalachian cousin. It was a "face" cobbled together with spare parts, and almost assuredly had to have been a joke. Then a few weeks ago an M&M wrapper popped up online that featured the other twin (or at least an M&M version of it) with buck teeth - one of which was actually capped gold. Surely that was just because those M&M's are idiots, right?

Then the above image was posted across the fucking internet. There's the orange head, and there's the 1/2 gold buck teeth.

Actually, if you want to nitpick, you can point out other problems too. And since I have a blog and no life, I'm gonna.

First of all, what the fuck is going on with hands in this movie? Soundwave's toy has these bigger-than-normal fists all balled up, looking like he's Sean Penn in 1987. And these two have hands like Roger Rabbit. What's worse, their feet are even bigger! I can't even begin to imagine the crazy ass walk-cycles these two have. I have a degree in animation, and I can tell you that anyone who designs a character that features a toe-to-heel distance greater than the hip-to-ankle distance should pretty much have a shoe thrown at them. Twice. The tires in the feet are cool, and I remain a fan of the overall aesthetic of the movie designs (meaning, I like the bits and pieces visible).

But those heads.

Let's start with the bigger train wreck, the lime green abomination. I didn't notice it at first, but he looks like a rat, like some fucked up zombie Chuck E. Cheese. He's got "ears", and what actually looks like is supposed to be hair. There's virtually no symmetry to be found (yay for thinking outside the box!), which is especially noticeable when you realize that his eyes look nothing alike. It's not a "pose", it's two completely different sets of components, like they ran out of parts at the factory. What should have happened is that someone should have shipped him off to the Island of Misfit Toys so that flying lion in the crown could have kicked the shit out of him and put him out of his misery. Let's not forget the big front teeth. If this fucker eats cheese I'm going to set the theater on fire.

Then there's his orange brother, with a face only slightly less fucked up than that dude from "Little Monsters" after his face melted off. His eyes look to be similar in design, although they aren't exactly lined up straight, and I think he has eyebrows as well. He'll probably issue snappy one-liners and do that eyebrow thing that Groucho Marx used to do. Which will more than likely look pretty fucking scary, because his mouth seems to be just a piece of metal hanging there, going into spasms when this idiot starts the "routine" that these two assholes will no doubt start throwing down.

So far, most of what has been revealed about this movie has been pretty cool. I can't wait to see this corvette dude in action, and of course, there's the Constructicons. It just boggles my mind how these filmmakers can have such an established franchise - really, NO character work needs to be done, it's already there! - and make choices like these that are so far away from creative and well thought out. The filmmakers need to stick to what their target market wants: awesome robots that are fighting, hot women that I want to have sex with and kickass vehicles that I want to have sex with.