Toy Stories

In a world...

I realize that I talk about Transformers a lot here. Sure, I don’t dedicate entire updates to conundrums of the series, such as what would happen if you were riding in a Transformer and it transformed with you in it, but I make passing reference to the films and the merchandise on a fairly regular basis. I think that happens a lot because these days I feel as though Transformers is a pretty good way to gauge the stupidity of our times, and how far people are willing to go to pander to it.

From the start, what Transformers was about was selling cheap shit to stupid kids, which is the very textbook definition of ‘advertising.’ Hasbro created a line of toy cars that could be converted into robots and then built an entire animated series around the merchandise to sell it. Years went by and the kids who were targeted grew up; Transformers became less cool. But then, when those kids were in their 20s, Michael Bay went and made a movie about the TV show designed to advertise the toys, which appealed to the same generation’s nostalgia and convinced them to start pumping their money into the same gimmick as before, only this time around it’s got boobs and it runs in slow motion. The movie begat sequels and a new line of toys as well as a new animated series. This is an excellent example of, if I may quote Elton John, “The circle of liiiiiiiiife!”

And all of that is fine – par for the course, really. I fully expected the first movie to suck, and it was actually pretty good in spite of the fact that it was a movie about toys that cost more than the GDP of Iceland to make. The second one apparently sucks, which is no great surprise – after all, Hollywood is not content to simply milk a cash cow; their preferred course of action is to fertilize it with dragon sperm in hopes that it will give birth to a cash dragon/cash cow hybrid that breathes rainbows and cries golden tears when confronted with its hideous dual nature. But even at its stupidest, whoriest point; the Transformers franchise has one thing going for it: It has roots in something with an actual story.

Transformers has unfortunately set the precedent that a movie based on anything currently rotting at the bottom of most 20somethings’ closets is a surefire hit.* G.I. Joe was one thing, but as studios begin to run through all the toy lines with actual stories, we can predict a real tidal wave of terrible entertainment on the horizon.

*Pornography: Rise of Carmen Electra, coming soon to a theater near you.

For example, it’s confirmed that a Stretch Armstrong movie is in the works. Now, Stretch Armstrong was a little before my time, but as I recall (and Wikipedia confirms), he was “…a well muscled blonde man wearing a pair of swimming trunks. Its most notable feature was that its arms and legs could stretch outwards, presumably without breaking.” That’s it. The rest of the Wikipedia page is all about cultural references and the description of his accessories. So, in case you’re keeping score, the plot of your movie is: A well muscled blonde man in swim trunks can stretch his body really far.*

*Pornography 2: Whiplash Wang

Now, I might be old fashioned, but I feel like a movie needs a little more than that to have half a shot at not sucking. A stretchy blonde guy in swim trunks isn’t a movie; it’s not even a YouTube video. At best it’s a photograph, and not a very interesting one at that.

Maybe you’re saying “This gives the screenwriters a blank slate – they get to give Stretch Armstrong a voice and a backstory he never had! It’s creativity, stupid!” However, I’ve got to disagree – no matter how blank your slate is in this situation, you’re still trying to write a summer blockbuster around a blonde stretchy dude in swim trunks; at best this is fan fiction, and as someone who spent most of middle school writing fan fiction, I can assure you that it’s going to suck. If you really want a blank slate, maybe do away with Stretch Armstrong entirely and just write an original movie straight from your own head.

And so long as we’re talking about originality, I may as well mention that a Lego movie has been greenlit. This is arguably the only toy to movie conversion more obscure and stupid than Stretch Armstrong.* Legos did have some overarching themes, which give them a leg up on Stretch, but those themes were things like, “Cowboys,” “Pirates,” and “Space,” all of which Hollywood has tested with varying degrees of success.

*Scratch that – Play-Dough and Pet Rock have the lead.

That aside, the real reason I can’t see any good coming from a Lego movie is the fact that Legos really didn’t need much story; they literally were a blank slate for every elementary schooler who was bored on a Saturday afternoon and had the artistic vision of a spaceship on wagon wheels flying the jolly roger covered in tiny yellow plastic pizzas. What did it all mean? That was for the kid to decide. My Lego cowboys orchestrated heists, chases, and shootouts that raged for days between the living room, the hallway, my room, and the bathroom (where the last of the bandits drowned after the sheriff shot a hole in their rowboat while they tried to escape across the sink).

Just because a toy was popular doesn’t mean it’ll make a popular movie; a movie needs a story, a toy does not. Kids give toys their own stories. Hollywood should look somewhere else.

Truman Capps recently found out that The English Patient was in fact based on a popular line of brooding, melancholy action figures with emotionally charged backgrounds.