Movie Yelling with jwz and Kingfish:
A while back:
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Jim
Dude you're gonna say who are you and when did you steal Jamie's phone, but Bumblebee is pretty good!
When you return to your planet, please send Jamie back to us.
It is cute and funny and not a mean self loathing disaster like the other transformer movies.
Her robot car is a big dumb dog.
I'm going to watch it, but only while drunk
Oh definitely
What if Herbie The Love Bug but space robots
Okay, I can get down with that.
I have so many questions about Autobot physiology but these are actually the same questions I have about "Cars"
My problem with Cars: everyone knows headlights are car eyes, not windshields. That's just wrong.
Definitely a strange take.
Ok so transformers can reshape and whatnot. Dents can just buff right out? Right? So when they fight what does all the percussive maintenance accomplish? By which I mean the punching.
It's just satisfying to them
Mating ritual.
Like I said. So many questions.
Are some only cars or can they all do planes? Is it like Unicorn versus Pegasus in My Little Pony?
Inventing intricate rituals that allow you touch the metal flesh of other robots
METAL FLESH BEFORE THE METAL FLESH GOD
Ha!
So it's set in 87 and features many appropriate songs - the soundtrack is legit for a Hughes movie and there are actually multiple Smiths-related gags in the script - and I just don't understand how does this play with Da Yoot? Is this like when I was a kid and wondering "why does every teen movie have Wooly Bully in it?"
Also here's something that bugged me. They do a gag where Sammy Hagar "I can't drive 55" is playing but I'm pretty sure it was the "65" re-edit that was released in the 90s when the federal speed limit was raised but then the credits said "55" so I don't even know and OMFG why is there Sammy Hagar trivia in my head DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE
Delivered
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One month later:
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Jim
Based on your recommendation I am watching "Bumblebee." I am trusting you so much right now.
Oooh I was super drunk watching that
Funny you should say that. I literally just thought I am going to need a drink for this.
You are.
HERBIE
Acquired
FTR, I was a huge Herbie fan
I realize I'm way out of line here, but... the girl character has a job at Hot Dog on a Stick at the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk, to which she commutes, by moped, from her moms house in Marin. As someone who was a teenager in Marin in the 1980's, I can tell you that while mopeds were definitely a thing, 180 mile round trips on one of them, to work at Hot Dog on a Stick, was not commonplace
HA
I'll give them this though... somebody in production of this movie definitely grew up around here in the 80's. Everything is very accurate.
I was too drunk to be picky but that's good to know
Like the mean girl drives a BMW.
And all the people look right.
I definitely paused and judged her Ferris-esque wall of posters
Okay first inaccuracy. No mom in 87 Marin would say a Volkswagen Beetle was "unsafe."
Every Marin mom wished their kid wanted a used Beetle in 1987.
Chappaquiddick!!
Well sure but...
Volkswagen was practically the official carmaker of Marin in the 70's. By 87, all the kids wanted Beemers.
I like when they liquified the hillbilly at the diner.
I think we all remember where we were the day Optimus Prime died.
Did you get to my favorite line yet?
I dunno. She just installed his tape deck and he rejected The Smiths
"They're called Decepticons. Did that not raise any red flags?"
Ha
Diving into the ocean from the Marin headlands. That water's like 45 degrees.
Not to mention getting sucked out the Golden Gate and pulled under
Everyone knows that in Crime World, the Bay is like 1000' deep.
Yes.
Crime World is also where Godzilla can walk down Battery and like? There's room? And it's not all mushy landfill?
Makes sense.
Autobots and Decepticons have seats and steering wheels and what not. This seems wrong.
Also, why can't we see their fabric covered seats when they're robots.
Like I said before, I have so many questions. And they are the same questions I have about "Cars".
Yes.
Did we already talk about the fact that the guys who made Cars confirmed that yes, that is post apocalyptic earth?
That intelligent car society exists on the aftermath of the extinction of humans.
Can they all fly if they SQUEEEZE hard enough? Or can only some of them fly? Is flight more like melanin, or sex, or gender? I also have these questions about My Little Pony.
So many theological mysteries
I think the real issue is that being intelligent cars is a clear sign of the limitations of their original human-made programming, and their inability to evolve.
Like, you're a robot. You can be anything. But you can't, because it wasn't in your original programming. Now you can't even walk up a flight of stairs.
Charlie Stross has a book about robots after the humans are gone, and one of them is a weird tall, small-eyed robot because it was a sex doll, but most of the robots are small and anime chibi-eyed, so the one that looks like an actual human is a freak
That's awesome
Are the cars self replicating, or just self repairing? Can they make new cars? New designs? Offspring? I say no. They're trapped
In fact, I'm going to go there: no free will. They're just endlessly repeating their programming
I made too much popcorn so tonight I am having two bowls of popcorn. This is a thing that grownups can do.
Mmm... popcorn
So are the cars all a thousand years old? Do their personalities reset? Do they remember humans?
Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. They don't remember humans and they're all 1000 years old.
Is this a story about role playing Meths?
Yes.
So, basically, Cars is a dark dystopian saga about futility
I mean you're a thousand years old and you still want to race or whatever?
Exactly. And you haven't even tried to make feet.
Goddamn, girls house is exactly right for time and place.
Ha! Her hometown is listed on the Big War Map as Brighton Falls. I wiki'd it. Leaving aside the questionable "Falls" in any location in the Bay Area, it is listed as basically a mythical place near San Francisco that is at once Marin County and Santa Cruz. So, she wasn't commuting to the SC beach boardwalk by moped. In this reality, Brighton Falls is a town just north of SF that has its own beach boardwalk
Oh ok I figured she just lived in some fictional inland of Santa Carla
Essentially yes.
So you think the boardwalk is in Marin?
According to the movie, yes.
I find this troubling
They don't say Marin, but the show on the war map where Brighton Falls is.
Can the Northern California economy support two boardwalks? That's like a world that includes all of Metropolis, Gotham, New York and Chicago
Well, there was Playland at The Beach, once upon a time.
Destroyed by Decepticons in ought nine as you well know
Oh yes. It was horrible
Laughing Sal, on fire, laughing.
Furby, When The Walls Burned
Haha
Mare Island naval base just made its appearance
Only one thing can save bumblebee now! Diving!
Damn You Chekhov
Haha! Yes!
Use your powers of diving, Charlie!
Literally did nothing.
Like, diving made no difference.
By the way, I call bullshit on robots that can turn into cars _and_ jets or helicopters or whatever. No, no, completely no. You get one and that's it. Just because we can see car stuff and airplane stuff on your robot body, there's just not enough volume in your robot body for all that.
Did you notice that in the opening scene on robot world he had different tires
But still tires
Yes
Also, wth, leaving Charlie standing there in the Marin headlands
I did like that Camaro Bumblebee clearly meets up with Optimus Prime on the GG Bridge.
"You could have been a Camaro the whole time?"
Yeah that was a cute movie. Good reboot of a terrible franchise
Unlike the other movies, not made 100% of assholes
Hahaha
Hat full of assholes!
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I thought we were done with the Rickrolls, but NO. Bumblebee to the rescue.
Hailee Steinfeld is a national treasure. Fight me.
This is the most SoCal background I’ve ever read. Don’t @ me.
I think I need to get this entire conversation as a back piece.
I must have watched Herbie 10 times as a kid (due to it being played incessantly on broadcast TV). Can't say I loved it or hated it, but it's still occupying plenty of neurons (compare to It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World). Bumblebee .... was OK. I definitely appreciated it not being the mega-destructo movies the other Transformers are.
The surviving members of Apple's and Uber's self-driving car fleets from 1000 years in the future, come back through time to destroy each-other in the era they were first born. And maybe destroy humanity Terminator-style, a little bit.
Stross's book, for those who were curious: Saturn's Children (which is good despite the terrible sexbot cover illustration.)