Your Childhood Was a Goddamned Lie

Lex and I took in a midnight showing of Transformers: The Movie last Saturday night at the Music Box. It was truly an event beholden of the markedly epic dreams I had as a child of doing things exactly like this when I became an adult.

The idea that I’d be in the theater watching the shit out of this movie again twenty-two years later was something of a super secret wish that occupied the same box as being paid to play with computers, being one of the Ninja Turtles and getting right the hell into Arcee’s pants. I am glad to say that I’ve done it, along with two of the remaining three super secret wishes. If you’re wondering which of two I mean, let me explain to you that I have been into – and currently have no-restriction access to – Arcee’s pants.

If you’ll remember this film along with me, here, I’d like to discuss one of the continuity issues that has become evident to me over the years. You see, there’s this Witwicky kid.

That’s Daniel. He’s just a boy and can’t keep up with the Transformers when they are trying to figure out how the hell to get off of the junk planet. He also can’t keep his eyes off of Arcee’s tits, which I guess is pretty cool because that makes us brothers or something.

Arcee gets Daniel his dad’s Exosuit. She makes the point that it belongs to his dad; a sore spot because his dad is likely dead right now for all Daniel knows. There is a quiet moment of reflection before they go full-force dead-man’s-boots on the subject, so it isn’t all that bad, I guess.

Soon enough the kid is in there, in that suit his dad had before he got tagged by the Decepticons or eaten by Unicron or whatever. He seems pretty happy about it. He’s got a ducky little getting used to my likely-dead dad’s exosuit scene where he’s all falling everywhere and totally disrespecting his almost certainly killed father’s memory.

So he’s got the suit and they make it off of the junk planet and somehow into Unicron and you know what the kid finds?

That’s his dad. Yeah, the guy in front of Bumblebee. That’s Spike Witwicky. That’s Daniel’s dad right there. Do you notice anything interesting about Spike? Is it the hair, or the button down? How about I give you a small tidbit of a hint by pointing out that Spike, Daniel’s not-dead-dad, is wearing his fucking exosuit.

He’s crying because he realizes that they just busted continuity. Look at Spike up there, all happy and waving, totally oblivious to the fourth wall they just jack-punched an Optimus Prime sized hole through. It’s sad, really. Daniel sees it. He’s weeping for you, the viewer. He knows you know and he’s damned ashamed about it.

Personally, I was ashamed when Spike yelled “holy shit” about twenty minutes into the film. I remember being in the theater in 1986 and thinking that my mom was going to flip out. I cringed a little bit this time around and looked over at Lex who shoved a hand-full of sno-caps into my face and smiled a smile the shine of which may very likely have started a whole new universe somewhere.

I wasn’t kidding about Arcee’s pants, BTW. I’ll post pics.