More Than Meets the Eye

Over the weekend, The Common Man became excited only to see his dreams crushed against the rocky shoals of reality. You see, when The Common Man was but The Common Boy, he loved his Transformers. He loved the toys. He loved the cartoon. He was traumatized by the movie (in which all his favorite Transformers, including Optimus Prime but not Bumblebee, were killed off in the first 20 minutes) but loved it anyway. The Common Man even loved the lean third season, suffering through the reign of Rodimus Prime, the new, totally wussy, leader of the Autobots. Somewhere, in his parents' basement, The Common Man still has his original Optimus Prime (even though one arm has fallen off),

his decomposing Megatron (a poorly-designed, fragile toy that, by the way, transforms into a realistic-looking pistol; not sure that toy would fly today), his crippled Soundwave(with a broken tape-deck and legs that no longer support his weight), and
Rodimus Prime (in mint-condition...damn it; seriously, this is the Transformer that's in perfect condition??? Is there no justice in this world?), along with dozens and dozens of other Transformers in various states of decay. Suffice to say, The Common Man loved him some Transformers.

Certainly, The Common Man realizes that the cartoons were poorly written with cheesy dialogue, that they often portrayed Muslims in a stereotypical manner (seriously, go back and watch them if you don't believe me), and that they were essentially half-hour commercials for the toy line (as more and more Transformer characters conveniently showed up on theshow just in time for their product release...I'm looking at you Constructicons, Aerialbots, Stunticons, Predicons, Protectobots, and Combaticons). But this does not diminish his affection for them; it only reminds him of how much he enjoyed playing with his toys. Indeed, maybe The Common Man can see how ridiculous crap like Pokemon, Digimon, Power Rangers, and Yu-gih-oh can have such an influence on kids today (or, I guess, 5-7 years ago). Of course, all of those suck and The Common Man's Transformers are awesome, so it's probably not a good comparison after all.

Anyway, as you may or may not know, there is a live-action version of Transformers coming to theaters near you this summer. This has The Common Man all atwitter, and for weeks he has been searching for ever more news, photos, and clips from the new film. The Common Man prays that this film will be good, for it holds the unfulfilled dreams of his childhood in its hands. Unfortunately, those hands are being controlled by Michael Bay, director of Armageddon and The Island. Bay has admitted that, prior to his involvement in this film, he knew nothing about the Transformers. Happily, his hands are being guided by this man, who has had a decent track record in putting together enjoyable films.

This is a lot of explanation to get to The Common Man's ultimate frustration this weekend when he read that various internet "media" outlets had been given a chance to view 25 from the upcoming film at the International Toy Convention. The Common Man thought that, surely, some clever individual had smuggled out some kind of bootlegged copy. So he looked and looked and looked. But none could be found. All these sites have are text descriptions of what they saw. And that's not good enough for The Common Man. He needs his fix. Or, he needs it to be July. Now.

The lesson, as always, is that The Common Man has the emotional maturity of a 10 year old.