Feverishly Elective: US Edition

Hoist the bunting, pop the champers and crank up Kool and the Gang: the US election is finally coming to an end!

And what a tragic indictment it has been of what US politics has become.

I've mostly avoided writing about his election because, really, what's to say?  Clinton is your typical Wall Street shill, as entrenched in the politics of greed as anyone else in Washington, but at least she's not Donald-Smegging-Trump!

Trump is not only every bit the typical Wall Street shill Hillary is, despite protests to the contrary (how else is he going to hold on to what little fortune he has left?), he's a sad, thin-skinned, neurotic, spineless, witless, crooked, cowardly, racist, misogynist hypocrite, who has survived his myriad failed business ventures through tax evasion and his sole talent of selling his own name.

And that's really all there is to it: one candidate who isn't great, and one candidate so pathetic, his own party have abandoned him.

So how has this even become a race?

Many have been citing what happened in the summer with the Brexit vote, suggesting people are voting against the status quo because of how ineffectual and unrepresentative it has become.  'Business as usual' hasn't been working for a while, so regardless of what the anti-establishment vote is, at least it's anti-establishment.

Unfortunately, much like the Brexit vote, this misguided 'protest' hurts only those already let down by the establishment.  Okay, Brexit got rid of Cameron and Osborne, but their legacy is being carried on by their like-minded peers, and the only change on the horizon is that lot gaining unfettered control of our rights, while having to think up new ways of directing funds into the pockets of them and theirs.

By the same token, Trump in the White House is going to in no way upset the status quo.  Perhaps if he had any savvy about him, he could enact some genuine change (though the change he'd enact is, in itself, a troubling prospect), but the reality is he's nothing but a spoiled, petulant child, wanting a go at being the big boss.  Handing him the presidency would be equivalent to handing him a toy phone and telling him the cow, sheep and chicken at the other end are Congress, Fox News and the Pentagon.

"When cow says 'moo', you've enacted a bill!  Isn't little Trumpy-wumpy clever?"

Meanwhile, the Republicans in office can finally do whatever they like without the president keeping their scumbaggery in check.

Make no mistake, how ever many Republicans have come out against the hamster-haired tangerine, you'll see few willing to vote against him.  They'll call him a disgrace, and unrepresentative of the party, but at the end of the day, they'd rather be answering to a weak-willed ignoramus, mistaking their empty platitudes for loyalty, than one of their opposite number seeing through every vapid grin, and kicking them in the nuts till they do as they're told.

And so they trot out the usual batch of braggarts, buffoons and blustering cretins, whose political careers are long-past ruining, to mindlessly defend every moronic soundbite he comes out with, while the rest can try to claim the 'Country Before Party' moral high-ground in an attempt to save their own seat, while secretly hoping the majority of voters really are that gullible.

The sad thing is, Trump really was one of the best candidates the Republicans put forward.  Chris Christie is a fat, simpering nobody, so lacking in self-worth and future prospects, he was the ideal first sacrifice to be thrown on the Trump dumpster fire.  Debating Hillary, Marco Rubio would've come across as a scared little boy getting a spanking form mother.  Ben Carson is so befuddled and out-of-touch, he'll be in a nursing home by this time next year, trying to rally the political support of his apple purée.  The majority of Ted Cruz's supporters would think today better spent in church, praying to God for the win, rather than actually voting.  And by the time of the third primary debate, the rest had already become 'the rest'.

Ironically, much like Ron Paul before him, the only candidate who'd have stood any chance of drawing some liberal support away from the Democrats, and making this a fight of principals and policies, rather than personalities, was John Kasich; the one candidate too sensible for the party base to ever accept.

Despite fears of Trump bringing the apocalypse down upon us all, I see very little being changed by this election.  This time tomorrow, the US will prove to be either not quite as stupid as we thought they were, or that mentally-deficient little nation that was big in the '80s, but now spends its time getting fat, ranting about greatness and shouting at a wall.

Bay's Nostalgia Films Suck: Why I Care

Transformers is silly.

Not just the Bay films, or the shoddy attempts at more animated series, but the entire franchise is silly.  Christ, the animated movie was (and by some (including myself) still is) adored, but even that featured this!



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was even worse!  Setting aside the fact their primary antagonist was a nasal hentai off-cut riding around in an '80's sex doll, with a pig, a rhino and Uncle Phil as his sidekicks, there were the musical specials, the live-action TV show, the second and third live-action movies...look, just watch this:


(or, for something far more in-depth, this)

The swaths of silliness that permeate these franchise and others - be it He-Man, GI Joe or the myriad comic-book franchises with adaptations old and recent - are often brought up in defence of some of the adaptations that spawn from them:

"You think Devastator's scrotum's bad, you should see the episode of the cartoon with the golden pond!"
"What do you mean the new Shredder's stupid?  Don't you remember Super-Shredder?"
"How can you think Duke in a super-suit's daft when the toys included a heavily-armed windsurfer?"

The argument being that, if we could put up with the weirdness of the source material and still love it, why is it such a big issue that they completely changed the Turtle's origins?

For me, the problem is one of potential.  The Transformers lore is rich and epic, and packed with some awesome characters, yet when given the go-ahead and budget to finally bring it all to life on the big-screen, we got a relatively small-scale, earth-bound shoot-out, focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the towering, warring robots to the background.  Where the cartoon gave us a transforming city, an underwater battle with robotic piranhas and a planet-devouring monster, Bay gave us Skids and Mudflap.

As for the Turtles, while the 2nd and 3rd live-action movies were pants, the first did a great job of not only bringing the characters to life, but of creating an atmosphere that settled nicely between the cartoon and the early comics.  The only real issue with it (aside from a spot of slow pacing) was technological restrictions: impressive as the costumes were at the time, they haven't aged well, and in retrospect, encumbered the ninja action.

To revisit the property with the benefit of today's technology could have resulted in something fun, fast-paced, and visually unique and spectacular.  Instead we got some generic rip-off of Amazing Spiderman (of all things), focusing on a handful of tedious humans, and relegating the weird-but-badass ninjas to the background.

The reception of these films is also a problem.  Bays Transformers films are crap, but because explosion-porn makes money, we're stuck with his take on the franchise for the foreseeable future.

On the flip-side, the last Turtles film bombed, and so we're due a reboot.  On the surface, that should be great news, but for all the problems with the films, they did at least get the Turtles right (love-or-hate visual design notwithstanding), but current Hollywood reasoning dictates that if a film doesn't do well, it's because everything about it was wrong, and the only way to save it is "gritty realism".

Just look at Superman Returns: a half-arsed attempt at recapturing the magic of the first two Christopher Reeves films it might have been, but for all its problems, Brandon Routh was an inspired casting choice, not only looking the part, but also able to give two distinct and convincing performances as both Clark Kent and Superman.

Contrast that with the dour, miserable, misguided Zack Snyder films, and poor Henry Cavil who is mostly unconvincing as either.

Okay, the gritty reboot thing worked for Batman following the horror of Joel Schumacher, but the reason it worked for Batman is because it's freakin' Batman!  A gritty reboot of Superman makes about as much sense as one for the Fantastic Four.

But I digress: the point of all this is, yes we still have the cartoons to watch; yes they had their silliness and spawned some utterly baffling off-shoots; yes there was a moment in our naive youth when it was just about acceptable to randomly have Vanilla Ice rapping about ninjas, but they had the opportunity to do something great!  To finally bring these memories from our childhood to life in such a way that was new and spectacular, while still paying homage to the best of what they were, eschewing all of the unnecessary baggage that had built up over the years.

And instead we got Bumble Bee pissing on a Fed, Devastator balls, a mech-suited Shredder, a crappy rip-off of a crappy reboot, Skids, Mudflap, Shia le Boufant, Megan Fox, Marky Mark and the Wooden Bunch, and Michael fucking Bay.