This post is part of a longer series examining the god-awfulness of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you missed it, the introduction is right here.

When we last left Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a group of African stereotypes got stomped by a robot sometime in the distant past. Today’s installment begins 17,000 years later, with a shot of an industrial hellscape, and another friendly caption:

SHANGHAI, CHINA. 22:14 HRS – TODAY

And what’s happening TODAY at 22:14 HRS? Well, Shanghai is being evacuated following a toxic spill in the financial district. Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, some serious-looking officers are watching the evacuation on some serious-looking monitors, chattering on about Chinese airspace and strike teams.

Then, back to China, where a decrepit ice cream truck putts along a dirt road. A speaker on the truck’s roof announces – I swear – “Any bad robot out there’s better get ready for an ass-whoopin’,” in a voice that sounds like your racist uncle’s Flavor Flav impression. There’s an Autobot insignia on the front of the truck, and a sign on the side that reads – again, I swear this is all true – “[Decepticon insignia] suck my popsicle!”

You hear that sound? That’s the sound of hope dying.

Soldiers move into position, and Optimus Prime’s voiceover fills us in on the backstory: for the last two years, he and the Autobots have joined up with a group of human soldiers to form a “classified strike team called NEST” (which I assume is an acronym for something, although they never bother saying what). We meet a few of the team members: a sleek-looking car that will probably turn into a robot at some point, a group of human soldiers, the aforementioned ice cream truck, and – just to make things confusing – a trio of motorcycles (complete with holographic riders) referred to as “Arcee.”

Fans of the Transformers’ 1980’s incarnation will remember Arcee as the token girl Transformer. They will also remember that there was only one of her. Now, somehow, she is three motorcycles that turn into three robots, but who all have one name. This makes perfect sense, so be quiet and watch the damn movie and stop trying to confuse Michael Bay because you’ll make him mess up.

Also, those soldiers? They were in the first movie, and we’ll be seeing them throughout this one. For the purpose of this review, their names are Lead Guy, Black Guy, Third Guy, and Fourth Guy. Lead Guy explains that the “toxic spill” was just a cover story to get everyone out of the city so they can fight some Decepticons.

Finally, we get what we came for: a truck turning into a motherfucking robot. Unfortunately, the robot is standing so close to the camera that all we really see are unidentifiable bits of truck twisting around and blocking our view of anything else; he starts as a GMC pickup and ends up as an Autobot named Ironhide, but how he got from Point A to Point B remains a mystery. In his robot form, Ironhide looks like a collection of random metal parts welded together into something vaguely man-shaped, not unlike the sculptures that stand in front of office buildings. I wish Tyler Durden was in this movie.

The soldiers gather around some kind of power plant or refinery or something, where a nearby crane transforms into a very large Decepticon and starts smashing shit. There’s an explosion, a weird “BWAAAAAUUUUMP” noise, debris, gunfire, the anguished cries of wounded soldiers. For no reason, some cars go flying across the screen, although we did not see them take off, nor do we see them land. Through all of this, the Decepticon is off-screen. Not in the background. Not obscured by dust or explosions. Just not there. In a couple shots, the soldiers seem to be firing at nothing. When the robot finally reappears, it transforms into some kind of one-wheeled spidery thing and takes off.

Then bunch of shit happens that I cannot make myself care about. Two highlights:

ONE: A Decepticon breaks through a wall and the Arcees pursue him, crashing through the apartment of an elderly Chinese man in the process. Just as the laws of comedy predict, the old man is oblivious to the robo-carnage going on behind him – the robots destroy his home, and he goes right on eating his soup, barely mustering the energy to glance at the giant, burning hole in his wall. If you find this funny, you are my enemy.

TWO: During that same chase, the Flavor Flav ice cream truck returns to drag this movie down into the deepest pit of Hell. The back half of the truck breaks off and turns into a (relatively) squat robot, who does a slapsticky tumble into the side of the building. The front half turns into a similar robot with a similarly offensive jive-talkin’ accent, and he smacks his partner upside the head for his screw-up. If this were a just world, I could say that they never appear again after this scene. Alas, the world is a dark and wicked place, and I will have much more to say about these two in the future.

Eventually, we get back to the giant killer Decepticon. He has somehow found his way to a bridge full of cars, and runs one over with his gargantuan tire. Now, let’s ignore the fact that the whole “evacuation” thing has been completely forgotten, and the fact that some civilians just got killed for the sake of a CGI effect, and focus on the insane hugeness of this fucking tire. Seriously, this thing is like four monster truck tires put together. And we’re just supposed to accept that?

Now, I’m not an expert on cranes. I don’t know what kind of tires they have. In fact, I always thought cranes had treads. So for all I know, some company really does make crane tires that are twenty feet tall and wider than an entire truck. But it’s a lot more likely that the people making this movie have no idea how big things are, and decided that Mister Crane-Bot should be big enough to crush everything in his path, even though there is just no fucking way that much metal could compact itself into anything resembling a piece of functioning construction equipment. But I digress.

At long last, Optimus Prime joins the fight, in the most absurd and unnecessary way possible. No, really: he drives out of a moving plane in truck-form, transforms into a robot as he tumbles through the air, deploys three parachutes, drifts the rest of the way to the ground, cuts the chutes, turns back into a truck, and pursues his one-wheeled foe. The Unicycle of Malevolence, meanwhile, has made his way to a crowded highway, where he is crushing cars, smashing overpasses, and almost certainly killing children by the busload.

And then, somehow, Optimus is climbing around on the monster’s evil head. I had to rewind twice to figure out how he got up there, and I’m still not 100% sure. It doesn’t matter; once he’s up there, Optimus does something that makes the Decepticon crash and die. I have no idea what the fuck just happened, but this sequence seems to be coming to an end, so I don’t care anymore. Optimus and Ironhide approach their vanquished enemy, who manages to croak, “The Fallen shall rise again,” out of his metal mandibles before Optimus blows his face off with a laser or something.

One of the soldiers says, “That doesn’t sound good.” He’s right. We are eight minutes and forty-nine seconds into Revenge of the Fallen, and only pain awaits us.

In our next installment, we finally meet the humans, their pets, and their robot sidekick. We do not, however, meet Mr. Dignity.

This post is part of a longer series examining the god-awfulness of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If you missed it, the introduction is right here.

It’s not often that a movie starts sucking before it has even begun, but such is the case with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Before seeing even a second of the movie proper, we’re treated to an ominous hum accompanying the Dreamworks logo, and a series of beeping and whirring sounds as the stars in the Paramount logo fly by. This will become a recurring theme throughout the movie: things make noise when they move.

The first thing we see is a shot of some mountains somewhere, followed by a shot of something lumpy that may or may not also be a mountain. The credits – which make whooshing noises as they appear onscreen, naturally – tell use that this movie was made “In association with Hasbro.” Finally, in the third shot of the same mountains, Optimus Prime speaks in voiceover:

“Earth. Birthplace of the human race. A species much like our own.”

While he says this, two silhouetted, spear-wielding tribesmen ascend one of the larger rocks, effectively laying the groundwork for this movie’s attitude about race. They are either joined by several more warriors, or we simply cut to a shot of some different warriors – it’s hard to tell, since everything is still in silhouette. Optimus goes on, “Capable of great compassion… and great violence,” and a helpful caption informs us that it is all happening in 17,000 B.C.

We get our first look at our warriors, and indeed they are African. I have no idea if their war paint or weapons are even remotely authentic, and I’m sure Michael Bay doesn’t know either. There are at least seven of them now, and they are all staring grimly past the camera.

Some sort of big cat runs by silently, and the tribe (now up to nine!) charges it. We hear a guttural, feline growl as they do, even though the cat is no longer onscreen – clearly, the implication is that this animal-noise somehow came from one of the tribesmen.

So maybe this is what establishes the movie’s attitude toward race. In any case, Michael Bay is an asshole, the cat is revealed to be a tiger, and I have my first “What the fuck?” moment, because tigers live in India. In jungles. This scene, meanwhile, takes place in a craggy desert environment, presumably somewhere in Africa, where being stripey and bright orange is a tremendous evolutionary disadvantage, even for an apex predator.

Also, every shot of this chase seems to take place in an entirely different location, with the occasional presence of the tiger serving as the only nod to continuity. Eventually, an elderly (and therefore wise) member of the tribe makes the universal gesture for “I’m about to do something wise,” while Optimus narrates a bit more:

“For in our quest to protect the humans, a deeper revelation dawns: our worlds have met before.” You may notice that this does not actually follow from his previous statement. If you noticed, then congratulations – you are smarter than basically everyone involved in the making of this movie.

Two seconds later, none of that matters anymore; in the very next shot the warriors are calmly climbing over a ridge (the tiger now completely forgotten) and peering down at some kind of huge, pointy machine being assembled by a team of giant robots. A particularly ugly robot moves toward the camera, thus establishing himself as the leader, and the tribe decides to do something stupid.

We hear another animalistic roar, and this time there is no doubt as to its origin; it is clearly coming from the mouth of one of the warriors. We even get a slow-mo shot of him baring his teeth at his new enemies.

Just in time, it seems, since that lead robot is suddenly right on top of the tribe (he must have walked over while the camera was lingering on that one dude’s teeth), and he starts stomping on people. And then he’s somehow holding a frightened tribesman in his hand, despite never bending down to pick the guy up in the first place. He flings his victim aside, then roars directly at the camera while a set of metal feathers (?) around his face flutter back and forth.

The screen goes black, and a pile of metal scraps assemble themselves into the movie’s title – I assume that the intent was to show us the title “transforming,” but that’s kind of hard to do because it’s a title, and as such its robot form is nothing, and its vehicle form is a bunch of letters.

And that, dear readers, was the first two minutes and thirteen seconds of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I know it was somewhat joke-free, but at least you’ve seen the kind of stupid-to-watchable ratio we are dealing with. You’ve also seen exactly as much of this movie as I can tolerate for now. In our next episode, the story returns to the present, where we learn that robots can magically become bigger or smaller, depending on what needs to be smashed in a given scene.

After Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out this summer, there was a lot of talk about how terrible it was. It was not merely bad, the reviews claimed, but a two-and-a-half-hour display of everything wrong with Michael Bay’s ideas about filmmaking. Beyond that, it (quite unintentionally) exposed our culture’s fucked-up ideals, on subjects ranging from race and gender to the relationship between the military and civilians. Or so I had read; I wasn’t about to pay money to watch it, and downloading a crappy cam version seemed like a huge waste of time.

Well. It’s out on DVD now, and I decided to undertake a project. I would obtain a copy of the movie, force myself to watch it, and then review it. But instead of writing another bad review in a field of thousands, I decided to analyze the entire movie. That meant full write-ups of everything wrong with every scene, every character, every insufferable joke — every single thing that helped to make this move so terrible.

Of course, before I could dissect the movie, I’d have to understand it, and that meant sitting down and watching the damned thing. The movie is 150 minutes long; I made it to 150 seconds before I needed a break. I needed several more breaks throughout, not because I had anything better to do, but because I just needed to get the fuck away from this movie to gather my thoughts. Unwilling to return, I would assign myself little tasks during my breaks — emptying the trash cans, writing emails, preparing some surprisingly tasty BBQ pork sandwiches (a process which takes up the better part of a day) — and spent much of the actual movie on my feet, pacing around and occasionally glancing at the screen when something seemed to be happening.

And Revenge of the Fallen isn’t just long; it’s slow. Once you’ve been watching it for a while, it becomes difficult to remember a time when you weren’t watching it, and just as hard to imagine that it will ever end. All the action sequences seemed to drag on for days, but in reality they rarely took more than a few minutes. Every so often, I would pause to see how much time I had left, and it was always a lot more than I expected.

When I started watching this movie, I was already planning this review series. But if I hadn’t, I’d be planning it now, because there is simply no way I can hold back all the righteous fury I have for this steaming pile of shit posing as entertainment.

Actually, no. If I hadn’t been planning this project, I never would have watched the movie in the first place, and I’d still be happy. As it is, I am not happy, and the first review will be arriving shortly.

I have seen Transformers. The world will pay.

We at the Beak are not role models. We drink to excess. We use coarse language in front of children and ladies. We “forget” to post for months at a time. And, perhaps most shameful of all, we smoke.

Like all smokers, we’d grown accustomed to paying more than we’d like for cigarettes. It was unpleasant, but you lived with it. Until a few months ago, when the President — himself engaged in an on-again off-again affair with tobacco — signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Mostly standard stuff, bigger warning labels and all that, with one nasty catch: it bans flavored tobacco products.

As a fan of fancy-flavored cigarettes, I was understandably alarmed. And not long after that, Horatio informed me that readers had been asking if we could post something about the situation. And why shouldn’t we? If I can build a robot at home, I can sure as hell figure out how to roll a cigarette. Luckily, I didn’t have to, since Horatio’s lady-friend (and all-around bon vivant) Ms. Monsterface has set up a blog dedicated to the making and smoking of your own homemade clove cigarettes. You can even follow along at home! It’s like a cooking show for your lungs!

I admit I haven’t tried any of her experiments yet, but only because I’ve been conducting my own. Unfortunately, I’m not able to write a guide as thorough as hers, simply because I forgot to take pictures of all the steps of the process. Also, I’ve already smoked most of my supplies, so that’s an issue as well. Luckily, I had a chance to talk with Ms. Monsterface a couple weeks ago, and gave her permission to steal my ideas. So for all I know, my clove-making techniques could be showing up on her blog at some point in the future.

And if they don’t, then I’ll just take some pictures and write about it here. This definitely seems like the sort of thing that could become a recurring feature; people love to learn indie-friendly ways to be unhealthy. In the meantime, though, we should all be grateful that Ms. Monsterface is on the job, bringing tastiness to the masses.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for a movie that came out over a week ago, and that you’ve probably already seen, or at least read about by now. If you haven’t, but wish to remain unspoiled, read something else.

After putting it off for far too long, I finally saw the new Star Trek. My reaction to the movie itself — the plot, the performances, the ways it diverged from the original series — is about the same as what you’ve read everywhere else, and you don’t need to hear another nerd waxing nostalgic over DeForest Kelley. Just trust me when I say that, if you’re a Star Trek fan, or a science fiction fan, or just an average schmuck who likes big summer movies, this is a pretty safe bet.

Before it even came out, I spent a lot of time hoping it succeeded, partly because I’m a (relatively casual) Star Trek fan, but mostly because I’d be willing to attend a convention if it meant an opportunity to hang out with Simon Pegg. After seeing it, though, I’m not sure he, or anyone from the new cast, will be doing conventions. Indeed, I’ve begun to wonder if conventions will even be necessary after this. Star Trek fandom, despite the enthusiastic community that has sprung up over the years, has often been a lonely pursuit. Fans gather at conventions, and are amazed at how many fellow fans they meet, but during the rest of the year, they often have no one to talk to about their obsession.

Now, Star Trek has found a level of mass appeal that had previously eluded it. Some of the infamous Trek sermonizing was lost in the process, but the franchise’s fondness for exploring morality still comes through. The new film gives us a story about the futility of revenge, the acceptance of one’s limitations, and the ethics of dicking around with time travel — all themes that would feel perfectly at home among the redshirts and papier-mâché rocks of the original series.

Comparisons to Star Wars, that other venerable sci-fi franchise, are inevitable, and for good reason. This new Star Trek gives us fast-paced space battles, spectacular effects, a villain capable of destroying entire planets, and a team of inexperienced young heroes tasked with stopping him. And now it has a Star Wars-sized audience to match, and that audience is experiencing a renewed interest in the classic series.

If — and this is a big “If” — the movie’s popularity endures, if its new continuity is accepted by longtime fans, and if the inevitable sequels are worth a damn, we could see a permanent shift in the way Star Trek fandom works. Fans will be freer to talk about their fondness for the franchise, and will encounter far more people who share their interest. In short, we could be headed towards a pop-culture landscape in which Star Trek is not arbitrarily considered less acceptable than Star Wars.

That this could happen, and that the peaceful, progressive values of the Federation could be treated with the same relative respect shown to the (frankly medieval) Jedi code, is nothing short of a miracle for my fellow geeks. We’ve spent the last few decades — and the last eight years in particular — banging our heads against the wall in frustration, shocked and frightened by humankind’s apparent inability to overcome our urge to destroy ourselves.

Star Trek made an impact during the Cold War by depicting a future where humans had not only survived, but had become model citizens of a galactic civilization, and leading voices in a Federation devoted to peace, exploration, and diversity. For years, its fans have held it up as an example for our present-day society to follow, and have been largely ignored. We were told they were too idealistic, or simply too hard to take seriously when they wore fake Vulcan ears. Plus, “Voyager” kind of bogged down after a couple seasons, and nobody liked “Enterprise” that much.

Now, though, an explosion-filled summer blockbuster has provided them with their long-awaited opening, and a decent sequel or two will be more than enough to make the public wonder why they weren’t on board with Gene Roddenberry’s ideas in the first place. It won’t result in a radical overhaul of society, and it won’t compel us to model our world after the Federation, but it could very well get people thinking some of Star Trek’s lofty ideals.

As a nerd, that’s really all I’ve ever asked for.

Membership in Second Life, the giant online game/community/virtual world that you’ve heard about but never used, is free. I didn’t know that until recently. When I learned that fact, an idea hit me:

Second Life is a free source of material for at least one post, and probably a series.

It is, after all, the place where all the scariest, most unpleasant motherfuckers on the internet come together to be totally uninhibited. A place where a man can say, “In my real life, I’m an accountant, but here I can by my true self: a panda with huge tits and both sets of genitals,” and be accepted and embraced by a whole huge-titted hermaphro-panda community. A place, in short, where I could find something to write about, whether or not those stereotypes turned out to be true.

My vision for this project was simple: I’d go undercover, knowing absolutely nothing about the game or its world. Once there, I’d investigate all the things you’ve heard about Second Life in the media. Would the other players be at least half-normal? Would they would look down on me for being a noob who didn’t own any in-game property? And (of course) is the game really a depraved 24/7 furry scat party like all the news reports say it is, or is it mostly just people walking around and chatting? This, I told myself, would be some funny shit.

I downloaded the necessary files from the Second Life website, I installed them, I set up my account, and I started playing.

And then I stopped playing, because it is fucking unplayable. My computer is old, and my internet connection isn’t as fast as it could be, but goddammit, it ran World of Warcraft just fine! This game, though, suffered from a fucking ridiculous level of slowness. Remember that first generation of 3D games, on the original Playstation and the Nintendo 64? How objects just appeared when you got close enough? How mountain ranges would just pop up out of nowhere?

Yeah. It’s like that, but with better graphics and about 1/10th of the speed. Oh, and sometimes you’ll see objects that aren’t supposed to be there at all! You’ll be standing around, and a cluster of weird-looking polygons will appear in the middle of the screen, and stay there until you adjust your camera.

I assumed this had to be a problem with my hardware — either the old computer, or the mediocre connection. To an extent, I was right. But then I watched a couple video tutorials put out by Linden Labs (the makers of Second Life, who I probably should’ve mentioned earlier), and the videos’ narrator wasn’t having much more luck. He clearly had a better system than I did, but the framerate was still choppy, and his avatar spent much of its time standing around, waiting for the scenery to load. The game even crashed on him while he was recording one of the tutorials, and he didn’t even bother cutting it out of the video. He knows how to edit — he’s making video tutorials, after all — and he decided to leave this in.

And that was the end of my undercover investigation of Second Life. Everything I learned, I got from articles and tutorials that are already freely available to anyone who wants to read them, whether or not they’ve played the game. I am able to bring absolutely nothing new to the table regarding this topic. I had some interesting points about the in-game economy, but it’s nothing you can’t find on your own. No, all I could come up with is some angry criticism of the game’s slowness.

Seriously, how fucking patient do you have to be to addicted to this game? At least with drugs, you have the instant gratification of getting high.