Portrait of a Leader
Some people in my office are really excited about the live action Transformers movie coming out this summer. For a while I was excited too, but Steven has never seen the Transformers before so to prepare him we have been watching the first season of the cartoon.
I remember watching the cartoon a bit when I was young, but I don’t remember too many details other than the names of the major characters as well as the names of some of the toys I had. It turns out that there was a reason that my memory isn’t that detailed, there aren’t too many plot details to remember in the cartoon anyway.
I will give you the rundown of the average cartoon. Spike, the human companion of the Autobots (the good guys) begins writing in his journal about how nice and thoughtful the Autobots are. After that point the screen switches over to Megatron, a Decepticon, who is hell-bent on stealing the natural energy resources of the Earth. At this point he comes up with a brilliant idea to take over a dam, or an ocean turbine, or a solar plant, or even tap into the geothermal energy from the Earth’s core. You can see that the creators of the cartoon are very keen on promoting alternative energy sources.
After a much needed commercial break, we return to the Decepticons who fly in to plunder the energy resources. Immediately the Autobots hear about this and race to save the humans and their energy. There is a battle that results in a stale-mate and Megatron saying “I’ll be back to get my revenge!”
No one ever dies. The reason for this is due to the fact that no child wants to buy toy of a dead character. Also, every few weeks we are introduced to a new Autobot or Decepticon available in the local Toys R Us the day later. This means that each cartoon is really just a 1/2 hour toy advertisement. I guess I didn’t see this when I was 10, but now I only see empty plots and weekly releases of new toys. I will watch more of the cartoons for nostalgic reasons, but I won’t see this as anything more than background noise when nothing else is on TV.
