Sunday, September 14, 2008

Generation Gap


It seems kind of weird sometimes to realize that at 33 years old I can
remember much of the last 31 years. In all that time I have seen things
cycle through American culture. Somethings I never thought would come
back have in about 10 years. When I was 9 years old in 1984 I loved to
play with Transformers. Like most of my generation I played with the
toys, read the books, and watched the television show. But back then,
I could not imagine me past 30 or that children today would still be
playing with them. I did not even conceive that there could be a
live-action movie combined with CGI as there was last year. I mean when
I was 11 there was an animated film in theaters but nothing like the
2007 film. Truth is that the Transformers have been seen in many
permutations and versions. I always considered myself a purist, so when
I heard that the film-makers changed the looks of Optimus Prime and all
the Transformers in the film I didn't know what to think. I was
pleasantly surprised. I found an animated gif on the Internet that
shows the difference in the intervening years in how Optimus Prime was
shown in 1984 (on the left) versus how he was shown in 2007 (on the right).