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https://blackgirlnerds.com/cult-classics-an-appreciation-of-don-mancinis-polarizing-seed-of-chucky/
Since 1988’s Child’s Play, Don Mancini has been the driving creative force behind the long-running franchise. After the first installment, which he co-wrote with the film’s director Tom Holland (Fright Night) and writer John Lafia (who’d go on to direct Child’s Play 2), Mancini continued to pen every screenplay.
It wasn’t until Seed of Chucky that he made his directorial debut, which hit theaters on November 11, 2004. Unfortunately, it didn’t do well at the box office, making it the last Child’s Play movie to premiere in theaters. Some fans consider it the worst in the franchise, though others, especially the LGBTQ+ community, regard it as a campy cult classic.
With the 20th anniversary approaching and in honor of the unceremonious cancellation of the Chucky series, let’s look back at this polarizing film that the studio considered “too gay, too funny…” and had “too much Jennifer Tilly” (as if there’s ever such a thing).
Most, if not all, horror franchises run into the same problem after a few sequels — the slashers stop being scary. To avoid that, Mancini subverted expectations by steering the Child’s Play films in a more comedic, self-referential direction, beginning with 1998’s Bride of Chucky directed by Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason). There were still horror elements but it deviated from the story of Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent and Justin Whalin), the young protagonist central to Child’s Play 1–3. The film introduced Chucky’s (Brad Dourif) fabulously twisted ex-girlfriend, Tiffany Valentine, played to perfection by Jennifer Tilly.
After bribing and then killing a police officer to obtain Chucky’s remains, Tiffany stitches him together and recites the Damballa voodoo spell to resurrect her old lover. Tiffany spent a decade looking for Chucky, believing that he planned to marry her but he laughs in her face at the idea, so she locks him in a playpen, later taunting him with a bride doll. At this point, Chucky has come back from the dead four times; a measly cage doesn’t hold him for long. After killing her in a very cool Bride of Frankenstein-inspired death, Chucky traps Tiffany in the bride doll, which she gives a serious glow-up in a makeover montage.
To transfer their souls into humans, the doll couple needs the Heart of Damballa amulet, inconveniently located 6 feet under in Hackensack, New Jersey, with Charles Lee Ray’s corpse. Tiffany pays her neighbor Jesse (Nick Stabile) to deliver the dolls, and he brings along his girlfriend Jade (Katherine Heigl).
The two couples go on a wild road trip leaving several bodies in their wake. After witnessing Tiffany committing a gruesomely creative murder involving a waterbed, a mirror, and a Champagne bottle, Chucky finally puts a ring on it. But their violently rocky relationship hits a few speed bumps along the way, and by the end, they’re literally at each other’s throats in a cemetery. Tiffany tries to kill Chucky, but he stabs her instead, and then Jade shoots him to death. Before the credits roll, Tiffany briefly wakes up and gives birth to a slimy, sharp-toothed (kinda cute) baby doll.
Seed of Chucky picks up six years later and we learn that the screeching infant was found by a British guy named Psychs (Keith-Lee Castle), a cruel ventriloquist who forces the ghoulish-looking doll (voiced by Billy Boyd) that he dubbed Shitface to be the dummy in his act. The orphaned doll has a kind and gentle heart but is plagued by murderous nightmares.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, actor Jennifer Tilly (played by Jennifer Tilly) is on the set of Chucky Goes Psycho, a horror film based on the legend of the dolls inhabited by the souls of serial killers. The last time we saw Chucky and Tiffany, they were burnt to a crisp and riddled with bullets, but they’ve since had a makeover. Luckily, their offspring sees them on TV with the same Made in Japan markings, then flees England and runs away to Los Angeles to find their family. Better yet, they have the amulet to bring them back to life.
While he’s mostly referred to as male, the character’s gender is ambiguous. Chucky wants a boy, Tiffany wants a girl, so their child is called Glen or Glenda (an homage to Ed Wood’s cult classic). Tiffany sets her sights on transferring her soul into Jennifer Tilly and Chucky’s into hip-hop superstar-turned-director Redman (playing himself). The plan is to impregnate Jennifer and whatever baby pops out is for Glen or Glenda.
Considering their brief but nightmarish introduction in Bride, this “Dickensian waif” who wets his pants when he’s nervous was not what fans expected. Instead of a natural-born killer with their parents’ same lust for murder, Glen/Glenda is firmly against killing, at least a part of them. As they struggle with their gender identity, they also confront their killer instincts.
Seed haters couldn’t get on board with the meta-Hollywood aspect. Jennifer Tilly playing a version of herself while still voicing Tiffany, and later playing Tiffany in the body of Jennifer Tilly, is a lot to wrap your head around. She pokes fun at herself by playing a washed-up actor, annoyed with doing horror when she wants the juicy parts given to Julia Roberts. She’s determined to land the role of the Virgin Mary in Redman’s “Bible epic.”
Many often critique the multiple plot points, believing there are too many things going on when all that should be happening is Chucky killing people. Still, the film has some pretty cool kills. Glen/Glenda takes out sleazy paparazzo Pete Peters (John Waters) with acid and sets Jennifer’s assistant Joan (Hannah Spearritt) on fire, both accidents. Tiffany disembowels Redman after he fires Jennifer for being pregnant (though Mary would indeed be pregnant).
The comedy is very much of the time back when people thought it was cool to hate Britney Spears and celebs like Martha Stewart and Anna Nicole Smith were frequently referenced. But there’s still some humor that holds up. Glen/Glenda knowing nothing about himself other than the Made in Japan manufacturer mark and informing his personality is just hilarious.
Seed is also very much about acceptance. Tiffany tries to fight what she sees as an addiction to killing and knows that she wants to be a mother first (with some murderous tendencies). Jennifer gives birth to twins, allowing Glen/Glenda to split their identities in two. Even Chucky finds self-acceptance. Since the beginning, his main motivation has been to transfer his soul into a human body for good. But here, he realizes that he would rather embrace his serial killing nature in doll form, declaring “I am Chucky, the killer doll. And I dig it!”
Seed of Chucky is not for everyone, namely anyone looking for something truly terrifying. Mancini took a big swing making a full-on comedy that plays into the absurdity of killer dolls while touching on poignant topics like gender identity, addiction, and acceptance. For those who can accept that Seed of Chucky is a meta off-the-rails comedy, it’s a gory, good time.
Seed of Chucky is available to rent on Prime Video and is streaming on Netflix through October 31, 2024.
The post Cult Classics: An Appreciation of Don Mancini’s Polarizing ‘Seed of Chucky’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
Since 1988’s Child’s Play, Don Mancini has been the driving creative force behind the long-running franchise. After the first installment, which he co-wrote with the film’s director Tom Holland (Fright Night) and writer John Lafia (who’d go on to direct Child’s Play 2), Mancini continued to pen every screenplay.
It wasn’t until Seed of Chucky that he made his directorial debut, which hit theaters on November 11, 2004. Unfortunately, it didn’t do well at the box office, making it the last Child’s Play movie to premiere in theaters. Some fans consider it the worst in the franchise, though others, especially the LGBTQ+ community, regard it as a campy cult classic.
With the 20th anniversary approaching and in honor of the unceremonious cancellation of the Chucky series, let’s look back at this polarizing film that the studio considered “too gay, too funny…” and had “too much Jennifer Tilly” (as if there’s ever such a thing).
Most, if not all, horror franchises run into the same problem after a few sequels — the slashers stop being scary. To avoid that, Mancini subverted expectations by steering the Child’s Play films in a more comedic, self-referential direction, beginning with 1998’s Bride of Chucky directed by Ronny Yu (Freddy vs. Jason). There were still horror elements but it deviated from the story of Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent and Justin Whalin), the young protagonist central to Child’s Play 1–3. The film introduced Chucky’s (Brad Dourif) fabulously twisted ex-girlfriend, Tiffany Valentine, played to perfection by Jennifer Tilly.
After bribing and then killing a police officer to obtain Chucky’s remains, Tiffany stitches him together and recites the Damballa voodoo spell to resurrect her old lover. Tiffany spent a decade looking for Chucky, believing that he planned to marry her but he laughs in her face at the idea, so she locks him in a playpen, later taunting him with a bride doll. At this point, Chucky has come back from the dead four times; a measly cage doesn’t hold him for long. After killing her in a very cool Bride of Frankenstein-inspired death, Chucky traps Tiffany in the bride doll, which she gives a serious glow-up in a makeover montage.
To transfer their souls into humans, the doll couple needs the Heart of Damballa amulet, inconveniently located 6 feet under in Hackensack, New Jersey, with Charles Lee Ray’s corpse. Tiffany pays her neighbor Jesse (Nick Stabile) to deliver the dolls, and he brings along his girlfriend Jade (Katherine Heigl).
The two couples go on a wild road trip leaving several bodies in their wake. After witnessing Tiffany committing a gruesomely creative murder involving a waterbed, a mirror, and a Champagne bottle, Chucky finally puts a ring on it. But their violently rocky relationship hits a few speed bumps along the way, and by the end, they’re literally at each other’s throats in a cemetery. Tiffany tries to kill Chucky, but he stabs her instead, and then Jade shoots him to death. Before the credits roll, Tiffany briefly wakes up and gives birth to a slimy, sharp-toothed (kinda cute) baby doll.
Seed of Chucky picks up six years later and we learn that the screeching infant was found by a British guy named Psychs (Keith-Lee Castle), a cruel ventriloquist who forces the ghoulish-looking doll (voiced by Billy Boyd) that he dubbed Shitface to be the dummy in his act. The orphaned doll has a kind and gentle heart but is plagued by murderous nightmares.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, actor Jennifer Tilly (played by Jennifer Tilly) is on the set of Chucky Goes Psycho, a horror film based on the legend of the dolls inhabited by the souls of serial killers. The last time we saw Chucky and Tiffany, they were burnt to a crisp and riddled with bullets, but they’ve since had a makeover. Luckily, their offspring sees them on TV with the same Made in Japan markings, then flees England and runs away to Los Angeles to find their family. Better yet, they have the amulet to bring them back to life.
While he’s mostly referred to as male, the character’s gender is ambiguous. Chucky wants a boy, Tiffany wants a girl, so their child is called Glen or Glenda (an homage to Ed Wood’s cult classic). Tiffany sets her sights on transferring her soul into Jennifer Tilly and Chucky’s into hip-hop superstar-turned-director Redman (playing himself). The plan is to impregnate Jennifer and whatever baby pops out is for Glen or Glenda.
Considering their brief but nightmarish introduction in Bride, this “Dickensian waif” who wets his pants when he’s nervous was not what fans expected. Instead of a natural-born killer with their parents’ same lust for murder, Glen/Glenda is firmly against killing, at least a part of them. As they struggle with their gender identity, they also confront their killer instincts.
Seed haters couldn’t get on board with the meta-Hollywood aspect. Jennifer Tilly playing a version of herself while still voicing Tiffany, and later playing Tiffany in the body of Jennifer Tilly, is a lot to wrap your head around. She pokes fun at herself by playing a washed-up actor, annoyed with doing horror when she wants the juicy parts given to Julia Roberts. She’s determined to land the role of the Virgin Mary in Redman’s “Bible epic.”
Many often critique the multiple plot points, believing there are too many things going on when all that should be happening is Chucky killing people. Still, the film has some pretty cool kills. Glen/Glenda takes out sleazy paparazzo Pete Peters (John Waters) with acid and sets Jennifer’s assistant Joan (Hannah Spearritt) on fire, both accidents. Tiffany disembowels Redman after he fires Jennifer for being pregnant (though Mary would indeed be pregnant).
The comedy is very much of the time back when people thought it was cool to hate Britney Spears and celebs like Martha Stewart and Anna Nicole Smith were frequently referenced. But there’s still some humor that holds up. Glen/Glenda knowing nothing about himself other than the Made in Japan manufacturer mark and informing his personality is just hilarious.
Seed is also very much about acceptance. Tiffany tries to fight what she sees as an addiction to killing and knows that she wants to be a mother first (with some murderous tendencies). Jennifer gives birth to twins, allowing Glen/Glenda to split their identities in two. Even Chucky finds self-acceptance. Since the beginning, his main motivation has been to transfer his soul into a human body for good. But here, he realizes that he would rather embrace his serial killing nature in doll form, declaring “I am Chucky, the killer doll. And I dig it!”
Seed of Chucky is not for everyone, namely anyone looking for something truly terrifying. Mancini took a big swing making a full-on comedy that plays into the absurdity of killer dolls while touching on poignant topics like gender identity, addiction, and acceptance. For those who can accept that Seed of Chucky is a meta off-the-rails comedy, it’s a gory, good time.
Seed of Chucky is available to rent on Prime Video and is streaming on Netflix through October 31, 2024.
The post Cult Classics: An Appreciation of Don Mancini’s Polarizing ‘Seed of Chucky’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
It’s time for a new generation of feminists to take up the torch. But where to begin? Should teens hit the ground running with The Feminine Mystique? Or maybe a fantasy novel about dismantling entrenched structures of power? Yes and yes. If you need suggestions, here are 10 feminist books for teens.
10. We Should All Be Feminists
We Should All Be Feminists is a long-form essay by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a New York Times best-selling author and leading light in postcolonial feminist thought. Adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name, We Should All Be Feminists is an eloquent and deeply personal piece of prose about the importance of embracing feminist thought, no matter who you are. Combining personal anecdotes with observations of society as a whole, the book is a call to action for feminist thinkers everywhere.
In the seventh episode of Agatha All Along, we finally reach a moment we knew was coming from all the teasers and trailers—our Westview coven dressed up as famous pop culture witches. This occurs within the portion of the Witches’ Road trial, the Tarot Trial, designed specifically for Patti Lupone’s divination witch Lilia. But why were each of these witches paired with those specific pop culture enchantresses? Each one has a very specific meaning, and reason for being paired with them.
Agatha Harkness/The Wicked Witch of the West
Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) enters the trial and transforms into a semblance of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. She seems amused by this, saying to Billy “She’s based on me, you know.” This implies that at some point, she met Oz author L. Frank Baum, no doubt left a horrible impression on him and he based his novel’s villain on her. Agatha seems to relish having the embodiment of the evil witch cliché based on herself. So it’s no wonder that became her appearance in the trial. Also, let’s not forget that Agatha killed the Maximoff family’s dog Sparky in WandaVision. This of course reminds us of Margaret Hamilton’s iconic Oz line “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!” Interestingly, this series is humanizing Agatha somewhat, just as the novel/play Wicked did for the original Wicked Witch.
Billy Maximoff/Maleficent
William Kaplan/Billy Maximoff’s witch was none other than Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. We know from the glimpses into his bedroom posters in episode six that he’s a big fan of classic Disney animation. Let’s face it, of the great pop culture witches, Maleficent is the most diva-esque of all. So it’s no wonder that Billy (Joe Locke), a gay teen, would idolize her over the others. It also makes sense that he’s not just doing Maleficent drag, but it’s more like gender-bent cosplay. Maybe the biggest clue as to why Billy is Maleficent is that she famously has a secondary form as a giant dragon. Now, we doubt Billy is a dragon, but he was certainly adept at hiding his true self for several episodes. Luckily, Billy is better at dodging swords than Maleficent was in Sleeping Beauty.
Jennifer Kale/The Old Hag
Speaking of Disney witches, Jennifer Kale’s witch is actually the Old Hag persona of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This makes total sense, of course, because the Evil Queen was obsessed with being the “fairest in the land.” Jennifer’s whole business was selling (bogus) age-defying beauty products to unsuspecting customers. Potions were also her specialty, and the Evil Queen mixes magical potions in the classic film. Jennifer didn’t manifest in her glamorous Queen persona in the Tarot Trial, probably because inside, she knows that she is far older than she looks. No doubt her biggest insecurity is that despite any appearances to the contrary, inside, she’s really a very old hag.
Lilia Calderu/Glinda the Good Witch
No one hates the representation of witches in pop culture more than Lilia Calderu (Patti Lupone). We learned this from her very first appearance in the show. So it makes sense that for her Tarot Trial, pop culture witches would be the theme. Lilia was transformed into a version of Glinda, the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz. Honestly, this is probably the witch stereotype that offends her the least. Given the nature of this episode, it also makes sense she would embody Glinda. In The Wizard of Oz, it was Glinda who revealed to Dorothy that she contained the answers within herself all along. In a sense, Lilia had the answers to her time leaps within her all this time too. She just didn’t know how to access it until the very end.
The post How AGATHA ALL ALONG Paired Pop Culture Witches with the Witches’ Road Coven appeared first on Nerdist.
I’m not a big Transformers guy like my friend Jive. He loves it. He had me front and center for Transformers One when it dropped. Even though, I only know a bit here and there about Transformers. Through all the different Transformer shows, reboots, and movies, the one thing that always peaked my interest is the backstory between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Who were they before they became the leaders of two warring factions (Autobots and Decepticons)? Transformers One answered this question for me in the best way by showing that before differing ideologies steered their paths. Megatron was a mining bot named D-16 that kept his head down, worked hard and followed the system. Optimus Prime was a mining bot named Orion Pax that kept dreaming big, breaking protocol, and pushing to do more. D-16 and Orion Pax were polar opposites, but they were friends.
Transformers One: A Story About Day Ones
Twenty-four years ago, I was sitting in math class when our teacher Mr. Rhymer introduced a new student. Beside him stood a dark-skinned Black kid that was entirely reserved. “This is Elvis.” Mr. Rhymer said, “are you serious?” A student shouted from the back of the class in disbelief of a Jamaican kid having that name. “Omar!”, Mr. Rhymer shouted, not in anger but as to say, at least try to act like you have some decorum. “Sorry!” I shouted back. Fast forward and a few days later Elvis joins the indoor track team and is the starting of our 4×400 relay. I was anchor leg. We had lost so many times before because we just couldn’t get or maintain a lead. I’m always prepared to lose but fight like hell to prevent it, and to this day I can still see Elvis coming around the corner hammering that baton in his hand running like hell. We won that race… and every relay race we ran together.
Elvis and I became fast friends (see what I did there). One day during practice Elvis was joking around with a thrower named Wesley just playfully talking shit. After practice when I entered the locker room, I saw Wesley towering over Elvis whose back was against the lockers (playfully) asking him about what he said before. Instinctually, I slowly walked up behind Wesley then suddenly felt a hand on my chest stopping me. The hand belonged to Clifton who was not only my senior, not only my pole vaulting teammate, but also Wesley’s best friend. Clifton said, “Ah-ahh-ahhhh. Hold on Omar. Where are you going?” I looked at Clifton, then Wesley, then Elvis and said, “Man, I’m going home. Elvis always be saying shit. He’s on his own.”
Elvis shot me the same look he gave me when I reacted to his name in class. “Omar! What the hell?!” he said as I walked away. I took two steps, turned around to see that both Clifton and Wesley took their eyes off me (as I expected). Clifton was now beside Wesley, and Elvis was trapped in a 2 on 1. I dropped my book bag, ran the fuck back, and jumped on Wesley back locking him in a sleeper hold while shouting at Elvis, “START SWINGING! START SWINGING! OH MY GOD, HE’S SO STRONG!” After the fight (which wasn’t really) when Elvis and I were walking back I asked him, “You thought I was going to leave you didn’t you?” I smiled and told him, “I had to make it look convincing.”
Twenty-four years later that man is still a best friend of mine. When I went to compete in poetry slams in New York and the transit back to NJ had stopped running, Elvis drove in and got me. When I had to go out of state, Elvis and Bri (his soon to be wife) looked after my mom. When she died, Elvis was beside me in the hospital room where the only thing I could say, was “she watched us grow up together” and when Bri and Elvis got married, the DJ was our teacher Mr. Rhymer who upon introducing me for the best man speech realized that Elvis and I had first met in his class.
Looking back now it’s funny how that’s something that came full circle. I’ve been friends with Elvis for almost 25 years. When you have a sibling, that’s a bond that’s given to you. When you make a friend, that’s a bond that you are choosing to maintain. Elvis and I don’t agree on everything but are core values, morals, and ethics are aligned. At our core, we know both know who the other is and trust that down the line, if we change, it won’t be for the worse.
Transformers One‘s depiction of D-16 and Orion Pax is about what happens when your best friend’s core changes and their value, morals, and ethics become unaligned with yours?
When They Reminisce Transform Over You
Orin Pax is the rebel with a cause. He is constantly searching for answers. What’s happening top side? What happened to the Matrix of Leadership? What can be done to help Sentinel Prime? Pax believes that he himself and his peers don’t have to be designated to pigeonholed to a role for the entirety of their lives. Whereas D-16 would have been perfectly fine living as a miner bot. D-16 had faith that Sentinel Prime was doing everything they could to find the Matrix of Leadership and make life better. D-16 took Sentinel Prime at his word because he idolized them. Whereas Orion Pax, had faith but knew something did not feel right.
This feeling is what drives Orion Pax and because D-16 is his friend, it often takes him out of his comfort zone as a miner bot but makes him better for it. These two bots have different approaches to how they live their life, but they are there for one another. Ever since they first met, they made a pact to watch each other’s backs.
When Orion tricked D-16 into participating in that grand race in order to show that even though miners couldn’t transform, they were just as good as the transformers. D-16 was mad, but then got into during the race but then was upset again afterwards when Sentinel Prime wanted an audience with them. Even during their adventure on the top surface of Cybertron, D-16 is taken from what he knows and thrust into the unknown. He is tentative to embrace all these new experiences and information, but Orion Pax has no issue taking it all in.
When what Orion has known to be true is challenged, he is able to deal with the reality of the situation. Orion is constantly able to adjust and go forward. D-16 moves forward while holding onto the past. This comes to ahead when Orion and D-16 learn of Sentinel Prime’s betrayal of the Primes, Cybertron, and his alliance with the Quintessons (their enemies.)
D-16 put so much faith into Sentinel Prime, he was praised by him, and now to see this person he believed in is actually a traitor? It breaks everything he knows. He even gets upset at Orion for taking him out of the mines and on this adventure. He’d have rather not known but that’s a lie. Finding out the truth doesn’t make you who you are, it’s the actions you take when you know the truth that comes to define you.
Now It’s Clear That I’m Here for a Real Reason
There’s something oddly poetic about knowing that there will be an inevitable divide. Some issue, some clash, some impasse that will make the time between two people, the last time as they are. I watched Transformers One with this in mind the entire time as I saw Orion Pax and D-16 start to grow apart. The divide was real, and it was raw. I said earlier the truth doesn’t make you who you are but the actions you take do. Power, however, has a way of revealing who a person truly is. Especially when you have the power to fight back.
D-16 and Orion Pax were powerless miner bots that were then granted the power to not only fight back against their oppressor in Sentinel Prime but to free their people. Orion Pax and D-16 were aligned on their people being free but when it came to Sentinel Prime? D-16 said, that bot had to go… When D-16 said go, he wasn’t talking Sentinel Prime going up north for a bid or on vacation. He meant a permanent trip from this plane of existence. He meant the scrap yard. He meant the recycling bin. He meant “the drastic change in production when cars were metal instead of plastic.” D-16 meant to dead that man bot. I mean, but is he really wrong to feel that way? Sentinel Prime not only lied to D-16 and the whole society of bots, betrayed the Primes, got in bed with their enemies, but took away the miner bots (and others) abilities to transform. Sentinel Prime a whole all-star war criminal. Jail ain’t good enough.
D-16’s dissent toward becoming Megatron may feel rushed but honestly, it be like that sometimes. When everything you known is a lie and the person you trusted most was perpetuating that lie and had hurt you unbeknownst to you for all your life? This was a breaking point for D-16, and when he was able to transform a gun onto his arm while fighting Star Scream, it felt like a choice had a change had taken place. Along with that change, a choice had been made.
The problem here is hurt people hurt people, right? Fighting to take down Sentinel Prime and his regime needed to happen. Violence was the answer there. I don’t say that meaning that it’s always needed to bring about change; however, to say that it is never the answer is a lie. When you are met with an person or a force that uses violence to do you harm, and knowingly continues to do you harm? Get your Duolingo sessions in because we bout to speak their language. There was no talking it out with Sentinel Prime (who wanted to keep up the lie). Which means this fight, this violence is what was needed to take this person doing harm out of power. We ain’t talking about revolution and people no longer being oppressed. That’s it.
Here’s the problem, deciding when violence is no longer the solution. Orion Pax had a better grip on this than D-16. I go by Kratos rules, the fight stops when the person is no longer a threat. D-16 was boxing with Sentinel Prime, he had Sentinel Prime defeated. Unarmed, down and out. If Sentinel Prime was fighting to the death, that’s an entirely different thing. He’d have been fighting to the death on a lie but it’d be understood. However, the reality is, Sentinel Prime was unarmed and surrendering. D-16 saw this… and was going to kill him. Though D-16 feelings were valid, the problem was the optics looked crazy. Orion Pax stopped him because he understood that. Orion Pax understood that the change they needed happened. Violence stopped being the answer once Sentinel Prime surrendered.
I never been a big fan of the “we gotta be better than our enemies” speech/trope. However, I understand where Orion was coming from here. The fight is over, killing an enemy that’s surrendering looks wild. We’ve won. Orion Pax was talking revolution, D-16 was talking revenge. Now don’t get me wrong, I think revenge can be a good thing. I love a story where revenge happens and a happily ever after follows. That wasn’t going to be the case with D-16 because he lost his trust in everyone else and only trusted himself. That only he had the right way forward.
That’s when D-16 became Megatron. It wasn’t when he took Megatronus’s transformer, it wasn’t when Orion Pax jumped in front of his kill shot on Sentinel Prime, or even when he let Orion fall to his doom. To me, it was the moment that he couldn’t bring himself to believe in anyone other them himself. To make matters worse, D-16 deads Sentinel Prime but it don’t do shit for him. The rage still there. If he deaded that bot then said, “Alright, let’s start rebuilding I guess.” this would be an entirely different discussion. It ain’t work out like that. So not only does revenge not satiate him, he then sees that Orion Pax has come back from the dead with the Matrix of Leadership.
The prime’s chose Orion Pax to be the new leader of Cybertron, to be inducted into their order, to be Optimus Prime. D-16 had to have seen and known that his way was wrong off the strength of this alone. He even said, “They chose you?” and the confusion, hurt, and wtf were so loud in his voice as he said it. D-16 and Orion Pax, now known as Megatron and Optimus Prime find themselves at a divide. This was the moment I had kept waiting for and knew was coming. This was an excellent retelling of the tale of two friends split on an ideology for their people. The harshest thing about this divide is that each person feels like the other is the one that betrayed them.
Megatron can’t understand why Optimus would let Sentinel Prime live, and Optimus is so hurt that Megatron can’t see how there’s a point where violence is a last resort and once it’s in use, there comes a point where it’s no longer the option. You heard it in Optimus’ voice, “we were supposed to rebuild Cybertron together.” That line hits so hard because losing a friend can feels like losing a sibling, a significant other, or a loved one. Friendship is a bond you are choosing to maintain. Optimus and Megatron were once great friends. Now, they are on opposing sides.
It’s heartbreaking to know where D-16 and Orion Pax started at and the events that lead them to become Megatron and Optimus Prime means that for them, things won’t be as they once were. They transformed into who they were meant to be, now there’s no going back.
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The post ‘Transformers One’: Considering Violence as the Answer appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.