Far as the racist thing, Chud seems to agree: TRANSFORMERS' LITTLE BLACK SAMBOTS? And I'll go ahead and be proactive about the inevitable whining--I'm sure that link has been posted before. But it's recent and relevant to this discussion, so I'm throwing it back up for the folks who, like me, haven't seen it previously. SIMMER DOWN. What? Bay tries to act black? Guy, what are you talking about?
The one thing that everybody is not mentioning is that the twins get major laughs in the theater. Bay does tons of screenings and is not afraid to change things if people complain. Remember the starscream scene from the end of the first one? It was added at the last minute to give starscream a resolution after fans complained. Remember Megatrons face? Changed due to fan complains. If the twins got zero laughs during the screenings or people complained they were racist He probably would have changed it. Even if you given to this idea that the twins are racist they are still funny. Most stand up comedy is racially based. Why is this a problem?
Everyone is getting up in arms about the twins being racist against a black stereotype (personally i saw them as hillbilly rednecks trying to act all rapper like) but if people are going to pick up on that why is no one complaining about Jetfire and his old grumpy english stereotype? He goes around stumbling into things saying arse and bollocks and things...granted a lot of us english types do use those words a bit more than we should, but its still a stereotype. But what about all the types of people who are not portrait in some kind of robot form? Where are the bots with accents from other countrys? We don't see any french or japanese accents on the bots? And theres definately no indication any of the bots might be gay...mainly because if a bot had a camp voice it could be considered a stereotype and most gay people don't talk like that. THATS why stereotypes are used in the first place. They're used to give a background to a character without taking time to literally explain it to the audience. As for the way the twins look I'd have thought it was obvious..they're a split personality and a split bot literally...one has a big right arm one has a big left, look at the faces too, the features have been shared between them and (like frenzy in the first film) their systems have built replacements to fill in the blanks. Look at them...its like 2 bots combined together but when time came to uncombine they forgot which part belonged to which bot. If you really want to take this argument to its conclusion then you have to start asking why is Optimus prime always portrait as a white american hero? a it biased towards the US don't you think? and if you try to take out all references to any culture or race from the voices of robots you're going to end up with a whole bunch of bland lifeless characters on screen. In the perticular case of the twins, people are now looking for things to critisise them. When I first saw them My initial reaction was 'oh look they've created two goofy youth type characters' not oh theres a couple of black stereotypes
Awesome, I thought I'd go forever without using this GRE word, but statements like this are the definition of specious logic. They sound cool in that rubber vs. glue kind of way, but don't really present a compelling argument. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that these stereotypes never existed before "racists" like me saw Revenge of the Fallen is a total joke. But the truly hilarious part is the suggestion that one would have to dig deep to find these same racial stereotypes. I mean really, guys? REEEEALLLY? But no, I guess me and 90% of reviewers who saw it are just projecting our own shortcomings onto absolutely nothing at all.
See, if the Twins would have been killed in the first scene of the movie, before they got a chance to talk, like I begged for, this ******ed racial claim would be non-existant! *note* IDK why this posted twice, but the full post is a couple down...
how is it racist to have a character in a movie act how some people act in real life? isn't that the point of acting?
See, if the Twins would have been killed in the first scene of the movie, before they got a chance to talk, like I begged for, this ******ed racial claim would be non-existant! I went to the premeire last night with my friends; some black, some white. Now, I don't exactly feel that white people are nesessarily the best judges when it comes to what's racist against black people(especially in MY neighborhood) so I just called 2 of my black friends that went with me to ask them their opinions. One said "Not at all", the other one said "No, but some black people try to use the race card for everything, so there's no doubt that SOMEONE is gonna find it offensive" I, personally, am racist against the twins in general, and wish they would have been slowly tortured and killed in the most graphic way possible, so my opinion doesn't really count. I just thought you guys might like to hear what some (well, 2) other people are saying
But what if it is racist. Wouldnt we all be trying to find ways to say it isnt because we are trying to defend its integrity. We really dont know what the intentions behind the creation of the characters are so really we dont know if it is meant to be racist or if it is just a horrible couple of designs. I think the "we dont read" part is the most slanderous comment if it is attributed to any group but then again maybe thats just the twins. Because its a couple of bots not from this planet its hard to pin them on any one group of people including posers ( which they by definition have to be ). Then again if someone meant to slight someone with a characterization we would never know it. We would get the idea but could never say for certain unless it was blatant .
Because ALL negative stereotypes are built around the idea that a certain group of people behave a certain way in real life? And people, if the Twins were really supposed to represent white posers, don't you think that'd be the first thing out of Bay's mouth when confronted with the racist aspects of the characters? Instead it was all "Oh, it wasn't my idea, it was Kinny!" and similar buck passing, not just by Bay, but by the writers as well. If it was really as innocuous as people think, why wouldn't he just own up to it and explain the situation? Why wouldn't he say they weren't supposed to be thought of as black?
Because Cullen based his voice and personality on that of his Marine brother and John Wayne. And anyone who's trying to say the twins weren't two horribly overblown black stereotypes is just fooling themselves. Bay is all about the stereo types, it's how he works. Jetfire is a crotchety old Scott, Wheelie is a NY guido and the twins were two wanna be thugs. Jazz from the last movie was a black stereotype too, just like he was in G1. The issue isn't whether they are or aren't blatant stereotypes, because they are, that shouldn't even be an argument. The real issue is whether or not it offends you. And as someone who can lay on a heavy NY accent similar to Wheelie from this flick, I can honestly say they didn't bug me in the least. The way Bay works is crass, tactless and tasteless, so him filling a movie with tons of negative stereotypes isn't all that surprising. But sometimes, it's the best way to do it, and for these two it ended up working pretty well.
i honestly thought of like hillbilly redneck bots. No offence to any hillbilly rednecks. i dont think of black people looking at them.
I wouldn't say they were making fun of anyone, they just took a stereotype (wannabe gangsta) that they thought could work and ran with it. And seeing as the two had the muscle to actually back up their trash talking, it worked out pretty well. Even if they were two idiots.
How could they possible be racist? Skids and Mudflap make no negative comments about any race. They are not black people, they are robots from another planet! As discribed in TF1 the Aubots learned Earths languages from the World Wide Web. This is where Jazz got his way of speaking from and probably the Twins as well. The Twins are not so bright (and annoying) but that has nothing to do with their way of speaking, which they got from the internet. So they may speak in a way rap-people might do (but there are white rap people too) they are still alien robots and not blacks. When learning English from the WWW they learned this way of speaking. They sound mostly like stupid teenagers (which could be either white or black). By the way. I read that the personalities were pretty much created by the people that did the voices for Skids and Mudflap and that 1 of them is black (not sure which one he did). So a black voice actor actually created the personality of one of the charaters! I am so tired of people that are offended by pretty much anything. Even more by people who go tell for someone else that they are or should be offended.
