Crosshairs said something to the fact of "Whats in it for me?" and Hound said something like "How is a hole in your head do for ya" Not an exact quote, but its close..
Crosshairs - "Well we looked, they're not here! Let's go!" Cade - "What? Hey, I'm not going anywhere without Tessa!" Crosshairs - "I'm unclear...what's in it for me?" Cade - "What's in it for you?!" *Hound points gun at Crosshairs* Crosshairs - "Easy, let's use words..." Hound - "What's in it for you...is I don't kill you. We're gettin' the boss back. And the girl." *pulls gun away* "Copy?" Crosshairs - "Ok, ok...very persuasive. Textbook machismo."
To be honest in many ways that's a recurring thing with a lot of characters in the film series, they tend to be combinations of other characters from the G1 series. Shockwave was at one point being called Blitzwing during DotM's development, and Hound is in many ways Bulkhead right down to vehicle mode. It's not a bad thing, though it does touch on a lot of notes in the process. As for Drift, I didn't find him racist at all, though I know a lot of the online reviewers that love to tear into this series will harp on it heavily once they get to it (I'm looking at you, ERod). But it's not enforcing negative stereotypes or really stereotypes at all. With the twins a big problem wasn't so much their jive talk as things like "We don't know how to read", which I could understand could come across as offensive. But we've had several asian-themed characters at this point in film and games, such as Zero in Borderlands 2, a ninja that also speaks in haiku and fits the shinobi archetype even though there shouldn't be any template in that setting for it. People are just going to gripe ultimately.
Because dating someone or marrying someone outside of your own race, ethnicity, religion, or culture totally means you can't be racist or otherwise biased? This is a silly claim to make and it bugs me when folks dredge it up because it's a false equivalence. It's basically the same thing as saying, "I have black (or fill-in-the-blank) friends so I can't be racist!" Archetypes, well, there are different degrees of it. The Twins were full on minstrel imagery, no two ways about it. Drift being the mystical samurai warrior spouting haikus doesn't have the same racist context and negative connotation as minstrel Jim Crow imagery. Now if Drift sported buck teeth, wore a metal coolie hat, and had a really thick Mickey Rooney from Breakfast At Tiffany's Engrish accent whenever he spoke (instead of just Ken Watanabe speaking in his more or less normal Ken Watanabe voice), then that'd be closer to the same thing, in my view. As far as Drift goes, if the writers were trying to go full Japan-o-phile satire with his character, why give him a Bugatti Veyron (European) alt mode when they could have given him a Japanese car alt mode like the Nissan GT-R or Fairlady 370Z (cars actually known for drifting)? That would have made more sense to me. Four TF films and still not a single character with a Japanese car alt mode to at least give a nod to the Japanese roots of the TF franchise? I call shenanigans. It's not like Japanese car manufacturers such as Nissan don't already enjoy a healthy relationship with Takara-Tomy and Hasbro.
I don't really see any negative-race issues with Drift. He's designed to look like a Samurai. Ok, there's a lot of Samurai-themed things out there, it's part of pop culture, nothing wrong with that. Samurais are Japanese, so they got him a Japanese actor. Anything wrong with that? Not that I know. He says a haiku. Ok, maybe you think that's stereotypical that Japanese characters say haikus, but it's also part of Japanese culture, and there's nothing negative about that either! People are looking into this waaaay too much.
agreed. Also, Haiku fits in perfectly with my whole 5's conspiracy thing. Not only does the word have 5 letters in it, but this is from wiki:
I have to object to your opinion respectfully, I can see bias in your words, and I'll just end it here before it gets ugly.. Lets keep on topic shall we
You know, I knew Drift because I saw him a few times in posts or the front page, but I don't think the small green guy got named even once, cause I have no clue what his name is and I just got back from my second viewing...
Crosshairs? He was named by Drift when they were on Lockdown's ship, during the scene when Crosshairs is climbing up the walls with all the lasers.
Like many have mentioned before, it wasn't handled poorly. He was fine, 50 times better than any of the new autobots from ROTF and DOTM. Just not as good as we thought.
The movie was a nexus of partially-explained plot-points and missed opportunities. I'm banking on them explaining it in #5 or 6.
I Love drift His style, his fighting style, his voice with the Japanese accent (in the German version) I would like to know more about his past as a Decepticon. And what has actually brought him to switch to the Autobots. I would also have liked to have heard more haikus from him But anyway, I love him anyway in AOE (Sorry when my englisch is bad... ^^" )
