Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Money, violence, sex, computer graphics, scatalogical humor, racism, robots designed to be rednecks but given European accents, and maybe another sequel to the saga... what's not to love? TF m1, Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon and now Age of Extinction.
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Onslaught Six
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Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Onslaught Six »

I started a new thread rather than post it in the existing thread because it would inevitably completely derail the thread. This is intended less as a discussion of the film review and more a criticism on Scioli.

Needless to say, there are some spoilers in his review, but it's nothing anyone who has read any other reviews hasn't seen.

http://comicsalliance.com/plot-is-overr ... xtinction/

First off, I like how he's described as a "cartoonist," that sounds like something he might call himself--his work certainly resembles it instead of a serious attempt at "art." (Look at the Wheeljack-centric piece of his later in the article; what in the holy fuck is even going on?)

Throughout the article, Scioli shows his ignorance on possibly every facet that he talks about in the article, making weird-ass comparisons that make no sense and splurting out outright wrong bullshit out of his gullet with no regard for research or correctness. He is somehow wrong about everything from Transformers lore to the film itself to general movie and comics knowledge. It is literally embarrassing.

Here are some choice quotes:
Normal people? An everyman? In a post-Internet world, nobody identifies with normals. We identify with cyborgs, gods and mutants.

Wahlberg is an everyman the way Tom Cruise is. You don’t buy it, nobody buys it, but we’ll go along with it for the sake of convenience.

. A good rule for these movies would be “less people, more robots”, unless the people are sci-fi comic book super-soldiers with memorable code names. I want to skip straight to Optimus waking up. We know it’s going to happen from the moment we see the busted-up truck, even if we didn’t see the previews. Why prolong things?
The designs of the Decepticons/Quintessons/Whatever are a cross between Kirby and Moebius, meaning they were probably designed by Jose Ladrönn. I checked and I don’t see anything about his involvement, but they sure look like Ladrönn’s Ronin the Accuser or the Recorder from the 2000 Thor Annual.
I was never able to guess the identity of the killer robot seen throughout the film. I thought it was Shockwave because of his connection to the Dinobot’s origin, his occasional faceless visor, and the fact that his head can turn into a cannon. He’s a hitman — I’m assuming for the Quintessons. The Internet says his name is Lockdown. I don’t remember coming across him in my research.
HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THIS BADLY? DID YOU NOT EVEN WATCH ANY OF THE PREVIOUS MOVIES, WHERE SHOCKWAVE WAS EXPLICITLY THE VILLAIN IN EVERY TRAILER AND MOST OF THE MOVIE? I literally want to tear my hair out at the idea of someone like this working on official TF fiction. This is the extent of walking into Iron Man 3 and being confused at who The Mandarin is.
He coughs like Darth Grievous, spewing the gray powder that covers him and mutes his colors to a primer tone.
Optimus eventually returns to his high-voltage look. His design incorporates elements of Hot Rod (the human face and the flames), probably a deliberate decision to incorporate Rod’s youthful vigor while eliminating him as a separate character and assume him into Optimus’s persona.
Hound’s face and coloration resembles Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings. Hound’s overall design has personality — maybe too much personality, making him seem like he belongs in a different universe altogether. He’s got pouches. Rob Liefeld could do a great version of it, but I think the design is way too MegaMan villain.
Have you ever even seen a Mega Man boss in your life, you pretentious shit?
Mark Wahlberg’s Cade Yeager is not part of Transformers canon. Good to know. Cade. Yeager. C. Y. Cy. Cybertron. Is he the creator of Cybertron and Cybertron resides in the future, like in Terminator?
What even the fuck
The ultimate shape of all things will eventually be Sandman, the Spider-Man villain, the first nano-organism in fiction.
Incidentally, Bumblebee should fly. He’s a bumblebee. For Transformers Vs. GI Joe we considered a flying Bumblebee but decided against it. We should’ve done it, though. It makes sense. There’s still time.
Galvatron is a purer, meaner version of Megatron. Galvatron has no Spark, therefore no soul. It’s a good idea. Emptiness at his core, like Megatron’s Black Hole Heart if his tech spec file card is to be believed.
I...what?
think the giant ship is supposed to be a rebuilt, dark version of the Autobot’s now-tarnished golden Ark.
???
With his two heads, Swoop looks more like Gidrah than a pterodactyl.
Did no one even edit this? Ghidorah. King fucking Ghidorah is spelled wrong.
If those creators are the Quintessons, then the creators are robots.
....nooooo...?


Literally everything from reading this makes me cringe. IDW needs to fire this hack immediately. He seems to crib knowledge from reading things online but doesn't actually take the time to make sure he knows what the fuck he's talking about, spouting off comparisons and buzzwords from things he vaguely remembers as a kid and getting all sorts of details completely wrong, but pats himself on the back for even remembering the reference. So many of the things in that article piss me off, probably more than they should, primarily because this fucking guy gets paid to write and draw comic books while actually talented people rot. I could write and draw better comics than him. Period. And I'm a musician, not a writer or an artist!
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Almighty Unicron »

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I ended up agreeing with more than a few points Sicoli makes.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Onslaught Six »

He might be more or less right about the film. But that's not what I'm criticizing, I'm after the fact that he's a pretentious twat who pats himself on the back for sort of remembering Mega Man and Ghidorah.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Shockwave »

I read this and I can't unread it.

At some point, I'm gonna post my Megatron picture that I scribble between calls at work and see if you guys think it's better than Scioli's art.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Sparky Prime »

That is... That's just... wow. For a guy who claims to be "well-versed" in Transformers, I have to wonder how much he actually knows about Transformers after reading that. Or if he actually paid attention to what was going on in the film... O6 pointed out some good quotes, couple more I wanted to comment on:
When Mark’s friend is frozen by one of those roboactive seed bombs, it seemed a certainty that he’d return later like the Dinobots. Death is not final. You will return as metal. Not so. We never see his buddy again. Left on the cutting room floor, or another one of the myriad narrative dead ends?
Ok, how did he not understand those dinosaurs at the start of the film weren't transformed into the Dinobots? The movie makes it clear the Seed turns things into metal. Not living robots, just the metal they're made of. So those dinosaur died. Just like Lucas died. Death in this case is very much final.
Transformium makes you indestructible, because you’re so modular, you can be broken into a million pieces and put yourself back together again.
Then why did the human built Transformers stop functioning when they were damaged enough? Their transformations might break them down like that, but they were clearly not indestructible.
I think the giant ship is supposed to be a rebuilt, dark version of the Autobot’s now-tarnished golden Ark.
Really? After Lockdown captured Optimus, they had had this whole discussion about the ship and how it used to be the Knights Terminos that the Knights had used to explore the universe, prior to Lockdown capturing and corrupting it for his own purposes.
The “Autobots don’t fly” taboo is powerful and needs to be handled carefully.
Yet earlier he says Bumblebee should fly because he's a bumblebee... :?
Instead of a run-and-gun action movie, why not a documentary-style exploration of a world where robot cars and humans live in peaceful productive harmony?
.... Seriously, does this guy actually know anything about Transformers?
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by JediTricks »

I wanted to give him a chance, I thought maybe he was trying to interpret what a normal viewer would think, but he clearly is just rambling his own incoherent and self-congratulatory thoughts. I hate to use the term, but he really is coming off like a Special Snowflake, his ideas are unique to him so he thinks they're valuable, it comes off like nobody has ever challenged him and so he's never had to forge his position of "self" into a functioning person who makes sure they know what they're talking about; instead, every idea ever has been put up on the fridge. I couldn't get through it all in one reading because it's incredibly douchey and scattered and wrong and self-centered, all while repeatedly crowning himself the heir to the crown of Jack Kirby and also the throne of the Transformers and Joe brands. And the worst part is there are a few grains of truth scattered about the beach of acid-addled introspection and jacking off to a mirror that is pretending to be this movie review.

Outside of the TF brand he's trying to pull a Warhol on, his interpretation of blockbusters and storytelling are assholish nonsense, they're this hipster response to things that are bad but too big to fail basically, "well if you can't beat 'em, join 'em while also pointing out how stupid they are but that they can have good things too". Blockbusters used to be all story, simple stories that were padded out by action and effects scenes, but competent stories none the less - the ones that were incompetent would go back to the editing bay to get recut into something watchable, or get dumped before the expensive effects hit so they ended up as B-movies.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Dominic »

Late edit:

Calling him a "cartoonist" is fair, so long as nobody assumes that implies talent.

Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot
Because we had such a lack of evidence before this....

I am trying to read through that review. Oh, my god. There is something wrong when I, (me of all people), cannot get through something that the writer of a comic on my radar is writing....

The actress Nicola Peltz, cast as Wahlberg’s daughter, Tessa Yeager, could easily have been cast as his love interest. This creates an Electra dynamic between the characters, indicating that director Michael Bay is a more daring filmmaker than people give him credit for.
Two possible ways to read this: Either Scioli is writing a deliberately bad review, as a parody of over-analysis. Or, Scioli really is this much of an asshole.

(Actually, those are not mutually exclusive readings.)

Color is much more present in this outing than in the previous dark gray installments. The rainbow heat vision palette the humans use when they go Autobot-hunting is a better palette than you’ll find in most of modern cinema. Ratchet, the hunted Autobot, is one of three very green characters. It must’ve been a challenge finding enough greens that differentiate, but digital projection technology is more than up to the task. There is a lot of green in this movie, literally and figuratively.
Dripping with sarcasm by hyperbole. (Mind you, he is failing as a reviewer. I might get the style Scioli is using, but that does not mean he is doing a good job.)

Indeed, product placement is actually referred to in-story as product placement.
Oh, Scioli, you cheeky bastated. Get it? He talks about product placement and then shows an image from his crappy comic? Oh, well played you talentless hack! Well played!

Hound’s face and coloration resembles Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings. Hound’s overall design has personality — maybe too much personality, making him seem like he belongs in a different universe altogether. He’s got pouches. Rob Liefeld could do a great version of it, but I think the design is way too MegaMan villain. I see Hound in TvsGIJ as a different kind of grizzled war dog. More Orion than Enkidu.
I can see Hound as a Megaman villain in terms of general proportion. But, the real purpose of the above quoted paragaph is to give Scioli a chance to be cheeky *and* show his pop-culture roots. (It also shows his lack of real though. But, that may or may not be accidental.)

Stanley Tucci is good. You’re not sure if Joshua is a villain or a hero. He’s what is called, in non-genre fiction, a “character.” He’s a sometimes unflattering portrait of Steve Jobs, perhaps indicative of the slight diminution of the blind awe in which Apple was once held. As Jobs’ innovations become ubiquitous, we’re becoming inured to them. But for this story, Joshua and Cy realize that regardless of their superficial differences and values, there’s a brotherhood of inventors. Cy is just as greedy an IP grabber as Joshua, he’s just not as successful. Before the poor guy is turned into frozen metal, Cy tells his friend about how he owns all his ideas because he signed a contract the second he entered Cy’s barnyard robotics lab. The scene hits close to home as the Kirby family are headed for the Supreme Court.

Read More: Plot Is Overrated: Scioli On Transformers: Age of Extinction | http://comicsalliance.com/plot-is-overr ... ck=tsmclip
Up until the Kirby reference (because Scioli wants you to know that he knows comics....despite his complete lack of talent in the field), I was almost agreeing with Scioli. (Aside, Scioli's name sounds like a disease. Oh, aren't I cheeky?)

AND WHY THE FUCK DOES THAT STUPID LINK APPEAR IN ALL OF MY COPY/PASTED TEXT? SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH COMICS ALLIANCE?

He’s supposed to be modelled after Optimus, but keeps looking like Megatron. Galvatron is a purer, meaner version of Megatron. Galvatron has no Spark, therefore no soul. It’s a good idea. Emptiness at his core, like Megatron’s Black Hole Heart if his tech spec file card is to be believed. It’s the sort of cosmic idea you’d find in a comic book, and therefore it gets my thumbs up.
Fuck you. Just.....fuck you.

(This is my third, and most successful attempt to read through Scioli's idiocy. I am still skimming.)

The blending of alien flesh and alien machine makes this closer to a Micronauts than a Transformers movie. It increases the range of what a Transformer can be.
More references to show Scioli's cred. And, this one is to Micronauts, which is a precursor to TF, so it is so cleverly meta!

An everyman? In a post-Internet world, nobody identifies with normals. We identify with cyborgs, gods and mutants.
Oh, look, Scioli thinks he is Grant Morrison. Or, maybe he is meta-riffing on Morrison.

(Morrison made a similar point in "Supergods" when he pointed out that modern technology effectively makes us all superhuman.)


I am not going to say that I could draw better than Scioli. (I probably cannot, owing to my deteriorating hands and eyes.) But, I could definitely write better than him.
Last edited by Dominic on Thu Jul 03, 2014 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by JediTricks »

Dominic wrote: AND WHY THE FUCK DOES THAT STUPID LINK APPEAR IN ALL OF MY COPY/PASTED TEXT? SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH COMICS ALLIANCE?
It's a sweet little clever javascript add-on, when you highlight it dumps that code into the paragraph, which makes me think they knew there'd be a lot of copy-pasting going on with this turdblossom.
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Almighty Unicron »

I thought it was Warren Ellis who wrote Supergods?
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Re: Scioli reviews Age of Extinction, proves he's an idiot

Post by Tigermegatron »

JediTricks wrote:
Dominic wrote: AND WHY THE FUCK DOES THAT STUPID LINK APPEAR IN ALL OF MY COPY/PASTED TEXT? SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH COMICS ALLIANCE?
It's a sweet little clever javascript add-on, when you highlight it dumps that code into the paragraph, which makes me think they knew there'd be a lot of copy-pasting going on with this turdblossom.
Sure it no a virus of sorts. Because it sure sounds like one. Glad I stopped clicking on links in forums threads ages ago.
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