Shia LeZombie?
Proof that I listen to my readers: Here is your post about Transformers, as requested. While I could talk about the fact that the transformers are, allegedly, sentient robots, or that they are also aliens, or that they are symbolic of the dual-edged nature of technology, or that there are seemingly no females, or that some transformers picked up the, uh, nuances, of certain subcultures among American humans, or that they are literally armed with whatever weaponry they want and yet choose to engage in hand-to-hand combat – I am not going to talk about those things.
What I am going to briefly meditate on is the All-Spark, the large (or small, whatevs) cube thing that shoots out electricity that turns your Nokia cellphone (does anyone use those anymore?) into an angry, crab walking robot. It turns out that when you think about it too long (that is, at all) the All Spark has some horrifying capabilities.
Let’s look at it logically:
One starts with the knowledge that the All-Spark created the entire race of the Transformers, as well as Cybertron, and is able to bring earthbound technology to life.
Things that the All-Spark can animate seem to be primarily technological, such as cell phones or boom boxes. These things, it would seem, have what we’ll call animation potential. That is, given an All-Spark, these things can become living, animated things.
So, what do we know about things with animation potential? They are primarily metallic and silicon based, use electricity as a means of energy, and are inert prior to animation. Now, what do we know about things that have been animated by the All-Spark, namely, the Transformers? That their preferred non-hominid condition is a machine that has an internal combustion engine, rubber tires, and an leather interior. Finally, we can think about Jetfire, the graybeard of Transformers, who was an SR-71 Blackbird, a plane built out of carbon-fiber, filled to the brim with top-octane fuel, and minimal circuitry. Weirdly, these statistics imply that the All-Spark can affect materials made of carbon, silicon, most metals and alloys, rubber, and leather.
So? If the All-Spark merely needs structural complexity and some combination of those elements, it would seem the All-Spark is capable of reanimating dead, organic tissue. The All-Spark/Matrix of Leadership is capable of reanimating Optimus Prime, therefore it should be capable of reanimating, oh, I don’t know, Sam Witwicky.
A thought experiment. Let us presume that Sam was riding around in Bumblebee while he was in auto-mode. Suddenly, Megatron shows up and starts launching nukes. What does the autobot do?
A grisly accident, but irreversible? Perhaps Sam’s head, or hand, was preserved. Bumblebee, traumatized and fearful of Optimus’ righteous retribution, thinks frantically. Is there enough intact order/material to use the All-Spark to resurrect it? What will it become? He doesn’t know, but in an act of blind grief and fear, he uses the enigmatic cube to re-invest the remaining bits of LadiesMan247 with life.
What comes back, however, is not Sam Witwicky.
Instead, it is some sort of ever-mutating, organic, soulless shape-shifting monstrosity, with one grotesque thought permeating every cell of its unholy body: survive. Bumblebee, horrified with his own demented error first contains his vile misdeed, and then scrambles for a new plan. He remembers Megatron’s internment in Antarctica and, turning into a yellow military helicopter, races off to the continent of ice. Upon landing, he blasts an epic crater in the ice pack, into which he hurls the Lovecraftian thing he has spawned, and buries it under seven tons of ice and shame.
Little does Bumblebee realize that years later some Norwegians would dig up the ostensible corpse of Witwikey, releasing havoc upon both their own scientific team and that of the Americans, only to be (maybe???) killed by Snake Plisskin and Keith David.
Footage of the reanimated Witwikey (not for the faint of heart). And that, my friends, is the horrible truth behind the allegedly benevolent All-Spark.
