To morph or not to morph

[Michael Pajaro]

I know we're all obsessing over the use of the word "morph" with the new Knight Rider series. I'm not ready to panic just yet, although it raises a yellow flag with me too.

I can think of 3 categories of moprhs:

1. The "Magical Morph". This is when a vehicle turns into something else with little or no explanation. This is what happens in Viper, TKR, and when a Transformer turns into a cell phone. Personally I think it's silly and a cheap excuse to use CGI, and I'm not a big fan of it at all.

2. The "Cheating Mechanical Morph". This is when they show pieces of the vehicle moving around and changing shapes, but when it's all over you say "hey wait a minute, the parts don't fit right." This is what most of the Transformers do, and how KITT's roof mysteriously hides away in convertible mode. It doesn't bother me too much, but I think it is a bit lazy.

3. The "True Mechanical Morph". This is when everything you see on screen could happen in the physical word. This is what the Transformers toys did; you physically moved the parts around to create a truck or a robot. This is what KITT's SPM transformation was (with the one conceit that the seams were invisible.)

If the creators of the new series built a real car - or even a mock up - and designed it so that it could change shape into something else (a true mechanical morph), I think that might be cool. Even if they had to use CGI at times to show the transformation at high speed or whatever, I could live with that. The important thing for me is that they take the time to think it through intelligently: "how could a super car function in the real world?"

[DevonStyles]

I'm just hoping kitt does not turn into a robot or something. I hope that play it a little safer and keep to the way the original show was. Lord please let it be a trans am

[PBH]

Any talk of a Mighty Morph?


Okay, okay, so I need to get a life. I know!

[Lost Knight]

I hope the "morphing" is left to Glen's film, not the series. I just don't trust NBC or any other outside directors/writers to incorporate Super Pursuit Mode the right way without making it too gimmick-y. I'm sure most of you would agree that any new Knight Rider project wouldn't need any morphing, but somehow it does seem inevitable.

[LadyV2000]

@ Phil's post.

If the "morphing" is a new version of Super Pursuit Mode, I might be able to handle it, even though I was never a big fan of it in the original series. I always thought it made KITT look too bulky and the sped up footage was cheesy. However, one morphing vehicle I think is cool is the black Crown Victorian from Men In Black. I like how it essentially spreds out, becoming lower to the ground and more aerodynamic.
But if KITT turns into a robot, it's just going to look tacky and not very original. There will be so many people thinking "How lame. They just copied that from Transformers."

[Skav]

Something tells me Universal have something planned that will be more than just a re-imagining of SPM.

Any talk of Morphing scares me. Btw, I don't get what Mike means by mechanical morphing....in Transformers, the robots turned into cars because they could mechanically do so.

It wasn't magic.

[neps]

What about the morphing on "Viper" ?

[Michael Pajaro]

By "magical" I'm not talking about an explanation within the storyline; I mean what we see as viewers. The mischievous little robot Transformer in the movie: there is no physical way a robot could convert from an 8-pound radio into an 8-ounce cel phone. It's not "magic" in the movie, but if we're supposed to believe it as viewers, I'm just calling it magic.

I consider the Viper morphing to be "magical" because pieces of the car grew out of nowhere. It looked cool, but I'm not a fan.

If you could build a real-life, physical model of the transformation (or at least come close) I'm calling that "mechanical" (SPM, the Transformer toys). If you have to use morphing software, I'm calling it "magic". (Viper) Those are just the words I'm using to describe the different styles of vehicle transformations.

[sarfraz]

ummm, not to be pedantic but I don't recall Frenzy turning from radio to phone. More he was beheaded, thus he lost mass and rescanned as a phone....but your right even then it was verging on mass-shifting, but thats nothing new in Transformers.

This morphing thing? I'm still sticking with hopes of mechanically sound movement ala, most normal transformers but still retaining vehicle modes. This kinda reminds me of MASK, the 80's cartoon about similar vehicles that had combat modes.

Sarfraz

[Michael Pajaro]

Frenzy (I did not know his name, thanks) was a large radio on Air Force One. It's one thing to have a robot turn into a car and back again, but Frenzy was a robot, and a boom box, and a cel phone... Magic.

[sarfraz]

Frenzy was a 5foot tall insect of robot which could easily transformer into the radio/boombox thing. The ILM guys didn't cheat as far as that was concerned. The mobile phone was abit more far fetched (I agree) but Frenzy rescanned himself into that form only after losing 90% of his mass from the beheading!!

...it did cross my mind how hollow Frenzy's head must be if it were to get from just a head to a flat mobile phone.

You can't really argue too much when you got giant robots smashing bits of cities up and taking out whole military bases with sweeping energy weapons....theres always going to be some "magic" involved.

Sarfraz

[T.A.H.O.E.]

I posted this before...KITT morphed-transformed when he got SPM .

[Michael Pajaro]

I apologize if I have confused the issue by using Transformers as an example. To simplify things, what I'm saying is that there is a very big difference between the visual style / mechanics in which KITT transformed into SPM, and the way Viper morphed into the Defender.

If the new KITT is going to change shape, I want to happen in the same way as SPM, rather than being completely virtual as it was in Viper.

[sarfraz]

That I understand. Viper was way way too much "magic" so to speak. Pretty much all the Transformers for example had a reality in their transformation though it was hard to comprehend due to the complex nature of the mechanics involved.

When I thought SPM, thats kinda what I had in mind just taken a step-up.

Wondering, this has some serious potential for any new KR toys dont you think

Sarfraz

[Lost Knight]

Regarding Viper, interestingly enough there were actually two different types of morphs. The NBC version in the first season was most definitely magic; the actual metal of the car changed texture and color and smoothed itself out. When the show came back on a different network, the morphing was more Transformers style where things just popped out and flipped around.