@DosCavazos The Autobot that talks really fast Blurr was voiced by John Moschitta Jr. I don't know if he still holds the record but he has been in the Guinness book of records as the worlds fastest talker.
I didn't shed a single tear when I saw Bambi's mother perish. However, I was 7 when I seen this in theaters. I had to hold back the tears when they slaughtered Optimus Prime just to sell more / new toys. Optimus Prime deserved better. This movie taught me at a young age about corporate greed. Much the same way that Scooby-Doo taught me that human beings were / are the real monsters.
@@AndSaveAsManyAsYouCan I remember that. He also did a least one Fedex commercial. I think their is a youtube video of him reading the lyrics of Beat It as fast as he can.
RIP, Orson Welles, Unicron RIP Leonard Nimoy, Galvatron RIP, Lionel Stander, Kupp RIP, Robert Stack, Ultra Magnus RIP, Casey Kasem, Cliffjumper RIP, Scatman Crothers, Jazz RIP, Chris Latta, Starscream. Till All Are One.
@@trydowave The screenplay and the storybook adaptation both claim that Cyclonus says "The Autobots have been terminated" after Ultra Magnus blows up half the shuttle. It admittedly sounds more like Scourge's voice to me, but Cyclonus (in ship mode) _is_ onscreen at the time, and Carmel _was_ inconsistent about how the character sounded in the post-movie episodes, and he _is_ listed in the credits. On the other hand, Don Messick is also credited for voicing Gears, who only appears in the background of one scene and says nothing, so it's possible both characters had lines that were cut. Well, Carmel definitely voiced the Quintesson leader, so whatever.
This movie takes place 20 years after the second season of the original cartoon. So there's a LOT of lore. However, if you watch the first 5 episodes of the show, you'll get a great understanding of how things worked for the setup. How the Transformers came to Earth. How they met humans. All that.
@@DenverStarkey No offense, but the first two seasons were evidently set in the eighties when they were made and the movie is set in 2005, so yes, it's 20 years later. (And Spike was definitely under 18--in the season 2 episode "The Immobilizer" a cop pulls him over because he's too young to have a license, only for Bumblebee to transform and explain that he was the one driving.)
@@davebrown2056 they never specified the year in the early seasons. it's not so "evident". just saying that doens;'t make their actual evidence for it. it is my opinion that they were intended to be taking place in the ninties. it's kind of like how Robocop (as an example) never specified when it took place , but no one is asuming it was the 80's in robcop . same deal with the transformers season 1 and 2, they never specifed a year . so it's easy to say they were set in the "near" but unspecifed future at least till the movie which claimed it was 2005 like you said and spike was more like early 30's in that movie not his mid 40's also very important when reguarding spike's age; he was working in oil fields with his dad in the first two seasons of the show , so at youngest he was 18 in the first season of the show , they haven't allowed minors to work in the oil industry since before the 1930's . also i call the cop pull over a huge msitake on the writer's part because of this fact. as a minor would not be allowed to work in a oil field Job. him working that job is more consistant than the one time he got pulled over. furthermore a freaking 15 year old can get a drivers permit , but a 15 year old can't work in the oil industry. and spike is most defintiely older than 15. so maybe he lied about his age to get the job , this puts him at 16-17 then maybe. but still a stretch , some one would eventualy caught him lieng about his age and he'd have lost his job with his dad, and his dad might have lost his job as well for being an accomplice,
I didn't see the film on it's release (I was 1 😂) but I started watching transformers in 88 and got to this a few years later and it still makes me cry to watch Prime die 😂
My dad made sure I watched all of G1 before TF1 (2008) came out. Believe me when I say, six year old me was traumatized by the movie. (I had also broken half my face against a tree literal days after TF1 came out on DvD, so I got it as a present and I binged it every hour for the entire weekend) edit: Typos
That's the thing, he was the most expensive toy, thus the hardest to move. And the movie was all about making room for new toys to sell. Sucks, but the Decepticons were right, it's survival of the fittest (most popular by sales). I both miss and hate the 80's for doing that kind of crap.
Not really, I was not. I was like "that's what happens in battle sometimes" and I was 7 at the time. I also did like Rodimus more, he was interesting a character.
I was 7 and I knew by the 2nd season that Transformers was a Civil War but you still don't won't your favorites killed off 15 minutes in. Rodimus...one minute he's confident being a leader then he's not then he is then he's not....and sometimes that would be in one episode.
This movie had a whole generation of kids in tears; especially, when Optimus Prime passed away. John Moschitta, Jr, the voice actor of Blurr, was listed in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the fastest talker. He did many toy commercials in the 80's and early 90's for Micro Machines.
Yep tho i will always admire how incredible the CGI for the first 3 transformers films is and how puts movies that have come out recently to absolute shame. Michael Bay just didnt understand these characters and why they were special to us
Ironhide, Ratchet, prowl, and Brawn , the four autobots taken out on the shuttle towards the beginning, were all major characters in the first two seasons of the show- in an animated series for kids where no one died. Seeing the four of them killed so quickly and in such violent fashion is something so shocking that people who didn’t grow up with the 80s show will never fully appreciate.
@@MrFox619 Mine was Prowl. First autobot I owned. Seeing him die with his eyes glowing and smoke billowing out really left an impact on my 8 year old brain. And at least Brawn, Prowl, Ratchet and Ironhide at least went out fighting. Wheeljack and Windcharger were just dead bodies.
As I noted elsewhere, the statement that no one died in pre-movie Transformers isn't entirely accurate--there was Alpha Trion, Dion, and a handful of nameless background characters. Still, I see your point. I suppose I'm a bit biased because I grew up with Beast Wars/Machines and only went back and watched G1 later, so major characters dying wasn't as shocking to me.
The thing is, in the animated series, no one EVER died. They get shot, and they shake it off. Then the movie came along, and it was a slaughter. Yes it was very shocking in 1986.
Well, to be fair: Alpha Trion sacrificed himself in "The Key to Vector Sigma Part 2" (his later appearances were either via time travel, or in spirit form). The Autobots' Thirteenth Legion succumbed to Cosmic Rust in the episode of the same name. The Dinobots killed several of Shockwave's guards in "Desertion of the Dinobots Part 2". "War Dawn" featured the deaths of Orion Pax's best friend Dion and an unnamed Guardian Robot. But sure, characters who had toys never died in the show (except Skyfire, but he came back two episodes later).
it was a toypocolypse. hasbro wanted to introduce new toys because sales were starting to drop on the old ones and some toys like megatron had to be discontinued before they even had a full year out, because laws regarding toy guns changed mid-production. (I was of of the very few kids that had megatron) as he looked like a real walter p38 when transformed.
I remember when I’ve been a kid and been freaked out when Prowl died and the flames came out his mouth. It freaked me out. I’m was worse than prime dying imho.
Back then this movie legit traumatized a generation including my dad with the fact that all the Autobots and Decepticons from the original tv show were all mostly killed off. And all of this was just because Hasbro wanted to sell new toys by killing all the characters.
God I wish they'd use him more often. He was great in g1, they perfected him in animated, the bumblebee movie role was fun (even as brief as it was) but it feels like they just haven't even thought about him since then. Bring him and my boy Lugnut back 😔
That's the one thing they had to do for the live action movies or I can honestly say my enthusiasm would have been much lower. Hearing THAT voice was essential..
I was disappointed they didn’t have OG Megatron voice actor Frank Welker doing the new Megatron since he was available as I believe he voiced some other transformers in the movie. (Fun fact, he also does the voice of Brain of “Pinkey & The Brain”. He’s awesome! Almost any movie involving aliens or monsters or animal voices from the 80s and 90s had him in the cast)
Fun fact: Arcee, the female autobot, wasn't actually supposed to be in the movie. The networks (I think) didn't want a female character because she wouldn't be interesting to the young boys in the audience and they didn't think girls would watch it. However one if the filmmakers fought back to keep her included, because his daughter was in love with the original cartoon series, and knew how important it was for her and all the other girls watching to be represented.
not exactly true. From the start, transformers was genderless entities, because they're alien robots. And Ratchet was female from the start. But then became this story, and for this purpose fembots were added to season 2, automatically making all the previous characters male.
@@AIFT_Staff Ratchet wasn't female. you are confusing stories. Bob wanted to make ratchet female but that was told he couldn't. so yeah. there were no female transformers until the writer convinced them to let him add Arcee. they absolutely were male because Hasbro didn't want female transformers.
@@Lazrael32 Elita-1 was in season 2 along with a few other female Autobots before Arcee came along in TF: The Movie. I think those female Autobots were only in 1 or two episodes before Arcee, so they were easy to miss.
@@cheeseburger12 exactly. We do find out in those episodes that female Autobots were nearly extinct, leaving only their strongest warriors. Arcee was never the first, but she would have been the first to get a toy... but the powers that be didn't like mixing toy lines because girl toys in a boy series "didn't sell". (This of course is malarky, as Princess Leia sold just as much as the guy characters) Unfortunately for her, Arcee never made it out of prototype... much like Unicron.
Its always interesting to see how people react to Primes death, because the new movies absolutely understand just how important Prime is to the franchise and so he cant die essentially. Primes death caused a huge uproar from parents and caused Hasbro to change the ending of the GI Joe movie.
That must have really sucked for the writers. Buzz Dixon had finally convinced Hasbro to let him kill off a G.I. Joe character (it's not that he was bloodthirsty, he just felt that making war look fun and safe was a bad message for children, to which I agree). They then forced Ron Friedman to kill off Optimus as well (something he _really_ didn't want to do) and because of the backlash, they ended up removing Duke's death. And on top of that, because the Transformers movie bombed at the box office, the Joe movie got its budget slashed and went direct to video. As a fan of both franchises, that irritates me to this day.
Hasbro wanted to sell more toys, so they took this opportunity to have the discontinued toys killed off in this movie in order to make room for them. Some of the more popular toys had their characters survive, so they could keep selling them. Fun fact: they kept the details of the movie secret but still had pre-production of the toys where it was hard to keep secrets. In the UK and Japanese markets, they went ahead and advertised Galvatron as one of Megatron's minions, a loyal second in command to be the counterpart to Ultra Magnus. And the toy that ended up as Ultra Magnus was originally an alternate power armor form and the same character as the toy that became Optimus Prime.
Long-time Transformers nerd here with further information: 1:30 - It depends. Some Transformers are programmed by Vector Sigma, the ancient computer at the heart of their home planet Cybertron. Others are simply built. (It's been implied from time to time that they _can..._ "get physical", let's say... presumably just for pleasure, but for obvious reasons this has never been elaborated on.) 2:43 - More specifically, according to the DVD commentary, Autobot City is near Chatanooga, Tennessee. This is plausible, particularly since there _is_ a real Lookout Mountain in that region, though a later episode of the TV show seems to imply it's near New York City instead. Either way, part of the city transforms into a gigantic Autobot, Metroplex. 2:52 - Yep. That's Spike Witwicky. He's the inspiration for Sam, Shia LaBeouf's character from the live-action movies. His wife (and little Daniel's mother) is a character named Carly, who you'll meet if you keep watching the live-action movies. 4:00 - There are some humans who are enemies of the Autobots, such as mad scientist Dr. Arkeville, crazed big game hunter Lord Chumley and crime lord Victor Drath. For the most part, however, the two races get along just fine. There are even humans who live and work in Autobot City. 4:16 - Hot Rod can only turn into a car, but some Transformers _do_ have multiple alternate modes (we see two such characters in this movie). 4:27 - Again, it depends. Some Transformers are built from existing vehicles, while others choose their alternate mode (by scanning something and copying its appearance). 4:49 - When the franchise was in development, writer Bob Budiansky wanted Ratchet (the Autobot medic who transforms into an ambulance) to be female, but Hasbro said no, since they wanted to market Transformers towards boys alone. But when Ron Friedman wrote this movie, he insisted on introducing a girl robot, since his young daughter loved Transformers. Consequently, one episode of the show that aired before the movie would establish that female Autobots existed (including Elita-One, Optimus Prime's girlfriend). 5:55 - There's a later episode of the show where a new character asks if there's something wrong with Blurr's "timing mechanism". Kup (the grumpy old Autobot with all the war stories) affectionately notes that that's just how Blurr is. 6:51 - The characters who die in this movie are mainly those whose toys had just been discontinued. Almost every other character was available as a toy at the time, except Arcee and Unicron. (Toys of them were planned, however, and would eventually be made decades later.) 7:12 - Transformers who were built together are considered siblings, but in the live-action movies, Optimus and Megatron were brothers in the metaphorical sense (i.e. very close buddies). It should be noted, however, that _this_ Optimus and Megatron don't share the same backstory (though young Orion Pax _did_ admire Megatron until he realized how evil he was). 7:58 - Note that he kicks Megatron with the foot he was injured in earlier. 8:47 - They didn't call them sparks back then, but basically, yeah. 9:09 - There was a lot of backlash against Optimus' death at the time, since many of the kids in the audience saw him as a father figure. He does come back to life near the end of the show, however. 11:04 - Not quite. In the following season of the show, Starscream comes back as a ghost that can possess other Transformers. We later learn that he has a mutated, indestructible spark. 11:48 - In this movie, yes, but the Autobots have several other human allies. For example, there's Chip Chase, wheelchair-bound computer genius. And there's Captain Marissa Faireborn, their military liaison, who is actually the daughter of two characters from G.I. Joe (which sometimes crosses over with Transformers). 14:12 - It's revealed in the following season of the show that the Quintessons originally created the Transformers. Cybertron was their colony, until the ancestors of the Autobots and Decepticons rose up against their masters. 14:32 - It should. One of the taglines for this movie was "conceived in the epic tradition of Star Wars". In addition to the similarities you noted, there's Arcee's Princess Leia hair. 15:03 - Yes, Wheelie is an Autobot child. He was orphaned when his family's ship was wrecked on Quintessa, and he spent the following years hiding out and fending for himself. 17:15 - The Junkions are descended from Autobots who left Cybertron during the war. Presumably they recognize the Universal Greeting because of their shared heritage. 18:40 - Grimlock has always been one of my favorite Transformers characters. I'm glad you also like him. 22:25 - The show and this movie were written and produced in America, and only animated in Japan, so they don't count as anime (at least in my view). There have been several Transformers anime made since then, however. 25:09 - This movie was a theatrical release, one of two based on Hasbro toys in 1986 (the other was My Little Pony). I'm sorry this was so long, but you seemed very curious. Also, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you're really pretty.
Actually in the very first episode of the show, they have very generic forms. The autobots are mostly vehicles and can't fly. Deceptions are generally other stuff and most if not all of them can fly. They fly to earth because its rich in energon, on the ship there they get into a fight and crashland. The AI of the ship goes around and takes like holographic pictures of stuff and programs them into them, so they can take on forms from the world. The deceptions wake up first and thing all the autobots are gone and run off. The Autobots wake up... and that's where the series starts...
The animation was done in an anime style by one of the top anime studios at the time (still are to this day) and not in the same stylings or designs as American animation. This IS considered anime.
@@SmaugUKA Here's my problem with that reasoning, though: many American cartoons from this period were animated by Toei. It was just a cost-saving measure. Is Muppet Babies considered an anime? Is The Real Ghostbusters? How about G.I. Joe? And the designs for the movie were made by Floro Dery, a Filipino residing in the United States. They look detailed and realistic, but does that really make them "anime style"?
@@davebrown2056 It's not that they are detailed and realistic. Muppet Babies and Real Ghostbusters' looks and designs as well as art style are in the form of American cartoon. More rounded edges, faces, bright colors and more childish. The original G.I. Joe however was again drawn in the 80s anime style and was done by Toei. Have you watched any 80s and early 90s anime? Does their art style, designs, color schemes and overall look compare and or look similar to what the Transformers and G.I. Joe look like, especially their Movies? Yes, they do. Do the other cartoons or anything from major American Saturday Cartoon lineups from the 80s and 90s look like anime? No. American animation and design does not line up with how Japanese animation and or things inspired by Japanese animation do, especially during the 80s and 90s. Voltron, Macross/Robotech, G.I. Joe, Transformers were all anime. Back then in the US however it was simply called Japanese animation, shortened later to Japanime and finally anime. You might want to do a Google search on Anime vs Western Animation to better gain even more clarity on this topic.
"I didn't even realize there was an animated show." Ouch. Just..... OUCH! It's where it all began (and technically there are decades of animated Transformers, but the original was the only one that got a theatrical movie).
i watched this movie when i was a kid in the 80s. prime's death was so damn traumatizing that i didn't watch the movie again until i was in my 20s. prime wasn't just a cartoon character or a toy. he was my idol. he was my hero.
Imagine me a 5 year old watching this in the cinema crying my eyes out so much I missed most of the movie, I asked my mum can we watch the next viewing and she took me back in to watch it again. I'm 44 now still hits hard.
Uttered every kid's parents 10 minutes before removing them from the theater while they were bawling their eyes out. Oh, yes... I was there in 1986.... but I wasn't one of those traumatized children.... nor one of their parents... I was 19, and just loving the movie itself.
Essentially, the first act of this movie is the final episode of the Transformers as people knew it at the time. The big ultimate battle where the autobots and decepticons both lose their leaders... and then it somehow keeps going. The characters have to carry on, the world building spirals, the next generation takes over, it's great. Be ready to hear a LOT of these names pop up again in the live action sequels if you get that far.
I am sittin here at work waiting for my shift to start as a 44 year old man, remembering every tear I shed when Optimus died. I also have a transformer on the desk of my machine every day lol, 44 years old indeed
The assumption is that human technology would have advanced faster because of the autobots sharing their technology. If that had happened it would have been huge in the span of about 20 years. The voice of Optimus Prime was the same as in the movie. And I was sad that they killed off so many of the original characters in the movie. This was done because the company that purchased the rights to the transformers and didn’t get the rights to any of the old characters.
Hasbro thought kid had bought enough of the old toys and were clearing the roster for new ones. Hasbro/Takara have owned the Transformers together since they were cobbled together from Diaclone and Micro-change.
I'm sure the Autobots sharing their technology was a factor, but don't forget that Transformers shares a universe with G.I. Joe and Inhumanoids. The need to protect the populace from terrorists armed with ancient technology, as well as giant monstrous invaders, would also lead to some rapid advancement.
One interesting thing to me is that the guy who voiced Megatron, voiced Scooby Doo, Fred, Dynomutt… so many others. Frank Welker is his name.. he’s a voice acting legend 😊
So the timeline was seasons 1 & 2, the movie, then seasons 3 & 4. And lemme tell you, Optimus dying was a pretty big thing at the time. He was like my Saturday morning dad since mine wasnt around. In the words of Peter Cullen's (the voice of OP) brother, he was "strong enough to be gentle". Im in my 40's and i still get teary eyed thinking about OP's death. There was also a massive backlash at the time of the movie. Theatres of kids crying and parents taking their kids out of the movie. It even sparked a write in campaign (yes, with physical letters) from angry parents. The suits at Hasbro were basically telling the animated team to kill off all of the existing characters so they could sell the new toys coming out, they didnt see the cartoon as anything other than an ad to get kids parents to buy them toys. But the writers did the best with what they had and made really thought out characters who resonated with kids, at least with the amount of time and resources they had available to them.
Today is the Transformers 40th anniversary. Marvel Comics published the first issue of the US Transformers comic book on the 8th of May 1984. A Marvel UK version followed 5 months later in September.
19:00 "He doesn't have like stomach acid because he's a machine" *literally 1 second later* Careful what you wish for lol. That scene horrified me as a kid.
This movie is re-releasing in theaters for it's 40th anniversary. It sucks because it NEVER makes to any theaters within 8 hours of my area. I'm still pissed that I couldn't see it in the theaters in the 80's.
If you're referring to the 40th Anniversary Event next week, it's a theatrical screening of the first four episodes of the 1984 TV series. This movie won't celebrate its 40th anniversary until 2026. Maybe we'll see a re-release of it then.
@@AlexLiquid-hc9gp It's just being advertised that it's GOING TO have a 40 year anniversary re-release. I'm talking about the 35 year anniversary that I "just" missed the last time. The closest location was about 8 hours away THAT time.
It did re-release at some theatres for the 35th anniversary, but at limited theatre's and only in the US. Hopefully it will get a worldwide release in 2026.
i didn't see it in theatres when it frist released , but i did get to see it in 1989 , when i was 10. i went to a kid's expo convention in Houston Texas where they had two theaters set up running different kid's cartoon movies through out the day , and, i saw that this movie was one of the movies they'd run , so i made sure to catch it from start to finish despite having seen the movie dozens of times at the time.
The main thing you might be missing from the series seasons 1+2 before the movie is that it took place in 1984-1985, so there was a 20 year time jump in the intro of the movie (hence the narration, It is the year 2005). Spike Witwicky (Daniel's father) was the main human character and was around 15 years old. His dad Sparkplug was also featured a lot. The second thing missed from the series is the many many characters not seen in the movie. And their long histories together... like Megatron and Starscream have a lot of past issues. So when he gets blasted by Galvatron there's a lot of pay-off in stuff like that.
"Were there dinobot toys?" lol - you have to understand that the TV show was basically a toy commercial. If a new 'transformer' was revealed on the show - it would be on the shelves before long so we could tell our parents what they had to get us for christmas. The movie was really better than it had any right to be with a kick-ass soundtrack and an impressive cast of voice actors. It's held up surprisingly well.
everyone except Devcon. who we finally got last year. and arcee, unicron, many of the junkions, many background characters.. but i'm just being pedantic at this point. you are mostly correct.
"I wasn't prepared for Optimus Prime dying!" Trying being a 12 year old kid seeing this for the first time in the theater when the cartoon standard at the time was stuff like everyone in GI Joe who was shot down magically having a parachute to save them. :)
"He turned gray?!" Man, in the 80s they did not give a F about kids feelings lol. In case you were too young to understand the light in his eyes going out means death, they turned his ass gray to drive home the point lmao
Yeah I mean the cartoon wasn't even this dark. The first episode has them crash into earth and "deactivate" for 4 MILLION years, only to be repaired in modern times.
I absolutely love when people discover this movie. One of the standouts from my childhood. And dude was right. Anyone in their 40s were devastated when Prime died.
It’s funny as all the character deaths in the movie was a mandate from Hasbro who makes the Transformers toys as a way to remove old characters (toys) and replace them ones. This actually went badly for Hasbro as they received letters spin letters from sad kids. Hasbro had not realized kids didn’t see Optimus Prime as just a toy, but a hero. And in the 3rd season of the show revived Prime (with a new toy to follow of course).
So badly that they had to last minute retcon Duke's death in G I Joe. Evidentally getting stabbed in the heart by a snake just puts you in a coma. (they also added that Optimus would be back in many of the video releases)
Let's not forget that between the movie and Optimus Prime's revival, there was that *disturbing* as hell episode "Dark Awakening." It was supposed to cement that Rodimus was the once and future Autobot leader. Yeaaaah... NOPE! No touch, no power for Rodimus.
It’s funny that an 80’s toy company wanted to add the toys but have it make sense to the narrative when today they would just junk the old stories and toys for a reboot.
@@hippusmaximus9319 unless you watch headmasters where they quickly kill off optimus and reinstate rodimus. 0.o. i love rodimus but no one is beating optimus' cred.
@@Lazrael32 LOL. Ah yes, the Headmasters. I only count the US version in my mind. The American version was canceled after only three episodes. I know Japan continued Transformers which disregarded the three eps and did their own story with them. It's still wild to me that Japan imported and accepted an American toyline that was originally exported from multiple toy lines in Japan.
I didnt grow up in the 80s, and i didnt join the fandom til i was an adult (i only started watching the cartoons a little over a year ago), but even as late to the party as i am i can say with full confidence that toys are a pretty big chunk of the experience. I in no way shape or form take myself seriously as a collecter, but i still have a shelf full of the bots. Its kind of just nice having the funny little guys youre attached to kicking around. It also helps that the toys tend to be pretty high quality, and really media-accurate if they came out after 2007 (which i thank the Animated toy designers for every day) You will find a toy for nearly every character in any given tf show. You will find recolors of those same characters. You will find characters that arent even IN the show. You will find toys that look nothing like the character and toys that recreate the character perfectly down to the last minute detail. There are a fuck of a lot of these guys. Its kinda like pokemon in that everyone is SOMEONE'S favorite.
17:17 These motor cycle Transformers are called "Junkions", who seem to have left Cybertron LOOOOONG ago, and settled on this planet as a sorta lost colony, and learned to speak by watching television or listen to radio signals from across space. Orson Wells, who voiced Unicron, that booming voice you hear, was actually done with a LOT of electronic enhancing, because Nelson Shin, the producer said, Orson could barely speak at this point (for he was morbidly obese, and needed an oxygen tank with a tube up his nose to breathe) and was wheezing. It was good timing, because Orson died a few weeks later, due to his obesity. 17:45 "Call of the Primitives", a season 3 episode from the original series, goes over his origins....and had some of the BEST animation in the original series. Most modern Transformers series use the original comic book Unicron origins. He is not so much a cannibal, since he is not of the same race as the Transformers as....it's kinda tricky to explain. 18:19 Antibodies. If you look at the original trailer for this movie, which you can find on RUclips, you will see Unicron, though machine....had organic innards, like veins and organs. The trailer also had some unused animation, some of which was EPIC. In the 2002 Armada/Micron Legend series, Unicron did have organic internals. 20:12 Yep, that is why you see Unicron actually ripping parts of himself off, he was trying to get the Matrix out of his body before it was too late. 20:43 more like until season 3 came along, which takes place shortly after this (In Japan, it was 5 years later). 20:55 I had a hard time telling who was who in the Bay movies, and really did not like most of the designs. Some 'toy cartoons', that did not FEEL like toy cartoons (good stories, writing, etc) I recommend are: Jayce and the Wheel Warriors Starcom Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers The Real Ghostbusters Zillion Visonaries Dragon Quest: The Legend of Able Inhumanoids The first 5 part pilot to the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Robotix Machine Robo Mighty Orbots Duck Tales (1987) Transformers Beast Wars 22:16 There IS Transformers anime, which adds MORE to the original series.
Although I wasn't happy with the new designs in the live action movies, I did eventually get used to them. Was soo disappointed in Jazz's death as he was one of my favorite characters in the cartoon. You are completely right though, it was super hard to tell what/who was going on. Especially when transformers were fighting, wrestling and rolling around! It's like there was too much small details in their body's so it just looked like a mangled mash when it happened. Thankfully I think they managed to improve in this department as the movies went along, although I can't tell you what they did to achieve it. I just could tell easier what was happening and with who more and more as we went.
I saw this film opening day in Theaters. The house was packed and everyone cried at the death scene. All of the characters with the exception of the Tenetacons (three faced judges) and Unicron had toys dedicated to them.
Also, check out the band "Cybertronic Spree" they basically are cosplayers that dress up as characters from this movie and play the soundtrack and other theme songs. The lead singer dresses up as Arcee
Choosing to watch the live action movie instead of the original series before watching this movie will always cause you to have more questions and confusion about the movie and characters than people who watched the original series from the beginning of the first season because this movie was an extension to the original series with a change in the characters based on the toy being released at the time.
As you realized, yes all the transformers in the movie were toys sold back then. So the reason why they killed off a lot of them in this movie (including Prime) was because the toys were getting discontinued.
Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers were The Toys of my childhood. This is a lovely blast from the past.❤ 2:05 There's not just a theme song, there are 80's Power-Chords. This whole soundtrack is steeped in pure, well-aged 80's cheese...and it's glorious.🤘🤘🤘 6:39 Yup, Dino-Bots were a thing. I seem to remember a couple of them being quite difficult to Transform. And the Constructicons set I had (Devastator) did indeed combine like Voltron.
Love seeing someone enjoy these movies for a change, I feel like (as is usually the case) a lot of people tend to hate on them almost just because that's the popular thing to do
This was Hasbro’s way of bringing in new toys so they killed off most of the original Autobots. They was also going to do this same thing with GI Joe but the backlash they received from this movie actually stopped them from releasing the G.I. Joe movie and also changed it from killing some characters
I’ve been engaging with Transformers all my life, I didn’t grow up with the original show, the multiple reboots and the movies were my intro to the franchise, after watching this movie for the first time is really refreshing, it’s fun movie to me
There were toys of everyone, but Arcee and Unicron, they came out way later. The idea around all the deaths was the 1984 toyline Optimus, Megatron, Starscream, would be replaced by the 1986 toys like Hot Rod and Galvatron. The producers of the movie just saw this as a toy commercial and didn't realize kids actually loved the transformers as characters until after the movie was released.
The design for many of the new transformers seemed a lot less interesting and quite tacky in some cases. I was never a fan of Hotrod's toy for example, but it was still way better than Rodimus Prime's design. I kept watching the show and reading the annuals, but the first toys were always more interesting to me. With the exception of Jetfire, which was a repurposed Valkyrie from Robotech if I remember correctly. I think it was Robotech, it's been a while. We had some amazing toys back in the day.
The parental backlash to Optimus Prime's death was hilarious. It was enough that they had to re-dub a scene in the GI Joe animated movie so one of the main Joes was in a coma instead of dead. Also I still love the DRSmoov redubs of the 80's Transformer cartoon. "Don't worry, Shockwave can't shoot for shit."
Speaking as one of the kids this was made for back in the 80s, I didn't cry when Optimus Prime died. If I had the words back then, I was 5, but I would've said, "You can't just kill Optimus Prime and Ironhide like that, that's BULLSHIT!!" But I will tell you that I just about cried (from joy) hearing Peter Cullen voice Optimus Prime again in 2007. I mean, we have and have had other actors play Optimus Prime, some imitating the original, some not. One time, Optimus Prime was voiced by David Kaye, an actor known for voicing Megatrons. But nobody captures the soul of Optimus like Peter Cullen. A voice that is noble and gentle, yet powerful. And at the time, I never thought i would hear him again.
The UK version of the film was a bit different. We had a Star Wars type opening crawl instead of the cast and at the end a narration teasing the return of Optimus Prime. They also took out Spike's 'oh shit'.
Clarifying the anime vs western cartoon stuff. Transformers began as two Japanese toy lines that had no real story (Microman and Diaclone). Hasbro, in America, bought the rights to both of these series and grouped them together. Hasbro paid Marvel Comics to come up with a story and characters. That was turned into a cartoon show. The cartoon show is a weird mix of American and Japanese. Americans wrote the scripts, but Sunbow and Toei were making the show (and the toys began in Japan). The show itself had 3.25 seasons in America and 6 full seasons in Japan. So the last 3 seasons or so are 100% Japanese anime (as they were written, animated, and aired only in Japan).
Great reaction video! Seeing tbis movie in the theatre led to my then 11 year old self making many trips to the toy store lol. The characters, animation and the soundtrack blew me away. Still my favorite Transformers movie!
This is my favorite movie ever! I saw in the theater as a child and was the only child not devastated by Prime's death(I knew he'd be back.) When I saw Blackout transform at the beginning of the 2007 film, I was so moved I teared up.
The movie was from what I understand one of the very few pieces of the 80’s cartoon widely available on VHS, so that also explains why it left such an impact on children since that was more or less their definitive Transformers experience.
Every single Transformer you see in this movie and in the cartoon series you could buy as a toy. I owned the tank transformer called Blitzkrieg (the purple one that you commented on at 4:22) - he could also transform into a flying plane - he was a different one called a Triple-changer. They were cool. This movie was set after Season 2 of G1 series and Season 3. A lot of the characters in this movie made their first appearence here, ones like Kupp, Hot Rod, Arcee, etc. And then they continued on in Season 3 of G1 series. And to add even more context, in Season 1 and 2 there wasn't a single permanent death at all, then in this movie they're killing Transformers all over the place (including Starscream and Optimus). So this movie was a huge deal back in the day. I remember seeing it in theatres when it first released in '86. Every single kid lost their minds when Optimus died. That was such a hard pill to swallow. :P
Depending on the continuity, most Transformers can only have one alternate mode at a time, so Optimus Prime can only transform into a truck, Megatron a gun, Starscream an F-15, etc. There are exceptions, the Triple Changers can have two alternate modes (Blitzwing and Astrotrain are two examples, they have plane/tank and space shuttle/train alt modes), the Titan Transformers have a city and a battlestation/beast modes along with their robot forms, and the character Sixshot has six different alternate modes. Starting with the Bayverse universe Transformers could change their alternate modes whenever they wanted by scanning another source (though the characters with only one alt mode still only changed into the one they had at the moment). Certain mystical sources of power could also reformat a Transformer so they could use multiple forms. Transformation itself came from Amalgamous Prime, one of the original Thirteen Primes created by their god, Primus, who was the only one of the Thirteen who could transform and had no limit on forms, able to change into anything he wanted and could imagine. When the Primes created the Well of All Sparks, Amalgamous infused his ability into it, granting the Transformers his shape-changing power, though for most it was a very limited version. There are some, called Shifters, who did inherit Amalgamous' full transformation power and could be anyone and anything they wanted, two examples being Makeshift from Transformers Prime and Pseudo from Robots in Disguise (2015).
This movie was the debut of several new toys on the toy line. Blaster’s cassette tape robots made their debut here for example. This was mostly just to set up the new year toys, and they weren’t expecting the death of Optimus to hit as hard as it did.
This was my childhood. Transformers and GI Joe. Optimus Primes death messed us up as a kids. So much that in season 3 they brought him back to life. Starscream also came back too.
4:44 - Arcee was one of the first depiction of a female transformer. (A few others appeared in the series in the year prior to this movie's release) In the original toy line, some characters were conceptualized to be female (Ratchet for example) but the idea was nixed because 'boys wouldn't want to play with girl toys'
This movie is like a core memory of my childhood and i can remember how freaking excited i was. Optimus passing was pretty sad but i did like Rodimus more (Jazz is my favourite though). Glad to see that you had fun watching this though. This movie was much more impressive in the 80s. 😂
Wrap your brain around this one lol the voice actor who did wheelie is the same guy who voiced Megatron who is the same guy who voiced Fred from Scooby Doo. Also great reaction video. Its always fun watching people enjoy the series I've been a fan of for the last 40 years (omg I'm so old lol) .
Pretty much everything in the movie was a toy you could buy, with the most notable exceptions being Unicron (a prototype was made, but it was never produced) and Arcee (rough designs exist, but likely she was axed because back then toy companies assumed that girl characters didn't sell in "boys toys" lines). As a kid experiencing this movie on VHS in the early 90s, around the time the original TF run was over, I was obsessed with tracking down the toys of these characters that I had missed out on. It's one of the reason it became a lifelong hobby for me!
I didn't see the movie when it came out- it was the 90s when I found it on VHS at a flea market. I still have it. My favorite part was when Galvatron was formed. I freaked out when I heard Leonard Nimoy's voice- I've always loved him
This was before the days of the internet but when the Dino-bots came out kids would pillage every store that carried them. I had to take a couple of them and hide them in different aisles of a supermarket so nobody else could buy them up before I could come back with my parents to get them. During Christmas parents would get into fights over them for their kids. It was cut throat.
Good morning. I apologize for only now watching this video two weeks after it was posted, but it appeared on my recommended feed. I am glad it did because I really enjoyed watching it and I wanted to give my thanks to you for taking the time to give us your thoughts and reaction to a movie I grew up watching over and over again! Thank you! 😄
As a kid from the era - the death of Optimus Prime was HUGE at the time. The outcry was so big that they changed the GI Joe movie which came out shortly after. Originally Duke - one of the main characters and original Joes - was supposed to die. After the Transformers movie caused such a huge backlash, they changed it to him "falling into a coma" and being miraculously healed off-screen so they didn't have to change the animation. And yes, almost all of the Decepticons and Autobots in this movie were toys you could buy. The entire purpose of the movie was essentially a commercial - killing off old characters to introduce new ones, so kids would need to buy new toys.
*_So refreshing to see you enjoying the movie for what it is and all the cool elements it includes, rather than endlessly complain about how confusing it is that it is not like the Bay-formers movies (which too many reactors do)!_* *_Thank you Kacee: This was BY FAR the most pleasant reaction to the OG cartoon Transformers movie EVER!_* *_I understand that you don’t want to watch the entire cartoon series, as it is many seasons long, however: If you are even just a little bit interested in seeing more, I HIGHLY recommend you watch (and possibly react to) the THREE-EPISODE OPENER of the series (Barely an hours long for all three episodes together) entitled “More than Meets the Eye”! That alone gives you a much better understanding of who the auto boys and deceptions are, how their war came to Earth and how the autobots came to know and cooperate with humans. It is SO WORTH IT! Plus, you get to see a lot more of the personalitie, functions and transformations that are a bit missing in the movie (only because the writers knew that the audience of the 80s had followed the cartoon and they were obligated to move the plot along in the movie)_*
I’m so glad you watched this. This has been my favourite movie since it came out and next week they are doing a theatrical release of it to celebrate 40 years of Transformers.
24:45 - They were blocky and lacked articulation. Most of them had arms that moved, but little else. However they did convert to alternate forms. Many had diecast metal parts around thier feet, which helped keep center of gravity low, allowing them to stand easier. Modern versions have much greater posability and articulation. My favorite was the Generation 1 character 'Skids' - not the Bayverse version You can see images and more info on various characters at websites like TFwiki
Marvel UK ran a weekly comic on Transformers ( 300 or so ) where they expanded on the US versions and added original stories. My personal favourite series was on Deaths Head the bounty hunter, who was tasked by Rodimus Prime to track down Galvatron.
8:43 As an 8-year old who loved Optimus Prime from watching the show…I wasn’t prepared for it either. Nor were the millions of kids who saw this in the theaters back in the day.
🤖 *Watch the entire movie with me on Patreon (Full Length Reaction):* www.patreon.com/posts/transformers-103750309
@DosCavazos The Autobot that talks really fast Blurr was voiced by John Moschitta Jr. I don't know if he still holds the record but he has been in the Guinness book of records as the worlds fastest talker.
@@Chris-sm9epHe was also the Micro Machines spokesman in the commercials.
I didn't shed a single tear when I saw Bambi's mother perish. However, I was 7 when I seen this in theaters. I had to hold back the tears when they slaughtered Optimus Prime just to sell more / new toys. Optimus Prime deserved better.
This movie taught me at a young age about corporate greed. Much the same way that Scooby-Doo taught me that human beings were / are the real monsters.
@@AndSaveAsManyAsYouCan I remember that. He also did a least one Fedex commercial. I think their is a youtube video of him reading the lyrics of Beat It as fast as he can.
Facts! I'm 48 and am still in therapy. Lol😅
RIP, Orson Welles, Unicron
RIP Leonard Nimoy, Galvatron
RIP, Lionel Stander, Kupp
RIP, Robert Stack, Ultra Magnus
RIP, Casey Kasem, Cliffjumper
RIP, Scatman Crothers, Jazz
RIP, Chris Latta, Starscream.
Till All Are One.
I dont think ill ever be ready for the day when i eventually will have to say this about Peter Cullen and Frank Welker 😢
Damn. I knew about each of them, but reading this all together hurts a little
You missed a few.
RIP, Roger C. Carmel, Cyclonus/Quintesson Leader
RIP, Stan Jones, Scourge
RIP, Don Messick, Scavenger
RIP, Ed Gilbert, Blitzwing
@@davebrown2056 I've watched tf the movie a gazillion times and I'm 99% sure cyclonus doesn't utter a single word. Whilst scourge has a few lines.
@@trydowave The screenplay and the storybook adaptation both claim that Cyclonus says "The Autobots have been terminated" after Ultra Magnus blows up half the shuttle. It admittedly sounds more like Scourge's voice to me, but Cyclonus (in ship mode) _is_ onscreen at the time, and Carmel _was_ inconsistent about how the character sounded in the post-movie episodes, and he _is_ listed in the credits. On the other hand, Don Messick is also credited for voicing Gears, who only appears in the background of one scene and says nothing, so it's possible both characters had lines that were cut. Well, Carmel definitely voiced the Quintesson leader, so whatever.
This movie takes place 20 years after the second season of the original cartoon. So there's a LOT of lore. However, if you watch the first 5 episodes of the show, you'll get a great understanding of how things worked for the setup. How the Transformers came to Earth. How they met humans. All that.
After that the story was slowly building the whole world, like until S3 we finally knows who created them and why.
Also, season, 3 and 4 of the original series takes place after the movie.
spike was liek 18 in season 1 and 2 , in the movie he is early 30's it's not 20 years time jump more like 10-12 years.
@@DenverStarkey No offense, but the first two seasons were evidently set in the eighties when they were made and the movie is set in 2005, so yes, it's 20 years later. (And Spike was definitely under 18--in the season 2 episode "The Immobilizer" a cop pulls him over because he's too young to have a license, only for Bumblebee to transform and explain that he was the one driving.)
@@davebrown2056 they never specified the year in the early seasons. it's not so "evident". just saying that doens;'t make their actual evidence for it. it is my opinion that they were intended to be taking place in the ninties.
it's kind of like how Robocop (as an example) never specified when it took place , but no one is asuming it was the 80's in robcop . same deal with the transformers season 1 and 2, they never specifed a year . so it's easy to say they were set in the "near" but unspecifed future at least till the movie which claimed it was 2005 like you said and spike was more like early 30's in that movie not his mid 40's
also very important when reguarding spike's age; he was working in oil fields with his dad in the first two seasons of the show , so at youngest he was 18 in the first season of the show , they haven't allowed minors to work in the oil industry since before the 1930's .
also i call the cop pull over a huge msitake on the writer's part because of this fact. as a minor would not be allowed to work in a oil field Job.
him working that job is more consistant than the one time he got pulled over. furthermore a freaking 15 year old can get a drivers permit , but a 15 year old can't work in the oil industry. and spike is most defintiely older than 15. so maybe he lied about his age to get the job , this puts him at 16-17 then maybe. but still a stretch , some one would eventualy caught him lieng about his age and he'd have lost his job with his dad, and his dad might have lost his job as well for being an accomplice,
Imagine being a kid who watched the tv show every day to seeing all those characters die. You don't forget it well into your 40's.
I didn't see the film on it's release (I was 1 😂) but I started watching transformers in 88 and got to this a few years later and it still makes me cry to watch Prime die 😂
My dad made sure I watched all of G1 before TF1 (2008) came out. Believe me when I say, six year old me was traumatized by the movie. (I had also broken half my face against a tree literal days after TF1 came out on DvD, so I got it as a present and I binged it every hour for the entire weekend)
edit: Typos
This is Transformers,Bay’s movies are garbage
No...... no you dont.
7 year old me was totally destroyed.
"It's Optimus Prime, he'll be fine...right?" tears
That's the thing, he was the most expensive toy, thus the hardest to move. And the movie was all about making room for new toys to sell. Sucks, but the Decepticons were right, it's survival of the fittest (most popular by sales).
I both miss and hate the 80's for doing that kind of crap.
Later seasons of G1: Well...yes, but actually no.
All of us who are now in there 40's was either crying or saying WTF! when Prime died when we was kids.
Never watched this movie and now I refuse to🙃
Not really, I was not. I was like "that's what happens in battle sometimes" and I was 7 at the time. I also did like Rodimus more, he was interesting a character.
I was 7 and I knew by the 2nd season that Transformers was a Civil War but you still don't won't your favorites killed off 15 minutes in. Rodimus...one minute he's confident being a leader then he's not then he is then he's not....and sometimes that would be in one episode.
BOTH
Unless you were more of a decepticon guy...
This movie had a whole generation of kids in tears; especially, when Optimus Prime passed away.
John Moschitta, Jr, the voice actor of Blurr, was listed in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the fastest talker. He did many toy commercials in the 80's and early 90's for Micro Machines.
Crazy to think Optimus Became one with the Matrix 2 years before the live action Autobots got to earth in 2007
It’s not about CGI it’s about story, character and being true to the original everyone fell in love with. This is the one
Yep tho i will always admire how incredible the CGI for the first 3 transformers films is and how puts movies that have come out recently to absolute shame. Michael Bay just didnt understand these characters and why they were special to us
Yeah, the CGI movies don't come close to this one.
Bumblebee came pretty close to this one though.
@@3DJapan
not even remotely close
@@sabin97yes it did.
Ironhide, Ratchet, prowl, and Brawn , the four autobots taken out on the shuttle towards the beginning, were all major characters in the first two seasons of the show- in an animated series for kids where no one died.
Seeing the four of them killed so quickly and in such violent fashion is something so shocking that people who didn’t grow up with the 80s show will never fully appreciate.
Wheeljack is one of my all time favorite Autobots. Seeing him dead in the movie was damn near traumatic.
@@MrFox619 Mine was Prowl. First autobot I owned. Seeing him die with his eyes glowing and smoke billowing out really left an impact on my 8 year old brain. And at least Brawn, Prowl, Ratchet and Ironhide at least went out fighting. Wheeljack and Windcharger were just dead bodies.
All these years I had no idea...! I thought it was just Optimus, Ultra Magnus and Starscream that were killed. 😳
@@MrFox619 If it makes you feel any better, Wheeljack comes back in Transformers Victory (one of the Japanese-exclusive series).
As I noted elsewhere, the statement that no one died in pre-movie Transformers isn't entirely accurate--there was Alpha Trion, Dion, and a handful of nameless background characters. Still, I see your point. I suppose I'm a bit biased because I grew up with Beast Wars/Machines and only went back and watched G1 later, so major characters dying wasn't as shocking to me.
The thing is, in the animated series, no one EVER died. They get shot, and they shake it off. Then the movie came along, and it was a slaughter. Yes it was very shocking in 1986.
Well, to be fair: Alpha Trion sacrificed himself in "The Key to Vector Sigma Part 2" (his later appearances were either via time travel, or in spirit form). The Autobots' Thirteenth Legion succumbed to Cosmic Rust in the episode of the same name. The Dinobots killed several of Shockwave's guards in "Desertion of the Dinobots Part 2". "War Dawn" featured the deaths of Orion Pax's best friend Dion and an unnamed Guardian Robot. But sure, characters who had toys never died in the show (except Skyfire, but he came back two episodes later).
it was a toypocolypse. hasbro wanted to introduce new toys because sales were starting to drop on the old ones and some toys like megatron had to be discontinued before they even had a full year out, because laws regarding toy guns changed mid-production. (I was of of the very few kids that had megatron) as he looked like a real walter p38 when transformed.
lol yes, it was shocking. Especially seeing some of your favorite characters getting drug away......
I remember when I’ve been a kid and been freaked out when Prowl died and the flames came out his mouth. It freaked me out. I’m was worse than prime dying imho.
Back then this movie legit traumatized a generation including my dad with the fact that all the Autobots and Decepticons from the original tv show were all mostly killed off. And all of this was just because Hasbro wanted to sell new toys by killing all the characters.
Fun fact, Blitzwing (the Decepticon at 4:20) is one of the first triple changers ever in Transformers.
Him and Astrotrain debuted at the same time if I remember correctly..
Octane is next.
God I wish they'd use him more often. He was great in g1, they perfected him in animated, the bumblebee movie role was fun (even as brief as it was) but it feels like they just haven't even thought about him since then.
Bring him and my boy Lugnut back 😔
Did you notice Optimus Prime is voiced by the SAME EXACT actor as the current movies?! isn't that rad?!
Peter Cullen 👏
That's the one thing they had to do for the live action movies or I can honestly say my enthusiasm would have been much lower. Hearing THAT voice was essential..
I was disappointed they didn’t have OG Megatron voice actor Frank Welker doing the new Megatron since he was available as I believe he voiced some other transformers in the movie. (Fun fact, he also does the voice of Brain of “Pinkey & The Brain”. He’s awesome! Almost any movie involving aliens or monsters or animal voices from the 80s and 90s had him in the cast)
@@turbopokey Welker voices him in AOE and TLK. But Hugo Weaving really killed it with the more animalistic and darker Megatron in the first 3 movies.
@@CryosisOfficial I’m not saying Hugo didn’t, just that they got the OG Optimus, they should’ve got the OG Megatron.
RIP Orson Welles and Leonard Nimoy
Like Welles, was Scatman Crothers' final film before his death too (he voiced Jazz).
"You got the touch
You got the power
Yeah!"
Light our darkest hour
🎶When all hell's breakin' loose, you'll be right in the eye of the storm.🎶
@@darthken815 *"When all hell's breakin' loose"
Srsly though, the whole soundtrack is just banger after banger.
@@jordanpeterson5140 Other than "The Touch", my favorite is Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid".
Fun fact: Arcee, the female autobot, wasn't actually supposed to be in the movie. The networks (I think) didn't want a female character because she wouldn't be interesting to the young boys in the audience and they didn't think girls would watch it. However one if the filmmakers fought back to keep her included, because his daughter was in love with the original cartoon series, and knew how important it was for her and all the other girls watching to be represented.
which is funny because Arcee was one of my favorites as a young boy. I often liked the cool female warriors. I still do.
not exactly true. From the start, transformers was genderless entities, because they're alien robots. And Ratchet was female from the start. But then became this story, and for this purpose fembots were added to season 2, automatically making all the previous characters male.
@@AIFT_Staff Ratchet wasn't female. you are confusing stories. Bob wanted to make ratchet female but that was told he couldn't. so yeah. there were no female transformers until the writer convinced them to let him add Arcee. they absolutely were male because Hasbro didn't want female transformers.
@@Lazrael32 Elita-1 was in season 2 along with a few other female Autobots before Arcee came along in TF: The Movie. I think those female Autobots were only in 1 or two episodes before Arcee, so they were easy to miss.
@@cheeseburger12 exactly. We do find out in those episodes that female Autobots were nearly extinct, leaving only their strongest warriors. Arcee was never the first, but she would have been the first to get a toy... but the powers that be didn't like mixing toy lines because girl toys in a boy series "didn't sell". (This of course is malarky, as Princess Leia sold just as much as the guy characters) Unfortunately for her, Arcee never made it out of prototype... much like Unicron.
Its always interesting to see how people react to Primes death, because the new movies absolutely understand just how important Prime is to the franchise and so he cant die essentially. Primes death caused a huge uproar from parents and caused Hasbro to change the ending of the GI Joe movie.
That must have really sucked for the writers. Buzz Dixon had finally convinced Hasbro to let him kill off a G.I. Joe character (it's not that he was bloodthirsty, he just felt that making war look fun and safe was a bad message for children, to which I agree). They then forced Ron Friedman to kill off Optimus as well (something he _really_ didn't want to do) and because of the backlash, they ended up removing Duke's death. And on top of that, because the Transformers movie bombed at the box office, the Joe movie got its budget slashed and went direct to video. As a fan of both franchises, that irritates me to this day.
There are no "new movies". It's a retarded dude with adhd that has made a fortune off of graping yet another franchise.
I find it so wholesome that Susan Blu, the voice of Arcee, has stuck around to be the voice director on every Transformers series to date.
Hasbro wanted to sell more toys, so they took this opportunity to have the discontinued toys killed off in this movie in order to make room for them. Some of the more popular toys had their characters survive, so they could keep selling them.
Fun fact: they kept the details of the movie secret but still had pre-production of the toys where it was hard to keep secrets. In the UK and Japanese markets, they went ahead and advertised Galvatron as one of Megatron's minions, a loyal second in command to be the counterpart to Ultra Magnus.
And the toy that ended up as Ultra Magnus was originally an alternate power armor form and the same character as the toy that became Optimus Prime.
Long-time Transformers nerd here with further information:
1:30 - It depends. Some Transformers are programmed by Vector Sigma, the ancient computer at the heart of their home planet Cybertron. Others are simply built. (It's been implied from time to time that they _can..._ "get physical", let's say... presumably just for pleasure, but for obvious reasons this has never been elaborated on.)
2:43 - More specifically, according to the DVD commentary, Autobot City is near Chatanooga, Tennessee. This is plausible, particularly since there _is_ a real Lookout Mountain in that region, though a later episode of the TV show seems to imply it's near New York City instead. Either way, part of the city transforms into a gigantic Autobot, Metroplex.
2:52 - Yep. That's Spike Witwicky. He's the inspiration for Sam, Shia LaBeouf's character from the live-action movies. His wife (and little Daniel's mother) is a character named Carly, who you'll meet if you keep watching the live-action movies.
4:00 - There are some humans who are enemies of the Autobots, such as mad scientist Dr. Arkeville, crazed big game hunter Lord Chumley and crime lord Victor Drath. For the most part, however, the two races get along just fine. There are even humans who live and work in Autobot City.
4:16 - Hot Rod can only turn into a car, but some Transformers _do_ have multiple alternate modes (we see two such characters in this movie).
4:27 - Again, it depends. Some Transformers are built from existing vehicles, while others choose their alternate mode (by scanning something and copying its appearance).
4:49 - When the franchise was in development, writer Bob Budiansky wanted Ratchet (the Autobot medic who transforms into an ambulance) to be female, but Hasbro said no, since they wanted to market Transformers towards boys alone. But when Ron Friedman wrote this movie, he insisted on introducing a girl robot, since his young daughter loved Transformers. Consequently, one episode of the show that aired before the movie would establish that female Autobots existed (including Elita-One, Optimus Prime's girlfriend).
5:55 - There's a later episode of the show where a new character asks if there's something wrong with Blurr's "timing mechanism". Kup (the grumpy old Autobot with all the war stories) affectionately notes that that's just how Blurr is.
6:51 - The characters who die in this movie are mainly those whose toys had just been discontinued. Almost every other character was available as a toy at the time, except Arcee and Unicron. (Toys of them were planned, however, and would eventually be made decades later.)
7:12 - Transformers who were built together are considered siblings, but in the live-action movies, Optimus and Megatron were brothers in the metaphorical sense (i.e. very close buddies). It should be noted, however, that _this_ Optimus and Megatron don't share the same backstory (though young Orion Pax _did_ admire Megatron until he realized how evil he was).
7:58 - Note that he kicks Megatron with the foot he was injured in earlier.
8:47 - They didn't call them sparks back then, but basically, yeah.
9:09 - There was a lot of backlash against Optimus' death at the time, since many of the kids in the audience saw him as a father figure. He does come back to life near the end of the show, however.
11:04 - Not quite. In the following season of the show, Starscream comes back as a ghost that can possess other Transformers. We later learn that he has a mutated, indestructible spark.
11:48 - In this movie, yes, but the Autobots have several other human allies. For example, there's Chip Chase, wheelchair-bound computer genius. And there's Captain Marissa Faireborn, their military liaison, who is actually the daughter of two characters from G.I. Joe (which sometimes crosses over with Transformers).
14:12 - It's revealed in the following season of the show that the Quintessons originally created the Transformers. Cybertron was their colony, until the ancestors of the Autobots and Decepticons rose up against their masters.
14:32 - It should. One of the taglines for this movie was "conceived in the epic tradition of Star Wars". In addition to the similarities you noted, there's Arcee's Princess Leia hair.
15:03 - Yes, Wheelie is an Autobot child. He was orphaned when his family's ship was wrecked on Quintessa, and he spent the following years hiding out and fending for himself.
17:15 - The Junkions are descended from Autobots who left Cybertron during the war. Presumably they recognize the Universal Greeting because of their shared heritage.
18:40 - Grimlock has always been one of my favorite Transformers characters. I'm glad you also like him.
22:25 - The show and this movie were written and produced in America, and only animated in Japan, so they don't count as anime (at least in my view). There have been several Transformers anime made since then, however.
25:09 - This movie was a theatrical release, one of two based on Hasbro toys in 1986 (the other was My Little Pony).
I'm sorry this was so long, but you seemed very curious. Also, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but you're really pretty.
Actually in the very first episode of the show, they have very generic forms. The autobots are mostly vehicles and can't fly. Deceptions are generally other stuff and most if not all of them can fly. They fly to earth because its rich in energon, on the ship there they get into a fight and crashland. The AI of the ship goes around and takes like holographic pictures of stuff and programs them into them, so they can take on forms from the world. The deceptions wake up first and thing all the autobots are gone and run off. The Autobots wake up... and that's where the series starts...
The animation was done in an anime style by one of the top anime studios at the time (still are to this day) and not in the same stylings or designs as American animation. This IS considered anime.
@@cedric13 I've watched "More Than Meets the Eye Part 1" (and every other episode of G1 Transformers), but thanks, I guess.
@@SmaugUKA Here's my problem with that reasoning, though: many American cartoons from this period were animated by Toei. It was just a cost-saving measure. Is Muppet Babies considered an anime? Is The Real Ghostbusters? How about G.I. Joe? And the designs for the movie were made by Floro Dery, a Filipino residing in the United States. They look detailed and realistic, but does that really make them "anime style"?
@@davebrown2056 It's not that they are detailed and realistic. Muppet Babies and Real Ghostbusters' looks and designs as well as art style are in the form of American cartoon. More rounded edges, faces, bright colors and more childish. The original G.I. Joe however was again drawn in the 80s anime style and was done by Toei.
Have you watched any 80s and early 90s anime? Does their art style, designs, color schemes and overall look compare and or look similar to what the Transformers and G.I. Joe look like, especially their Movies? Yes, they do. Do the other cartoons or anything from major American Saturday Cartoon lineups from the 80s and 90s look like anime? No.
American animation and design does not line up with how Japanese animation and or things inspired by Japanese animation do, especially during the 80s and 90s.
Voltron, Macross/Robotech, G.I. Joe, Transformers were all anime. Back then in the US however it was simply called Japanese animation, shortened later to Japanime and finally anime. You might want to do a Google search on Anime vs Western Animation to better gain even more clarity on this topic.
I love that Weird Al had a song in the sound track; and my favorite Weird Al song, I might add.
And when WreckGar came back in a different series Weird Al voiced him as a call back.
the song sounds pretty stupid.
@@Lazrael32 Yeah, and they dared to be stupid.
@@darknessunknown4384 it's like sticking your head in a microwave to get a tan levels of stupid.
He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life.
I remember watching this in the theatres as a kid and the whole theatre was full of crying kids when Ironhide and Prowl died in the beginning.
At 4:36 when she said: "What is that? A telescope?", I audibly gasped and face-palmed at the same time. lol
I had that one and it really worked!
"I didn't even realize there was an animated show." Ouch. Just..... OUCH! It's where it all began (and technically there are decades of animated Transformers, but the original was the only one that got a theatrical movie).
i watched this movie when i was a kid in the 80s. prime's death was so damn traumatizing that i didn't watch the movie again until i was in my 20s. prime wasn't just a cartoon character or a toy. he was my idol. he was my hero.
ruclips.net/video/sJwwxoZiJF0/видео.html
Yeah it traumatized a lot of kids hence them bringing prime back in the show. :-p
"Could you buy all of these as toys?!"
Wellll.... not *all* of them, after 1986....
Hasbro: we need to sell new toys, let's massacre the originals to clear the shelves.
Oh we traumatised an entire generation of kids? Oops
Imagine me a 5 year old watching this in the cinema crying my eyes out so much I missed most of the movie, I asked my mum can we watch the next viewing and she took me back in to watch it again. I'm 44 now still hits hard.
The red transformer that you said had a fun personality, that was Ironhide in this continuity.
and they're both voiced by Peter Cullen
"No he's fine... he's optimus prime"
Uttered every kid's parents 10 minutes before removing them from the theater while they were bawling their eyes out.
Oh, yes... I was there in 1986.... but I wasn't one of those traumatized children.... nor one of their parents... I was 19, and just loving the movie itself.
I was struck more by her noting that Ironhide has "such a fun personality"...just a few scenes before Megatron shoots the poor guy in the face.
"Wait, why is my boyfriend/husband sitting there crying?"
Because the greatest hero of our childhoods just died!
When you see a grown man crying over a cartoon character dying, you KNOW that was his hero.
My number 1 favorite transformers movie
Mine too. Especially as an 80's kid.
Essentially, the first act of this movie is the final episode of the Transformers as people knew it at the time. The big ultimate battle where the autobots and decepticons both lose their leaders... and then it somehow keeps going. The characters have to carry on, the world building spirals, the next generation takes over, it's great. Be ready to hear a LOT of these names pop up again in the live action sequels if you get that far.
I am sittin here at work waiting for my shift to start as a 44 year old man, remembering every tear I shed when Optimus died. I also have a transformer on the desk of my machine every day lol, 44 years old indeed
The assumption is that human technology would have advanced faster because of the autobots sharing their technology. If that had happened it would have been huge in the span of about 20 years.
The voice of Optimus Prime was the same as in the movie. And I was sad that they killed off so many of the original characters in the movie. This was done because the company that purchased the rights to the transformers and didn’t get the rights to any of the old characters.
Nah, the older characters got killed off because they wanted to make room for the new characters/toys.
Hasbro thought kid had bought enough of the old toys and were clearing the roster for new ones. Hasbro/Takara have owned the Transformers together since they were cobbled together from Diaclone and Micro-change.
I'm sure the Autobots sharing their technology was a factor, but don't forget that Transformers shares a universe with G.I. Joe and Inhumanoids. The need to protect the populace from terrorists armed with ancient technology, as well as giant monstrous invaders, would also lead to some rapid advancement.
One interesting thing to me is that the guy who voiced Megatron, voiced Scooby Doo, Fred, Dynomutt… so many others. Frank Welker is his name.. he’s a voice acting legend 😊
So glad to see you watch this. So much better than the live movies
How are you going to compare animation to live action movie that makes no sense
Animation can do more with story than live action can a lot of times. Plus, this is where a lot of ideas the live action movie takes from
@@Nightwolf_500
You can compare story and esthetics. This one wins imo.
I named my new puppy Arcee after the Autobot Arcee ❤️🐕
So the timeline was seasons 1 & 2, the movie, then seasons 3 & 4.
And lemme tell you, Optimus dying was a pretty big thing at the time. He was like my Saturday morning dad since mine wasnt around. In the words of Peter Cullen's (the voice of OP) brother, he was "strong enough to be gentle". Im in my 40's and i still get teary eyed thinking about OP's death.
There was also a massive backlash at the time of the movie. Theatres of kids crying and parents taking their kids out of the movie. It even sparked a write in campaign (yes, with physical letters) from angry parents. The suits at Hasbro were basically telling the animated team to kill off all of the existing characters so they could sell the new toys coming out, they didnt see the cartoon as anything other than an ad to get kids parents to buy them toys. But the writers did the best with what they had and made really thought out characters who resonated with kids, at least with the amount of time and resources they had available to them.
Today is the Transformers 40th anniversary. Marvel Comics published the first issue of the US Transformers comic book on the 8th of May 1984. A Marvel UK version followed 5 months later in September.
19:00 "He doesn't have like stomach acid because he's a machine" *literally 1 second later*
Careful what you wish for lol. That scene horrified me as a kid.
This movie is re-releasing in theaters for it's 40th anniversary. It sucks because it NEVER makes to any theaters within 8 hours of my area. I'm still pissed that I couldn't see it in the theaters in the 80's.
If you're referring to the 40th Anniversary Event next week, it's a theatrical screening of the first four episodes of the 1984 TV series. This movie won't celebrate its 40th anniversary until 2026. Maybe we'll see a re-release of it then.
the tv series is 40 years old, but the movie won't be 40 years old until 2026 cause it came out in 1986
@@AlexLiquid-hc9gp It's just being advertised that it's GOING TO have a 40 year anniversary re-release. I'm talking about the 35 year anniversary that I "just" missed the last time. The closest location was about 8 hours away THAT time.
It did re-release at some theatres for the 35th anniversary, but at limited theatre's and only in the US.
Hopefully it will get a worldwide release in 2026.
i didn't see it in theatres when it frist released , but i did get to see it in 1989 , when i was 10. i went to a kid's expo convention in Houston Texas where they had two theaters set up running different kid's cartoon movies through out the day , and, i saw that this movie was one of the movies they'd run , so i made sure to catch it from start to finish despite having seen the movie dozens of times at the time.
The main thing you might be missing from the series seasons 1+2 before the movie is that it took place in 1984-1985, so there was a 20 year time jump in the intro of the movie (hence the narration, It is the year 2005). Spike Witwicky (Daniel's father) was the main human character and was around 15 years old. His dad Sparkplug was also featured a lot. The second thing missed from the series is the many many characters not seen in the movie. And their long histories together... like Megatron and Starscream have a lot of past issues. So when he gets blasted by Galvatron there's a lot of pay-off in stuff like that.
"Were there dinobot toys?" lol - you have to understand that the TV show was basically a toy commercial. If a new 'transformer' was revealed on the show - it would be on the shelves before long so we could tell our parents what they had to get us for christmas. The movie was really better than it had any right to be with a kick-ass soundtrack and an impressive cast of voice actors. It's held up surprisingly well.
everyone except Devcon. who we finally got last year. and arcee, unicron, many of the junkions, many background characters.. but i'm just being pedantic at this point. you are mostly correct.
"I wasn't prepared for Optimus Prime dying!"
Trying being a 12 year old kid seeing this for the first time in the theater when the cartoon standard at the time was stuff like everyone in GI Joe who was shot down magically having a parachute to save them. :)
I was a 10 year old!
"He turned gray?!" Man, in the 80s they did not give a F about kids feelings lol. In case you were too young to understand the light in his eyes going out means death, they turned his ass gray to drive home the point lmao
Also Avengers infinity war absolutely copied this for vision's death.
Yeah I mean the cartoon wasn't even this dark. The first episode has them crash into earth and "deactivate" for 4 MILLION years, only to be repaired in modern times.
@@hellomark1 the comic was worse. Optimus felt bad for something he did and blew himself up.
I absolutely love when people discover this movie. One of the standouts from my childhood. And dude was right. Anyone in their 40s were devastated when Prime died.
It’s funny as all the character deaths in the movie was a mandate from Hasbro who makes the Transformers toys as a way to remove old characters (toys) and replace them ones.
This actually went badly for Hasbro as they received letters spin letters from sad kids. Hasbro had not realized kids didn’t see Optimus Prime as just a toy, but a hero. And in the 3rd season of the show revived Prime (with a new toy to follow of course).
So badly that they had to last minute retcon Duke's death in G I Joe. Evidentally getting stabbed in the heart by a snake just puts you in a coma. (they also added that Optimus would be back in many of the video releases)
Let's not forget that between the movie and Optimus Prime's revival, there was that *disturbing* as hell episode "Dark Awakening." It was supposed to cement that Rodimus was the once and future Autobot leader. Yeaaaah... NOPE! No touch, no power for Rodimus.
It’s funny that an 80’s toy company wanted to add the toys but have it make sense to the narrative when today they would just junk the old stories and toys for a reboot.
@@hippusmaximus9319 unless you watch headmasters where they quickly kill off optimus and reinstate rodimus. 0.o. i love rodimus but no one is beating optimus' cred.
@@Lazrael32 LOL. Ah yes, the Headmasters. I only count the US version in my mind. The American version was canceled after only three episodes. I know Japan continued Transformers which disregarded the three eps and did their own story with them.
It's still wild to me that Japan imported and accepted an American toyline that was originally exported from multiple toy lines in Japan.
I didnt grow up in the 80s, and i didnt join the fandom til i was an adult (i only started watching the cartoons a little over a year ago), but even as late to the party as i am i can say with full confidence that toys are a pretty big chunk of the experience.
I in no way shape or form take myself seriously as a collecter, but i still have a shelf full of the bots. Its kind of just nice having the funny little guys youre attached to kicking around.
It also helps that the toys tend to be pretty high quality, and really media-accurate if they came out after 2007 (which i thank the Animated toy designers for every day)
You will find a toy for nearly every character in any given tf show. You will find recolors of those same characters. You will find characters that arent even IN the show. You will find toys that look nothing like the character and toys that recreate the character perfectly down to the last minute detail.
There are a fuck of a lot of these guys. Its kinda like pokemon in that everyone is SOMEONE'S favorite.
17:17 These motor cycle Transformers are called "Junkions", who seem to have left Cybertron LOOOOONG ago, and settled on this planet as a sorta lost colony, and learned to speak by watching television or listen to radio signals from across space.
Orson Wells, who voiced Unicron, that booming voice you hear, was actually done with a LOT of electronic enhancing, because Nelson Shin, the producer said, Orson could barely speak at this point (for he was morbidly obese, and needed an oxygen tank with a tube up his nose to breathe) and was wheezing. It was good timing, because Orson died a few weeks later, due to his obesity.
17:45 "Call of the Primitives", a season 3 episode from the original series, goes over his origins....and had some of the BEST animation in the original series. Most modern Transformers series use the original comic book Unicron origins. He is not so much a cannibal, since he is not of the same race as the Transformers as....it's kinda tricky to explain.
18:19 Antibodies. If you look at the original trailer for this movie, which you can find on RUclips, you will see Unicron, though machine....had organic innards, like veins and organs. The trailer also had some unused animation, some of which was EPIC. In the 2002 Armada/Micron Legend series, Unicron did have organic internals.
20:12 Yep, that is why you see Unicron actually ripping parts of himself off, he was trying to get the Matrix out of his body before it was too late.
20:43 more like until season 3 came along, which takes place shortly after this (In Japan, it was 5 years later).
20:55 I had a hard time telling who was who in the Bay movies, and really did not like most of the designs.
Some 'toy cartoons', that did not FEEL like toy cartoons (good stories, writing, etc) I recommend are:
Jayce and the Wheel Warriors
Starcom
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
The Real Ghostbusters
Zillion
Visonaries
Dragon Quest: The Legend of Able
Inhumanoids
The first 5 part pilot to the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Robotix
Machine Robo
Mighty Orbots
Duck Tales (1987)
Transformers Beast Wars
22:16 There IS Transformers anime, which adds MORE to the original series.
Although I wasn't happy with the new designs in the live action movies, I did eventually get used to them. Was soo disappointed in Jazz's death as he was one of my favorite characters in the cartoon.
You are completely right though, it was super hard to tell what/who was going on. Especially when transformers were fighting, wrestling and rolling around! It's like there was too much small details in their body's so it just looked like a mangled mash when it happened.
Thankfully I think they managed to improve in this department as the movies went along, although I can't tell you what they did to achieve it. I just could tell easier what was happening and with who more and more as we went.
I saw this film opening day in Theaters. The house was packed and everyone cried at the death scene. All of the characters with the exception of the Tenetacons (three faced judges) and Unicron had toys dedicated to them.
Also, check out the band "Cybertronic Spree" they basically are cosplayers that dress up as characters from this movie and play the soundtrack and other theme songs. The lead singer dresses up as Arcee
Good call. Their cover of Dare is one of my favourites, and Hunger too.
A little bit of a META fact. In the cartoon Wheeljack and Ratchet repaired the autobots when they were damaged. They were both killed in the battle.
Kacee, when it comes to reacting to movies, you've got The Touch.
I see what you did there.
Choosing to watch the live action movie instead of the original series before watching this movie will always cause you to have more questions and confusion about the movie and characters than people who watched the original series from the beginning of the first season because this movie was an extension to the original series with a change in the characters based on the toy being released at the time.
Blurr's voiced by the Micromachines guy. He set the record for the fastest talker.
John Mochitta
As you realized, yes all the transformers in the movie were toys sold back then.
So the reason why they killed off a lot of them in this movie (including Prime) was because the toys were getting discontinued.
Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers were The Toys of my childhood. This is a lovely blast from the past.❤
2:05 There's not just a theme song, there are 80's Power-Chords. This whole soundtrack is steeped in pure, well-aged 80's cheese...and it's glorious.🤘🤘🤘
6:39 Yup, Dino-Bots were a thing. I seem to remember a couple of them being quite difficult to Transform. And the Constructicons set I had (Devastator) did indeed combine like Voltron.
Love seeing someone enjoy these movies for a change, I feel like (as is usually the case) a lot of people tend to hate on them almost just because that's the popular thing to do
This was Hasbro’s way of bringing in new toys so they killed off most of the original Autobots. They was also going to do this same thing with GI Joe but the backlash they received from this movie actually stopped them from releasing the G.I. Joe movie and also changed it from killing some characters
And some Decepticons were "killed" to make room for the new toys
I wish you could've been in the movie theaters with the rest of us 80s babies when Dare came on for the first time.
Fun fact: hot rod’s sequence constantly changed through the film and no two sequences are the same
He had three ways he transformed
I’ve been engaging with Transformers all my life, I didn’t grow up with the original show, the multiple reboots and the movies were my intro to the franchise, after watching this movie for the first time is really refreshing, it’s fun movie to me
There were toys of everyone, but Arcee and Unicron, they came out way later. The idea around all the deaths was the 1984 toyline Optimus, Megatron, Starscream, would be replaced by the 1986 toys like Hot Rod and Galvatron.
The producers of the movie just saw this as a toy commercial and didn't realize kids actually loved the transformers as characters until after the movie was released.
The design for many of the new transformers seemed a lot less interesting and quite tacky in some cases. I was never a fan of Hotrod's toy for example, but it was still way better than Rodimus Prime's design.
I kept watching the show and reading the annuals, but the first toys were always more interesting to me. With the exception of Jetfire, which was a repurposed Valkyrie from Robotech if I remember correctly. I think it was Robotech, it's been a while.
We had some amazing toys back in the day.
These were all massive toy commercials.... and we loved them. I was 6 years old when this came out. Absolute childhood classic.
"What a fun little world!" Ten seconds later: 😧
The parental backlash to Optimus Prime's death was hilarious. It was enough that they had to re-dub a scene in the GI Joe animated movie so one of the main Joes was in a coma instead of dead. Also I still love the DRSmoov redubs of the 80's Transformer cartoon. "Don't worry, Shockwave can't shoot for shit."
Speaking as one of the kids this was made for back in the 80s, I didn't cry when Optimus Prime died.
If I had the words back then, I was 5, but I would've said, "You can't just kill Optimus Prime and Ironhide like that, that's BULLSHIT!!"
But I will tell you that I just about cried (from joy) hearing Peter Cullen voice Optimus Prime again in 2007.
I mean, we have and have had other actors play Optimus Prime, some imitating the original, some not.
One time, Optimus Prime was voiced by David Kaye, an actor known for voicing Megatrons.
But nobody captures the soul of Optimus like Peter Cullen. A voice that is noble and gentle, yet powerful.
And at the time, I never thought i would hear him again.
Reviewer: “Oh is that a girl
Transformer?! I wanna learn all about her!”
The rest of us: “You just did.”
The UK version of the film was a bit different. We had a Star Wars type opening crawl instead of the cast and at the end a narration teasing the return of Optimus Prime. They also took out Spike's 'oh shit'.
Clarifying the anime vs western cartoon stuff. Transformers began as two Japanese toy lines that had no real story (Microman and Diaclone). Hasbro, in America, bought the rights to both of these series and grouped them together. Hasbro paid Marvel Comics to come up with a story and characters. That was turned into a cartoon show. The cartoon show is a weird mix of American and Japanese. Americans wrote the scripts, but Sunbow and Toei were making the show (and the toys began in Japan). The show itself had 3.25 seasons in America and 6 full seasons in Japan. So the last 3 seasons or so are 100% Japanese anime (as they were written, animated, and aired only in Japan).
Great reaction video! Seeing tbis movie in the theatre led to my then 11 year old self making many trips to the toy store lol. The characters, animation and the soundtrack blew me away. Still my favorite Transformers movie!
This is my favorite movie ever! I saw in the theater as a child and was the only child not devastated by Prime's death(I knew he'd be back.) When I saw Blackout transform at the beginning of the 2007 film, I was so moved I teared up.
Dare is the type of song you blast with the windows down. When I was a kid I used to watch this movie once a week.
As a kid, my Dad bought me Scorponok (12" scorpion transformer).
The movie was from what I understand one of the very few pieces of the 80’s cartoon widely available on VHS, so that also explains why it left such an impact on children since that was more or less their definitive Transformers experience.
I love her reaction to all the brutality in this 86 version. Most people are like "oh, it's just a cartoon" then everyone dies lol
Every single Transformer you see in this movie and in the cartoon series you could buy as a toy.
I owned the tank transformer called Blitzkrieg (the purple one that you commented on at 4:22) - he could also transform into a flying plane - he was a different one called a Triple-changer. They were cool.
This movie was set after Season 2 of G1 series and Season 3. A lot of the characters in this movie made their first appearence here, ones like Kupp, Hot Rod, Arcee, etc. And then they continued on in Season 3 of G1 series.
And to add even more context, in Season 1 and 2 there wasn't a single permanent death at all, then in this movie they're killing Transformers all over the place (including Starscream and Optimus). So this movie was a huge deal back in the day.
I remember seeing it in theatres when it first released in '86. Every single kid lost their minds when Optimus died. That was such a hard pill to swallow. :P
I must admit, I love your energy doing this review; just adds to the nostalgia of seeing the G1 characters...
The kids were crying in the theaters. One kid didn't come out of his room in a month.
Depending on the continuity, most Transformers can only have one alternate mode at a time, so Optimus Prime can only transform into a truck, Megatron a gun, Starscream an F-15, etc. There are exceptions, the Triple Changers can have two alternate modes (Blitzwing and Astrotrain are two examples, they have plane/tank and space shuttle/train alt modes), the Titan Transformers have a city and a battlestation/beast modes along with their robot forms, and the character Sixshot has six different alternate modes. Starting with the Bayverse universe Transformers could change their alternate modes whenever they wanted by scanning another source (though the characters with only one alt mode still only changed into the one they had at the moment). Certain mystical sources of power could also reformat a Transformer so they could use multiple forms. Transformation itself came from Amalgamous Prime, one of the original Thirteen Primes created by their god, Primus, who was the only one of the Thirteen who could transform and had no limit on forms, able to change into anything he wanted and could imagine. When the Primes created the Well of All Sparks, Amalgamous infused his ability into it, granting the Transformers his shape-changing power, though for most it was a very limited version. There are some, called Shifters, who did inherit Amalgamous' full transformation power and could be anyone and anything they wanted, two examples being Makeshift from Transformers Prime and Pseudo from Robots in Disguise (2015).
This movie was the debut of several new toys on the toy line. Blaster’s cassette tape robots made their debut here for example. This was mostly just to set up the new year toys, and they weren’t expecting the death of Optimus to hit as hard as it did.
In the original Transformers TV series, they had an episode featuring the female Autobots.
This was my childhood. Transformers and GI Joe. Optimus Primes death messed us up as a kids. So much that in season 3 they brought him back to life. Starscream also came back too.
4:44 - Arcee was one of the first depiction of a female transformer.
(A few others appeared in the series in the year prior to this movie's release)
In the original toy line, some characters were conceptualized to be female (Ratchet for example) but the idea was nixed because 'boys wouldn't want to play with girl toys'
This movie is like a core memory of my childhood and i can remember how freaking excited i was. Optimus passing was pretty sad but i did like Rodimus more (Jazz is my favourite though). Glad to see that you had fun watching this though. This movie was much more impressive in the 80s. 😂
Wrap your brain around this one lol the voice actor who did wheelie is the same guy who voiced Megatron who is the same guy who voiced Fred from Scooby Doo. Also great reaction video. Its always fun watching people enjoy the series I've been a fan of for the last 40 years (omg I'm so old lol) .
Pretty much everything in the movie was a toy you could buy, with the most notable exceptions being Unicron (a prototype was made, but it was never produced) and Arcee (rough designs exist, but likely she was axed because back then toy companies assumed that girl characters didn't sell in "boys toys" lines). As a kid experiencing this movie on VHS in the early 90s, around the time the original TF run was over, I was obsessed with tracking down the toys of these characters that I had missed out on. It's one of the reason it became a lifelong hobby for me!
Im from the UK because our U.S brethren were so traumatised they had to have a voiceover at the end to let us know Prime would return😅
That’s right!
I didn't see the movie when it came out- it was the 90s when I found it on VHS at a flea market. I still have it. My favorite part was when Galvatron was formed. I freaked out when I heard Leonard Nimoy's voice- I've always loved him
This was before the days of the internet but when the Dino-bots came out kids would pillage every store that carried them. I had to take a couple of them and hide them in different aisles of a supermarket so nobody else could buy them up before I could come back with my parents to get them. During Christmas parents would get into fights over them for their kids. It was cut throat.
In the UK they only released 4, Swoop never flew over here
Imagine being 7 years old and seeing Optimus die. I was devastated. My father even cried lol
I had most of the Constructicons as well as 3 of the Dinobots, Grimlock was always my favorite, 80s toys rule
Good morning. I apologize for only now watching this video two weeks after it was posted, but it appeared on my recommended feed.
I am glad it did because I really enjoyed watching it and I wanted to give my thanks to you for taking the time to give us your thoughts and reaction to a movie I grew up watching over and over again!
Thank you! 😄
Thank you!
As a kid from the era - the death of Optimus Prime was HUGE at the time. The outcry was so big that they changed the GI Joe movie which came out shortly after. Originally Duke - one of the main characters and original Joes - was supposed to die. After the Transformers movie caused such a huge backlash, they changed it to him "falling into a coma" and being miraculously healed off-screen so they didn't have to change the animation.
And yes, almost all of the Decepticons and Autobots in this movie were toys you could buy.
The entire purpose of the movie was essentially a commercial - killing off old characters to introduce new ones, so kids would need to buy new toys.
*_So refreshing to see you enjoying the movie for what it is and all the cool elements it includes, rather than endlessly complain about how confusing it is that it is not like the Bay-formers movies (which too many reactors do)!_*
*_Thank you Kacee: This was BY FAR the most pleasant reaction to the OG cartoon Transformers movie EVER!_*
*_I understand that you don’t want to watch the entire cartoon series, as it is many seasons long, however: If you are even just a little bit interested in seeing more, I HIGHLY recommend you watch (and possibly react to) the THREE-EPISODE OPENER of the series (Barely an hours long for all three episodes together) entitled “More than Meets the Eye”! That alone gives you a much better understanding of who the auto boys and deceptions are, how their war came to Earth and how the autobots came to know and cooperate with humans. It is SO WORTH IT! Plus, you get to see a lot more of the personalitie, functions and transformations that are a bit missing in the movie (only because the writers knew that the audience of the 80s had followed the cartoon and they were obligated to move the plot along in the movie)_*
I’m so glad you watched this. This has been my favourite movie since it came out and next week they are doing a theatrical release of it to celebrate 40 years of Transformers.
The Toy Galaxy history video, "If you are really a huge fan of Transformers, thank a Barbie". Lol
24:45 - They were blocky and lacked articulation. Most of them had arms that moved, but little else. However they did convert to alternate forms. Many had diecast metal parts around thier feet, which helped keep center of gravity low, allowing them to stand easier. Modern versions have much greater posability and articulation.
My favorite was the Generation 1 character 'Skids' - not the Bayverse version
You can see images and more info on various characters at websites like TFwiki
Marvel UK ran a weekly comic on Transformers ( 300 or so ) where they expanded on the US versions and added original stories.
My personal favourite series was on Deaths Head the bounty hunter, who was tasked by Rodimus Prime to track down Galvatron.
Deaths Head was a freelance peacekeeping agent yes?
Calling him a bounty hunter, hazardous to your health eh?
@@TheMacKosh haha. Excellent 👍
8:43 As an 8-year old who loved Optimus Prime from watching the show…I wasn’t prepared for it either. Nor were the millions of kids who saw this in the theaters back in the day.