Fun fact about the universal greeting: in like the comics or something (I forget where exactly, I only know random trivia about this franchise) is explained that it is a phrase that is universally regarded as so silly and so absurd, no matter what language you speak, that only good people will say it because evil people are too egotistical to debase themselves that much.
Knowing nothing about the Transformers universe, when i heard "universal greeting" i thought "smile?". Always worked for me.... But then again, i dont even know, if transformers can smile, so....
@@cheezemonkeyeater Well, yeah, i was thinking human cultures. And yes, even there are some exceptions to this, i heard. But that only fits the movie, doesnt it? In my experience though, if you meet someone who doesnt speak any language you do, a smile is the safest bet to start. Point being: If there is a real life equivalence of a universal greeting, that´s what i would come up with, to a point, were i´d be confident to put it as a clue in a crossword puzzle for "smile". Would also work for "Hi", maybe. I think, that one is pretty universal by now, too. But doesnt count for much, without that smile, going with it. Only that leads to spontanious dance celebrations by everyone attending with an approximate 6.9 % probability ("Hi" only coming in as distant 2nd at around 0.9% [citation needed]).
I don't know why I didn't expect you to be here And I don't know why I assumed that your audience and Hbomberguy's audience would overlap Veeeeery intriiiiiiguing
My 5 year old son said to me yesterday "I love Optimus and bumblebee, they're my favourite" and I was like "yeah, Optimus is my fave, his voice is like a really comforting dad" then I remembered the movie and how I never had a dad growing up. I remember crying for about a day straight after I saw the movie and not knowing why I was still so upset, just getting teased by my brother the entire time. Dads, go hug your sons.
Transformers was my favourite show ever. My Dad died when I was 9. Shortly after, my Mum recorded Transformers the Movie for me as a surprise. She wasn’t to know 😶😶
@@evam6961 I don't know that experience. I can't relate, but feel bad for you. My experience is being 32 and beginning to bald and people think I'm a 20-something suffering premature hair loss like Stephen Miller. I should've spent my attractive years being an extrovert and not gaming. xD
As someone who just got into transformers, the wiki has truly been a trip, I wasn't expecting to see the image of a characters alt form captioned with "Get in loser, we're going shopping."
Inb4 the human race makes contact in 300 years time with the single species in existence to whom 'bah weep granah weep nini bong' translates as 'a curse upon you and your seventh grandfather' and we get unicroned
@@carlbradley3175 honestly it's a good thing second hand nostalgia poisoned zoomers like myself aren't going to be in charge of first contact, because I would really want to try it out lol
The song was my anthem as a struggling autistic teen. I hated myself and thought I was an idiot, I thought I was stupid. Then I found weird al and I found dare to be stupid and it made me laugh and cry at the same time. It still can make me emotional. The idea to not tone your "weirdness" down, EMBRACE IT! CELEBRATE IT! DARE TO BE STUPID! The song helped me learn to love myself.
The hardest part of the movie to watch is the scene where the Decepticons keep pretending Unicron isn't coming so they can keep making money from fossil fuels.
This is a common theme in a lot of mecha animation in my experience. For instance, the Universal Century timeline of Gundam can be often described as "War is bad, but it is sometimes worthy to fight it to defeat a greater evil." which is a very refreshing take from a country that can be conservative at times. The climax of the last Gundam movie is so great at this. They were fighting a man literally compared to Hitler by his own father and has a WMD of untold proportions at his disposal, yet our heroes keep fighting. Things keep going wrong, but they press on. And they win. Things may not have turned out as well as they could have in the end as seen in the direct sequel Zeta Gundam, but It was a much preferable alternative to Gihren's "utopia."
One of my favourite lines of the movie is when the heroes fly back to cybertron and see Unicron in person for the first time, and Hot Rod goes "Any one of your stories this reminds you of?" Like, it's sort of a joke, like haha old Kup has long war stories, but in this scenario it becomes "Do you have any experience or idea what to do...?" But Kup, without looking at him, says "No kid..." and it cuts to Unicorn destroying their home, their entire planet and he continues; "Cause I've never seen anything like this before..." Keep in mind Transformers are capable of living literal millions of years. And Kup is very old by Transformers standards... and in those tens of millions of years he has no idea what to do or make of the terror that is Unicron... That still hits real hard no matter your age...
It’s also more poignant since throughout the film Kup keeps telling stories about what their current situations remind him of of his own war history and experience and yet for the first time he has nothing...
@@kaemonbonet4931 Superman vs the elite (or what's so funny about truth justice and the american way? for the comic) is the best superman story IMO. Acknowledges the modern world of cynicism but still offers hope as the better way forward.
@@kelvinyoung3655 it was the perfect response to Snyder and his flying monkeys (the world can be dark and cynical, Clark isn’t) and it was written twelve years before Man of Steel
My husband walked in on me watching this, having never seen an Hbomberguy video, and said, "He looks like if Jesse from Breaking Bad cried for like four days." I'm dying.
@@devilmaycrysarockingdontcome sí le sabe al POV, porque se refiere a que eres el niño y ves a tu papá (hbomberguy) haciendo una rabieta. TÚ no le sabes al POV
@No Longer Human Its all good. The Situationists were really interesting. Their main idea was that mass media under capitalism consisted of a million ways to distract the populus from the actual material conditions of their lives, which they called the Spectacle. They attempted to confront the Spectacle by using absurdist art and graffiti to create what they called Situations, which were meant to be bizarre moments that would cause people who came in contact with them to question the assumptions of their everyday lives. SI's other famous piece of graffiti was "Under the pavement, the beach!"
@@lorddunsparce9425 Check em out. Everything they published was as dense and pretentious as you would expect from French art students, but the things they did were pretty cool
This movie was one of my fixations as a kid, so hearing you break it apart, and concluding "Dare to be stupid" is an anthem of hope and good leadership. I really needed it.
"Ronald Reagan famously hated regulations almost as much as he hated South American civilians" I did not prepare myself for a take with that level of spice HOT DAMN
@@FrenchToast663 And then apologized and disowned that same colleague publicly soon after. Even if you don't accept it, don't just leave that detail out
Makes me angry how much I enjoy this quote and the underlying philosophy. It's been stuck in my head since the first time I saw this comment and it has almost made me use the word yolo in conversation because its poisoned my vocabulary by echoing around my brain like a screensaver that never quite hits the corner of the screen
@@Ezekiel_Allium That's how modern slang slowly works it's way into your lexicon- it pings around what brain cells it can like a DVD screensaver until it's been burned into your eyes- or in this case, your mouth.
this genuinely helped me with some of my existential anguish. specifically the part where that guy said "come out, we all must die" and then that other guy was like "no" and punches him.
The movie pretty explicitly signals that the Matrix symbolizes hope. When one of the characters says that the Matrix is gone, Kup responds "And with it, all hope." I don't dispute parents' shock and horror over all the graphic (robot) violence in the movie, but if you watch it to the end, "never give in to despair" is clearly the message, and that's a good message to give kids about to enter adolescence, don't you think?
Actually in that scene, Hot Rod says: "Not today, Galvatron" which is a much better line seeing as it underscores the inevitability of death, but the importance of not surrendering. Also, and I just thought of this now, it echoes Springer's line from the Battle of Autobot City earlier in the film: "I've got better things to do tonight than die." Now you've made me notice how people keep talking about death in the movie and how this ties into the theme. Thanks! :-)
@@ZTanMURReneRs I think the fact it's a toy commercial compounds it, says even though those days are over we should keep that optimism. Like now I can say Bah-Weep Graaaagnah Wheep Ni Ni Bong to you and you to me, but in the past and future we won't get the chance
The writers acted as Unicron/Galactus.... they weren't killing the characters because they were evil. They just killed them to make new toys. "Hungry" for new product. Ironic
It makes even more sense if the writers were forced by the producers to kill the characters to make new toys and they used the producers as inspiration for Galactus
Well sorry then, I didnt knew all that, i am speaking from the whole south american perspective with you know, dictator ship , crimes awaits humanity , thousans of people kidnaped tortured and killed, babies of pregnant women being sold to police or military officers, etc@Dangerz Own
@@sodacat8749 In the 80's, but there'd been decades of Disney & Looney Tunes to hammer in the fact that ya don't dispose of the audience's favourite lineup. Marketing just came first this time.
@@TSFboi the loney toons were created in a different era though, the company viewed the show as a toy commercial and little else, its why the earlier plots are super nonsensical till after the movie when they realized "whoops we've got something bigger"
looking back on this video again, the concept of "introducing children to Nietzschean morality by killing their idols" makes me fucking belly laugh for some reason
It actually makes me reflect on the sorta twisted way in which the religious right talks about innocence and children. Their narrative of protection is really one of maintaining ignorance.
I've actually gone out of my way to memorize "bah weep gragnah wheep ni ni bong," because I thought it was rather cool, and if someone else ever understands it they'd be someone I could relate with, so it actually translated itself into real life. I find that idea magical.
Don't come up with the greeting and expect it to work: create the universe in which you'd like to live, and the greeting will be a part of it by design!
Yeah I guess really it just works as a different way of making an obscure reference. Think my version of this accidently became a phrase from Oblivion, I had just started college and after my first day went to a bar with a classmate, got introduced to his mates and at one point this guy, who later became a very good friend for a few years, randomly (I really can't remember what the conversation was cause I was so nervous at the time) went "What is the colour of midnight" and without thinking I answered the nerdiest phrase "Sanguine my brother". Everyone else chuckled, by he was estatic and from that point we spent the whole rest of the day talking about video games, music, movies we were into etc.
I know you were paraphrasing when you said that Hotrod says "no" but I think it's important that he specifically says "not today!" He's acknowledging that he will die and eventually everything comes to an end, but also showing that just because he will die one day doesn't mean that his life doesn't matter. He isn't dead right now, and that's enough to keep going.
Optimus Prime roughly means "Best First" iirc. Makes sense since he was originally supposed to be the biggest, strongest, and wisest of all the Autobots. Kinda funny now that I think about it, every other Autobot has a simple modern earth name. Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Wheeljack, Ironhide, Brawn... and then we get Optimus Prime.
The TransFormers Animated cartoon (2007, not to be confused with all the OTHER animated TransFormers cartoons) had a good justification for this: they all had binary number sequences as identifiers, but for simplicity's sake they also had nicknames. Helps when communicating with other beings. "Bumblebee" came from the fact that he "bumbled" around the battlefield. And was bright yellow.
idk why they insisted on going through all that trouble with the alien species in Arrival (2016) when a simple, sincere and welcoming Universal Greeting would have sufficed
I vividly remember my first exposure to body horror being the 90s spider man cartoon. The one that was so censored spidey wasn't allowed to punch people
Star vs the foecces of evil has some effective horror. The time when the gozillalike villain goes around really wrecking shit, stealing souls, and she has an actually good written motivations. Or when the villain played by dexter getting under stars skin and actually winning somehow. Mixed in with fun lively bits with humor. And eclipsa who you can never tell what her intentions are because she is actually neither good or evil. Mirroring how people are never good or evil. Just sometimes abusing power, or abuse vistims themselves even. Not always the horror but that are deep thought provoking issues.
Or many anime , gurren laggan is super enthusiastic, and deals with loss and growing up at the same time. And the themes and musical themes are super catchy. Or inuyasha which is about dealing with the very tragic past and learning to trust in the future again. With a demon that drives of that drama that cant be killed till everyone works together in the end. Ands a guy overcoming his exgirlriend that still haunts him, literally and is always compared to the girl he travels around with. And rassism, it deals with rassism too.
I'm pretty deeply ensconced in the transformers fandom and I've consumed a lot of content involving some iteration of rodimus prime. I'm thankful that this video has gently reminded me that rodimus's name is fucking stupid because after seeing it played straight for so long, it almost started sounding reasonable.
I like to think it's part of the whole embrace the silliness, dare to be stupid attitude that frightened unicron and lead hot rod to becoming the leader. It IS fundamentally a stupid name! That guy said some silly words and gave sweets to some guy with guns for nipples, causing a dance party where Grimlock discovers homosexuality, which in turn leads to them KILLING DEATH... or at least making it inert
The exact end of Orson Welles’ film career is also the exact beginning of Weird Al’s presence in film (via Dare to be Stupid) and I just think that’s funny.
or to reduce it further hbomberguy: “its about nihilism” creators: “yeah we are nihilists” the consequences of their consumer art did not enter into their ethical or moral calculus, since capitalism is purely concerned with eternal feeding.
Actually if you listen to the writers commentary they were more interested in the story, hasbro wanted new toy lines so the writers killed off a lot of the old g1 characters as a result which actually did give the transformers movie some more tension, real life consequences and maturity.
The funny thing about meaning is that it isn't the sole domain of the author. It's almost like the author might as well be... dead, or something. I wonder if there's a theory about that?
@@The5lacker That theory is stupid because: 1. The producers of the product aren't actually the writers of the story. In fact, the producers wrangled the plot from the writers, as said directly above your comment. 2. The writers (and the producers) both had intentions for the final product. It turns out that the writers had more pull on the audience, as the show was interpreted _their way,_ not the way the producers wanted. 3. The message is created by the author, and remains regardless of the author's death. In that way, the message is actually writer immortality, not a dead thing to be reinterpreted as you please.
I have a friend who loves the Transformers show, he's a bit naive but very caring. He is just so hopeful and kind, I'm gonna tell him I appreciate him.
The transformer who talked really fast was Blurr, who was only there so that they could give a part to the Micro Machine guy, John Moschitta Jr., because for some reason audiences of the 80's LOVED how fast that guy could talk.
You gotta remember they didn't have the internet as it exists now, so people like him were seldom seen and were considered celebrities for their talents.
You made me remember it. In the nineties my post-communist country was being flooded with all the surplus pop culture the West has produced in the 80s. Transformers were one of those things. Your video woke up the memories of facing the utter sublime when watching the Unicron arc. I was terrified. Existentially. And only now, years later, can I understand what I felt then, as a child.
I'm really glad to hear Optimus transforms into Rodimus as it is the sensible Latin progression. Optimus meaning, y'know, 'best' and Rodimus meaning *checks notes* 'we corrode'
Although, to be fair, that is the best way to describe Rodimus as a leader. He slowly got more and more cowardly and lazy until he gave the Matrix back to Optimus (who had, of course, been brought back to life by then)
Wouldnt the only response from that to scream at your sibling or parent to get off the phone. Like would defeat the purpose if we immediate think the greeting isnt working
31:21 "and that is an actual philosophical statement about how to live in the world. to... insist, if not demand, that better things are possible. Even when it specifically doesn't seem possible at all." Felt like highlighting this quote.
lol same here, I'm 35. But I get feeling old at 26. I dealt with "feeling old" since I was around 20 (I guess because of depression?) and then, looking back, marveling of how young I was. So these days I don't give a shit. I'm old. Watch me still write "lol" at RUclips comments, ya dumb kids
@@grmpEqweer oh my god thank goodness I'm not the only one Little baby dude up there is having a mid life crisis and I thought I was just going to have to leave RUclips entirely
I'm 28 and only about 6 months ago found a stable full time job in a field at least adjacent to the one I went to school for. The first time I listened to this video was when it was on autoplay while I was working my previous dead-end job in the back of a pizza parlor. I still feel like I'm in an intermediate stage of transformation, but at least this one is more stable than the last. And hopefully, if I dare hard enough, when I watch and/or listen to this video again I will be even more stable. Thanks HBomb
When I clicked on this, I expected some jokes about Orson Welles finishing his career with voicing a planet in a kids film and was not prepared for "The Transformers The Movie" to end up being connected to Nietzsche and Lovecraft.
I specifically remember Transformers teaching me that "good guys can lose"... I remember it being so difficult to take that I had to ask my dad if it was true and he said it was. GOOD TIMES! Thanks for the great vid as usual Harris. One day I will be an honest and kind person and become a Patreon.
for one of my college classes we had to write an essay about a quality of leadership that we felt was important to us and how that specific quality was portrayed in media. i ended up writing about how naïvety is important for (some) leaders. i used mainly novels and short stories as my sources, but i did end up mentioning this video. i'd like to genuinely thank you for my a-
The first part of maturing as a person is realizing that there is darkness in the world. The next, equally important, part of maturing is learning to Hope again. It is in not letting the darkness _stop you_ .
@John Toas As someone who went through a massive pseudo-intellectual phase in high school and said the exact type of dumb shit that you are now, stating that metaphysical concepts don't physically exist isn't smart, it's just cringe-inducing. Everyone is aware that hope does not physically exist, no one needs you to tell them that is the the case. The same goes for saying "not an argument", especially when someone clearly wasn't making one in the first place.
Darkness *does* exist. Both physical and metaphysical. Have you ever turned off the kitchen light at night? Darkness. Have you ever looked inside your own heart? Examined the soul of morality that dwells in your consciousness? Darkness as well as Light lies within. (Light is also referred to as hope, optimism, courage etc.) Concepts are never tangible but they are achievable.
"Beyond good / beyond evil / beyond your wildest imagination" in the exact tone of voice of the announcer is the kind of thing I'd write as a joke about commercializing pop culture lol
I think they Literially added in the curse because they were trying to get a pg rating because they wanted to get the parents into the movie with their kids because a toy commercial only works if the person with the money to buy the toys sees the product that is being advertised as well. They wanted to push the toy units of new Wave of g1 since they knew the kids already likes the old wave. How’s the parent supposed to know he’s now supposed to buy their kid rodimus prime for Christmas instead of optimum if they don’t see the correct toy to buy themself.
The death of Optimus Prime kind of traumatised me. I couldn't watch Transformers, which had been probably my favourite programme up to that point, for a good long time after that. I would get really upset as soon as the opening titles started and either change the channel or leave the room. I guess you could say it was a transformative experience!!! HAHAHAHA Kill me.
Yourenot the only one who was traumatized But you'll be glad to know that Peter Cullen, the actor himself, has a favorite role in that of Optimus, because of fans like you (That wasnt supposed to be rude btw)
I still have that reaction to the Heidi anime, and only because of Peechee the tiny bird she rescues and who eventually leaves and that was fucking traumatizing for 5 year old me, like I still genuinely cannot breathe because of the grief that grips me just now thinking about it.
Hbomb neglects to mention Unicron is voiced by Orson Welles in Transformers: The Movie, and was his final performance before his death. Welles apparently enjoyed playing Unicron.
Orson Welles thought it was a disgrace that he had to voice a toy in a stupid cartoon. In a way, it was. But even thought he completely phoned it in, his performance still elevated the movie just a little bit.
@@Lurdiak Welles was always a bit of a prima donna. Maybe that's to be expected when everyone has been telling you you're a genius since childhood, but it cracks me up that the Pinky and the Brain guys based Brain off of him.
The reporting I have heard is to the contrary. But Wells being so disinterested and aloof actually sold Unicron even more as this... Entity. Like even more than some usual Transformer, he was... He just *WAS* and didn’t care about the scurrying little bugs on the planets he ate any more than we Humans care about ants while walking down the street
@@Lurdiak That's the thing; Welles phoning it in helped DEFINE Unicron's personality because a deep imposing voice that couldn't care less about what's set before him is how a god-like entity that destroys planets out of boredom and hunger should sound.
new viewer who is binging the backlog after having loved the most recent video (about the oof sound) just here to say wow and how lovely to always be able to find new people who are all experiencing time and age and nostalgia in different ways and that we can all share that with each other. in the unlikely even that anyone ever sees this comment: long distance high five to you, bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong.
I've been grieving. I had to put my kitty, Littleman, to rest. It's been the worst days of my life. I feel regrets, anger, sorrow and hollow. I can't believe he's gone. I keep torturing myself looking at photos of him and holding his paw prints. I miss him so much. This video helped center some of my thoughts. Thank you, Harris.
Listening to this as i pack my house up to move across country into the unknown. Your final section about growing and changing hits. Thank you and positive vibes. Thanks.
"I miss having so much future ahead of me...but the present is cool too" that hit me in the heart. I am immersed in that feeling since I turned 29. I feel like we all would love to relive the young past with the knowledge we have acquired till now. And I hope its all just a trip that we all make, trying to reach a point where we understand that its all a "now" and how we can live that "now" in the most beautifull way we can at that moment. If you get there later in life its not exactly time lost but time spent trying to understand. Thank you for your video essays man, I really enjoy your work!
I’m just in awe to realize that I wasn’t the only one that felt like “I am so embarrassed and hope no one is watching me watch this” when I watched kid shows
i had this back when i was really into the transformers comics (well. just mtmte really but i was REALLY into it) like every time someone would be like "what are you reading these days" i'd either say nothing or make shit up because i didn't want to be like "i'm reading a comic book about toy robot cars but i swear it's actually really good"
I had this during a particularly bad food metaphor during Pokemon Black and White. Didn't help that it had been translated from Japanese to English to Danish
Ah, yes, the five horsemen of the "has a really cool narrative, themes and ideas but is ruined by the poor public reputation of its medium" Anime, Fan Fiction, Comics, Videogames and Cartoons
As an adult I'd expect a bit more profesionalism and a realistic grasp of the position you are submiting a request for... its DINOBOT not ""Transformer dinosaur"... phhh Good luck all the same :)
@@tymiller2903 If it doesn't make any sense that'd be because the subject verb wheep precedes ni ni which is a misplaced modifier for the pronoun, which to make matters worse is also missing an apostrophe. An obvious but common mistake.
Optimus Prime was the 80s generation's version of Luke Skywalker. He was the center of moral certitude, the indomitable leader who may be set back, sure, possibly even fail to an extent but he was always there at the denouement, validating the viewers' faith: that there was never an unwinnable scenario. Watching the core crowd of 1st gen Autobots and Decepticons get absolutely tossed aside in the first 10min was an absolute parfait of existential considerations, agreed, up to and including to the ol' "War. Huh. What is it good for?"
I will be 30 in fall and I'd been feeling 19 up to, yeah, 26. then 27-29 I felt like there's nothing left for me but to die, but now as I'm closing in on 30 I feel like I'm finally starting to breathe.
Holy shit, only you could make a 45 min video about a transformers movie that amazingly deep and actually pretty uplifting. This actually really helped me right now, so thank you for doing what you do.
This video was fine and all, but I gotta recommend Moviebob's essay on the movie. It really is concise and goes in depth on why a lot of people love that movie.
Yep, Moviebob's video about the transformers movie is the absolute best video about that movie that exists on RUclips. His whole series of videos called "really that good" is outstanding. If you like hbomberguy you'll love moviebob
This video was really interesting not just because of the points you elaborated on, but because it goes to show how two people can enjoy the same thing for vastly different reasons. I too rewatched this movie a couple months ago and had the time of my life while chugging on beers because of the nonsensical plot, the absolutely amazing soundtrack by Vince DiCola, the colorful and sometimes almost surreal visuals, the one liners you hated, and just the pure bombastic energy it has, coupled with the surprisingly serious tone the deaths have on it. I loved every single part of it and spent the next week listening to the soundtrack on repeat. I unironically think it's a great movie because it offers exactly what you'd want from it plus more, but I would've NEVER even thought about the philosophical ideas you got from it while watching it. Art really is an amazing thing, giving us all a window into ourselves through the lens of other people's creativity. That alone makes every single existential and nihilistic horror worth the price of being alive.
Every now and again I rewatch this, even though I've never really cared for Transformers or any of these violent anglophone cartoons in my youth. Your experience of revisiting an old childhood memory and finding more than mere nostalgic value, but new (and uplifting) meaning from it speaks a lot to me. Not just because of how earnest and endearing you are, but because I know that sometimes our inner existentialist dread can be mitigated by the most seemingly shallow things. Thank you.
I've never seen the movie, but I nearly choked when Mr. hydrogen bomb here revealed that "Dare To Be Stupid" was actually playing over that scene, and he wasn't just piping it in himself.
45:53 , though no certainty about extra layers, good luck out there in the "just kidding" battlefields soldier. Also, I wish daddy hbomb would entrap me~ UwU
i was never a transformers fan growing up, but i only very recently got into the franchise as an adult through the idw comics (i can't recommend the more than meets the eye comics enough, genuinely very well-written with some of the most engaged i've ever been in fictional characters) - and watching this video as a very new, kind of sheltered adult who's afraid of growing up... was a really nice experience, showing that those anxieties around growing up are real no matter what age you are, that even when you're older you can look back on these silly toy commercial robots and feel some hope in the scary world. sorry for using your midlife crisis to make me feel better about myself. wonderful video, wonderful themes and wonderfully worded, i was hugging my hot rod figure for most of it :'D
I know Moviebob already did like an hour long video on the movie in his RTG series. I haven't seen it but he always go into depth about the cultural context and impact of the films so it may already be somewhat covered.
I wish the people making Star Trek would realize this is a message the franchise needs. Too many people in both the audience and the production team seem to think that pessimism is the only valid response to the idealism of the Federation, and it's choking everything about it. Everyone is projecting their despair in the present onto the futurism of sci-fi, when right now what we need most is the inspiration from someone who dares to say: "Demand the impossible; believe that it can be better even if it doesn't seem that way."
The entire point of Star Trek's future setting is the realization of humankind's potential for greatness. The Federation as an idealistic system is idealistic, but that is kind of the point. There is a reason most of Trek is about exploring other people's cultures.
Beyond was much better than people gave it credit for, in large part because it was allowed to be genuinely optimistic about what the Federation way of life represented, and contrasted that with the villain's militaristic pessimism. Also because Kirk finally seemed like he knew how to do his damn job.
@@gordongraham2064 That... is a fair interpretation that I never really considered before. It is still not enough to save the newer movies in my eyes, but that is actually a really good point.
Bro the "we didn't expect this kind of response, we just thought we were killing and old product line and introducing a new one" was savage as fuck, in all the context you've put together up to that part it sounds weird as fuck, like it's a metaphor for something
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
Fun fact about the universal greeting: in like the comics or something (I forget where exactly, I only know random trivia about this franchise) is explained that it is a phrase that is universally regarded as so silly and so absurd, no matter what language you speak, that only good people will say it because evil people are too egotistical to debase themselves that much.
This is genius.
This comment gives me joy. It is the reading equivalent of eating ice cream.
Knowing nothing about the Transformers universe, when i heard "universal greeting" i thought "smile?". Always worked for me.... But then again, i dont even know, if transformers can smile, so....
@@mrscruffy8045 Smiles aren't universal, though. With chimps, for example, smiling is a threat.
@@cheezemonkeyeater Well, yeah, i was thinking human cultures. And yes, even there are some exceptions to this, i heard. But that only fits the movie, doesnt it? In my experience though, if you meet someone who doesnt speak any language you do, a smile is the safest bet to start. Point being: If there is a real life equivalence of a universal greeting, that´s what i would come up with, to a point, were i´d be confident to put it as a clue in a crossword puzzle for "smile". Would also work for "Hi", maybe. I think, that one is pretty universal by now, too. But doesnt count for much, without that smile, going with it. Only that leads to spontanious dance celebrations by everyone attending with an approximate 6.9 % probability ("Hi" only coming in as distant 2nd at around 0.9% [citation needed]).
Reporting for infringement
But he doesn’t have a fringe.....
Clym Dodds is that a balding joke because if so you can’t do him that dirty lol
I don't know why I didn't expect you to be here
And I don't know why I assumed that your audience and Hbomberguy's audience would overlap
Veeeeery intriiiiiiguing
@@disastermidi1990 It was a 2 for 1, I simply couldn't resist. Clym: now celebrating 20 years of exceptionally poor impulse control online... Woo!
_What_ are you doing to
*The Invisible Man* in your p4p?
My friend once said to me, about Transformers, 'what if your Hot Wheels had Greek mythology?'
That is the greatest thing I have ever read written about transformers.
This comment deserves more love ❤
Either you or your friend are quoting a tumblr post.
@@hopeiswherethehomeis9606 probably my friend quoting a tumblr post. Because we both use it lmao.
It basically has Greek Mythology, though. The lore goes hard
My 5 year old son said to me yesterday "I love Optimus and bumblebee, they're my favourite" and I was like "yeah, Optimus is my fave, his voice is like a really comforting dad" then I remembered the movie and how I never had a dad growing up. I remember crying for about a day straight after I saw the movie and not knowing why I was still so upset, just getting teased by my brother the entire time.
Dads, go hug your sons.
I think im in the same boat. I went through 3 dads, and dont even remember the first 2
Robot dad 🥺
He knows. Optimus's actor knows he was a paternal figure for all Milennials.
IM NOT CRYING YOURE CRYING! SHUT UP NERD!
Transformers was my favourite show ever. My Dad died when I was 9. Shortly after, my Mum recorded Transformers the Movie for me as a surprise.
She wasn’t to know 😶😶
Also, "I felt like I was 19 until I was 26, and now I feel like an old person" is ALARMINGLY accurate to my experience of life
So accurate to me it kind of hurt my soul a little.
I'm 24 but without make up ppl still think i'm 17 or 18 so it's hard for me to take myself seriously or like "grown up"
@@evam6961 I don't know that experience. I can't relate, but feel bad for you.
My experience is being 32 and beginning to bald and people think I'm a 20-something suffering premature hair loss like Stephen Miller.
I should've spent my attractive years being an extrovert and not gaming. xD
@eva m & Cani Terrae: 36 here. epoxy both your houses.
Around age 25 your hormones settle, so your teenager years are actually over then. So this feeling makes a lot sense
So the rhyming Autobot is Wheelie and their Transformers-wiki page is even more infuriating because IT IS ALSO ENTIRELY IN RHYME.
As someone who just got into transformers, the wiki has truly been a trip, I wasn't expecting to see the image of a characters alt form captioned with "Get in loser, we're going shopping."
God bless each and every person who works on that wiki.
@@someoneoutthere3232 which one?
Thanks, man. I appreciate the fix.
You gotta admire the commitment.
fun fact! the reason the universal greeting is as silly as "bah weep granah weep nini bong" is because no one in the universe can find it threatening.
Inb4 the human race makes contact in 300 years time with the single species in existence to whom 'bah weep granah weep nini bong' translates as 'a curse upon you and your seventh grandfather' and we get unicroned
Namaste!
@@carlbradley3175 honestly it's a good thing second hand nostalgia poisoned zoomers like myself aren't going to be in charge of first contact, because I would really want to try it out lol
@@Ezekiel_Allium Great, now I can describe myself as a second hand nostalgia poisoned zoomer.
@@llamathenerd1672 glad to be of service lmao
Dare to be stupid is punkrock because believing in the good in people is radical as hell even when you're proven wrong repeatedly
the establishment want you to stop trying when proven wrong.
...wait no nevermind this is conspo-speak
Merrick Deville theme song right there, and that’s a compliment to both.
yuh, punk is love without shame
Madness
The song was my anthem as a struggling autistic teen. I hated myself and thought I was an idiot, I thought I was stupid. Then I found weird al and I found dare to be stupid and it made me laugh and cry at the same time. It still can make me emotional. The idea to not tone your "weirdness" down, EMBRACE IT! CELEBRATE IT! DARE TO BE STUPID! The song helped me learn to love myself.
The hardest part of the movie to watch is the scene where the Decepticons keep pretending Unicron isn't coming so they can keep making money from fossil fuels.
inb4 video essay about how Mitch McConnel is Skeletor
@@LimeyLassen Gneeeeeh! Come, Beastman! *Ted Cruz waddles across the hall*
Hahahaha
I literally burst out laughing at this. Bravo.
But at least the miners are in control of the business.
I feel like the message of “always trying to do the right thing on the off chance it works out” is something we need more of in media.
Agreed. It's why I love NieR: Automata so much (and I find it very funny that game shares themes with the first Transformers movie)
Yee! Trigun's another cool one about that
Exactly
This is a common theme in a lot of mecha animation in my experience. For instance, the Universal Century timeline of Gundam can be often described as "War is bad, but it is sometimes worthy to fight it to defeat a greater evil." which is a very refreshing take from a country that can be conservative at times.
The climax of the last Gundam movie is so great at this. They were fighting a man literally compared to Hitler by his own father and has a WMD of untold proportions at his disposal, yet our heroes keep fighting. Things keep going wrong, but they press on.
And they win. Things may not have turned out as well as they could have in the end as seen in the direct sequel Zeta Gundam, but It was a much preferable alternative to Gihren's "utopia."
That kind of feels like what Raya and the Last Dragon was trying to get at, but their execution was pretty bad.
One of my favourite lines of the movie is when the heroes fly back to cybertron and see Unicron in person for the first time, and Hot Rod goes "Any one of your stories this reminds you of?" Like, it's sort of a joke, like haha old Kup has long war stories, but in this scenario it becomes "Do you have any experience or idea what to do...?"
But Kup, without looking at him, says "No kid..." and it cuts to Unicorn destroying their home, their entire planet and he continues; "Cause I've never seen anything like this before..."
Keep in mind Transformers are capable of living literal millions of years. And Kup is very old by Transformers standards... and in those tens of millions of years he has no idea what to do or make of the terror that is Unicron...
That still hits real hard no matter your age...
It’s also more poignant since throughout the film Kup keeps telling stories about what their current situations remind him of of his own war history and experience and yet for the first time he has nothing...
lol ........ unicorn
No matter how hard I try my brain sees unicorn 🦄
war.... has changed....
Unrelated: you're a cute pony
When life gives you a trolley problem, you save everyone anyway.
That's why I love superman.
@@kaemonbonet4931 Superman vs the elite (or what's so funny about truth justice and the american way? for the comic) is the best superman story IMO. Acknowledges the modern world of cynicism but still offers hope as the better way forward.
Thesis of spiderverse babey!
@@kelvinyoung3655 it was the perfect response to Snyder and his flying monkeys (the world can be dark and cynical, Clark isn’t) and it was written twelve years before Man of Steel
I know you posted this 3 years ago, but thanks. This really touched me, and I'm gonna start using it.
My husband walked in on me watching this, having never seen an Hbomberguy video, and said, "He looks like if Jesse from Breaking Bad cried for like four days." I'm dying.
Nah Hbomb is the Saxophone player from Men AT Work.
that's just jesse from breaking bad
It's because of the crushing white guilt he carries with him
wait.....that is exactly what he looks like....
Bailey Xavier wow you must be fun at party’s huh
POV: you are a 6 year old who just finished watching transformers with his dad and he starts going on a rant
No le sabes al POV 😔
cool pfp.
i dunno what it is but this fire man looks cool
@@devilmaycrysarockingdontcome sí le sabe al POV, porque se refiere a que eres el niño y ves a tu papá (hbomberguy) haciendo una rabieta. TÚ no le sabes al POV
Reminds me of when my dad told my mom that the movie Robots was a scathing criticism of modern capitalism
@@deathmetalalchemist2731 That movie's existence is an argument against capitalism
"be realistic: demand the impossible" - communist graffitti, in france 1968. also optimus prime
Well, Situationist graffiti. They kind of straddled the gap between Marxists and anarchists.
@No Longer Human Its all good. The Situationists were really interesting. Their main idea was that mass media under capitalism consisted of a million ways to distract the populus from the actual material conditions of their lives, which they called the Spectacle. They attempted to confront the Spectacle by using absurdist art and graffiti to create what they called Situations, which were meant to be bizarre moments that would cause people who came in contact with them to question the assumptions of their everyday lives. SI's other famous piece of graffiti was "Under the pavement, the beach!"
There was a tank transformer right?
@@stephenwilliams163 i’ll have to read into this more, I’m intrigued
@@lorddunsparce9425 Check em out. Everything they published was as dense and pretentious as you would expect from French art students, but the things they did were pretty cool
This movie was one of my fixations as a kid, so hearing you break it apart, and concluding "Dare to be stupid" is an anthem of hope and good leadership. I really needed it.
"Ronald Reagan famously hated regulations almost as much as he hated South American civilians"
I did not prepare myself for a take with that level of spice HOT DAMN
and Hbomberguy was caught gaslighting a rape survivor when she revealed that one of Hbomberguy's colleagues molested her.
@@FrenchToast663 who? And when?
@@FrenchToast663 And then apologized and disowned that same colleague publicly soon after. Even if you don't accept it, don't just leave that detail out
@@FrenchToast663 what are you referring too??
@@FrenchToast663 the way he dressed in the video it might as well be him who did it lol
So what you're saying is, the core question of the movie is:
"Do you interpret YOLO as a warning or a call to action?" :D
Occam Aldanis I mean right
I hate you for being right.
I'm making this my life motto
Makes me angry how much I enjoy this quote and the underlying philosophy. It's been stuck in my head since the first time I saw this comment and it has almost made me use the word yolo in conversation because its poisoned my vocabulary by echoing around my brain like a screensaver that never quite hits the corner of the screen
@@Ezekiel_Allium That's how modern slang slowly works it's way into your lexicon- it pings around what brain cells it can like a DVD screensaver until it's been burned into your eyes- or in this case, your mouth.
this genuinely helped me with some of my existential anguish.
specifically the part where that guy said "come out, we all must die" and then that other guy was like "no" and punches him.
Reminds me of IASIP's "Everybody's dying bitch, let's get you some fruit"
The movie pretty explicitly signals that the Matrix symbolizes hope. When one of the characters says that the Matrix is gone, Kup responds "And with it, all hope."
I don't dispute parents' shock and horror over all the graphic (robot) violence in the movie, but if you watch it to the end, "never give in to despair" is clearly the message, and that's a good message to give kids about to enter adolescence, don't you think?
Actually in that scene, Hot Rod says: "Not today, Galvatron" which is a much better line seeing as it underscores the inevitability of death, but the importance of not surrendering. Also, and I just thought of this now, it echoes Springer's line from the Battle of Autobot City earlier in the film: "I've got better things to do tonight than die." Now you've made me notice how people keep talking about death in the movie and how this ties into the theme. Thanks! :-)
Rage against the dying of the light.
Except it's a toy commercial.
@@ZTanMURReneRs I think the fact it's a toy commercial compounds it, says even though those days are over we should keep that optimism.
Like now I can say Bah-Weep Graaaagnah Wheep Ni Ni Bong to you and you to me, but in the past and future we won't get the chance
Holy cow that “holy shit what do we do now?!” Is honestly really horrifying to hear in a kid’s movie
The answer was apparently die
In fairness, it was "oh shit," not "holy shit." :D
Also it literally exists only to increase the rating from G to PG.
It was rated G though@@JetstreamGW
The writers acted as Unicron/Galactus.... they weren't killing the characters because they were evil. They just killed them to make new toys. "Hungry" for new product. Ironic
This movie is more meta than I ever realized as a child.
i expected hbomb to take this perspective tbh
It makes even more sense if the writers were forced by the producers to kill the characters to make new toys and they used the producers as inspiration for Galactus
That's some meta level cosmic horror.
I kept expecting him to use that as a way to pivot into criticizing capitalism!
"He hated regulation almost as much as he hated South American civilians."
Well played, my good man. Well played.
@@snow2546 Boi you dont know what you are talking bout
*cries in Argentinian*
Well sorry then, I didnt knew all that, i am speaking from the whole south american perspective with you know, dictator ship , crimes awaits humanity , thousans of people kidnaped tortured and killed, babies of pregnant women being sold to police or military officers, etc@Dangerz Own
Not to mention Central American.
I an so happy to hear this. It's nice to have it acknowledged
*is an actual television show creator*
"Shit I didn't know people get attached to characters"
Especially children lol
keep in mind, this was relatively new, older childrens programming would just end without a word and a new one would take its place.
@@sodacat8749 In the 80's, but there'd been decades of Disney & Looney Tunes to hammer in the fact that ya don't dispose of the audience's favourite lineup. Marketing just came first this time.
@@TSFboi the loney toons were created in a different era though, the company viewed the show as a toy commercial and little else, its why the earlier plots are super nonsensical till after the movie when they realized "whoops we've got something bigger"
"So we murdered Bambi's mom because she was just a stupid fucking deer, we never expected children to react that way"
looking back on this video again, the concept of "introducing children to Nietzschean morality by killing their idols" makes me fucking belly laugh for some reason
It actually makes me reflect on the sorta twisted way in which the religious right talks about innocence and children. Their narrative of protection is really one of maintaining ignorance.
“Fuck them kids”
-Writers of The Transformers: The Movie
@@Tyveris Rent free
@@LordVader1094 Rent free what?
@@LordVader1094Yeah when y'all stop being a danger.
I've actually gone out of my way to memorize "bah weep gragnah wheep ni ni bong," because I thought it was rather cool, and if someone else ever understands it they'd be someone I could relate with, so it actually translated itself into real life. I find that idea magical.
Don't come up with the greeting and expect it to work: create the universe in which you'd like to live, and the greeting will be a part of it by design!
Klaatu baraada niktu
this is the first time i actually found out how to say it right 😂 i’ve been saying “Bah Wee Granah wee midibong”
Yeah I guess really it just works as a different way of making an obscure reference.
Think my version of this accidently became a phrase from Oblivion, I had just started college and after my first day went to a bar with a classmate, got introduced to his mates and at one point this guy, who later became a very good friend for a few years, randomly (I really can't remember what the conversation was cause I was so nervous at the time) went "What is the colour of midnight" and without thinking I answered the nerdiest phrase "Sanguine my brother". Everyone else chuckled, by he was estatic and from that point we spent the whole rest of the day talking about video games, music, movies we were into etc.
I had a bar guest who was a kid when the movie came out and I always greeted him with the universal greeting. Always great to see that guy smile
The real april fools was the friends we made along the way
I kind of expected Lindsay Ellis to just have been sitting next to you the whole time, just off screen, revealed by a slow pan.
bahahahahaha. I'm also surprised she hasn't left a comment
@@Trepanee ... Oh geez.
What if after this video they aren't friends anymore?
Hahhaa omg that would have been beautiful! but probably kinda expensive for a gag.
That would have been great. It's a shame it didn't happen :/
Perhaps at a dinner table after eating the whole plate
I know you were paraphrasing when you said that Hotrod says "no" but I think it's important that he specifically says "not today!"
He's acknowledging that he will die and eventually everything comes to an end, but also showing that just because he will die one day doesn't mean that his life doesn't matter. He isn't dead right now, and that's enough to keep going.
This was _before_ Syrio Forel from ASOIAF
"What do we say to the god of death?"
_"Not_ today!"
i just realized how close "optimus" is to "optimist"
I figured it was derived from Optimal, but given the idea behind the Autobots that might actually be the source
Y'all know both of these words come from the latin word "optimus" right?
Optimus Prime roughly means "Best First" iirc.
Makes sense since he was originally supposed to be the biggest, strongest, and wisest of all the Autobots.
Kinda funny now that I think about it, every other Autobot has a simple modern earth name. Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Wheeljack, Ironhide, Brawn... and then we get Optimus Prime.
The TransFormers Animated cartoon (2007, not to be confused with all the OTHER animated TransFormers cartoons) had a good justification for this: they all had binary number sequences as identifiers, but for simplicity's sake they also had nicknames. Helps when communicating with other beings. "Bumblebee" came from the fact that he "bumbled" around the battlefield. And was bright yellow.
Man I wish my midlife crisis was only 45 minutes.
And people in hell wish for ice water.
lmao love that stressed out Malory is your pic
How’s that for bread and roses?
Oh that's just his Transformers mid-life crisis. You should get a load of his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mid-life crisis
Is he planning on dying at 52?
idk why they insisted on going through all that trouble with the alien species in Arrival (2016) when a simple, sincere and welcoming Universal Greeting would have sufficed
Indeed.
The universal greetiing is amazing, I love every part of it and what it represents.
Ba weep gra na weep nini bong
@@asrieldreemurr1988 Ba weep gra na weep nini bong?
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man”
Bill Maher: "Comic Books are for kids"
Hbomberguy: "You guys remember how a bunch of kids cartoons and comics had explicit cosmic horror?"
I vividly remember my first exposure to body horror being the 90s spider man cartoon. The one that was so censored spidey wasn't allowed to punch people
#billmaheraintshitbutalittlebitch
Oh god, if only these white people knew what Japan was cranking out at the time period... *coughIDEONcough*
Star vs the foecces of evil has some effective horror. The time when the gozillalike villain goes around really wrecking shit, stealing souls, and she has an actually good written motivations. Or when the villain played by dexter getting under stars skin and actually winning somehow. Mixed in with fun lively bits with humor. And eclipsa who you can never tell what her intentions are because she is actually neither good or evil. Mirroring how people are never good or evil. Just sometimes abusing power, or abuse vistims themselves even. Not always the horror but that are deep thought provoking issues.
Or many anime , gurren laggan is super enthusiastic, and deals with loss and growing up at the same time. And the themes and musical themes are super catchy.
Or inuyasha which is about dealing with the very tragic past and learning to trust in the future again. With a demon that drives of that drama that cant be killed till everyone works together in the end. Ands a guy overcoming his exgirlriend that still haunts him, literally and is always compared to the girl he travels around with. And rassism, it deals with rassism too.
the real april fools prank is this godawful premiere feature.
GammaWALLE it’s cruel to do
I have my pants down wtf am i supposed to do now
@@RileyDia do what we all do, whack off to the sherlock video
The true patricians do April Fools jokes on the 2nd.
Maybe the Premiere feature helps with getting the video out in 1080p until most videos in which they take some time to get there
"In a way, I don't think they HAD created such an icon UNTIL they killed him."
oh okay so basically optimus prime is jesus
Optimus loves me this I know, for the wiki tells me so
Like their god is primus so like...... prime.... yknow
Optimus Prime died for your sins.
Optimus Prime is like Jesus, if Jesus had to make hard decisions and genuinely cared about individual people. He's the Jesus man's Jesus.
The IDW comics really push the Prime is Jesus thing
HB: "A lot of things have happened over the last few years"
* Checks the date of the video: 2019 *
Me: "Oh, you poor sod..."
Seeing pre-pandemic, and even content from the very start of the pandemic... it gives me a very "oh, good luck" thought in my head yknow?
Lol
"The possible has been tried and failed. Now it's time to try the impossible." - Sun Ra and also Hot Rod
I'm pretty deeply ensconced in the transformers fandom and I've consumed a lot of content involving some iteration of rodimus prime. I'm thankful that this video has gently reminded me that rodimus's name is fucking stupid because after seeing it played straight for so long, it almost started sounding reasonable.
I blame the fact that Peter Cullen was the first person to say it. That man can make ANYTHING sound glorious.
@@Pineappolis Accurate.
hey we could have gotten hotimus prime
I like to think it's part of the whole embrace the silliness, dare to be stupid attitude that frightened unicron and lead hot rod to becoming the leader. It IS fundamentally a stupid name! That guy said some silly words and gave sweets to some guy with guns for nipples, causing a dance party where Grimlock discovers homosexuality, which in turn leads to them KILLING DEATH... or at least making it inert
@@asrieldreemurr1988sounds like a total babe 😂
im loving this trend of april fools vids just being really insightful essays on silly topics
The exact end of Orson Welles’ film career is also the exact beginning of Weird Al’s presence in film (via Dare to be Stupid) and I just think that’s funny.
"What's the philosophy of the Transformers movie?"
hbomberguy: * 45 minute diatribe *
The creators: "Buy our toys"
or to reduce it further
hbomberguy: “its about nihilism”
creators: “yeah we are nihilists”
the consequences of their consumer art did not enter into their ethical or moral calculus, since capitalism is purely concerned with eternal feeding.
@@morganstern0
_Burrrrn._ XD
Actually if you listen to the writers commentary they were more interested in the story, hasbro wanted new toy lines so the writers killed off a lot of the old g1 characters as a result
which actually did give the transformers movie some more tension, real life consequences and maturity.
The funny thing about meaning is that it isn't the sole domain of the author. It's almost like the author might as well be... dead, or something. I wonder if there's a theory about that?
@@The5lacker
That theory is stupid because:
1. The producers of the product aren't actually the writers of the story. In fact, the producers wrangled the plot from the writers, as said directly above your comment.
2. The writers (and the producers) both had intentions for the final product. It turns out that the writers had more pull on the audience, as the show was interpreted _their way,_ not the way the producers wanted.
3. The message is created by the author, and remains regardless of the author's death. In that way, the message is actually writer immortality, not a dead thing to be reinterpreted as you please.
I have a friend who loves the Transformers show, he's a bit naive but very caring. He is just so hopeful and kind, I'm gonna tell him I appreciate him.
We all need that sometimes.
I think he’d really appreciate that, your friend is truly a man of culture
this is the greatest youtube comment of all time
"He's not actually good at making the high concept decisions that a leader should make"
*cuts to Luigi*
@Masaka Jenosito Better that than a narrow minded psycho.
The transformer who talked really fast was Blurr, who was only there so that they could give a part to the Micro Machine guy, John Moschitta Jr., because for some reason audiences of the 80's LOVED how fast that guy could talk.
You gotta remember they didn't have the internet as it exists now, so people like him were seldom seen and were considered celebrities for their talents.
@RileyWritey Nah it's cause they miss cocaine
I've never watched the Transformers movie, so hearing that guy say "Oh, shit! What're we gonna do now?" was incredibly jarring!
When I was a kid, I remember going to see this movie in the theater. There was a collective gasp from the audience when Spike said "oh shit."
The warping of Homer Simpsons face on the shirt is horrific
Oh god I didn't notice that
Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god
Kinda looks like one of Jonen Vasquez's smiley faces
You made me remember it. In the nineties my post-communist country was being flooded with all the surplus pop culture the West has produced in the 80s. Transformers were one of those things. Your video woke up the memories of facing the utter sublime when watching the Unicron arc. I was terrified. Existentially. And only now, years later, can I understand what I felt then, as a child.
The real April Fools joke is the friends we made along the way.
Andy McCoolname Ja’am
@@fr0ggi3princ3 It's spelled "Ja'am" how dare you :P
slendy9600 oh no! I feel like a sham! :((
@@fr0ggi3princ3 In your defense, I was binging Monster Factory for the thousandth time recently so my memory is fresh XD
@@fr0ggi3princ3 You mean you feel like a sha'am?
I'm really glad to hear Optimus transforms into Rodimus as it is the sensible Latin progression. Optimus meaning, y'know, 'best' and Rodimus meaning *checks notes*
'we corrode'
A new layer to the nihilism of everything falling apart. Nice.
Saturnus Devorans creepy profile pic
Alternatively: "We nibble".
The movie is about how life sucks and the only relief is snacks.
Although, to be fair, that is the best way to describe Rodimus as a leader. He slowly got more and more cowardly and lazy until he gave the Matrix back to Optimus (who had, of course, been brought back to life by then)
Oh damn I thought they only called him that cos he was Hot *Rod.*
The universal greeting should have been dial-up sounds.
Just audible binary.
Fuck, that's genius
It was too early for that joke to land. Not that there wasn't Internet, but like "mobile phones" were still hardwired into cars. ;-)
@@jessielefey I just googled it and it was only commercially available from 1992 onwards. Crap. I thought it was way older.
Wouldnt the only response from that to scream at your sibling or parent to get off the phone.
Like would defeat the purpose if we immediate think the greeting isnt working
Praise the omnissiah!
31:21 "and that is an actual philosophical statement about how to live in the world.
to... insist, if not demand, that better things are possible.
Even when it specifically doesn't seem possible at all."
Felt like highlighting this quote.
"I'm 26 and I feel old"
Me at 34: "Oh shit"
I'm too old to wear short sleeve shirts over long sleeve shirts, but too young to shake my fist at kids in the street.
lol same here, I'm 35. But I get feeling old at 26. I dealt with "feeling old" since I was around 20 (I guess because of depression?) and then, looking back, marveling of how young I was. So these days I don't give a shit. I'm old. Watch me still write "lol" at RUclips comments, ya dumb kids
Me at 27 : [Nervous Laughter]
Me at 20:
"THERE'S NOBODY LEFT! I'M ALL ALONE!"
Me at 52: It seems very quiet out here!
The childhood Nuzlocke challenge: when your toy dies, burial ritual time.
Didnt most people do that with the green army men?
You must buy the first toy you encounter in any store, and you can't get anything else in that store. Unless it's like really shiny then just get it.
Warhammer 40k Nuzlocke???
@@rimjobsteve3264 I'm surprised its not a option, like ironclad for Xcom games.
As a south american civilian i'm happy you dunked on Reagan.
Same
I will dunk on Reagan all day every day.
I'll dunk on Reagan if you vote for me, Snowskeeper, as Canadian prime minister
I am a child of the 70's, I think Reagan should be dug up and staked. Zombie Reagan walks the land.
@@grmpEqweer oh my god thank goodness I'm not the only one
Little baby dude up there is having a mid life crisis and I thought I was just going to have to leave RUclips entirely
"Partly metal, partly real" cannot be an actual line in a song written by a human being
it's better in Spanish, trust
The bedroom scene is more impressive once you remember he paid three thousands of pounds for that Sherlock bear.
Ik this was three years ago but What
Watch his Sherlock video @@IrisGlowingBlue
@@IrisGlowingBlueit is mentioned in his video on Sherlock!
The one who talks in rhyme is Wheelie. The one who talks fast is Blurr.
I won't let you escape.
I was going to do this, but you already did it. I'm going to do it anyway.
Blurr is awesome but everyone hates Wheelie.
He must join us in the suffering.
We must remind hbomb at all opportunities
D I S L I K E D
I like how depressed Luigi looks while listening to this
I'd say he 'won' this video. Yes, by doing nothing.
Luigi is questioning what he's got into
I'm 28 and only about 6 months ago found a stable full time job in a field at least adjacent to the one I went to school for. The first time I listened to this video was when it was on autoplay while I was working my previous dead-end job in the back of a pizza parlor. I still feel like I'm in an intermediate stage of transformation, but at least this one is more stable than the last. And hopefully, if I dare hard enough, when I watch and/or listen to this video again I will be even more stable.
Thanks HBomb
Best if luck to you on your new job!
"And what do we say to death?"
"NOT TODAY, GALVATRON!"
When I clicked on this, I expected some jokes about Orson Welles finishing his career with voicing a planet in a kids film and was not prepared for "The Transformers The Movie" to end up being connected to Nietzsche and Lovecraft.
I specifically remember Transformers teaching me that "good guys can lose"... I remember it being so difficult to take that I had to ask my dad if it was true and he said it was. GOOD TIMES! Thanks for the great vid as usual Harris. One day I will be an honest and kind person and become a Patreon.
for one of my college classes we had to write an essay about a quality of leadership that we felt was important to us and how that specific quality was portrayed in media. i ended up writing about how naïvety is important for (some) leaders. i used mainly novels and short stories as my sources, but i did end up mentioning this video. i'd like to genuinely thank you for my a-
Did you cite with proper MLA formatting?
The first part of maturing as a person is realizing that there is darkness in the world.
The next, equally important, part of maturing is learning to Hope again. It is in not letting the darkness _stop you_ .
@John Toas Oh hello, small child. Aren't you up way past your bedtime?
@John Toas As someone who went through a massive pseudo-intellectual phase in high school and said the exact type of dumb shit that you are now, stating that metaphysical concepts don't physically exist isn't smart, it's just cringe-inducing. Everyone is aware that hope does not physically exist, no one needs you to tell them that is the the case. The same goes for saying "not an argument", especially when someone clearly wasn't making one in the first place.
Darkness *does* exist. Both physical and metaphysical.
Have you ever turned off the kitchen light at night?
Darkness.
Have you ever looked inside your own heart? Examined the soul of morality that dwells in your consciousness?
Darkness as well as Light lies within. (Light is also referred to as hope, optimism, courage etc.)
Concepts are never tangible but they are achievable.
@John Toas Delusions don't exist.
Don't you mean *despair*?
"Beyond good / beyond evil / beyond your wildest imagination" in the exact tone of voice of the announcer is the kind of thing I'd write as a joke about commercializing pop culture lol
Victor Caroli is a legend and I will brook no argument
i did a double take when he said shit.. i genuinely thought it was edited in
me too!
I curse so much and so often that I didn't even notice that until Hbomb pointed it out, so I had to rewind to actually hear it.
I think they Literially added in the curse because they were trying to get a pg rating because they wanted to get the parents into the movie with their kids because a toy commercial only works if the person with the money to buy the toys sees the product that is being advertised as well. They wanted to push the toy units of new Wave of g1 since they knew the kids already likes the old wave. How’s the parent supposed to know he’s now supposed to buy their kid rodimus prime for Christmas instead of optimum if they don’t see the correct toy to buy themself.
@@quadpad_music impressive
He describes Unicron as both ‘awful’ and ‘awesome’ within the same minute like - whatever it is, it inspires awe
(Lindsey Ellis has entered the chat)
Bahahahaha TRUTH
Lindsey Ellis is getting inspired to write Transformers fanfiction as we speak.
Challenger Approaches! Lindsay Ellis enters the match!
Uhh, excuse me, it's Lindsay*
Sorry, everyone, like Anita is the dark mother of Contrapoints, so too are Oliver North and Lindsay Ellis my dark father and dark mother
The death of Optimus Prime kind of traumatised me. I couldn't watch Transformers, which had been probably my favourite programme up to that point, for a good long time after that. I would get really upset as soon as the opening titles started and either change the channel or leave the room. I guess you could say it was a transformative experience!!! HAHAHAHA Kill me.
Yourenot the only one who was traumatized
But you'll be glad to know that Peter Cullen, the actor himself, has a favorite role in that of Optimus, because of fans like you
(That wasnt supposed to be rude btw)
I still have that reaction to the Heidi anime, and only because of Peechee the tiny bird she rescues and who eventually leaves and that was fucking traumatizing for 5 year old me, like I still genuinely cannot breathe because of the grief that grips me just now thinking about it.
Kid shows should traumatize kids more ngl.
Hbomb neglects to mention Unicron is voiced by Orson Welles in Transformers: The Movie, and was his final performance before his death. Welles apparently enjoyed playing Unicron.
He absolutely did not.
Orson Welles thought it was a disgrace that he had to voice a toy in a stupid cartoon. In a way, it was. But even thought he completely phoned it in, his performance still elevated the movie just a little bit.
@@Lurdiak Welles was always a bit of a prima donna. Maybe that's to be expected when everyone has been telling you you're a genius since childhood, but it cracks me up that the Pinky and the Brain guys based Brain off of him.
The reporting I have heard is to the contrary. But Wells being so disinterested and aloof actually sold Unicron even more as this... Entity. Like even more than some usual Transformer, he was... He just *WAS* and didn’t care about the scurrying little bugs on the planets he ate any more than we Humans care about ants while walking down the street
@@Lurdiak That's the thing; Welles phoning it in helped DEFINE Unicron's personality because a deep imposing voice that couldn't care less about what's set before him is how a god-like entity that destroys planets out of boredom and hunger should sound.
new viewer who is binging the backlog after having loved the most recent video (about the oof sound) just here to say wow and how lovely to always be able to find new people who are all experiencing time and age and nostalgia in different ways and that we can all share that with each other. in the unlikely even that anyone ever sees this comment: long distance high five to you, bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong.
bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong!
Bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong to you all, lest we forget
bah-weep-graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong! :D
Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong.
What do we say to the god of death?
Not today, Galvatron
I've been grieving. I had to put my kitty, Littleman, to rest. It's been the worst days of my life. I feel regrets, anger, sorrow and hollow. I can't believe he's gone. I keep torturing myself looking at photos of him and holding his paw prints. I miss him so much.
This video helped center some of my thoughts. Thank you, Harris.
I know it’s a year later, but I hope you are feeling better now. RIP Littleman
Luigi judgmentally stares at you for most of the video. It's worrying. I'd recommend keeping weapons away from him.
I cant unsee that now...thankyou
So you got to 26:10 as well?
Hey
You mean it's not trying to tell you why those people were lying down on the street in that Radiohead video for "Just"?
Luigi scars us for life by doing absolutely nothing.
Listening to this as i pack my house up to move across country into the unknown. Your final section about growing and changing hits.
Thank you and positive vibes. Thanks.
Thanks for taking the time to leave such a nice comment!
45 minutes just to make a "more than meets the eye joke"...
...and it's not even April 1st, anymore
I still have a scant hour and 35 minutes to enjoy this WONDROUS GIFT BESTOWED
@@radhapatel217 hey I could have started the video yesterday and would still have like 3 hours on the clock to it is finished... It was damn long
"I miss having so much future ahead of me...but the present is cool too" that hit me in the heart.
I am immersed in that feeling since I turned 29. I feel like we all would love to relive the young past with the knowledge we have acquired till now.
And I hope its all just a trip that we all make, trying to reach a point where we understand that its all a "now"
and how we can live that "now" in the most beautifull way we can at that moment. If you get there later in life its not exactly time lost but time spent trying to understand.
Thank you for your video essays man, I really enjoy your work!
I’m just in awe to realize that I wasn’t the only one that felt like “I am so embarrassed and hope no one is watching me watch this” when I watched kid shows
i had this back when i was really into the transformers comics (well. just mtmte really but i was REALLY into it) like every time someone would be like "what are you reading these days" i'd either say nothing or make shit up because i didn't want to be like "i'm reading a comic book about toy robot cars but i swear it's actually really good"
I used to feel this during the goofier moments of Godzilla films
I had this during a particularly bad food metaphor during Pokemon Black and White. Didn't help that it had been translated from Japanese to English to Danish
Ah, yes, the five horsemen of the "has a really cool narrative, themes and ideas but is ruined by the poor public reputation of its medium"
Anime, Fan Fiction, Comics, Videogames and Cartoons
Or the classic variant: "Oh no, a commercial for a girl's toy is on! I have to look away from the screen real quick or everyone will think I'm gay!"
When I was a kid, my dream job was to become a transformer dinosaur.
As an adult I still wish I could!
Don’t lose your (Transformer) Dinosaur
Dare to believe
Me tony say, it not as good as you think
I want to be a crab transformer
As an adult I'd expect a bit more profesionalism and a realistic grasp of the position you are submiting a request for... its DINOBOT not ""Transformer dinosaur"... phhh
Good luck all the same :)
From now on, whenever your family members are having arguments about politics, just scream "Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong"
That doesn't make any sense
@@tymiller2903 If it doesn't make any sense that'd be because the subject verb wheep precedes ni ni which is a misplaced modifier for the pronoun, which to make matters worse is also missing an apostrophe. An obvious but common mistake.
“Bah-weep grah-nah-weep, ninny-bong, or How I learned to do the right thing even though it doesn’t always lead to the optimal outcome”
The optimus outcome*
Yeeeee-haaaaawwwww!
I like to imagine a classroom a thousand years from now where they're talking about the great philosopher hbomberguy like he's Socrates
Does that make Abby Thorn Plato?
Lets be honest... he's closer to Diogenes.
@@washada You, sir, just broke me.
@@The5lacker if he's Diogenes, then who's UpisnotJump?
@@professionalhimbo who's that
Optimus Prime was the 80s generation's version of Luke Skywalker. He was the center of moral certitude, the indomitable leader who may be set back, sure, possibly even fail to an extent but he was always there at the denouement, validating the viewers' faith: that there was never an unwinnable scenario. Watching the core crowd of 1st gen Autobots and Decepticons get absolutely tossed aside in the first 10min was an absolute parfait of existential considerations, agreed, up to and including to the ol' "War. Huh. What is it good for?"
He was the 80s answer to John Wayne. He even walks like a cowboy
I'm pretty sure Luke Skywalker was the '80s version of Luke Skywalker
I was born in late 90s but my god was Optimus Prime all of that for me & more for like a decade of my life!
I turned 28 today. That ending hit me hard. "I feel like I was 19 until I was 26." That's it. That's the feeling
y’all I turned 36 a few days ago. Finally got a decent job at 34 and almost just now started living
*laughs in old man*
I will be 30 in fall and I'd been feeling 19 up to, yeah, 26. then 27-29 I felt like there's nothing left for me but to die, but now as I'm closing in on 30 I feel like I'm finally starting to breathe.
Also 28, and *YES*!!
For those wondering what epic awesome thing Rodimus Prime transforms into, it's a vacation camper van with flames painted on it
A Space Winnebago, as became known.
Shit that rocks
Modern Rodimus has a rebel vibe.
Holy shit, only you could make a 45 min video about a transformers movie that amazingly deep and actually pretty uplifting. This actually really helped me right now, so thank you for doing what you do.
You want to check Lindsay Ellis' RUclips channel, yo..
This video was fine and all, but I gotta recommend Moviebob's essay on the movie. It really is concise and goes in depth on why a lot of people love that movie.
Yep, Moviebob's video about the transformers movie is the absolute best video about that movie that exists on RUclips. His whole series of videos called "really that good" is outstanding. If you like hbomberguy you'll love moviebob
This video was really interesting not just because of the points you elaborated on, but because it goes to show how two people can enjoy the same thing for vastly different reasons. I too rewatched this movie a couple months ago and had the time of my life while chugging on beers because of the nonsensical plot, the absolutely amazing soundtrack by Vince DiCola, the colorful and sometimes almost surreal visuals, the one liners you hated, and just the pure bombastic energy it has, coupled with the surprisingly serious tone the deaths have on it. I loved every single part of it and spent the next week listening to the soundtrack on repeat. I unironically think it's a great movie because it offers exactly what you'd want from it plus more, but I would've NEVER even thought about the philosophical ideas you got from it while watching it. Art really is an amazing thing, giving us all a window into ourselves through the lens of other people's creativity. That alone makes every single existential and nihilistic horror worth the price of being alive.
The unofficial prologue to Lindsay Ellis' The Whole Plate series.
CANON
This is it. This is true.
@@xmlthegreat THIS IS THE WAY
Every now and again I rewatch this, even though I've never really cared for Transformers or any of these violent anglophone cartoons in my youth. Your experience of revisiting an old childhood memory and finding more than mere nostalgic value, but new (and uplifting) meaning from it speaks a lot to me. Not just because of how earnest and endearing you are, but because I know that sometimes our inner existentialist dread can be mitigated by the most seemingly shallow things.
Thank you.
transformers the movie: *god is dead.*
this would have been much better without the nobody: .
But that’s okay
And the world is beautiful.
You mean IDW?
I've never seen the movie, but I nearly choked when Mr. hydrogen bomb here revealed that "Dare To Be Stupid" was actually playing over that scene, and he wasn't just piping it in himself.
You just made me realize the H stands for hydrogen
@@Forke13no it stands for Harris
@@teathesilkwing7616 also
Is this an April Fool's joke?
You legally have to tell me if it's an April Fool's joke or else it's entrapment.
british people don't do april fools jokes after midday, otherwise the jokes on them.
watch until the end
45:53 , though no certainty about extra layers, good luck out there in the "just kidding" battlefields soldier. Also, I wish daddy hbomb would entrap me~ UwU
There are no jokes any more.
Parody = sincerity, the gap is closed.
10:55 "WHY do you eat that sandwich?"
"...because because I'm hungry?"
"Your lack of character writing is insufferable! What's your _motivation_ ?"
Devil Triggered
"I don't think I can create anything philosophical about eating a fucking sandwich"
The... pig that the ham came from killed my parents? The cheese came from the milk of a cow who was a jerk to my older sister?
“Where’s your motivation?” - a very motivated guy with a katana
@@morganpriest7726 eat burghre
"Reagan hated regulations almost as much as he hated south american civilians" Not even 5 minutes in and I already found gold
Aztec gold
i was never a transformers fan growing up, but i only very recently got into the franchise as an adult through the idw comics (i can't recommend the more than meets the eye comics enough, genuinely very well-written with some of the most engaged i've ever been in fictional characters) - and watching this video as a very new, kind of sheltered adult who's afraid of growing up... was a really nice experience, showing that those anxieties around growing up are real no matter what age you are, that even when you're older you can look back on these silly toy commercial robots and feel some hope in the scary world. sorry for using your midlife crisis to make me feel better about myself.
wonderful video, wonderful themes and wonderfully worded, i was hugging my hot rod figure for most of it :'D
In b4 Lindsey Ellis writes a full dissertation on Transformers effect on a generation in the comments.
I know Moviebob already did like an hour long video on the movie in his RTG series. I haven't seen it but he always go into depth about the cultural context and impact of the films so it may already be somewhat covered.
Dude, dont I wish.
@@QwertyCaesar im gonna need that link.
@@anarchisttechsupport6644 Just search Transformers Really That Good here on youtube.
I wish the people making Star Trek would realize this is a message the franchise needs.
Too many people in both the audience and the production team seem to think that pessimism is the only valid response to the idealism of the Federation, and it's choking everything about it. Everyone is projecting their despair in the present onto the futurism of sci-fi, when right now what we need most is the inspiration from someone who dares to say:
"Demand the impossible; believe that it can be better even if it doesn't seem that way."
The entire point of Star Trek's future setting is the realization of humankind's potential for greatness. The Federation as an idealistic system is idealistic, but that is kind of the point. There is a reason most of Trek is about exploring other people's cultures.
At some point this long obsession with pessimism has to go away.
Beyond was much better than people gave it credit for, in large part because it was allowed to be genuinely optimistic about what the Federation way of life represented, and contrasted that with the villain's militaristic pessimism.
Also because Kirk finally seemed like he knew how to do his damn job.
@@gordongraham2064: Absolutely! Unfortunately, not enough people went to see it after how poor STID was.
@@gordongraham2064 That... is a fair interpretation that I never really considered before. It is still not enough to save the newer movies in my eyes, but that is actually a really good point.
Bro the "we didn't expect this kind of response, we just thought we were killing and old product line and introducing a new one" was savage as fuck, in all the context you've put together up to that part it sounds weird as fuck, like it's a metaphor for something
Now let's make him watch Beast Wars, Animated, and Prime.