Transformers: The Movie (1986)

[Draco Dracul]

One thing I've wondered is why they didn't use Bumblebee in place of Hot Rod. I mean unlike the season one and two toys, the movie and season 3 toys were actually designed for Transformers, and the matrix physically altered Hot Rod anyway so you could still get a new toy out of it.

[BunBun299]

Ah Rodimus, the Jonathan Archer of the giant robot universe.

I wish i knew where the idea that girls didn't buy robot toys came from, I loved my transformer toys when I was a girl. I was stoked that there was this female Autobot and I hated there was no toy of her. Then again, I remember how disappointed I was when the Masters of the Universe line produced She-Ra toys and they were just glorified barbie dolls so maybe it was a good thing that there was no Arcee toy back then. As an aside I hate what the G1 comics have done with Arcee as a character (she was originally a male Autobot that got tortured into being a girl...!) so perpetual disappointment with how \transformers creatives deal with female fans is my ground state (where is my Anode and Lug toy, btw?). I'll give them this though, at no point in the movie did Arcee feel like the tagalong chick (that was Wheelie, the Jar Jar-Neelix-Wesley of the robot world who annoyed me even when I was a kid), she held her own in the action and it felt like she was an equal partner.

As for the robot death. Maybe it was spending all that time with my grandfather and watching war movies with him, UK WW2 movies are often a lot more downbeat than John Wayne-American ones are, and I kinda was used to seeing beloved characters bite the dust in heroic last stands and doomed defences. Optimus' death felt like a familiar story beat there. If anything it was Starscream's death that really caught me off guard, I was so used to him acting out and then getting smacked down that I fully expected Galvatron to show up and smack him around a bit and he'd fall back in line again while verbally sniping away in the background. That death was not a familiar story beat and that was when I felt the rug being pulled out from under me.

I still don't understand why UM got blown to pieces and lived, but Optimus died. Personally I feel it would have been bolder of the writers to kill UM there to prove things were still serious. He doesn't really fulfil any story purposes after that anyway.

I did like most of the new introductions. Arcee was a joy for me to see, a badass but still feminine figure, Kup was pretty much my Grandfather in robot form, and I did like Springer even though he didn't do much but be Optimus Mk2 in many ways. I would have had Springer be the new Prime if I had had my way. And Blurr, whom I decided would also be a girl Transformer too for some reason.

I did love that movie though. It was fun.

I was a boy when this movie came out, and I was disappointed that there was never an Arcee toy when I was little. The team just felt incomplete. I always hated as a kid when girls who were in the shows I watched were unavailable as toys. I had Princess Leia along with Luke and Han. But most other things I liked, I was left with teams with major gaps.

[G-Man]

One thing that annoys me - they act as if the universal greeting is special knowledge that Kupp has, that shows the usefulness of an old-timer. However, doesn't a universal greeting, by definition, have to be common knowledge? For it to work, he people you meet have to know it.

[CharlesPhipps]

One thing that annoys me - they act as if the universal greeting is special knowledge that Kupp has, that shows the usefulness of an old-timer. However, doesn't a universal greeting, by definition, have to be common knowledge? For it to work, he people you meet have to know it.

I get the impression the universal greeting is something that literally translates as, "We come in peace and have food."

[Robovski]

The Cybertronian Transformers don't seem that well-traveled at this point, so Kup, being the old-timer who has been everywhere knows things the youngsters don't (who have spent their entire lives fighting over Cybertron on Cybertron, local moons, or Earth). Perhaps Optimus or one of the other ''old timers'' would have known, but they are all dead or not here by this point.

On Prime's death, I was 10 when this was in theaters in the US and I never got to go, but I was a big fan of the show and suddenly with the new season it was all different. Got to see it a couple years later, and it made sense of the changes (in that all these characters had died) but I wasn't that moved at 12 and had already faced death of my father years before. People die in war, and I wasn't savvy enough at that point to realize just how unusual it was for you to kill off the cast and lead characters wholesale.

[Rocketboy1313]

You know what is strange?
This movie was my introduction to the franchise.
When I found the syndicated episodes of the series years later and left the VHS to record them while I went to school, I had a grasp of how important the characters were only because Optimus' death was treated with such weight in this film.

Though, Wheeljack became my favorite character in the series.

I loved this movie growing up. So much so that the idea of a planet eating menace like Unicron appeared in the little stories I would make up with my Z-Bots, my legos, and even now when I play Dungeons and Dragons (though that one is more to do with Azathoth).

[Rocketboy1313]

One thing I've wondered is why they didn't use Bumblebee in place of Hot Rod. I mean unlike the season one and two toys, the movie and season 3 toys were actually designed for Transformers, and the matrix physically altered Hot Rod anyway so you could still get a new toy out of it.

Seriously, they should have done that.
Have Bumble Bee transform at the end of the movie into Golden Prime or something.
Same story but with a character that people know and appreciate completing a character arc.

[CharlesPhipps]

One thing I've wondered is why they didn't use Bumblebee in place of Hot Rod. I mean unlike the season one and two toys, the movie and season 3 toys were actually designed for Transformers, and the matrix physically altered Hot Rod anyway so you could still get a new toy out of it.

Seriously, they should have done that.
Have Bumble Bee transform at the end of the movie into Golden Prime or something.
Same story but with a character that people know and appreciate completing a character arc.

I have had that same thought. It might have worked VERY well or VERY POORLY.

[AlucardNoir]

One thing I've wondered is why they didn't use Bumblebee in place of Hot Rod. I mean unlike the season one and two toys, the movie and season 3 toys were actually designed for Transformers, and the matrix physically altered Hot Rod anyway so you could still get a new toy out of it.

Seriously, they should have done that.
Have Bumble Bee transform at the end of the movie into Golden Prime or something.
Same story but with a character that people know and appreciate completing a character arc.

I can just see it now:
Optimus Prime's disembodied voice: Arise Bumblingus Prime!
Bumblebee: Optimus?

[Beastro]

My Optimus Death Story is an odd one. I never got broken up by and only watched the movie years later on VHS due to being born in the mid 80s (but playing with my cousins less than beloved Transformers only a few years later like Megatron an the Starscream clones). For me it was more seeing something that lacked an emotional impact or me personally, but was for others that was a legendary event akin to what the Kennedy Assassination was and it's place in history.

My childhood scarring moment was The Land Before Time and the death of Littlefoot's mother.... well, actually that whole damn move was scarring, went back home crying. Oddly it's a fond memory to have now, that I had something like that in my childhood alongside the Brave Little Toaster and Pee Wees messed up dreams about his bike in Big Adventure.

Maybe that's a part of why old fairy tales are so bloody messed up.

For my own opinion I actually do like that Unicron's motives are never elaborated on and that he seems to be doing all this seemingly for the sake of it. Unicron is pretty much the transformers version of a Cthulhu, a creature of seemingly cosmic power who sees mortals as tools at best and nothing at worse. Also I utterly love Orson Welles' performance as Unicron almost sounds bored when describing itself, how he almost never angry and when It's pants to be darken time.

The entire movie-introduction and reveal of Unicron is easily one of the best sequences ever done, especially if you think of Unicron as an elder thing:
There's space, deep space, the music adds a flair of the vast mysterious unknown as we zoom in on a peculiar and clearly not-natural object floating out there and as we get close, the music adds a mechanical-sounding theme just as it becomes clear, that this unnatural object is mechanical in nature and moves past the camera.
The mysterious music ceases to make room for a driving theme that intertwines with the mechanical tune as the object keeps moving and it's target, a planet, is revealed.
We zoom into the planet and observe the happy innocent lives on the planet, who do their daily routine and who are completely oblivious to the danger coming towards them, represented not just by the visuals, but the music perfectly as well, as the mechanical driving theme couples with a happy theme while we watch the last seconds of their innocence pass by.
As the gravitational influence of Unicron's approach starts to shake the planet, the theme changes again, loosing the happy tune and making room for a reinterpretation of the initial mystery-tune that the sequence started with, now again coupled with the pure mechanial driving sound as Unicron devours the planet and puts an end to the lives of the people we just observed.
The music interweaves the mechanical and mystery theme as we watch Unicron being invigorated and pass on, to leave a nothing in his wake, with the music being silenced for a few seconds.

Two minutes of perfect story-telling, the way that only movies can do. And of course then starts one of the greatest theme-reinterpretations of all time, "Transformers" by a band called Lion. (Kudos to Stan Bush, of course.)

I loved it too. One of the few times in movies both animated and non animated that something truly apocalyptic and Holocaust-like is portrayed with the gravitas it deserves.

And all in a kids movie.

That's the thing I love about the 80s Transformers, how there were bits like that that could have been spun into a real awesome built world and cosmology, but then it got touched too much by comics and the odd ordering they do that turned Primus and Unicorn into dualistic opponents.

So much of the problem with modern world building is the desire to explain too much. Unicorn ddn't need to be expanded upon on bit after the movie and could have been left as the inexplicable horror.

The Cybertronian Transformers don't seem that well-traveled at this point, so Kup, being the old-timer who has been everywhere knows things the youngsters don't (who have spent their entire lives fighting over Cybertron on Cybertron, local moons, or Earth). Perhaps Optimus or one of the other ''old timers'' would have known, but they are all dead or not here by this point.

My impression is that Cybertrons wars have completely aborted whatever "natural" exploration they might have otherwise had. The even long lived figures like Optimus and even Alpha Trion have been so focused on winning wars and securing victory that almost all of their knowledge comes from and is about those events.

A Autobot like Kup would be a colonial soldier, sent off to the ass end of the known world to fight and explored as he did so as a necessity of his mission.

Another aspect of the Transformers world I don't think has ever been explored is the result of the very reason why the Quintessons built/enslaved the Cybertronians, that is to sell them to other beings as contruction/labour machines.

It would be neat for Transformers from beyond Known Space to emerge or run into the Cybertronians and their problems after having lived all those millions of years in different circumstances both better and worse.