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SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
About the conspiracy imagery:

As noted before, the film obviously does not argue that these events actually happened - that there are robots on the moon, etc. However, Dark of the Moon mines imagery from conspiracy theories to symbolize why these events happened. Like the excellent and underrated 2011 film Apollo 18, Dark of the Moon tells a symbolic tale that links the end of the Apollo missions with the death of American idealism in the 1970s. Apollo 18 specifically uses imagery of a heroic all-American astronaut literally decaying, analog film corrupted by digital editing, attacks by abstract, 'transforming' nanotech aliens... Sound familiar? You see the similar imagery in the more optimistic Thing prequel (also 2011), and in the decidedly pessimistic Prometheus (2012). Dark of the Moon is a part of that conversation.

But there are specific nuances to Bay's film. Return to the imagery of the space bridge as a 'bridge to paradise', and the presentation of Cybertron as a lost Elysian utopia. In Dark Of The Moon, both the Russian and American Cold War space programs are presented as attempts, however unwitting, to 'access Cybertron'. So they make a specific point: America abandoned the ideal because it was cynically declared wasteful, while the USSR experienced Chernobyl...


(Note that they are crossing a bridge to reach it.)

You might remember these shots of the Chernobyl reactor core from the film. In the literal text, it represents an failed attempt at creating that Cybertopia. And it looks awfully familiar:




See the rounded shape of the core in the background? Yep, the Chernobyl reactor is a tiny Cybertron! This has pretty big implications in the rest of the film, because who else is trying to create a Cybertron on Earth but Megatron? He's explicitly starting again where the USSR failed. It certainly goes back to the scientifically inaccurate but loaded image of Shockwave emerging 'undead' from the dead zone where nothing can survive, like some kind of spectre.


Also, if you go back to the first film, Optimus Prime beams a fictional VR film around Sam and Mikaela, showing them what Megatron ostensibly did to the planet:



Here, however, is what Cybertron actually looks like:



It's obviously not an earthlike planet torn apart by huge, evil Decepticon spikes. It's an advanced hive-like community disrupted by tiny outbursts of Autobot violence. Why is Optimus' 'memory' so obviously distorted? Does he actually believe this, or was it a fabrication? I'd say it doesn't matter, because it's bullshit either way.

SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Oct 11, 2013

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Lord Krangdar
Oct 24, 2007

These are the secrets of death we teach.

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Marcus Nispel's Friday the 13th is literally a sequel to Transformers 1. Trent, the rich Jock who insults Sam at the lakeside party re-appears in F13 as a major character.

I couldn't believe you were being literal so I looked this up, and wow you're right. What a weird decision.

Maybe I'll watch that tonight.

Danger
Jan 4, 2004

all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'
Friday the 13th (2009) is one of the best films of the Aughties

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.
Terry, I recommend editing your work in this and the previous thread and submitting it to Soft Skull or some other indie publisher.

Danger posted:

Friday the 13th (2009) is one of the best films of the Aughties

I prefer the term Ought-Naughts, because I feel it expresses that decade better. And it has two zeroes.

Lord Krangdar
Oct 24, 2007

These are the secrets of death we teach.

Danger posted:

Friday the 13th (2009) is one of the best films of the Aughties

Well, I quite enjoyed that just now. I'm sure I missed a lot, having never seen any of the other Jason films.

The detail that stuck out the most was the moment where two characters find a skull (Jason's mom's?) in the wall, which they drop into a dirty bathtub. They jump back, disgusted, but then seconds later the girl jumps right into the bathtub with the skull to get away from Jason. Not sure why but I liked that. There's kind of a running theme of subjective boundaries throughout.

For some reason there were a lot of really blurry close-ups, though, for no apparent reason. And I'm not sure why they re-used a character from Transformers, but that's still pretty funny.

Paper Jam Dipper
Jul 14, 2007

by XyloJW

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

It's obviously not an earthlike planet torn apart by huge, evil Decepticon spikes. It's an advanced hive-like community disrupted by tiny outbursts of Autobot violence. Why is Optimus' 'memory' so obviously distorted? Does he actually believe this, or was it a fabrication? I'd say it doesn't matter, because it's bullshit either way.

I don't know, that sounds like something that matters quite a bit. Would work into Optimus being a zealot for one perspective of the war.

Necrothatcher
Mar 26, 2005




Was just reading up about Friday the 13th (2009) and this jumped out at me on the IMDB trivia page:

quote:

"Producer Michael Bay walked out in the movie premiere, stating that the movie featured too much sex.

Struck me as an odd reaction.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
Doesn't seem that odd to me re: Bay, especially with the way he chooses to display conspicuous sexuality. It's always Hot Rod Magazine/expensive strip club stuff, he likes that pin-up girl look but always shies away from actual sex, even in his gruesome, raunchy R rated movies.

Hammer Backspace
Jan 3, 2011

we're gonna throw a world domination slumber party and we're not inviting any boys!!!!

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Doesn't seem that odd to me re: Bay, especially with the way he chooses to display conspicuous sexuality. It's always Hot Rod Magazine/expensive strip club stuff, he likes that pin-up girl look but always shies away from actual sex, even in his gruesome, raunchy R rated movies.

Which is weird because I remember a shot from the Pain & Gain trailer of Rebel Wilson riding Anthony Mackie like a rodeo horse

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
That's a movie gag, that's not even a simulacra of a couple loving, it's a bawdy joke about a black dude insecure about having a little dick hooking up with a fat white girl. She likes to get "naughty" in bed but like him, she seems to be all talk. As such there's never been a sex scene that I recall in a Bay movie that even seems like an idealized movie sex scene.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
Reminder that Bay refused to let Scarlet Johannsen go topless in The Island.

The Internet was confused and mock-outraged, but consider that the entire film is about exploitation, and her vat-grown character literally has a mental age of about twelve. (There's a scene where Steve Buscemi's 'everyman' character becomes intensely uncomfortable about his attraction to, essentially, a child.)

People confuse Bay's tasteful restraint here with some deficiency on his part.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
It's definitely recurring, though, he treats the sexuality of many of the characters in many of his films as though they're twelve (for various thematic reasons). Sam Witwicky's parents act like stoned teenagers, which is fine because you can't have two dads AND a mom.

Hand Knit
Oct 24, 2005

Beer Loses more than a game Sunday ...
We lost our Captain, our Teammate, our Friend Kelly Calabro...
Rest in Peace my friend you will be greatly missed..
Everything Bay has done is interested in, in one way or another, masculinity. The idea of masculinity he puts forward is a usually a virtue-based idea where the true man is interested in his own excellence and doesn't approach women as objects to be merely used, or held on to as status symbols. One of the clearest scenes depicting this is in Pearl Harbor. At the end of their date before he is shipped off to war, Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale stop in front of a hotel room. Beckinsale asks if he wants to go up to her room, to which Affleck responds that he "doesn't want to be like those other guys." As he says this, one couple walks in the revolving door while another exits.

It's easy to be a bit confused about Bay, since he has no moral scruples about depicting what he wants to criticize. TvF did a great job of covering that the way Mikhaela Banes is presented, while superficially sexualized, is representative of how Sam sees the world, and that Sam is a horribly insecure person who is looking for a "girlfriend" as a symbol of status and masculinity. Pain and Gain does something similar with both how the strip club is presented (where rich, insecure people go to buy the attention of women) and how Lugo perceives Kershaw's lifestyle as affording him the women Lugo can't have. (In fact, I believe that when Lugo is telling Doyle about robbing Kershaw, Lugo turns to watch a woman walk by as he's talking about "taking [Kershaw's] stuff."

All told, the reason he would be angry at Friday the 13th would then be that it is sincerely presenting sexual titillation as something to be consumed. Bay, based on his movies, appears to be against that very strongly.

Sprecherscrow
Dec 20, 2009

Hand Knit posted:

Everything Bay has done is interested in, in one way or another, masculinity. The idea of masculinity he puts forward is a usually a virtue-based idea where the true man is interested in his own excellence and doesn't approach women as objects to be merely used, or held on to as status symbols. One of the clearest scenes depicting this is in Pearl Harbor. At the end of their date before he is shipped off to war, Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale stop in front of a hotel room. Beckinsale asks if he wants to go up to her room, to which Affleck responds that he "doesn't want to be like those other guys." As he says this, one couple walks in the revolving door while another exits.

It's easy to be a bit confused about Bay, since he has no moral scruples about depicting what he wants to criticize. TvF did a great job of covering that the way Mikhaela Banes is presented, while superficially sexualized, is representative of how Sam sees the world, and that Sam is a horribly insecure person who is looking for a "girlfriend" as a symbol of status and masculinity. Pain and Gain does something similar with both how the strip club is presented (where rich, insecure people go to buy the attention of women) and how Lugo perceives Kershaw's lifestyle as affording him the women Lugo can't have. (In fact, I believe that when Lugo is telling Doyle about robbing Kershaw, Lugo turns to watch a woman walk by as he's talking about "taking [Kershaw's] stuff."

All told, the reason he would be angry at Friday the 13th would then be that it is sincerely presenting sexual titillation as something to be consumed. Bay, based on his movies, appears to be against that very strongly.

This is most likely why his films tend to contain a lot of titillation but little actual sex. Sex requires looking at both participants clearly being subjects but Bay prefers to depict his women as subjects buried underneath many layers of objectification rendering them socially impotent, a theme served by the use of titillation. Though I imagine anyone who criticized him for not wanting ScarJo topless was probably just disappointed they didn't get to see ScarJo topless.

Hand Knit
Oct 24, 2005

Beer Loses more than a game Sunday ...
We lost our Captain, our Teammate, our Friend Kelly Calabro...
Rest in Peace my friend you will be greatly missed..

Sprecherscrow posted:

This is most likely why his films tend to contain a lot of titillation but little actual sex. Sex requires looking at both participants clearly being subjects but Bay prefers to depict his women as subjects buried underneath many layers of objectification rendering them socially impotent, a theme served by the use of titillation. Though I imagine anyone who criticized him for not wanting ScarJo topless was probably just disappointed they didn't get to see ScarJo topless.

I do not think that he has any preference for that sort of depiction, given his presentation of Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor, Liv Tyler in Armageddon, and (so far as I can remember) Tea Leoni in Bad Boys. It's simply that when he wants to tell a story involving an insecure man or culture that insists on objectifying women, he appears to have no problem with presenting the unvirtuous point of view.

Sprecherscrow
Dec 20, 2009

Hand Knit posted:

I do not think that he has any preference for that sort of depiction, given his presentation of Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor, Liv Tyler in Armageddon, and (so far as I can remember) Tea Leoni in Bad Boys. It's simply that when he wants to tell a story involving an insecure man or culture that insists on objectifying women, he appears to have no problem with presenting the unvirtuous point of view.

Haven't seen the other two, but I'm smacking my forehead at forgetting Armageddon. There you have Bay depicting actual tenderness between a man and a woman. The Transformers series and Pain & Gain just make the idea of romance seem so inherently crass I'd forgotten that it didn't account for every movie he's ever made.

Marshal Radisic
Oct 9, 2012


Sprecherscrow posted:

Haven't seen the other two, but I'm smacking my forehead at forgetting Armageddon. There you have Bay depicting actual tenderness between a man and a woman. The Transformers series and Pain & Gain just make the idea of romance seem so inherently crass I'd forgotten that it didn't account for every movie he's ever made.

I wouldn't say that in regard to Pain & Gain. One of the final scenes of the film is a sympathetic depiction of Ed Harris' character with his wife, and the film holds him and his relationship up as a sane alternative to the lifestyles of the Sun Gym Gang, their accomplices, and their victims.

SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN
The thing that makes me fairly ambivalent about the first Transformers film is that it does succeed at illustrating the gulf between how the characters are written and how they're presented. Bobby Bolivia is presented as "funny" and Mikaela is presented as "sexy", but they're not. Bobby is unsettling and Mikaela is plain sad.

The trouble is that there's no solution. When Mikaela straps the crippled Bumblebee to the hotwired tow truck, shouting "I drive!", the flipside is that she's strapping herself to Bumblebee. We all know what Bee represents and what he'll come to represent. She's also only given an extremely brief moment of despair before she gets mad and the butt-rock kicks in. The effect is that this 'empowerment' is actually less authentic than the palpable sadness she exuded before. As Armond White put it: "True art is watching hot-chick Megan Fox [...] coming to grips with her own
exploitation." And that's the opposite of what happens in TF1.

Mikaela's actual victory occurs when she dumps Sam offscreen and vanishes between Parts 2 and 3. Through all of Part 2, Mikaela is presented as a reward for Sam - and her refusal to obey is as much a source of Sam's impotent rage as his bleak job search and his crap car. It's important that the dumping happens offscreen, and we're never given a reason, because it's something that Sam can't incorporate into his 'Transformers' worldview. It's downright traumatic to him, and he doesn't handle it well at all.

Terry van Feleday
Jun 6, 2010

Free Your Mind

Fat Lou posted:

Awesome, I will add them in soon along with the extra formatting. I would love it to no end if we could somehow get Michael Bay to read it and respond to it somehow. I know that is really unlikely, but still...
Now that I look over it again, I do realize: The Duel chapter is missing! Since I do reference it in the main text, I figure it should be in there. Would it be possible to copy it over real quick, without editing it for now, just so the compendium is complete? It would be very kind of you.

Also, a minor nitpick: "Conclusions part 1" should probably just be called "Why are all these robots so drat ugly?"

(also, you should probably credit yourself somewhere in there, ha)

Fat Lou
Jan 21, 2008

Desert Heat? I thought it was Dessert Heat. No wonder it tastes so bad.

Terry van Feleday posted:

Now that I look over it again, I do realize: The Duel chapter is missing! Since I do reference it in the main text, I figure it should be in there. Would it be possible to copy it over real quick, without editing it for now, just so the compendium is complete? It would be very kind of you.

Also, a minor nitpick: "Conclusions part 1" should probably just be called "Why are all these robots so drat ugly?"

(also, you should probably credit yourself somewhere in there, ha)

Yeah, I can do those things. I didn't see the "Why are all these robots so drat ugly?" title, and I forgot you referenced Duel. I will have that updated late tonight. I will also try to find a permanent spot to put them so I don't need to keep updating the link and it will actually stay at the same URL.

rawdog pozfail
Jan 2, 2006

by Ralp
Hey Terry tried to PM ya but I guess I'll just post this suggestion here: maybe before the thread gets goldmined people can take turns reformatting/copypasting your posts from the previous thread and dumping them here so they're publicly available on SA forever? The only part that takes effort is copy/pasting each individual photo so it'd be easy for people with archives to just see whatever the last post transcribed was and go down the list until we have the entire original thread within this thread !

The PDF is awesome, it just might be nice to have it all available directly through SA as well.

rawdog pozfail fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Oct 13, 2013

Nebalebadingdong
Jun 30, 2005

i made a video game.
why not give it a try!?

Holy Calamity! posted:

Hey Terry tried to PM ya but I guess I'll just post this suggestion here: maybe before the thread gets goldmined people can take turns reformatting/copypasting your posts from the previous thread and dumping them here so they're publicly available on SA forever? The only part that takes effort is copy/pasting each individual photo so it'd be easy for people with archives to just see whatever the last post transcribed was and go down the list until we have the entire original thread within this thread !

The PDF is awesome, it just might be nice to have it all available directly through SA as well.

I'd be willing to help with this

Gatts
Jan 2, 2001

Goodnight Moon

Nap Ghost
All this talk of Bay and Sex...when is he going to make an Eyes Wide Shut type movie. Someone should tell him the world wants to see him explore it as subject matter with focus for a whole film. The way he'd film such a thing...

"Michael Bay's Nature of Love and Sex: A Human's Story" It'd be one long action-like sequence through a club setting probably.

Gatts fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Oct 14, 2013

Terry van Feleday
Jun 6, 2010

Free Your Mind
I'd be open to any ways of making this more publically available. I honestly wouldn't help out myself (I kinda want to take a break from this), but if you feel it would help please do go ahead.

I mean I guess it would be kind of odd to have discussion of the end of the trilogy followed by starting all over in a single thread, but I guess opening up a third one for reposts would be a bit presumptious, ha.

Bip Roberts
Mar 29, 2005

Gatts posted:

All this talk of Bay and Sex...when is he going to make an Eyes Wide Shut type movie. Someone should tell him the world wants to see him explore it as subject matter with focus for a whole film. The way he'd film such a thing...

"Michael Bay's Nature of Love and Sex: A Human's Story" It'd be one long action-like sequence through a club setting probably.

All dildo jokes and gay shaming.

Cornwind Evil
Dec 14, 2004


The undisputed world champion of wrestling effortposting
Any word on whether the Duel side-trip will be added to the PDF file any time soon?

Fat Lou
Jan 21, 2008

Desert Heat? I thought it was Dessert Heat. No wonder it tastes so bad.

Cornwind Evil posted:

Any word on whether the Duel side-trip will be added to the PDF file any time soon?

What if I told you 5 days ago...if you looked on my computer. ANYWAYS, I just uploaded it. The permanent place will be on the Google Drive link. I found out you can do revisions on it, so I will be able to upload it to the same link.

I updated what Terry van Feleday asked for, but I have to work on a couple other projects, so I am putting the PDF on hold for a week or two. If someone guilts me at the end of the month I will put in a solid day of work to make it better formatted with, hopefully, intradocument links for the table of contents.

Fat Lou fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Oct 20, 2013

Some Guy TT
Aug 30, 2011

Excellent work on this thread Terry. My favorite part was rethinking the opening of Transformer 3 as being a negative statement on the modern generation of youth. I dislike youth myself, even though I am one, and your analysis drives home a lot of my frustrations dealing with other young people. We are being unjustly screwed over by a bad system...but there's no unity in that, just anger that I, the special snowflake, am not getting ahead. I really like the way you illustrate Witwicky's character in terms of this same ambiguity. It's hard to get much actual discussion of this outside a context of "dumb kids not doing it right like in the good old days" and "old people are always assholes talking poo poo about the younger generation".

I think I do have the answer to a question you posed in the last thread that I don't think anyone else was able to figure out, and which you kind of sort of allude to here-

Terry van Feleday posted:

- why are women dogs

The question you posed in the last thread was, generally speaking, "what exactly does Carly see in Sam". Your analysis of the climatic scene Carly has in this movie is close, but not quite there.

My take on Carly is that she is attracted to Sam Witwicky because he is Sam Witwicky. Specifically, because he is the cause celebre of this whole Transformer movement. Consider, for a moment, how an ambitious young woman is supposed to reconcile the fact that she wants to be an Eleanor Roosevelt style statesman figure, yet also has to buy into our culture's nonsense about oversexualized women. A man can get his kicks from any willing girl he can find- we're animals and our sexuality isn't meant to be indicative of us as a person. But for women it's unmistakable. Carly doesn't want her Wikipedia page one day to read that she was in a romantic relationship with some random normal person. What will make the gossip rags sing, what will fully establish her value as a sexual object and as a famous object worthy of continued coverage in the future, will be the hotlink that leaves her two steps away from Optimus Prime, mankind's modern Messiah. Sam Witwicky is that connection.

So logically, of course, he is a worthy romantic partner and a valuable human being. Because in American rhetoric, a person can only be famous or well-treated by the world if he or she has clearly done something to deserve it. It's obvious to us that Sam is a terrible love interest and a terrible partner all around, but Carly can't believe this. She won't believe this, because Sam Witwicky has a place in her plan as one of the beautiful popular people. Even if the relationship eventually breaks up or ends in divorce, by having sex with this man Carly will have proved she has worth to the collective consciousness of humanity. There will be bad political cartoons about her. In short, people will pay attention to Carly, even if indirectly, and in the modern world of self-promotion and immortality through gossip, this earns her a permanent foothold. The longer the relationship lasts, the more interesting a person she must be. This reasoning is obviously incredibly dumb, but since Carly has also been conditioned to believe that relationships are just about "having fun", she never thinks about the actual state of the relationship. In a world where, (as movies such as Kick-rear end 2 deftly demonstrate), the most horrible thing a woman can do is act girly, Carly will never allow herself the "girly" act of talking about feelings in a relationship.

It's the very same machismo attitude she uses to talk down to Megatron at the end of Revenge of the Fallen. Carly wants to be the go-to-it icon for women, but wants no help from feminism to do so. Carly will either raise herself by her bootstraps in this society on her own terms (using sexuality as necessary) or she won't do it at all. She has denied her own agency as a woman in the belief that the "neutral" value she seeks is an objective one, completely oblivious to the fact that she herself is being manipulated.

Terry van Feleday
Jun 6, 2010

Free Your Mind
I said I was done, but then I realised I’d forgotten something. Something very important.

Extra: The Transformers: The Movie (1986)


Orson Welles posted:

The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.

I’ll be honest: I don’t like the G1 cartoon very much. I mean, we hold 80’s cartoons to different standards, but even making no false illusions about what I’d get going into it, I still wound up somewhat disappointed in, even annoyed by it. I guess my problem is that beyond the shoddy writing and terrible animation, I was promised that very special sense of unbound, bizarre fun that can only result from not a single person on the production team giving a gently caress.
The show itself is just not fun at all. The writers can throw around all the completely bonkers plot ideas they wanted, but they could never defeat the very fundamental crushing cynicism that pervades every second of its run. And I’m not talking about the whole “toy commercial” thing – which I feel a bit of a tedious talking point – I’m talking about the way the cartoon’s nature forces its structure. Every episode hasto begin and end on a rigid status quo broken up only by the introduction of new characters, every single episode (safe multi-parters) has to end with a big showdown between the Autobots and Decepticons, in which the former have to emerge victoriously for increasingly contrived reasons. The character cast is immeasurably bloated, and none of them can ever change or develop. It’s an enormous iron shackle cast around the writers’ feet, and it quickly becomes clear that all the ancient Maya temples and mad scientists and women who love Powerglide and increasingly creative methods of power generation are ultimately just window dressing for the same story being told over and over and over. It’s tedious and grinding and repetitive and joyless.

Now, I would be remiss to mention that the first three episodes of the show, the More Than Meets The Eye pilot, is vastly superior than the rest of the show’s run, like it’s beyond comparison. It’s also one of the very few points in the entire franchise where I can actually buy the Autobots as an unconditional force for Good rather than a bunch of jerks committing increasingly heinous war crimes while babbling about freedom, even in the series where they’re supposed to be the good guys.

Now imagine then, Hasbro walking up to Sunbow Productions (who then walked up to Marvel (who then walked up to Toei)) and saying “Yo, we’re going to make a new toy line, so you’ll have to murder the entire cast and replace them with some new guys. We’re giving you a movie budget and don’t give a crap how you do it, so go hog wild.

Transformers 1986 is rad as hell.

Seriously, go watch it. It has serious flaws, but that’s one of the things that makes it infinitely endearing. The creators were confronted with the task of taking such a cruel premise and still making a fun and positive experience out of it, and by lord they ran with the idea. The most fascinating thing about the film is its handling of tone.



From the very first instant, something’s wrong. Nightmarish colours and harsh edges fill the screen as a violent star shines lightlessly on this thing floating silently through the darkness of space, its single beady eye-mouth flickering malevolently. Instead of starting on the cheery theme song, we’re met with a dark and heavy set of synth-strings that set an otherworldly and ominous tone.



As it carelessly travels past the camera, we realise the enormity of its scale: Every one of its spikes is an enormous tower, and entire populations could live on its surface. We also catch a glimpse of its insides: An arrangement of bizarre shapes, combining the organic and mechanical, moving. Breathing. It’s alive.



We zoom down to the planet in its sights, and see a full civilisation, going about their day. Men and women converse and engage in their work, children run around, frolicking. The music temporarily takes on a more cheery, “shopping centre” tone – but continues its ominous progression. Something is clearly wrong.



The planet begins to shake, and glass shatters. Ceilings fall. The sky turns red and people panic. Chaos has found this place.



And the man tells us the name of that chaos: “Unicron”.



And under a hideous light, he begins his feast.




A few try to flee, but it’s useless: They are just sucked back into the void.


The striped pattern on the left side is actually a shot of a ruined building from Fist of the North Star.




Acivity inside of him becomes frenetic as he begins to digest. Men, women, children, the entire planet and everything on it disappears into nothing, and as if with a final silent sigh, he continues on his path leaving not a speck of dust behind, as if the place never existed. Our childhood heroes? Nowhere to be seen.

This opening scene is brilliant. Imagine coming here straight from the original cartoon series. This is our new antagonist, but he’s not a shiny gun man gloating about world domination while twirling his robot moustache. This is something much more fundamentally evil. Unicron is not just a robot, or even a monster, he’s a state of being. He is death and chaos and the all-consuming desert. And wherever he goes, he brings not just literal destruction and burning skies and so on, but a much more abstract tonal shift as well: His presence here on the screen is a declaration of the alarming rate of death that is soon to follow.

The quality of the production itself is astounding, as well. Even beyond the movie-budget animation and such (Frank Welker only voices a quarter of the cast instead of half of them!), the direction itself is vastly better than I expected. The film’s soundtrack is mostly remembered for Stan Bush enthusiastically proclaiming that You Got The Touch, but it’s actually used really well, and Unicron’s theme in particular is used in some pretty subtle ways (its low-key foreboding itself creating a notable contrast to the high-power 80s ballads of the Autobots).



It’s only now that we get the opening titles (which happen to mention some guys called Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles), after which we shift scenes to Cybertron in the crazy far-future year of 2005. The original, red Ironhide (Peter Cullen) badly wants to retake the Decepticon-controlled planet, but heroic flat-nose truck-man Optimus Prime (also Peter Cullen) sternly orders him to go to earth instead.



During security checkups, we also meet Spike Witwicky, (Peter Cullen Corey Burton) who fans of the cartoon might remember as... A teenager, actually. Beyond a manly jaw and spiffy mech-suit, the fifteen-year time skip has also left him married, with a son! This shows us a bit more clearly how much time actually passed since the Autobots originally crashed on earth, that not only all the robots have become older and more experienced (and ran entirely out of patience, in some cases), but an entire new generation of people has been born – this is the important part.



Unfortunately, Prime’s choice has dire consequences. Megatron (Frank Welker) has been listening in via Laserbeak, and decides to take over Ironhide’s shuttle and use it to get past Autobot City’s defences.
Megatron’s cartoon incarnation is incredibly inconsistent and demanded the most contrivances to make the format fit. Between his constant failures even in a position of superiority and his way of (not) dealing with the traitorous Starscream, the impression I took away from him was that he didn’t actually particularly want to win, but rather enjoyed conflict for its own sake. The movie decided to play him very differently, as a smug opportunist dripping with contempt for everyone and everything around him, mad and dangerous. It’s barely that he appears on screen that he already begins the slaughter. And oh yes, a slaughter it is.





IT BEGINS.

Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn and Prowl all die miserably in the assault on the shuttle. It’s incredibly graphic, including a close-up of Prowl’s face as he vomits fire and life leaves his optics and undignified scrap clanking sounds as their bodies hit the ground. They made drat well sure no kid would come away with illusions over what’s happening here. Up to this point, it’s been pretty much unheard of for a Transformer to die – most TV shows before and since portrayed them as nigh indestructible. And here, it’s not just a couple minor characters that sacrifice themselves heroically or whatever. It’s war. People die meaninglessly, painfully, en masse. Saying it’s an extreme tonal shift is still understating it, really. In fact...

Named character death count: 4



Shift in both scene in tone to young Daniel Witwicky (David Mendenhall) and Hot Rod (Judd Nelson). Daniel’s just a kid who misses his dad, but the latter guy is our new main protagonist. Hot Rod is pretty much a collection of traits the creators thought 80s teenage kids would find relatable – he’s an impetous Cool Dude who likes riding in style and pissing off old folks and has a couple insecurities over his lack of experience. They also grieveously screwed up, since I find it much easier to relate to the Rodster objectively looking back at my childhood, where most kids of the time just hated him because they would blame him for what happens to Optimus down the road. Kids don’t have much eye for nuance.

Notice the difference in the background, in shape and colour. Not only are the lines a lot smoother and softer than the harsh mechanical angles of Cybertron or the shuttle, it’s also missing the oppressive, sickly yellow or purple lighting that’s been following us so far, and the colours are a lot less psychedelic. It’s a very pleasant sort of scene, and it’s worth remembering that it’s this context Hot Rod first appears in.

They drive off, and Stan Bush pipes up to tell him “You’ve Got The Future In Your Hands”. Because he’s young. Aaand that’s pretty much the film’s main theme.



As Hot Rod runs straight through a road barrier (something I’ve realised is pretty much a standard cinematographic image for dynamic young folks), Kup (Lionel Stander) here shouts after him. Kup exists pretty much to affirm Hot Rod’s youth by being a contrasting image of a really old guy ranting at kids on his lawn and regaling us with old war stories. He’s a pretty fun character, really.

One silly thing about this movie is the difference in visual detail between the characters designed for the movie and the holdovers from the cartoon. Just compare Hot Rod and Kup here to Devastator or the Dinobots – the former have perspective and physicality and stuff, where the latter look like putty people.



Looking up at the shuttle, Hot Rod notices the Decepticons and begins the light show. Notice how the view is now dominated by the harsh and mechanical landing platform instead of the peaceful mountains again, and how the colours are already shifting to a blue-tinted look. Unicron himself may be far away from earth, but his aura of destructive perversion is already lowering over Autobot City, though Stan Bush is still around to keep our spirits up.



Of course, as soon as the camera shifts towards the all-out assault on Autobot City, he falls silent, and is replaced with an instrumental track with a much more threatening progression. The battle begins.



We’re also introduced to Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack, the big guy), commander of Autobot City and second-most-important Autobot around, Arcee (Susan Blu, in pink), who is the only female Transformer in existence, Springer (Neil Ross, the green guy), brave knight and general straight man, Blurr (John Moschitta, blue), whose gimmick is that he talks real fast, and Perceptor (Paul Eiding, his back turned), overly verbose science guy. With Hot Rod, Daniel, Kup and the Dinobots these guys will form the fellowship for this movie. If you were to remove Blurr and the Dinobots, and maybe merge Magnus and Springer into a single character, we’d have a tight group with a good dynamic to carry us through the movie – as it is, there’s just a few too many. Oh well, toys.





Arcee and Springer activate the transformation sequence for Autobot City, which unfortunately doesn’t turn into a giant robot (that feature was added later), just into a fortress with lots of guns. The transformation sequence itself is heavy and mechanical, with lots of bulkheads and clanking noises, as a contrast to something later.



The battle rages for a while, starting fairly innocently with stuff like a cute sequence of a bunch of tiny cassette robots fighting each other past multiple time skips to us starting to see the first serious casualties: Here, Windcharger and Wheeljack (who didn’t even get a line in the film!)

Named character death count: 6



Notice how the sky and scenery turns an increasingly unpleasant shade of blood red. Debris, dirt and damage begin to accumulate: Chaos. At this point, the change in visual tone cannot be missed.




But morning arrives, and brings with it: Optimus Prime! (and the Dinobots.)



Along with the palette, the music track switches to a much lighter note as well. Hope has arrived to Autobot City.



And finally, we get the song. YOU GOT THE TOUCH! YOU GOT THE POWEEEERRRRRR! The film’s treatment of Prime is nothing short of reverential, and by himself he holds the power to totally change the tone of the picture again. He disables like seven Decepticons all by himself, and finally faces down Megatron. “One shall stand, one shall fall.”



It... Doesn’t go super well. The way this battle is staged characterises the combatants pretty well: Prime is clearly the physically far superior fighter, throwing around Megatron like a rag doll, but his opponent can keep up using his opportunism and trickery. Prime is strong, but also slow and lumbering and has an oddly long reaction time. Already you get the impression that something’s a bit off with him.



Finally, Prime downs Megatron and points a gun at him, but seems oddly hesitant to shoot (even though he calls Megatron’s bluff for mercy). Suddenly, The Touch cuts out in favour of a threatening instrumental, and the palette subtly begins to discolour again.



Megatron tries reaching for the gun, but Hot Rod jumps in to stop him. Unfortunately, this makes Optimus even more uncertain, and instead of diving for cover, he gets hit by Megatron’s shots as he easily wrestles off the young guy.

This scene is, unfortunately, why a lot of people ended up blaming Hot Rod for Prime’s death, disregarding that he’d have been hit either way. The cause for his demise is an entirely different one, and Hot Rod unjustly blaming himself for what happens is part of his character arc.



Prime is down, but with a final massive punch he manages to disable the gloating Megatron as well. In the end, they basically destroy each other, as is only appropriate. The Decepticons pick up their wounded and retreat, the battle lost but the damage done.



For the Autobots, it is hardly a victory. Optimus isn’t going to make it. “Do not grieve. Soon, I shall be one with the forceMatrix...” The Matrix of Leadership, an artefact that is passed among Autobot leaders, must now trade hands again: Optimus chooses to give it to Ultra Magnus, who has doubts about the whole thing “...Use the Matrix... To light our darkest hour.”



I really like the degree of mechanical detailing going on here. It really feels like something hidden under the armour plating, like he’s exposing his actual heart.




It drops from his lifeless hand, and falls into... Hot Rod’s.



And finally, colour fades from Prime’s body completely.

Named character death count: 7

The scene that would scar a thousand hapless children! But it’s also crucial to the film’s themes.
See, the thing about Optimus Prime? The film’s reverence for him is genuine: He’s a hero, he’s a legend, he’s the Autobots’ greatest hope... But he’s also old. He’s slow and inflexible and makes a number of crucial lapses in judgement in a row, first unwittingly giving the Decepticons the opportunity to assault Autobot City, then confronting Megatron alone in the name of honour instead of staying with the others and helping deal with the main force. His choice of Ultra Magnus as the inheritor of the Matrix is also very telling, since we already know whose hands it will actually end up in (foreshadowing!).
You see, the Matrix, being there to light our darkest hour and call in The Touch at the push of a button, is, of course, Capital-H Hope. It’s Prime’s essence, all the things that make him heroic and great. Magnus is an understandable choice as military commander, being responsible, authoritative, disciplined and strong, but he’s also hesitant, full of self-doubt and actually too disciplined and there’s a lot of poo poo he just can’t deal with. It comes as a surprise to absolutely no one when he finally turns out unable to actually use the Matrix when it counts.

The simple fact is, Optimus was already losing his touch – and even without Megatron, it was eventually time for him to let go. Between that and Hot Rod, you can pretty much already see the film’s primary theme and idea.



Quick scene switch to Unicron, and we see his interior again, where we find out he’s basically omniscient. He’s pretty much one of Lovecraft’s Old Ones at this point, but instead of being emotionally unfathomable, he is quite capable of simple anger, as shown by the furious scream he lets out upon seeing the Matrix.



Nearby, Astrotrain complains he’s too heavy to fly in space accelerate. Starscream (Chris Latta)’s solution? Throw the wounded over board, they’re not going to complain (actually they are, but who cares). Among them: Megatron!
Immediately, a fight breaks out over who’s going to take over as leader. It shows pretty well how necessary his iron fist was to keep the rowdy Decepticons in check, and how he was pretty much the main thing that actually made them a credible threat. Without him, they are pretty much broken.



But of course, he’s not dead quite yet. But maybe, he’s met a worse fate: Meeting Unicron face to face.
This is one of my favourite scenes in all of Transformers. Unicron opens his eye-mouth and booming out comes the voice of Orson loving Welles, in his very final role. He hated it, of course. Funnily enough, his utter lack of care for the material actually works to the film’s benefit, as you can practically feel his contempt over words like “Ultra Magnus” and “the Matrix”. I’m not sure how much it’s his natural charisma and how much is sound technician trickery, but his voice comes out so incredibly clear and overbearing that it makes all other auditory impressions sound like anti-sound. Even his simple, courteous “Welcome, Megatron.” blinds Megs with its brilliant light and sends him flying into Unicron’s enormous mandible, which is enveloping him in a symbolic grip.
In fact, Unicron is incredibly calm, courteous and polite, yet passively condescending in his absolute superiority and just that little bit petty. "I have summoned you here for a purpose." “Nobody summons Megatron!” “Then it pleases me to be the first.” The creators pulled all the stops in making him feel purely powerful, and Welles’ vocal performance is crazy considering how utterly little of a poo poo he gave. All drives and desires Unicron expresses are shallow, animalistic and nonsensical: He is basically what happens when a force of nature learns to talk and learns to hate, and it comes as no surprise that the only thing he fears is the Matrix of Leadership – or, in other words, love and goodness and so on. At this point, he’s basically demanding Megatron go and destroy the concept of hope. That’s pretty hardcore. But how is Megatron going to do that when he already failed, and now is heavily damaged?




Simple. By being recreated, as Galvatron (Leonard Nimoy).




The other damaged Decepticons are reborn as well. Megatron, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Shrapnel, Kickback and Bombshell are no more, leaving something entirely different. Notice how the mechanical boxiness has made way for smooth, organic shapes. There’s leathery wings, claws and horns. The Decepticons have become hell’s army.

Named character death count: 13 (symbolic, but they still count – it’s not like we’ll ever see their original personalities again.)

Galvatron differs from his predecessor quite significantly. The movie played up Megatron’s opportunistic cleverness to show it displaced completely by sheer, directionless anger and strength. It almost seems like a Buddhist allegory in which Optimus’ enlightenment allows him to ascend to a higher plane of existence, where Megatron’s attachment to life and power sees him be reborn a demon. It’s an interesting thematic variation, but I have to admit the reborn Decepticons are one of my problems with this film, because it has to introduce all these new characters... But doesn’t seem entirely sure what to do with them. Scourge and Cyclonus don’t actually get to play a role at all here, and there is an actual, no-joke debate in the fandom over whether Cyclonus’ “armada” even exists. Galvatron himself strangely only comes across as adequately pissed when interacting with other Decepticons or Unicron, and doesn’t seem to care about the Autobots at all – which actually works for him as a character, but also diminishes his threat. In fact, after Unicron’s amorphous malice and the way his presence affects the entire picture, returning to humanoid, even somewhat relatable antagonists seems like a bit of a step down. Which is not to say Galvatron doesn’t get some great scenes:





First thing he does in his new life? Go crash Starscream’s coronation as Decepticon Leader, and straight-up murder the guy. Just like that.

Named character death count: 14

Considering how much Megatron put up with from the Screamer, yet never seeing it fit to actually do something about him, there’s something deeply funny about Galvatron just disposing of him in three seconds flat, barely even dignifying him with a one-liner.



One neat touch is him crushing the crown underfoot afterwards. Considering the huge throne room lined by huge statues (probably former Decepticon leaders), it seems this ceremony is actually A Thing rather than just something Starscream cooked up – so here, Galvatron is actually showing contempt for the very institution of leadership. Decepticon society is very much built around the rule of the strongest, but he removes even the formal component of his strength’s affirmation, replacing it with an affirmation of his own mythology of exclusive rule (compare live-action Megatron’s “It will be me, it will always be me”). Note how he doesn’t even take command of the old Decepticons after this, preferring to stick with the new guys who are his slaves by design. Of course, this is all terribly at odds with his subservience to Unicron – which forms his primary character motivation for the film.



Bad news, Unicron has arrived at Cybertron. He immediately sinks his teeth into its moons, one of which hides a giant explosive, which Bumblebee detonates, hoping to destroy the monster (it barely stuns him).



The sight immediately ticks off Galvatron, who doesn’t exactly want Cybertron to be eaten. Unicron simply meets his protests by silently mentally torturing him until he yields. “We belong to him”, Scourge informs him helpfully. The thing I do actually really like about Galvatron is that there’s a tragedy to his character: It’s clear that accepting Unicron’s deal was a horrible mistake (although really, the alternative was death), and although he became more powerful than ever before, he’s also completely under Unicron’s control, and on the rare occasion that he actually tries to do something good, it... Doesn’t work out well for him.

On earth, our protagonists, previously busy rebuilding the destroyed Autobot city, now heed Jazz’ and Spike’s calls and prepare to head to Cybertron, but are interrupted by the Decepticons. It comes to another battle, from which the Autobots barely escape.



Well, it takes some doing, because the Dinobots seem to have developed an odd fear of space flight. There’s an odd thing here where they transform into their silly dino modes and then aren’t seen in robot mode again until the very end of the movie, and until then act entirely as comic relief. It’s an odd tonal shift, and while it sort of sets up the rest of the movie, it also feels premature, like this comedic element is just transplanted into this otherwise grim situation without much concern for how it would work: Note how there’s no accompanying change in scenery and colouration as we saw earlier in the film. Unfortunately, after the very well constructed beginning, the movie becomes a lot sloppier from this point on.

The Decepticons pursue, and disable the ship Kup, Hot Rod and the Dinobots are on, causing them to crash land on a rather oddly shaped planet. Ultra Magnus and his crew manage to fake their deaths by blowing up most of their ship, losing the Decepticcons, but also having to land on another planet for repairs – a planet made entirely of junk.




Now this is where the real tonal shift takes place. Notice the radical departure in aesthetic – this is the precise point at which Transformers 1986 ceases to be a grim story of war and death and becomes a straight-up Flash Gordon style space adventure in which wisecracking heroes encounter increasingly strange planets and people and escape bizarre situations using quick moxie. It’s sudden and extreme enough to totally throw you out of the movie if you don’t know it’s coming, but works brilliantly once you do. As the focus shifts from the old crew to the new, young crew, the narrative itself takes on a lighter, more youthful tone. It’s dissonant, but it’s also this dissonance that the entire movie is built around: We can buy Hot Rod as the guy who’s going to Light Our Darkest Hour because, well, he pretty much carries lightness with him on a presentational level - contrasted with Unicron and his summoned apocalypse.

Anyway, he battles some mecha-fish, then saves Kup from a robot Kraken, re-attaching his detached arm and leg. Note the image of a robot being put together, as opposed to exploding into pieces.



Back with team Magnus, Daniel decides to help out with repairs by climbing into one of his dad’s exo-suits. We get a little scene in which Arcee has to teach him to walk in the thing, which is transparently framed as a (surrogate) mother teaching a baby to walk. It’s a little aside about his growing up, as he is quite literally climbing into his father’s boots, which itself parallels Hot Rod taking over for super-dad Optimus Prime later in the film.

Also, some words about Arcee: Being very much the woman, her role is to be a total maternal stereotype, similar to Prime’s paternal thing. It’s super-shallow and has a bit of that 80s-cartoon-misogynist streak, but what surprised me was how much she’s allowed to be part of the team dynamic. She sees more action than Ultra Magnus and is fully comfortable with a gun, and her caring touch works well within the context of the team. If she wasn’t the smurfette and there was at least one other female character with different traits, I probably wouldn’t find much about her inclusion here to criticise at all – it’s not like any of the guys is more particularly deep. The sad thing is that even with my struggling praise for the writers here, she’s still the best female Transformer the franchise would get until like 2012. Yeesh.



Unfortunately, the team’s junk theft has attracted the owners’ attention: A herd of motorcycle men led by Eric Idle with a Genghis Khan ‘stache speaking via TV quotes. Sure!



Hot Rod and Kup also encounter a big ol’ herd, this time of transforming crocodile robot men. I really enjoy that all of these alien species they encounter are robotic in nature – in a throwback to classic pulp Sci-Fi, it only makes sense for all the aliens to be rubber forehead Transformers.
Kup suggests communicating with them, using the “universal greeting” – commonly transliterated as “Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong”. It goes about as well as you’d expect, and they are both captured.



And brought to trial before this guy, who declares people innocent and then sends them into a shark pit anyway. Seems to find that sort of thing rather funny.



Waiting for their sentence, they meet this guy, who introduces himself as Kranix (Norm Alden), the single survivor of the planet destroyed in the intro. After saying his two sentences, he’s promptly thrown to the sharks and dies.

Named character death count: 15, plus an entire species



Outside, the Dinobots encounter a particularly obnoxious little robot whose gimmick is that he speaks entirely in rhymes. He’s a completely superfluous addition to the movie and they shouldn’t even have bothered. Anyway, Kup and Hot Rod are thrown into the shark pit, but fight themselves free and begin kicking rear end, the Dinobots bust down the door, and then they all flee on one of their captors’ ships.



Before Magnus’ group and the Eric Idles can do anything about each other, Galvatron, kindly reminded by Unicron that his target yet lives, shows up to wreck house. Magnus risks himself to save the others, hoping that the Matrix can do something about Galvatron – but he can’t use it. He shows some resentment/disappointment over it refusing to cooperate – “Prime, you said the Matrix would light our darkest hour!”, which seems to indicate an attitude from the Matrix itself, like Magnus just doesn’t have the right mindset for it to help him. It’s not a tool or a weapon you can use tactically as he attempts to, but perhaps something that itself decides to use you.
Of course, what this results in is Magnus getting shot a bunch of times and loving exploding. For a little while, Galvatron and Unicron return the film’s tone to what it was before the Autobots’ escape, and immediately characters start dying again.

Named character death count: 16



Even with the Decepticons gone, all that happens is that another fight breaks out. Except this time, hilariously, Weird Al is playing. The Junkions are a commune of motorcycle men who literally ride each other and although none of them can put up much of a fight against any Autobot, they just immediately repair any damage to themselves, threatening to overpower the protagonists through sheer suicidal tenacity. Then Hot Rod shows up in the stolen shuttle, and decides to try out that universal greeting one more time. Which leads to... This.



Not only is the fighting over and everyone suddenly friends, the Junkions straight up assemble Ultra Magnus back together, and he’s alive and fine again. After all that despair and so on, suddenly we can just undo death, because we Dare To be Stupid. It’s so beautifully bizarre.

Named character death count: Just 15 after all?

Everyone agrees to chase after Galvatron, who, of course, is on his way back to his master.



What he intends to do, is, of course, to overthrow him with the Matrix’ power. And also of course, it doesn’t work out for him. It’s a nice touch that he lacks the chest cavity for the Matrix that Optimus and Magnus have and instead has to wear it on a chain around his neck. Magnus was pretty incompatible with the thing, but it is so fundamentally alien to Galvatron he can’t even integrate it into himself. Anyway, Unicron does not take this well, and takes out his anger on Cybertron.





Unicron’s transformation sequence is contrasted against Autobot City’s earlier in the film. Although he’s still a robot, the smoother movements and particular rhythm of small bits moving around suggest something much more organic, more alive. In this, however, it is also a sequence of significant depowerment: No longer a disembodied voice emanating from an amorphous shape cloaked in an atmosphere of destruction, the Matrix’ presence, even unopened, turns him into something humanoid, expressive and vulnerable.

Also, the movie is a bit ambiguous about this, but the script makes it clear that in the ensuing fight, the character Shockwave dies.

Named character death count: 16

Unicron idly swallows Galvatron, then Hot Rod in his drill ship flies straight into Unicron’s eye. It’s an image rife with subtextual potential, but unfortunately the filmmakers just weren’t good enough to make much of it. Daniel also saves Spike, Bumblebee, Jazz and Cliffjumper from acidy death, meaning four minor characters actually survive!



Inside Unicron, Hot Rod gets separated from the others and falls from the bright-neon halls of his head into a colourless abyss, where he encounters Galvatron, who is initially cooperative, but Unicron “convinces” him otherwise, and he opens fire.

This fight stands in direct contrast to the Optimus vs. Megatron fight earlier in the film. Where before Optimus was the clearly superior warrior, here Galvatron clearly totally overpowers Hot Rod. The young guy, however, chooses a much different tactic, relying on his speed and spry hit and run manoeuvres to succeed. It almost doesn’t work out as Galvatron begins to crush his robot throat with his bare hands, but finally he reaches for the Matrix, and THE TOUCH ensues.



Hot Rod quite literally grows up and becomes Rodimus Prime, new leader of the Autobots. He straight-up throws Galvatron through the wall, uses the Matrix to explode Unicron from within (who seems downright pathetic at this instance) and finally declares the end of the Cýbertronian War as the camera pans out over the wrecked planet, Unicron’s head now orbiting it in place of its moons. And that’s the movie! It’s all very silly.

Final named character death count: 17, which is somehow still a lot lower than I expected.

Now, the thing that draws me to the Transformers idea in general is that I think the image of a robot turning into a car or whatever is, in itself, quite fascinating. You have a single object that combines two distinct concepts and images and freely shifts between them – it’s a toy first and foremost, but on a critical level you also have this really distinct symbol of change and layers of being (notice how, in spite of sharing virtually no visual or thematic similarities, both the old movie and the new have themes of death and rebirth as personal change). It’s interesting just to see the differences in how TF2007 and TF1986 frame and interpret this idea: Where the former emphasizes the “robots in disguise” concept of a complex ideological being hiding behind the cover of a relatable cultural image, the latter focuses on the tonal fluidity of changing from one state to another. Autobot City literally and symbolically transforms from a place of fishing and social interaction to a vicious battleground. Unicron turns from an amorphous eldritch thing-that-eats into a big oafish robot who gets kicked in the butt by dinosaurs. This allows the movie to cover a remarkably diverse range of genres and approaches to the source material: Grim war story? Sure. Wacky, dynamic space adventure? Alright! Introspective character piece about a bad man’s encounter with a much more primal evil force? We can try. Three stooges comedy about dumb dino men? Well, if you really want... The film’s actual attempts at all those things feel pretty shallow, but it also casts a lot of potential seeds for storytelling. It’s like the filmmakers wanted to show that something could be both a cynical toy commercial and a totally sincere attempt at telling a good story.

The filmmakers cite Star Wars (1977) as their primary inspiration for the film, and it really shows. It almost feels like they wanted to emulate A New Hope’s attempts to create a more lasting space for its story on cinema screens, leading with a very basic hero’s journey showing the world and its concepts, introducing a number of thematic hooks that could be further explored in future releases. I’d have really liked to see Transformers: The Empire Strikes Back, but of course, we never got any such movie.
The simple fact is, TF1986 was a complete critical failure and hardly a financial success (making up for that by selling lots of toys, of course). Lacking Star Wars’ strong editing team, it ended up riddled with a number of structural mistakes which make the deliberate tonal dissonances feel sloppy, and many critics cited the characters as weak (I guess making your cast consist of basic archetypes was already considered unfashionable). In the end, Hasbro dropped the idea of Transformers on the big screen, and returned to the safe investment of television, giving us a third season of the cartoon which is every bit as abominable as the other two (welcome to Carbombya!!).

The most fascinating thing is the return of Optimus Prime at the very end of the series. The movie, thematically, is entirely about children taking the place of their parents. Although its respect for Optimus Prime is absolutely genuine and the death of the old order portrayed as nothing short of apocalyptic, it’s also built on the encouragement for the young ones to keep going and build their own lives. So think for a second about what having Optimus return and take his place of leadership again signifies thematically. Yyyyyyeeah.

And really, that says pretty much everything. Instead of a sequel movie that may even have Galvatron win over the heroes, the franchise entered a cycle in which Optimus would enter a repeating state of death and revival, over and over and over again. For all his original heroism, he has become an undead avatar for everything wrong with the franchise: An unchanging archetypal bundle of “traditional” values, chaining all storytelling across many series robot to himself, forever. Rodimus wouldn’t get to be the leading man again until 2012 with the More Than Meets The Eye comic series (which, by the way, is very good, and begins with Optimus realising the world has Moved On from him). There’s this underlying frustration to the entire brand that current screenwriters are mostly trying their hardest to pretend doesn’t exist.

The sad part is that the 1986 movie is the most-quoted item in the franchise, but it’s all shallow citations of lines and scenes that completely forgo the meaning of the original. When Optimus Prime du jour mouths off “One shall stand, one shall fall” for the twentieth time, there is simply no longer that understanding that he will not be the one who stands. In failing to bring all the movie’s themes to a proper conclusion, they just fade and disappear into the void.
One of the reasons I think the new trilogy makes for such good Transformers films specifically is that intentionally or not, they show the full, terrifying implications of Optimus’ continued existence. Effectively, it’s the failure of Transformers 1986 that built the conditions that let Transformers 2007 happen.

I’m still disappointed we didn’t get an equivalent to Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi. I want to see Rodimus and Galvatron properly conclude their character arks. Oh well, maybe one day, fingers crossed...

The Rat
Aug 29, 2004

You will find no one to help you here. Beth DuClare has been dissected and placed in cryonic storage.

:neckbeard: I loved the poo poo out of the '86 cartoon movie. Good writeup!

ManSedan
May 7, 2006
Seats 4

Terry van Feleday posted:

... conclude their character arks...

Nice.

Lobok
Jul 13, 2006

Say Watt?

Terry van Feleday posted:

Now, before I conclude this whole deal, I want to address one of the more interesting questions about the films: Why are all these robots so drat ugly??

How am I now defending the look of the Transformers?!

So much research, insight, visual aid, and a bibliography to take what was a whole host of baffling and inexplicable designs and turn them into sensible and pragmatic decisions. Awesome post, man.

Maarak
May 23, 2007

"Go for it!"
Mr. Bay's commercials are interesting to watch in hindsight:
http://vimeo.com/3160074

http://vimeo.com/michaelbaydotcom/videos/page:11/sort:date/format:thumbnail

Come And See
Sep 15, 2008

We're all awash in a sea of blood, and the least we can do is wave to each other.


I can't let this thread end without saying thank you Terry, this was a great read.

I'm currently passing around that PDF link trying to convince my friends to read 450 pages about Michael Bay's Transformers movies. It's more challenging than it sounds!

seaborgium
Aug 1, 2002

"Nothing a shitload of bleach won't fix"




This was an amazing read. I look forward to more of this type of thing from you. Though I am curious how you're going to handle the whole Clonus/The Island situation.

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

¡Hola SEA!


seaborgium posted:

This was an amazing read. I look forward to more of this type of thing from you. Though I am curious how you're going to handle the whole Clonus/The Island situation.

What do you mean? There may be some interesting intertextuality between the two films, but mostly the situation is what it is. A big budget film has a very similar plot to a b movie from 4 decades prior. They're far from identical, even in plot terms, and thematically they're even less similar.

seaborgium
Aug 1, 2002

"Nothing a shitload of bleach won't fix"




DeimosRising posted:

What do you mean? There may be some interesting intertextuality between the two films, but mostly the situation is what it is. A big budget film has a very similar plot to a b movie from 4 decades prior. They're far from identical, even in plot terms, and thematically they're even less similar.

It's been a while since I've seen Clonus but I remember there being some almost identical shots, accounting for technology and budget differences of course.

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

¡Hola SEA!


seaborgium posted:

It's been a while since I've seen Clonus but I remember there being some almost identical shots, accounting for technology and budget differences of course.

Is that a problem? Films quote other films all the time. It would be kind of weird and dumb for The Island not to quote Clonus, or Blade Runner, for example. Just like it makes sense that Bay later quoted The Island in Transformers, because they have some very similar things to say about conflating identify with branding.

seaborgium
Aug 1, 2002

"Nothing a shitload of bleach won't fix"




DeimosRising posted:

Is that a problem? Films quote other films all the time. It would be kind of weird and dumb for The Island not to quote Clonus, or Blade Runner, for example. Just like it makes sense that Bay later quoted The Island in Transformers, because they have some very similar things to say about conflating identify with branding.

If you're talking about the shots themselves I think it does. It might agree with what he's trying to say, but Clonus didn't really come across with the same message. It was just cheesy sci-fi.

Anyways, this was a great thread and this discussion might be better somewhere else.

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Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

and god is on your side
dividing sparrows from the nightingales
I enjoyed this thread throughout, and I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I thank you for the dozens (hundreds?) of hours of Transformers you subjected yourself to when making it. And I don't mean that because 'hurr Michael Bay' I mean the movies are actively difficult to physically watch at times with all the blurry quick-cut CGI poo poo happening constantly (though this definitely peaked in ROTF).

I was definitely one of the people you mentioned who, while not exactly analyzing the films, knew something was off at the end of the two sequels when Optimus brutally murders his opponents. I mean, it can almost be hand-waved away in ROTF if you're not thinking about it too much because the Fallen is almost literally Satan, but at the end of DOTM when Megatron has surrendered? It can't be construed as Michael Baby being a dumb bro because it's so straight-up psychotic that it's impossible that it's accidental.

Definitely looking forward to the fourth movie where he waterboards some Decepticons in front of an American flag, though.

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