Nebakenezzer posted:

Is this the same bitcoiner that was so stupid that the SA bitcoin mocking thread actually began to feel guilty on mocking him, as he was clearly educationally sub normal and didn't understand anything?

Something about getting the rights from Disney to TaleSpin with a petition and finally producing the dark, furry filled vision the source material obviously called out for

Sestze posted:

using bitcoin profits to own a movie theater to show 24/7 Talespin and offer over 300 flavors of different soft drinks. Projection would be handled with a dvd player and a home projection system.

Logansryche was not a smart person, and his story is definitely a sad one.

Yinlock posted:

at least he had a beautiful dream to strive for

Kurtofan posted:

Of all the disney cartoons from that era, he goes with tailspin ?

Inescapable Duck posted:

Tailspin is one of those shows that languished in the disney vault forever iirc, dunno if they actually released it on DVD. The fans get... attached as a result.

Gringostar posted:

i use to love that show growing up as a kid(not a furry) but looking back on it now it was a massively pro-libertarian cartoon and also pretty loving sexist as well since all baloo does is bitch about the woman that owns the debt on his plane while she feels she is justified in humiliating and working him to death because she owns the debt on his plane while thinking she’s going to bootstrap herself into being a billionaire but won’t because the actual billionaires crush her dreams nonstop

on second though that’s pretty anti-capitalist

Inescapable Duck posted:

Baloo and Rebecca kinda deserve each other at times. (doesn't help that sometimes they're written as a total manchild/huge jerk while other times are more reasonable. They didn't really do much continuity or personality consistency back then in cartoons or even most shows)

The actual depiction of communist countries is downright racist tho, the episode with the pandas actually got pulled from syndication.

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

how in the gently caress do you people remember specific details about loving tailspin

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Tailspin was the closest we ever got to a Crimson Skies tv show.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Why was it specifically Baloo the bear piloting an airplane?

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Marketing tie in with Jungle Book on VHS.

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

My god, for having such a high-flying premise, talespin is some cheapass poo poo

KiteAuraan posted:

Same reason Louie the Orangutan was runnin' a bar.

Slugnoid posted:

it was something to do with sex trafficking right?

Inescapable Duck posted:

The company is called Higher for Hire, it's obviously drug trafficking

Crane Fist posted:

Is this a real thing that's happening here

exmarx posted:

i just half-remembered a musical interstitial cartoon on either nickelodeon or cartoon network in the early 2000s, featuring u.s. troops calling on the services of a mummy to beat up saddam.

does any body else remember this? it was insane in retrospect. i think at one point a chyron appears, calling him 'sodumb hussein' ????

Stairmaster posted:

frieza is a stand in for western colonialism

exmarx posted:

these threads tend to get embarrassing pretty fast, but i've got a tangential question:


it aired in nz in the early 2000s so i guess it could have originally been from the gulf war

get that OUT of my face posted:

i love seeing serious news outlets getting angry about Thomas the Tank Engine being fascist, as if:

1. kids aren't watching it just for the trains
2. parents aren't capable of teaching their kids right from wrong

exmarx posted:

these threads tend to get embarrassing pretty fast

get that OUT of my face posted:

i love seeing serious news outlets getting angry about Thomas the Tank Engine being fascist, as if:

1. kids aren't watching it just for the trains
2. parents aren't capable of teaching their kids right from wrong

Nebakenezzer posted:

I did watch it just for the trains

I wouldn't say Thomas is fascist, just completely authoritarian. The lesson in all Thomas stories is "behave as authority demands, or else."

Sestze posted:

i was into the trains when I was young, it was only after I grew up and listened to the sad story of henry that I realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong with that universe.

Nebakenezzer posted:

I did watch it just for the trains

I wouldn't say Thomas is fascist, just completely authoritarian. The lesson in all Thomas stories is "behave as authority demands, or else."

Captain_Maclaine posted:

With the "or else" being monstrously sadistic punishment, only slightly cleaned up for the TV series compared with the books (which featured sentient locomotives being literally dismembered by scrappers, bricked up in tunnels for the rest of their lives, being crippled and turned into power generators in the service of "making you useful at last", etc).

Chasterson posted:

People who are like Mr. Krabs run the world.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

With the "or else" being monstrously sadistic punishment, only slightly cleaned up for the TV series compared with the books (which featured sentient locomotives being literally dismembered by scrappers, bricked up in tunnels for the rest of their lives, being crippled and turned into power generators in the service of "making you useful at last", etc).

Jeb! Repetition posted:

What the gently caress

Nebakenezzer posted:

haha, wow. Did not know that. YOUR BODY WILL SERVE THE HOLY RAILWAY EVEN IF YOUR MIND WILL NOT, I bet it is popular in China

quote:

The show “canonically takes place in a train post-apocalypse where the Island of Sodor is the only safe zone in a totalitarian dystopia in which steam trains are routinely killed and their body parts are sold or cannibalized for repair,” a Tumblr user named frog-and-toad-are-friends argues, citing one of Awdry’s books, “Stepney the ‘Bluebell’ Engine.” In that book, a green train named Percy expresses his fear of the “Other Railway,” which is what British Railways, the United Kingdom’s nationalized rail company, is called on Sodor: “ ‘Engines on the Other Railway aren’t safe now. Their controllers are cruel. They don’t like engines anymore. They put them on cold damp sidings, and then,’ Percy nearly sobbed, ‘they . . . they c-c-cut them up.’ ” (The accompanying illustration features two terrified trains facing dismemberment, and, behind them, a train with a chilling black void where its face used to be.)

***

Henry, the curmudgeonly train, is afraid to come out of his tunnel, because “the rain will ruin my lovely green paint and red stripes.” Then Sir Topham Hatt, the railway director, who is also known as the Fat Controller, arrives on the scene. (He looks like Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags but with eyes that have almost surely witnessed murder.) The Fat Controller orders the passengers to pull Henry out with a rope, but Henry won’t budge. They push him from the other direction, to no avail. (The Fat Controller declines to physically participate in this effort, citing “doctor’s orders.”) The passengers then tell Henry that it’s not raining; Henry, perhaps noticing that everyone still has their umbrellas out, refuses to move.

Realizing that the day’s workflow is irrevocably disrupted, Fat Controller decides that Henry must be punished—for life. “We shall take away your rails, and leave you here for always and always,” he tells Henry. As Henry’s face contorts into anguish and the background music toots a series of Oompa Loompa faux-glum flourishes, railway employees build a brick prison around Henry, leaving only half of his face visible. His train friends pass by: one snubs him, and another whistles hello. Henry has no steam left to whistle back. He spends his days alone, soot-streaked, wondering if he’ll ever be allowed to go back to work. The last line of the segment is the narrator saying, “I think he deserved his punishment, don’t you?”

***

In one episode, a manager tells a showoff engine named Smudger that he’s going to “make him useful at last,” and then turns Smudger into a generator, never to move again. (There are several “R.I.P. Smudger” tribute videos on YouTube.) In another episode, a double-decker bus named Bulgy comes to the station and talks about revolution—“Free the roads from railway tyranny!” he cries. He is quickly labelled a “scarlet deceiver,” trapped under a bridge, and turned into a henhouse. A recurring storyline involves the “troublesome trucks,” which are disciplined into fearful obedience through public, symbolic punishments. Their leader, S. C. Ruffey, is pulled in two different directions until he breaks into pieces—“I guess the lesson is that if someone is bullying you, kill them?” a YouTube commenter writes—and, in another episode, a “spiteful” brake van is crushed into bits.

Nebakenezzer posted:

haha, wow. Did not know that. YOUR BODY WILL SERVE THE HOLY RAILWAY EVEN IF YOUR MIND WILL NOT, I bet it is popular in China

Realtalk - For kids who grew up with the original Transformers, the pivotal moment of our childhoods was Transformers: the Movie

The original cartoon was pretty good as far as these things went. The essential thing that made it work was the fact that four characters were worthy of the term, as opposed to being the sum of their accents or jobs. These were Optimus Prime, who was genuinely a good leader and heroic, often volunteering himself when it was dangerous as opposed to sending his underlings in. Then there was Megatron, who only cared about his own advancement and didn't give a poo poo about anything else. There was Soundwave, the only competent and genuinely loyal Deception. And then there was Starscream, the treacherous backstabber. These four characters were enough to make the show enthralling for your average 5 year old

After several successful seasons of TV, they made a movie. The most important thing in the movie was to replace the old characters so they could sell a new line of toys. The way they did this was by murdering most of the original cast on screen

Let me explain: on the tv show, robots got shot all the time with lasers. Usually they fell down. In extreme plot cases, they would be critically wounded. In the movie, these rules are revised. The bad guys attack the good guys in the film's first 20 minutes, and basically massacre them. Worst of all from a kid's perspective, Optimus Prime dies. The levelheaded, noble leader of the autobots is killed, to sell more toys. Really the movie from that point on was pointless. The message was clear to a generation: your moral character is pointless. Make money, or you will be replaced by somebody more profitable in the short term

In another very capitalist lesson, the new toys/cartoon lacked the old one's magic. The movie neutered Megatron, taking away his leadership authority, and murdered Starscream as well. (Memory is a little hazy, but I think Soundwave is one of the few original cast members to make it through the movie.) With three of the four actual characters gone (and the fourth of course de-emphasized) the show was not nearly as good, and so short term profit ruined a longer term good thing

temple posted:

The problem with transformers 1986 was optimus passed the mantle of leadership to a nobody and it felt off. I think we were just turned off by how it started but its better than we remember.

Transformers is a tale of anarchists vs fascists. Optimus leads by example and even respects the agency of his opponents. He is constantly reaffirmed as the leader of the autobots by consensus and the bots follow him out of shared interest. Any autobot could lead but optimus is the most able. Decepticons are of course villians for villian sake. They war not out of need but lack of conscious for those weaker than them. They could share the energon cubes but refuse to, half out of bloodlust half out of greed. Megatron is trapped in the cult of military pride and tradition, becoming a legitimate threat but accuracy depicted as a loose cannon. Starscream is probably more capable to lead but not worthy in the slightest, only fighting to feed his ego. Soundwave is balances out his unstable leaders, becoming the true menace of the series. His cold obedience to power and devotion to success made the decepticons survive when collapse was all but inevitable.

temple posted:

The problem with transformers 1986 was optimus passed the mantle of leadership to a nobody and it felt off. I think we were just turned off by how it started but its better than we remember.

Transformers is a tale of anarchists vs fascists. Optimus leads by example and even respects the agency of his opponents. He is constantly reaffirmed as the leader of the autobots by consensus and the bots follow him out of shared interest. Any autobot could lead but optimus is the most able. Decepticons are of course villians for villian sake. They war not out of need but lack of conscience for those weaker than them. They could share the energon cubes but refuse to, half out of bloodlust half out of greed. Megatron is trapped in the cult of military pride and tradition, becoming a legitimate threat but accuracy depicted as a loose cannon. Starscream is probably more capable to lead but not worthy in the slightest, only fighting to feed his ego. Soundwave is balances out his unstable leaders, becoming the true menace of the series. His cold obedience to power and devotion to success made the decepticons survive when collapse was all but inevitable.

Terry van Feleday posted:

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

Extra: The Transformers: The Movie (1986)




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...

temple posted:

The problem with transformers 1986 was optimus passed the mantle of leadership to a nobody and it felt off. I think we were just turned off by how it started but its better than we remember.

Transformers is a tale of anarchists vs fascists. Optimus leads by example and even respects the agency of his opponents. He is constantly reaffirmed as the leader of the autobots by consensus and the bots follow him out of shared interest. Any autobot could lead but optimus is the most able. Decepticons are of course villians for villian sake. They war not out of need but lack of conscience for those weaker than them. They could share the energon cubes but refuse to, half out of bloodlust half out of greed. Megatron is trapped in the cult of military pride and tradition, becoming a legitimate threat but accuracy depicted as a loose cannon. Starscream is probably more capable to lead but not worthy in the slightest, only fighting to feed his ego. Soundwave is balances out his unstable leaders, becoming the true menace of the series. His cold obedience to power and devotion to success made the decepticons survive when collapse was all but inevitable.

Squizzle posted:

transformers is about a society that has been at war for like ten million years, mostly w the same exact individuals involved and implicitly is about the toll that takes on a people, their society, and their resources—and how they react when confronted w a people (humans) who tho more brief individually are able to build a more majestic, diverse world of many cultures that endure in ways a millions-of-years-old sentient war truck cant match

its a show about the glory of peace because the alternative shown is a mechanized resource desert where post traumatic stress replaces culture

SimonCat posted:

Nebakenezzer posted:

A good take

I forgot about this but the Transformers movie ends with the autobots chanting "till all are one! Till all are one!"

temple posted:

figures this belongs here

Jeb! Repetition posted:

Where does WH40k say fascism is bad? A literal fascist I know loves it

Jeb! Repetition posted:

Where does WH40k say fascism is bad? A literal fascist I know loves it