Victor Caroli's wonderful narration has long been a staple for the first generation of Transformers media. He has such a distinctive voice and you knew it was probably Transformers when you heard his narrations. He added a trademark feel to the show.

Of all the narrations he did for the original Transformers, what is your favorite? Which episode, commercial, or scene?

For me I'll probably say it's the opening narration of Transformers: The Movie. The very narration this website is named after. Who could forget those docile tones, "It is the year 2005..." opening up the movie? Granted that was probably some of his most calm narration.

I also LOVED his narration for the TF: The Movie trailer. He makes it sound so exciting and thrilling. It's much more up beat than the intro to the movie. I noticed that later in the series as his work approaches the early 90s, most of his narrations seems to have taken up this fast tempo style. For example if you wach the episodes "The Rebirth Part 2" and "The Rebirth part 3" you'll notice that he does it more action packed and faster than he did early in the series for season 1. In season 1 he was slow paced, poetic, and calm. By season 4 he was action packed and fast tempo.

What is your favorite pieces of naration that Victor Caroli has done in Transformers?

 

Mine is the one that I don't believe the US got: The reading of the opening scroll from TF:TM. The way he pronounces "maniacal Megatron" still gives me a smile when I hear it.

The Star Wars-like scroll was such a better opening than the one the US got, with just the star names flying in on the screen.

 

Yeah, this. That was one epic bit of narration.

He made the G1 toy commercials memorable, too.

 

He does a pretty good job at those NHL commercials.

 

Yeah, that opening was awsome. Definitely my favorite.

Ugh, no. I remember when I bought Rhino's vhs for the movie and I saw the Star Wars style opening. I remember thinking to myself "what kinda alternate version of this movie did I buy????"

 

The opening narration of the TV show!  

"Millions of years ago, on the planet Cybertron, life existed..."

--Moony

 

I especially love Victor Caroli's narration at the start of the 1986 movie... not the Star Wars-style scroll narration that the US did in fact had on the Rhino release of the movie, but THE narration that goes "It is the year 2005."

 

G1 teletran II files: predacons.

 

That is a good one!


I'm also starting to favor his narration at the start of "Five Faces Of Darkness Part 1". Another narrative where he opens with "It is the year 2005...". The difference with this one though is he gives it a little more energy and a much warmer feel good vibe at the beginning because the good guy Autobots were on top of the world as victors when it started.

 

He even makes the word "buffalo" sound like a deadly creature.  

My memory may be tricking me, but for FFoD Part 1, didn't it start "It is the year 2006..."?

 

I think I like all of his narration, because it really did help define G1. Along with TF:TM G1 episode 1 stands out in my mind.

 

I still think it was beyond awesome that they brought him back do the voice overs for the 2007 movie TV spots. To me that was almost as big of a deal as getting Cullen to reprise Prime.

 

The Beast Wars ones.

"From insect, to high-tech."

 

Don't be ridiculous. The opening crawl is an awesome bit of dialogue that sets up the movie fantastically. Far, far better than the awful superman style names flying toward the screen. Did anyone really care for the celeb names as a kid? I kinda appreciate them now (Nimoy, Stack and Nelson especially) but the fact that the superior VA talent was ignored (Cullen and welker, arguably THE voices of transformers at the time)

The crawl seems far more relevent to the movie if you watch it today, I know I may be biased as it' the version I grew up with but I believe I've at least tried to rationalise my opinion. Seems that a lot of the US fans stand by the credits intro as thats the version THEY remember, but I never seem to get and objective view as to WHY its better.

 

Uhh, you forgot to end all that with "in MY opinion". Don't state it like it's a fact or call anyone else ridiculous because they don't like it.

Maybe people don't feel like debating which opening is better since it's A) just a personal preference, and B) most people haven't seen the versions that were released outside of their country. Hell, I never saw the Star Wars scroll version til it was on TV just a few years ago since none of my VHS's or DVD's ever had it. And no, I don't like it either - specifically because of the Star Wars likeness.

 

Sorry, but I did state in the next paragraph that it was my opinion. In fact I was trying to open it to discussion.

I do find it funny that you could specifically dislike one star wars likeness in a movie FULL of star wars likenesses. It could be argued that they represent storytelling archtypes that arnt exclusive to star wars, but then again, star wars hardly invented the opening crawl either.

Hell, I personally love the star wars parallels, Springer is all the more awesome for being a robot Han Solo.

 

Yeah but to be fair, it was Star Wars that made that opening scroll thing what it was. Whenever someone sees it, they think Star Wars - not who may have done it before. Star Wars made it iconic. So in that sense, while I do agree there are a lot of parallels between SW and TFTM in terms of cookie cutter good vs. evil / growth of a hero / etc etc etc, I personally thought the opening scroll was overkill.

 

Hate to say it but your memory is playing tricks on you...

YouTube - ‪Transformers G1: Five Faces of Darkness Part 1 (1/3)‬‏

 

 

I completely missed that one. Is there a youtube video to hear this?

 

Was Vince Caroli the Narrator for Transformers More Than Meets The Eye, when it starts?