Weird. I kind of vaguely remembered that but when I tried to get context on the wiki, some of the script background that I swear was there was gone and replaced by a production timeline that only mentions Friedman's draft submissions. So I thought I had misremembered the previous (actual) order of operations and that Friedman's submissions were listed because they were last in the sequence.

 

You assume too much, I hold the 86 movie in contempt for most of the same reasons with some added ire for breaking with previous lore/continuity/functionality.



What I find amusing is that many of the criticisms leveled at the Sunbow cartoon can *be just* as easily applied to BW, but because it's "Muh nostalgia..." people give it a pass.

I know "best" is subjective and everything, but I'm wondering if you're aware that "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" exists...

 

Having an opinion doesn’t mean it’s satire.

 

Oh, I am perfectly aware, not saying it's bad because I like Star Trek, especially TNG, but I stand by my post, you physically cannot change my mind; I have spoken.

This is the hill I will gladly die on.

 

It certainly doesn’t, but my question was genuine. I really couldn’t tell if the praise was sincere or sarcastic. I just don’t think I’ve ever felt so gushingly enthusiastic about anything, ever, and so when I read such words written about an 80s animated movie, I naturally suspected it might be tongue-in-cheek.

 

His motivation is to eat, the Matrix can destroy him. That's all you need. Sure, it's simple, but as much as I love a villain with complexity and depth and nuance and whatever-the-heck-else, sometimes there is nothing more compelling than a giant cosmic horror, whose only goal is to satiate their appetite, and that you, your loved ones, your home, your very being, means absolutely nothing to it. I mean heck, there's no indication Unicron even understands why the Matrix can stop him, nor does he care, he just knows.

 

People have their preferences. It might be something about the movie he finds greater over anything else done in cinema. I obviously can’t speak for him, but if that’s how he feels then I see nothing wrong of the sort.

 

The first 30 minutes are actually pretty good and nothing you'd expect from a Saturday morning cartoon show. The movie made it clear this was a WAR.

But the space shenanigans quickly devolve into less sinister follies that don't do much to move the plot further down the road. Even the Quints get turned into a chuckle-fest once the Dinobots show up. And really, that's the biggest disgrace of the film is that the Dinobots are relegated to comedy relief and this extends into season 3.

 

Yeah, it's kinda weird that other drafts aren't listed, because Ron only had two shots at the script before other writers started working on it.

 

Never thought of it this way but you're exactly right: it set a much different tone for both sides. Those first 30 minutes are why Megatron became my favorite character in the first place. It's kind of all down hill from there.

 

I never said there was anything wrong with their opinion, and I don’t think there is. However, the level of passion with which they stated their opinion surprised me, and I wasn’t sure if I was reading sincerity or sarcasm. I was really just looking for clarification, which they later provided. It’s all good.

 

I have a few thoughts on the movie. Summary- It's terrible, I've come to enjoy it anyway for what it is.

Despite being a hardcore geewunner since Day 1 in 1984, I never saw the movie as a kid. By 1986 I had aged out of TF (temporarily) and didn't even really know the movie existed until my freshman year of college (1995). someone happened to have brought a VHS copy with him, and we all watched it in the dorm one day. It was an odd way to experience it, as we were all way too old and cynical for it at the time. I remember strongly disliking it as it made no sense to me.

For me, the movie is an incoherent mess. It vacillates too hard between violence and outright silliness. The cues to 1977 Star Wars were obvious, which struck me as strange for 1986 as SW was completely out of style by that point. I give the movie a pass nowadays as I have no childhood nostalgia for it, rather the franchise as a whole.

I'm good with the movie right up until Starscream's death. The Junkion dance scene takes me right out and gets fast forwarded. I like the new Decepticon designs, but the latter parts of the movie are like a fever dream.


This may sounds strange, but I've always drawn a parallel between TF:TM and Beast Machines. Both took their source material and completely changed setting and aesthetic. Both discarded or revamped established characters and introduced a wild new story and took lots of chances creatively. While still trying to hold some tenuous link to their original source material. One is celebrated amongst the fans, one is reviled. Such is the fandom.

 

While not a great movie, I still really enjoy it and it's easily the best part of the G1 cartoon continuity to me until Masterforce.

 

All you need for the villain maybe, but they really should have tried to explain what tge matrix was and why it was able to destroy Unicron

 

I appreciate the concepts and characters it brought to the franchise, like the Matrix, Unicron, the Quintessons and all that, as well as trying to move the franchise forward with new leaders and new locales. Plus, it's got a great soundtrack (Admittedly, a soundtrack that was just a bunch of licensed hair metal and the single song actually made for the film) and the animation is stellar. I love the look of all the lights in the film, like the destruction of Kranixx's planet, it's just beautiful to watch even now.

But as an actual film it's not good. It's got good scenes, I enjoy the entire Quintesson Trial sequence, the attack on Autobot City, and Unicron wrecking Cybertron, but the filler in-between those bits is nonsensical. You can tell that they wrote a bunch of cool scenes and were scrambling for ways to connect them. I think it's a good rough draft, but not as a finished product. And the very utilitarian approach to the characters, killing them off brutally to signify they're discontinued, is so blatant it makes the actual cartoon, which is a 22-minute commercial of the purest variety, look tame by comparison. They at least tried to explain where the new guys came from...sometimes.

 

It's a good sci fi action flick. It has tons of memorable moments. Not all of the new guard was bad, although some were cruddy, and some of the old guard still remained. It is nicely animated, all the ends were tied up, and the soundtrack is really kickin. Is it flawed? Yeah. It's a very rare movie that isn't. Does it do what it set out to do which is be a sci fi action flick? Yeah. Did it make kids upset and scared? Yes, but no more I'm sure then the likes of Land Before Time, Dark Crystal or Bambi.

 

Land Before Time and Bambi upset kids? Hm. I mean, yeah, The Dark Crystal was pure nightmare fuel. I think I still occasionally have those creepy bastards sneaking into my more unsettling dreams.

 

Hey, I cried when Bambi and Littlefoot's moms died, and I wasn't the only kid.

That damn movie made me think that earwigs were going to crawl into my brain for years, before I learned they were harmless.

 

They wouldn't have needed to if that mystery was built into its inclusion in the story. If they had to go search for it and learn about it in a sort of holy grail style quest then you don't need all the backstory beyond what the movie provides because it could be taken as something secretive and shrouded in mystery. Of course this also would've required some background/myth & legend familiarity with Unicron as well. Because the movie very much implies that they have no idea who or what he is before he shows up and then they just happen to have the magic macguffin that's able to destroy him because.... reasons?

What really screws up the Matrix is the fact that there should've been numerous points in the show that we learned about its existence/importance but didn't for no reason besides "the writers hadn't made it up yet."