Transformers the Movie 40th Anniversary Tour
- Thread starter LordGigaIce
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Didn't know this was a thing, or it got buried under all the IRL stuff. Neat-looking redeco in a nice window box with the 86 Movie logo, but I wish they'd done a G1 ish box like their prototype colors 25th anniversary one (which is still on BBTS). This is kinda tempting, although I already got the latter (whose prototype colors suit the lack of articulation better).
I managed to get Thursday off to go see the screening. I figure that my poor ass isn’t going to get THAT much farther in life or be able to take a meaningful vacation for years, so I might as well enjoy little things like this while I can.
I am going to try to go see this weekend, but I don't know if I will be able to now.
Bought my seats for Thursday a month ago, but it's a Regal theatre so no word on any concession trophies.
Unlike AMC which the nearest is in Nashville. Since I'm off that day, and since theatres don't require you to have purchased a specific movie ticket to purchase concession trophies.....
Unlike AMC which the nearest is in Nashville. Since I'm off that day, and since theatres don't require you to have purchased a specific movie ticket to purchase concession trophies.....
Planning to try to go on Friday night. I have to admit to being tempted by that popcorn bucket / tin. How much was it?
So just the price of a small popcorn and soda then?
So the final short they did, Optimus Prime Awakening, was pretty cool
Good animation, it seems very fitting for Cullen's last performance as Optimus, even if they couldn't have known it would be his last.
Good animation, it seems very fitting for Cullen's last performance as Optimus, even if they couldn't have known it would be his last.
My summation of Optimus Prime Awakening?
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It was a pretentious nothingness. They COULD have explored the nature of Prime’s numerous deaths and returns (as implied by the various peaks into other franchise moments, besides, well, anything made between the end of G1 and the first feature film), or explore the nature of Transformers death (especially since “death” never seems permanent, Optimus or not). Maybe some sort of message ”easing him” into the Allspark, or some message of hope for the future
No, it’s some vague “god” (credited as “The Other”), seemingly, trying to teach Optimus some sort of vague “lesson” about being just as bad as Megatron for the constant wars and deciding he HAD to step away or become like him? Or some bullshit like that?
AND THEN they had the gall to tease Megatron finding the Matrix that Prime had tossed away, setting up…something?. And I’m like, just F U C K OFF with that garbage. Regardless of Cullen’s passing (which they DID do a nice memorial at the start of the animated film, I’ll give them that), this short seems something marketing did, by the same people that have given long time fans crap like the Machinima and the Netflix series. This is the equivalent of Kevin Conroy’s last Batman performance being the Suicide Squad game. At least Conroy got a measure of redemption in the Crisis OVA appearance.
The ONLY good points were the passable animation and the professional work done by the voice actors (even though Megatron was synthesized to crap to offset Frank Welker’s literal inability to perform the original voice). And as much as the entire short was a narrative mess, the “evil Decepticon Bumblebee” was a novel design.
And I’m not the only one who felt that way. Seemed most were confused, and NOBODY liked it. Da Fuq Hasbro?
It was so bad, it kind of cast a dour note over the fun of watching the original 86 film. Once my theatre got the audio levels corrected, it was a fun time, and it was a treat to see that great Toei work (even the gafs you never notice
) in its intended scale.I managed to go to a screening today myself...and yeah, I wasn't all that impressed with the Awakening short either. Good vocals, decent animation...but what was the point beyond having something extra for people who came to the screening?
Personally, I was more impressed by the little memorial thing they had for Peter Cullen just before the film. That was nice of them.
Personally, I was more impressed by the little memorial thing they had for Peter Cullen just before the film. That was nice of them.
I'm gonna pull the same card I pull with my students from time to time.
Can you cite your sources?
Needless to say I massively disagree with you.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that while anyone past the age of 80 is certainly on a short clock, no one really likes planning for a beloved performer's death. That is to say that while this thing teases some sort of follow up... what exactly are you expecting? That the people behind this peer into their crystal ball and see that Peter Cullen's going to die soon so they better rework their script?
It ends on a cliffhanger. And then Peter Cullen died. It sucks, but I can't blame the writers for not being psychic.
I mean... I don't get this at all, but ok.
But WHY do I like this short? Simple... I liked the message.
Going to spoil tag this for people who haven't seen it yet but are planning to.
When this short was first teased, before Cullen's passing, the fandom seemed on edge that this would in some way "minimize" Rodimus Prime yet again... somehow.
And while Rodimus doesn't really factor into the proceedings (though he is present, very briefly) the problem Optimus seems to be struggling with is his need to let go. What happens when he first comes to in the afterlife and realizes where he is? He wants to go back. He demands to be sent back because his fight isn't over. The whole exercise is Optimus having to accept that he's passed on and that he needs to let go.
In a way it's the opposite of the worry that this project would minimize Rodimus. The message is that Optimus needs to accept his time is over... he needs to let go and move on.
Optimus accepting this and doing so hits very differently now that Peter Cullen has passed on... and it makes it strangely appropriate for his last performance as the character.
It's not perfect. The various visions and scenarios Optimus navigates seemed like they were vision quests... IE not real. Just manifestations of the mental blocks Optimus needed to get past. So I genuinely have no idea what Megatron finding the Matrix would have set up, had Cullen not passed away because... I understood it as not being Megatron. Just a figment of Optimus' mind.
And I will agree with you that they flirted with a very BSG-esque "all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again" idea, which the BSG fan in me would have loved, but they didn't really commit to it.
Still, on the whole? I found it nicely animated and the message surprisingly mature for this franchise that tends to treat Optimus as a Christ figure and even published an official comic book retelling the events of the '86 movie where Hot Rod was a dork and everyone told him he sucked. To go with the direction of Optimus needing to let go and accept that he's gone... I donno. It worked for me.
And while Rodimus doesn't really factor into the proceedings (though he is present, very briefly) the problem Optimus seems to be struggling with is his need to let go. What happens when he first comes to in the afterlife and realizes where he is? He wants to go back. He demands to be sent back because his fight isn't over. The whole exercise is Optimus having to accept that he's passed on and that he needs to let go.
In a way it's the opposite of the worry that this project would minimize Rodimus. The message is that Optimus needs to accept his time is over... he needs to let go and move on.
Optimus accepting this and doing so hits very differently now that Peter Cullen has passed on... and it makes it strangely appropriate for his last performance as the character.
It's not perfect. The various visions and scenarios Optimus navigates seemed like they were vision quests... IE not real. Just manifestations of the mental blocks Optimus needed to get past. So I genuinely have no idea what Megatron finding the Matrix would have set up, had Cullen not passed away because... I understood it as not being Megatron. Just a figment of Optimus' mind.
And I will agree with you that they flirted with a very BSG-esque "all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again" idea, which the BSG fan in me would have loved, but they didn't really commit to it.
Still, on the whole? I found it nicely animated and the message surprisingly mature for this franchise that tends to treat Optimus as a Christ figure and even published an official comic book retelling the events of the '86 movie where Hot Rod was a dork and everyone told him he sucked. To go with the direction of Optimus needing to let go and accept that he's gone... I donno. It worked for me.
Oh boy. That's juicy.
I guess I'll just say that this franchise has spent nearly forty years sniffing its own farts over Simon Furman's Baby's First Zoroastrianism "le epic" pseudo mythology.
You need to buy into "pretentious nothingness" a bit with this stuff.
Frankly I'm surprised they had the restraint to not explicitly name the entity Optimus was speaking to in the afterlife "Primus" just to shoehorn him into the Sunbow continuity.
If anyone is like me and doesn't have a theater with this playing, here's screener of the new short. Get it while it's still up.
We had a surprisingly full theatre, and I heard the confusion walking out. I talked to a handful of other fans. One used the term “complete nothing-burger”. I may have been hyperbolic, but I don’t feel by THAT much.
It’s not about Cullen’s passing. It’s more about how the short has no clear message or theme. Was the battle with Megatron a vision or was it real? How about the BumbleCon combiner? Are we universe jumping? I don’t know, the short doesn’t feel like it does either!
Some more hyperbole from me, but I think the frustration comes from the fact that they so deliberately tie this short to the animated film, to one of the key moments…for it to, at least for me, not amount to much of anything aside from a tease for “something”
It feels like something that wants its cake and eat it too. It wants that sweet nostalgia pull of being tied to the 86 film…but it doesn’t want to be beholden to anything ELSE from era. It wants to explore the nature of Prime’s actions and the need for him to “let things go”, but that flies in the face of the nature of the franchise itself, not to mention DIRECT future episodes of the cartoon this movie was a part of. “The One” talks about Optimus from other times and places…but that doesn’t seem to be relevant here (aside from some fan service for the post-movie arrivals and returners). It seems to want to set up a new scenario (with the Megatron tease), but it also wants to be tied with G1 because, of course it must be.
I still think it would have been a crap short to begin with (especially with the weird ass Megatron tease at the end), but I DO think Cullen’s passing put an increased weight on this that the short can’t hope to carry.
I’ve been here, literally, 40 years. I can buy into “pretentious nothingness” if the writers can at least commit to a narrative of some sort. Again, it feels like the short has a LOT to say, but doesn’t really know how to say anything. Again, it just feels like the 86 connection is (and almost assuredly, WAS) a marketing ploy for…something…that maybe didn’t need it aside from the “click bait” nature of doing so.
Wow, and here I was worried that maybe I was too harsh on it...
www.allspark.com
Movies and TV - Transformers Day - The TransFormers: The Movie 40th Anniversary & Optimus Prime: Awakening Recap/Review
Happy Transformers Day, everyone! Well, actually, it's 12:20 as I finally sit down to write this, so the day is over. But I still hope it was happy for you! Me? As you might have guessed, the bulk of my day was spent going to and seeing the 40th Anniversary edition of The Transformers: The...
www.allspark.com
I just feel like nerdom in general has a bad habit of saying "I personally don't like X therefore everyone hates it."
We've lost the ability to just say "it wasn't for me" or even "I didn't like it," and leave it at that, because that opens the door to the possibility that someone could disagree and have their opinion be just as valid as ours, and G-d forbid that happens. So now we have to twist subjective opinions into air tight facts, invent moral justification to cast opposing viewpoints as ethically wrong, or just invent a majority that agrees with us.
It's tiring because we should get some joy out of sharing our opinions over this stuff even if we don't see eye to eye.
"We can agree to disagree" is a very valid take in these cases but we can't do that anymore and it turns this stuff into an internet knife fight and that's just not fun.
Reminds me of the time I was told I wasn't a "true fan" because I wasn't watching G1 season 1 ep 1 when it aired... three years before I was born.
Say, were you posting on TFormers in 2002?
I feel like if it goes beyond twelve minutes... make it its own thing. Flesh it out into a half hour special or a series of shorts you can release on YouTube.
But if the limit is twelve minutes and it's going to be an addendum to the '86 movie... you gotta work in that time frame.
Personally? I think they told a story in that time. Is it as fleshed out as it could have been? No. Will it be followed up on? Likely no because I can't see them wanting this fandom to react negatively if they cast someone else as Optimus. So leaving it be, cliffhanger and all, is probably the most likely scenario. Until, like, ten years down the line when getting someone else to play an explicitly Peter Cullen Optimus won't seem like heresy.
Still? I think they had a story, and told it well enough to get through. And the message, such as it was, was one I appreciated.
I'm on record worrying about this minimizing Rodimus. But once more details surfaced, that sobered into "well, it IS a short, maybe it's just an afterlife thing or a summative vision."
The actual end product seems to bear that out, if being clunkily done. But I see Steevy's point of this never being meant to carry the weight of a final project or final tribute. If Cullen hadn't passed when he did, this would just be more mid content of the "I see what they were going for, could've been better" variety that we could be content to shrug at.
At the same time, though, I can definitely see the complaints aren't an overreaction. This really is just not very good. There's plenty of wiser, more thoughtful commentary that could be made on the nature of Prime's death and of the role that he and that death plays in the franchise, and with or without Peter Cullen himself passing, that would be very nice to get. But this doesnt quite hit those marks.
The central thesis is so narrow (accept death or... lead to an apocalyptic future -- not the corrosion of war without end, just some vague threat to Earth and Bumblebee becoming Cyberworld Bumblebee with a worse head), and the resolution at the end is very "well, this short can only be so long" in how Optimus just conveniently decides to stop. It feels like something that would've been made in the early 2000s (maybe Dreamwave, maybe the Mosaics), gleefully raiding the G1 toy box again to write what is ultimately a very basic idea that is given a veneer of unearned loftiness. At the time the latter would have been accomplished by peppering in movie quotes, and here that's done more as just a transition to the opening for obvious reasons. I'll credit them for some new attempts at that instead, with the Deep Cuts of his other names, that pretty cool visual of Unicron hanging over an Earth horizon, that wtf-ery of Optimus with a glowing blue human hand... But again, it's window dressing for what is really a fairly plain window.
I can also see how the feeling of "this is setting something up" is sparked, partly because of the ambiguous, generic overhanging threat begging to be fleshed out, the cryptic "one day you will understand" (as if Optimus himself understands anything beyond the narrow thesis right now), the stinger... It's not as tidy and self-contained as it could be, which is one reason why people think there's more to come.
In the end, again, it wasn't terrible, but aside from the opportunity to get a lot of Peter Cullen being amazing, I didn't find it particularly good. But yeah, it was always going to be more of a curiosity, more of a bit of fun additional content, that must happened to get saddled with more expectations due to real-world events. I am perfectly fine just shrugging at this mid content and moving on.
The actual end product seems to bear that out, if being clunkily done. But I see Steevy's point of this never being meant to carry the weight of a final project or final tribute. If Cullen hadn't passed when he did, this would just be more mid content of the "I see what they were going for, could've been better" variety that we could be content to shrug at.
At the same time, though, I can definitely see the complaints aren't an overreaction. This really is just not very good. There's plenty of wiser, more thoughtful commentary that could be made on the nature of Prime's death and of the role that he and that death plays in the franchise, and with or without Peter Cullen himself passing, that would be very nice to get. But this doesnt quite hit those marks.
The central thesis is so narrow (accept death or... lead to an apocalyptic future -- not the corrosion of war without end, just some vague threat to Earth and Bumblebee becoming Cyberworld Bumblebee with a worse head), and the resolution at the end is very "well, this short can only be so long" in how Optimus just conveniently decides to stop. It feels like something that would've been made in the early 2000s (maybe Dreamwave, maybe the Mosaics), gleefully raiding the G1 toy box again to write what is ultimately a very basic idea that is given a veneer of unearned loftiness. At the time the latter would have been accomplished by peppering in movie quotes, and here that's done more as just a transition to the opening for obvious reasons. I'll credit them for some new attempts at that instead, with the Deep Cuts of his other names, that pretty cool visual of Unicron hanging over an Earth horizon, that wtf-ery of Optimus with a glowing blue human hand... But again, it's window dressing for what is really a fairly plain window.
I can also see how the feeling of "this is setting something up" is sparked, partly because of the ambiguous, generic overhanging threat begging to be fleshed out, the cryptic "one day you will understand" (as if Optimus himself understands anything beyond the narrow thesis right now), the stinger... It's not as tidy and self-contained as it could be, which is one reason why people think there's more to come.
In the end, again, it wasn't terrible, but aside from the opportunity to get a lot of Peter Cullen being amazing, I didn't find it particularly good. But yeah, it was always going to be more of a curiosity, more of a bit of fun additional content, that must happened to get saddled with more expectations due to real-world events. I am perfectly fine just shrugging at this mid content and moving on.
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