10 Things You Didn't Know About Transformers The Movie 1986

[fitnessabcvideo]

I still get shivers down my spine every time Optimus fires off his jets as he detaches and flies into the sky taking out all the decepticons, it's bloody legendary.

[rafaeltogami]

This is hands down the best Transformers movie to date.
I didn’t see it on the theater here in Brazil, saw it a year later on TV without any prior knowledge of this movie… it blown me away.
Transformers is my favorite franchise and this movie is epic!

[amidarkdesigns]

The best Transformers movie ever. I got it at a yard sale yesterday. I'm so happy. The soundtrack is just amazing.

Gotta say, I was never so disappointed in 2005 that we were in a future like this movie showed.

The critics are asshats with no vision. The movie has more than made up for the loss at the time by those of us who have been raised on it.

[jamesmoss]

Judd Nelson is brilliant as the voice of Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime. 😀👍

[openeyz]

I was 6 when this movie came out. Seeing Optimus die still hits me to this day. Very powerful scene.

[wstine]

"Do not grieve. Soon I shall be one with the Matrix." That scene was definitely a tear jerker for alot of kids in 1986.

[MathewRenfro]

Imagine going back in time and telling Citizen-Kane-era Orson Wells what his last movie role would be,
His 'filmographic rosebud' so to speak.
The guy who was made famous for his War of the Worlds radio show went out on a film also about advanced alien Invaders

[charlesshadid]

It holds up way better than any of the michael bay movies.

[shaggycan]

The score of this film is a masterpiece. Both Stan Bush and DiCola bring it.
The theme by Lion is unbelievably 80s.

[jimjohnston]

One thing I truly appreciate about your work, Minty, is that even if something isn't your thing, or you are not overly familiar with it, you admit it, and then you give the material the respect it deserves, never insulting or putting down something just because you didn't like or weren't caught up in the fandom. I always enjoy your work. If you have not done a 10 Things about Rock and Rule (which someone mentioned earlier in the comments), please consider it. There's got to be more than Mick Jagger turning down the roll of Mok in the rumor mill!

[brandonandcharlene]

As someone who was 10 in 1986, I can say seeing this in the theater was amazing! I've seen it hundreds of times over the last 36 years, and it definitely is one of my favorites. Much more than "just a toy commercial" as even at the time, I never ended up owning toys of the characters featured in the film.

Lastly that story about the kid locking himself in his bedroom...I've heard it many times, but I'm pretty sure it's just urban legend, There were way worse things in movies back then, stuff my parents never should have let me see, but we survived somehow.

[vorlon]

Regarding the enhancements to Orson Welles voice, from what I've heard there were 2 key problems: it was too quiet, and too slow. Supposedly he actually directly stated that "you cannot say these lines any faster" - I guess meaning he felt they needed to be slow to have gravitas. The cleanup then was amplifying, speeding up and pitching down the audio, which actually REALLY works. The character comes across as god-like from the soft but massively resonant speech, and has a slight unnatural quality you probably couldn't get any other way.

Also, that S-bomb actually serves an additional purpose too: Spike was a kid (well, a teen) in the TV show. How do we show him as a respectable adult? You have him speak like an adult. That includes, when your plan to punch a god in the face does nothing? "Oh SHIT, what do we do now?"

Regarding the death of Optimus Prime, honestly I think it's one of the very, very best death scenes in any of the movies I've ever seen. It's epic in the truest sense, and it gives a powerful sense of a story with stakes and danger. If you took that away, you'd feel like 'oh, it'll be alright, Prime faught for millenia against the Decepticons, he can stop Unicron' ... but by killing him off, you made it a story there was actual RISK. I think that is why - whether or not you agree that it's *better* than Bay-formers - it is much more *memorable* than Michael Bays TF films.

[Awesoman]

The death of Optimus Prime directly inspired their decision not to end up killing off Duke in the G.I. Joe movie, instead putting him in a coma. But Duke was originally supposed to have died in that movie. In fact I believe it was the idea of killing off Duke that inspired the TF:TM team to do the same thing with Optimus. However the G.I. Joe movie had production delays allowing the TF movie to come out and hit theaters first. And the backlash over Prime's death forced them to do a patch job with Duke "recovering" from getting stabbed in the 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 by Serpentor. Sadly the G.I. Joe movie never debuted in theaters and came out on home video instead.

[JOSH-lwjv]

Fun Fact:
In the Japanese release of
*"THE TRANSFORMERS: The Movie", *
Unicron (voiced by Orson Welles
in his final film role) was dubbed
by Mizuho Suzuki, who was
the Japanese voice of Darth Vader
in the NTV (Nippon TV) edition of
*"STAR WARS"* in 1983, *"The Empire*
*Strikes Back"* in 1986, and *"Return*
*of the Jedi"* in 1988. He also voiced
The Emperor in the 1980 Japanese
theatrical dub of *"The Empire Strikes*
*Back", * and starred in *"GOJIRA"*
(1984) as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seiichi Emori.

Also, Arcee (voiced by Susan Blu)
was dubbed by Masako Katsuki,
who was the voice of Michiru Kaiou
aka Sailor Neptune in the original
'90s *"Sailor Moon"* anime series
and its 2nd & 3rd animated film.
Years later, she returned to voice
Arcee & her sisters: Chromia and
Elita-One in the Japanese dub of
*"TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen".*

[HITMANPegas]

As a Transformers fanatic I knew all this. This movie got the touch, It's got the power. Ya!

[handsomerob]

No parents were dragged to the theatres to see this. Kids got dropped off to watch movies. That’s how legends like me watched movies in the 80’s.

[neilprice]

Still the greatest Transformers movie of all time. I have this on DVD and still watch the film every so often, with my transformers 80's series' collections. I frikkin loved this film as a kid and wore out three different VHS tapes of it.

[TheFLOMAN]

I absolutely love this movie. Still own the dvd. I'm 46 years old now, and I still watch it whilst bringing a tear to my eye when Optimus dies.
I don't care what anybody says or thinks, this movie was the shit when it came out.

[mr.sinjin-smyth]

A lot of kids sure cried seeing their favorite Autobots die in this movie. A really ballsy move from a business stand point. This 1986 movie is also way better than live action movies, though I think the Bumblebee movie comes the closest in capturing the essence & flavor of the 1980s/90s animated Transformer.

[CoryTheRaven]

This movie blew me away in 1986, and every subsequent week for years when I would rent it again and again and again from the video store. I literally had it memorized. And I'm SO glad that it still holds up today in a way that the TV doesn't. Sure I notice a few more silly things (the passage of time in the film is... unsteady), but the animation is beautiful, the story simple and compelling, and the characters are great. The Movie was MY Transformers. Hasbro finally suckered me in with buying their new versions of the toys too. Frickin' love this movie.