(upbeat music) Welcome back to BS Reactor, where the crew get their friends to talk about stuff. They couldn't get other people in their lives to chat with them about. This week, they're beginning their conversation about the 1986 animated robot film, The Transformers, The Movie. As always, the team is going to be using profanity and spoilers to get their points across. So if you're not into that sort of thing, tap stop before the music ends. The humans rant for a bit before doing the review, but they do get there. Don't worry. And thanks for listening. We appreciate you. - The thing that made me cross the threshold on, it was James Bond having sex with the ape woman. - Okay, that was the fuck are we talking about? - Tomb Patrol. - Oh, yeah. - Yes, it's the ape woman. And then her whole friends was a big spider. - Oh yeah. - So that took me out of a job. - The last several iterations of Tomb Patrol have been meh. - Yeah. - And then I'm just like, no Beast Boy, I wanna Beast Boy in there, but no Beast Boy, that's okay. And then the bandage rap dude, I'm just like, okay. - So the invisible guy, kind of? - Yeah, I'm just like, I'm tired of him. - It felt straight up like they stole that from D7, yeah. - Yeah, right out of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. - Yeah, that's right. - There's a good version of Tomb Patrol. - Yeah? - It's called Umbrella Academy. - Yeah. - You gotta be there. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - I had a thing I wanted to kind of sneak back to with you're talking about like people who deserved awards. - Yeah. - So y'all watched Inglorious Basterds, right? - Uh-huh. I have it, but I kind of know. - Have you at least seen the intro scene? - Oh, yeah, the pie or strudel? It's like a dairy farm. - Oh, yeah. - And he's interrogating the villagers? - Yeah, everybody had a huge boner for how Kristoff Waltz should get every Oscar for that scene, which-- - Well, the reactions were just as important as-- - Well, yeah, which is 100% not wrong, but dude, Dennis Pinochet and that fucking, the like the dairy farmer guy. Just, he didn't do a lot of talking in that scene, but like the way he held himself and the sheer horrific expression of his face. - Yeah. - He carried that scene just as hard. - Well, isn't that the scene everyone said one Kristoff the Oscar? - Yeah, 'cause, well, I mean, it's, you should see it, it is powerful. - 'Cause there's a lot of movies you watch and you're like a person when they went Oscar, you're like, okay, that is the scene that won them the Oscar. When Heath Ledger won, first scene when he comes in with the pencil. - That's trash. - And does, oh, you know the pencil scene? - No. - I don't like him as the Joker at all. - Well, really, no. - Because he doesn't play the Joker. He plays a cold, calculating murderer who wears Joker costume. He doesn't have a sense of humor. He doesn't have-- - No, he doesn't, really. - He doesn't really have it out for anyone. He's out to prove some kind of societal truth about like, it's a totally different character in a Joker costume. - And then Jared Leto happened and we're like, wow, Heath really had his. (laughs) - Well, then what came Phoenix came back and-- - Yeah. - What is Oscar for that? - Oh, was this like, let's just see what he finished, act. That's how I do what it was. - Yeah, that was better. - I'll end up watching the new one, fully adieu or whatever. - I'm sorry. - I don't know. - So sorry. - I'm already geared up from it being worse than Morbius. - So is Lady Gaga supposed to be like-- - But maybe we can still convince the studio to put it back in theaters again at a huge loss. - We did it with Morbius. - It's joke in time or something. - Yeah. - I don't know, at least Lady Gaga will beat it and she sings a bunch of times, so that'll be nice. - Yeah. (laughs) - Sometimes. - It's good at singing. Anyway, you want to get this thing rolling? - And she can act, so-- - Yeah, Star's board was good. I liked that one. - I just want to be talking about being depressed for a day. - I just wanted Denise Minochet to have his moment. - Yeah. - He was phenomenal in that scene. - It's very hard to be such a great actor, do such some really good and get nominated for it. Very few people are nominated for being in a movie for-- - It's weirdly easy to get nominated for being jack shit, though. - Yeah. (laughs) - Like, it's very few people, like example, like, what is it? Anthony Hopkins won for Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter's won here for what, 10 minutes in the movie. - Yes, I also feel like there should be an anti-oscale. I don't mean the Razzies. I mean, like, career ending performance awards. (laughs) Or like, moments in society where Jack Black shows up and yells, "I'm Steve." And he just feels old from that point on. - Why would you make it out of the thing about saying, "Yes, we got the Minecraft movie instead of Batman Beyond." - I think one of my favorite things I've seen about that so far is somebody posted a screenshot from the trailer. It was just like, these character outfits are so bad. You didn't realize I replaced one of them with someone from Concord. (laughs) And I had to, like, look, and I'm like, "Oh shit, it's one of these two." (laughs) - Like, I don't get the point of this Minecraft movie. It was the point, it's just-- - Microsoft wanted money from a movie. - Well, I know that. I'm talking about the actual point for the movie. That was the point-- - The point of the movie is that. - Most of the point-- - The point for-- - Sorry, the point of-- - The point of another Jack Black starring Raul's clap trap was the point of order. - Oh God. - The point of that was, "Hey, these people are trying to kill one thing in that." - Like, I haven't liked Jack Black in a long time. He's burned all of his School of Rock Goodwill a long time ago. - Yeah, he just seems like someone's creepy uncle. - And like-- - He just think he was funny. - He showed up as Bowser and killed it. - Yeah. - And I was like, "Oh shit, "can I like Jack Black again?" And then he's like, "No, you can't! "Watch this!" - Fuck this! - Like, oh. - Borderlands, yeah, there's like a product to get the person from here to there, blah, blah, right. - So what's the point of the Minecraft movie? Like, what's the plot? - They find themselves in Minecraft and have to deal with that situation. - It's too much, probably. - This is what I was saying. - It's not out yet, so-- - There's a few people that'll be awesome and we're just shit-talking. - They were so-- - The next Citizen Kane or whatever. - A thing about a possible world of Warcraft movie at some point. - They made that go. - They already did. - Yeah, but I mean, like in the first rumors, we're hitting, Penny Arcade did a thing about the jock, the nerd, and the cheerleader appear in the world of Warcraft. What the hell is this? Like, I know where we are, this is Azeroth! - No, absolutely not. - And like, had to get the ending of it is just like, well, they finally get the portal home and like, cheerleader's going through and nerd is like, guys, I think my place is here, I'm gonna stay and, you know, jock puts his hand on his shoulders, like, even though you're a nerd, I'd play football with you any day. And just like, that's the movie. That's what the movie's gonna be. - And then he gets instantly an arrow to the knee. - God. - I understand, like, at least Warcraft, there's like a point, if you're making a movie out of Warcraft, they're like, oh, the evil bad guys? - Look, I don't know if you've played Minecraft in a while, but they're going to have to feed the Ender Dragon. - Yeah, my son plays it, I know you build stuff and there's certain stuff, but other than that, I'm like, wow. - You eventually build a Nether portal and you go to the Nether and you fight the Ender Dragon. - Although, I will say that it sounds like Kideo Kojima's gonna make a movie, and by that, I mean, Death Stranding 2's coming up. - God. (laughing) - It hasn't been a while since I've messed any with Norman Reedus and the Electric fetus. - I'm so waiting for them. I want them to make a damn new Prince of Persia game. - They've been fucking it up for a while. - Not a game, but movie. - I want them to make a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse movie in the spirit of the Transformers movie. - I want there to be an epic Mickey movie. - Okay, I'd watch that. - That shit was cool. - I would watch that. - That shit was cool as hell. - I wanted to be made by Miramax. - I want there to be another Street Fighter game. Street Fighter movie. - I was gonna say, the one just came out. - All right. (laughing) - Isn't Street Fighter 7 just hit? - I think so. - I want them to do a 7 was very recent. One of those two. - I don't know. - I want to literally just be like a straight tournament movie where it's like, oh man, I'm gonna fight. We're gonna fight this person now. - Here's the problem. The first Street Fighter movie was flawless. (laughing) We will have to bring that up. What are these days? - I'll throw that down. - Yeah. - So I'm down with that. I don't know. It's just like the absolute really shitty bargain basement scripts with sad ass costuming and a real soulless cash grab. This thing got popular for a little bit. Let's make a movie before it fades. And it contains Raul Julia and Jean Claude Van Damm at their absolute fucking peaks. (laughing) - The #ster with kids? - God, right. - Just out of nowhere. Like Raul Julia's dying. - Rad Julia did such a great job. - And his grandkids are like, we like Street Fighter and he's like, okay. - Well, let's do this. - Rad, Raul Julia. - And then he was like, this character, he sucks. - That. - I improve him. (laughing) - The whole line of when Bison came to your-- - The day Bison graced your small village. It's the most important day of your life. - Yup. - But for me, it was Tuesday. - Exactly. I'm like, that's gangster. That's the biggest thing in your life is nothing. - Uh-huh. - That's awesome. - And then fucking, that is opposite Jean Claude Van Damm at his most meat stick. Just. - Come up that river and we're gonna kick it. - Okay, let me do this. - Oh yeah. (laughing) - But we can all go home. Well, I am not going home. I am going to get in my boat and I'm going to go up River and I am going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wanna be is gonna feel it. (laughing) - Now, I remember his American. - The cadence in that is just so fucking weird. (laughing) - And I remember he's American. - Yes. - I don't think, I don't think he's acting man. (laughing) - Well, he was, he was, he just trades in his role too. - You did it. - Full method. - The thing is, the thing is, he was a. - Mini-game and destroyed a car. - Yeah. - The thing is, he was high, like 99% of that movie. - Oh God yeah. - No. - But it got, it's a boring point if he wasn't. - He was very high. He was like. - It's fucking glorious. - They talk about, they talk about behind the scenes. They're like, yeah, he was just. - Fuck, I don't remember his name. The guy they got to play Zangief was absolutely perfect. - Oh yeah. - But it's just, it's a complete piece of shit movie, with every character firing on all cylinders, for no reason. - And one of the most interesting part of the movie was the Ken and Ryan part, where they were just selling. - It's just like grifters? - Yeah, they're grifters. - They're grifters and they were selling bad weapons to people who wanted to kill people, but they're actually doing a good thing. - Yeah. (laughing) - They're weapons dealers. - It's like catch 22. - The one part is that Ryu said this because he's actually stopping arm sales and kens in it because he's a fucking criminal. - Yes. - Yeah, catch 22, right? - Yeah. - Hellers, yeah. - I don't think they miscast anybody. - Honestly, it's so damn damn. - Speaking of perfect casting, they do transformers with these, they cast Optimus Prime as Thor, right. Megatron is paper boy from Atlanta. - Really? - Yeah. And my favorite, Steve Bushevi is Starscream. - Really? - That's wild. - And he does it flawlessly. There's even a point where Megatron crushes his voice box. He starts to win this. But Steve Bushevi is like, oh my god. And Ken Ham is like the major bad guy. - Ken Ham, not Ken Ham. - Jon Ham. - Jon Ham. - Ken Ham is the creation medium guy. - Jon Ham is, Jon Ham is Sentinel Prime. - Yeah. - I'm saying that. - D 16. - Ooh, Jon Bailey, the sound wave is good. - Yeah. - Who is? - Oh, it's not brilliant. - No, no. The casting is perfect. - Who is D 16? - They rename all the characters during this. - Oh, okay. - It makes sense when you're watching it for kids. Like, don't forget it. - I'm the fucking Jon Bailey. His sound wave is gonna kill me. - Right. - That's amazing. - Alpha trying. - Yeah, Jon Bailey. - Yeah, is he the only? - The epic voice guy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Jon Bailey actually. - Steve, Blue. - What the fucking hero? - Jon Bailey actually does Optimus Prime on stuff. - Yeah. - Peter Willard does it. Or Peter Willard's name is doesn't do. That's hilarious. - You wanna jump into this thing? - Uh huh. - I'll count you in. - And guess we can sort of get involved on this thing that we came here to do. - Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime. - There you go, thank you. Yeah, he does stuff that Peter Cullen doesn't do. - He's been Optimus Prime for like 50 years. - He was awkward when he got the script to the movie. And he's like, wait, you killed me? I guess I'll just go back to being Eeyore. - Or even better, yeah, right? You think it's better that Jon Bailey got it. He goes, oh, I'm gonna be a transfer movie. All right, good. Let me get my Optimus ready. He goes, oh no, no, no, no, no. - I was gonna say no. - 'Cause Optimus Prime isn't the only character he plays, but they kill Ironhide pretty fast. - Yeah. (laughing) - Actually, shit. - They murder the whole voice cast. In like, "Scat Man" Crowlers didn't give a fuck. 'Cause like, he didn't even know the name of his character until like, way late in the series. - Oh yeah, he doesn't give a fuck. - He was like, oh, I'm doing a robot. All right, I'll do a robot voice. And it's just his voice. - Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about when we get into, we'll talk about the cast of this movie when we get into it. - All right, I know Jon Bailey from Honest Trailers but when they get him to say, we're gonna have you do that. And he's like, oh, cool, I'm gonna do, you know, Optimus Prime. And they'd be like, no, no, no, we don't want you up this prime. - Yeah, we cast Thor for that. - But do you understand, but he's like, do you understand I actually do his voice. And he's like, yeah, when I have you, I was like, oh, was Peter, can we go be this? No. - Is he alive? - Yeah. - Yeah, is he? - Oh, okay. - He was doing transformers shit for the 40th anniversary. For the 40th anniversary show, he was Optimus Prime for that. - Yeah, cool. - Japan's been going silly on the 40th anniversary shit. They've been making transformers acrossovers with other properties. - Oh, yeah. - Like toys or whatever. - Well, like they bought our go-bots. - Well, like there's a bunch of fucking stuff in there that like, oh my nerdier than me friends are going absolutely apeshit. Like there's a fucking Kiryu Optimus Prime and a Godzilla Megatron. - I'm a group of this. - Like there's just all these weird crossovers and I was like, they're not gonna get me. They all can try, but you're not gonna get me to like transformers. And they're like, hey, we did Macross 7. I'm like, I'm just like, you motherfucker. - Well, you could have said so many things, but if it's Macross 7 or Macross Plus, I can't fucking, I don't want the defense against that. - What was it? Transformers Rise of the Beast, Peter Cullen was optimist in that one. That one came out last year. - All right, well, let's roll into this thing then. - Yep. - All right, it's three, two, one. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to BS Reactor. I'm Evan, joined by. - Isaac. - Yeah. - We're here today to talk about the Transformers The Movie from 1986. - We are, yay, yay. - And our current theme of making Isaac feel things I shot for nostalgia. - Indeed, and I'll again be honest on this. I did not see this movie until way later. - Well, that's okay. Because the other thing I put in my thesis. - But I do have the toys, some of the toys. - Yeah, the other thing I put in my thesis was the welling of pride and sorrow when you see what good people are willing to sacrifice for your well-being. - Yeah. We'll get into that too. So yeah, this came out in 1986, which was a little before my time, since I was like two when this came out. So like, by the time I was playing with action figures, the second hand market had a bunch of transformers. So I had my little collection of transforming toys, which these toys fucked. Like, yeah, we're the best. Like I could care less about what's happening on the TV. - Like other action figures are like, "Oh, we've got battle damage where one piece moves." And fuck that. - I've got it turned into a car. - It turns into a robot. You guys can fuck off. And like all of these things, like you get a car and a robot. That was like the best thing ever back in the '80s and '90s. - Right, oh yeah. - Even the ones that I kind of initially thought were hokey in the series, Megatron turns into a gun or whatever. It was like, "Oh, someone else has to pick you up." Well, these are all based on the Japanese toy lane that they imported and then wanted to make something better. But in Japan, Megatron was an actual functional pellet gun, which turns into a form kind of lame to like, Sauron's ring. Like (laughing) - I always thought. - Like a literal gun that is also a robot, like fuck all the other toys. - I always thought Megatron was a piece of garbage. His toy was so stupid. - Also, who proved that? Like obviously didn't make it to America, but it was like, the Jets, is there like a butane lighter in the back of the mover? - It should be. - But wasn't he a tank for a bit? - Oh yeah, yeah, later on he turns into a tank, yeah. - Then he gave him a tank because-- - I mean, the various forms of Transformers change a lot. I think the only really consistent things are that Hot Rod is a fucking Hot Rod because it's the name and Optimus Prime is some kind of truck. - So he turns into an astro van by the end of the movie. - Wow. - Yeah. - He grew up. - But Optimus Prime is a truck. - He grew up and had to take the kid to the extracurricular scene, whatever. - Bumblebee is always a beetle until it came to the Michael Bay stuff. - Jazz was like a Porsche? - Yeah, something like that. But it's like the fact that Megatron always thought it was so stupid, which is when I watched the TV series on those young. It was like, why does he never transform? And then when they finally have him transformed in the series, he's just a gun. I was like, that's the dumbest. - You have to trust a freaking guy. - I can't, that's why he doesn't transform. - Starscream to manhandle him. He should not be trusting stars for a guy who literally on every occasion talks about how he's trying to overthrow him. - Yeah. I think we can apply some Jack Sparrow principles to Starscream. He's a dishonest man. You can always trust to be dishonest. - Right, yeah. - And it's just like, dude, he turned to a gun. How can you be a leader of a group where you literally need someone else to control you? - He doesn't bother transforming. - No, he does, because his death of his fucking hands. - And also the scale is constantly fucked in the series. - Oh yeah. - Fluctuating all over the place. - There's no such thing as a consistent character ratio. - And they had three different animation groups animating the episodes as fast as possible to make this thing happen. - Yeah, I guess they were gonna cut them off. - I don't really wanna cover any of them individually, so I guess as good a time as any now to just bring this up. If you go to IMDB and you look at the Goof's page for this. - Oh, it is epic event. - Extensive. They do not give a single shit about shot-to-shot continuity. They don't give a single shit about consistent character design. - They don't even come with some of the characters and things. - Some shit just gets left off. They don't care. - Flotholes are just like, yeah, we do that now. - This is Saturday morning cartoons in the '80s. - It is just the more powers for no reason and they never return to them. - Is it the fact that people who couldn't sell Megatron as a transformer transformer? Has he changed from to a gun? 'Cause we didn't want that. - Is that where they changed from the release? - Yeah, is that where they changed him to a TV? - 'Cause he looked like an actual gun that shot pellets. - Yeah. - So yeah, when they imported it. I also wanna throw out that this is the first technically speaking Marvel movie we've covered. - Yes, it's a Marvel production movie. - Yeah, produced by Toei Animation, which also did the Daff Punk music video that Malik made us watch one afternoon. - Toei does a lot of Dragon Ball too. - The toys obviously were imported. There's interviews of the guy that initially wrote the story and then rewrote the story and all this sort of stuff. - There's a story to this movie. - The nerd uses heat on this one. - The story of this movie is something like five different episodes where they just cut the beginning and ends off and then slammed it on the app. - There are parts of this that just seem like commercial breaks. - Oh yeah, literally. - Yeah. - All right, I watched this on YouTube. So a lot of them was like, oh, there's a commercial coming up and it just keeps playing. - It just keeps playing, yeah. There is no way I'm gonna approach the level of nerd that's happened with this. There is a podcast slash YouTube channel called Transformers University that covers literally fucking everything about this series. Looked them up, it's kind of epic, but this is the guy that like hunted down all the vintage coloring books from the era and is debating the different canonical differences. - Yeah, no. - Yeah, right. I listened to like, I don't know, 10 to 20 episodes of this podcast and I was like, oh my God, I will never care about anything this much. Like I have studied physics and engineering. This guy knows more about Transformers than I will ever know about those topics. - You know, there's certain things I love a lot that I'm never going to. I love so many sports, other basketball, but I never gonna tell you like, oh, this is how you do this one play and then I'm like, I'm not. I could never get that much into something like like, yeah, wow. - Yeah, powered. - So sorry. - The other kind of background for this thing is this was the Reagan era and they had just deregulated advertisement sports kids because before this, things for kids geared towards kids, you put less commercials in front of them and they had to be educational. - Yup. - So you have things like Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street and a holdout from like forever. That's something like 6,000 episodes. Captain Kangaroo. - Oh boy. - Yeah, Captain Kangaroo. - Which I'm gonna say. - I hung it. - I hung it on the clown. - Yeah, yeah. I hung it down some episodes of Captain Kangaroo on YouTube. I looked at the early ones. He's all like animated and really knew the kids and like towards the end. He's just like, oh, you're bored. Well, fuck off. Get in the yard and fucking play. I am done with your bullshit, children. - Because he's like 50 stuff and he's like a child of this. - He's dying inside. - But Captain Kangaroo. - He's probably drunk. - Started in 1955, went through 1984 and had 6,090 episodes. - So basically, Simpsons are gonna be bad in like two days. - Yeah, right. So also things that happen back then. - Simpsons also suck now. - Tragically. So the things that are happening back then where Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, like I said, also Batman, the Thunderbirds, Flintstones, Space Ghost. Like that was the TV landscape. So Transformers in contrast to those was just bright colors, explosions. - Right. - It sounds like you don't watch Space Ghost. - Well, okay, so that tip. - They were washed out colors. - It was, Transformers is the reason why we end up getting like Thundercats and the Thunderbirds and. - Well also, Hasbro, who's selling toys about this thing. 'Cause they could give a fuck about the story. - Yeah, 'cause Hasbro was in charge of Thundercats and He-Man. - A lot of that sort of stuff. - Chira and other stuff that I can't think of. - Jimin, G.I. Joe, that kind of stuff. - G.I. Joe. - G.I. Joe is usually my biggest comparison stuff and Transformers because that was like the dominant force at the time. - You know what? It's the same story. - You don't kind of. - I mean. - The premise is the same story, yeah. - It's just swords and saberistry or mapparemelity. - Except that Cobra Commander is a hell of a lot more charismatic than the other ones. - Because the G.I. Joe movie was during when they were making this. And the same year that this movie came out, my little pony of the movie came out and Care Bears too. - I don't like it. My little pony used to be so fucking metal dude. - I know a lot. Those things are scary dude. - G.I. Joe. - I used to watch, my sister used to love my little pony so I watched it too. But Care Bears, man, there's something about these bears living on clouds and that would just say, you know what, you ain't happy? Let me just give you a little bit of my stomach. - Yeah. - And then you were happy. - How about my meat? - You want some meat? - Yeah. - It's kind of, they kind of just engulfed you with their happiness. - I can explain why. - I didn't watch a lot of these things so I mostly got all this shit by osmosis but I do remember like the intros or whatever, a friend's house. - Care Bears. - Like in episode of Duck Tales at some point or something. - Do the Care Bear count down five, four, three, two, one. - Or they're like gummy bears. - Gummy bears. - It's bouncing here and there everywhere. - Didn't watch it, still know the theme song. - Gummy Bears is a really interesting position just because. - They took drugs and started bouncing. - What? (laughing) - The power that they win the day with is so silly and benign and the guy they're up against is like a genuine medieval knight. - Yeah. - Who wants them to fuck off his land and he will slaughter them with his sword, right? And they're like, oh we'd better bounce away from this situation. - The first of the goddamn smurfs or one character is trying to literally eat them. (laughing) - Let's use them as reagent, right? - Let's make me like first before we can fight this guy and let us take a bunch of performance and ancient drugs that allows us to bounce up and down everywhere. - There were like kids shows where there was a big military struggle and then kids shows where there's a weird imbalance in priorities between the good guys and bad guys. - Yeah, Gargamo could have ruled a lot of stuff - Oh yeah. - But all this time. - Just got over the smurfs. - Like what was his reason about wanting the smurfs? - I don't know, I didn't watch it. - They were effectively like the fucking secret sauce to alchemy. - Okay. - He's an alchemist and they're like, that whole led to gold shit, you need smurfs. - Okay. - But also like it's the 80s. If you think about transformers as a general concept, what is the philosophical stance of Megatron? - He wants to rule. - Yeah, that's not a philosophical stance. - I mean. - Is it like thresemicus or whatever? - I mean, let us, even like really arch people in American politics, like they have a philosophy behind what they're doing. It may be stupid and crazy, but it's there. But Megatron's never like, I wanna rule the world because there's a certain elite in society that naturally evolves or some shit like that. He's like, the intro says he's evil. So he's the bad guy. - Okay, this is one of the times where you being really smart, you're overthinking this. - But you say that. - But the movie that just came out actually goes into details like why they do that. - Okay, 'cause it is him. - It is him. - 'Cause in the 80s, in the 80s, all Megatron wanted to be, he was bad, he was gonna be good versus evil. - Yeah. - That's all it was. Stuff like care bears where they fought the cloud guy in the sky, whatever. You're like, okay, like, why did Gargamel, yeah, he's like. - I think the cutest, most benign heroes always had the most terrific villains. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Have you ever seen G1 Tyrac man? The My Little Pony guy? - Oh, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, fuck. - He is basically Satan, who is the devil. - What is it? Strawberry Shortcake. - Oh, Jesus Christ. - That dude. - Mighty Max for fuck's sake. - Yes, like that was traumatic. - Like what these characters really have like, okay, they're evil, but they wanted to take over stuff for it. Like, Megatron wanted to take over, oh, what's it called? - Cybertron. - Cybertron, because he wanted to rule Cybert, Cybertron, that was by Bob Bob. - Cybertron. - Significantly at the beginning of this movie, he has succeeded. - Yes. - Yes. - No, he won. - He is in fact the king of Cybertron at the start of this movie. - And the heroes are just rebels. - Yeah. - So much like the- - The Autobots, not the other side of the war from the Decepticons are on Earth. And then also in- - They're terrorists. - So two moons. - Two moons. - Well, this is gonna sound stupid. Both of the three moons. - Yes. - And I say that because when they mention moon base one and moon base two, there are two moons. - Yes. - The third one just kind of appears later. - Is that? - It's an animation problem. - Yeah. - But it's like after both moons have been destroyed, Unicron, like bitch slaps a moon. - Uh-huh. - And there's absolutely a later transformers property that shows Cybertron with three moons. And the third one has fucking - Is it? - Unicron's claw marks across it. - Oh, okay. - I was gonna say it's one of them just ahead. - They're just like, hey do you remember when that happened? That was wild, right? - Yeah, that kind of ties back into the amount of- - Yeah. - Goofy animation errors and silly shit that happens in this. But yeah, Megatron is in charge. And one of the things that drives him in this movie, like the two things about Megatron over the course of this are that he doesn't want anybody else in charge but him. Fuck Optimus Prime. - Yeah. (both laughing) - He's just like the like bitch eating crackers on the plane. - Yeah. - Like he doesn't have a reason. He's just like, you know what, fuck that guy. - Yeah. - They don't need more. Like kids aren't gonna ask questions like that. - No. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Also an interesting aside from this is like again, Reagan's deregulation was happening. And there were these groups, these watchdog groups watching all of these cartoons beforehand to make sure they weren't doing anything too extreme for children. The one of the classic examples- - There's no one's- - D regulation works, right? - Right, yeah. I can go in more if you want to. But like, no one was allowed to punch anyone. You could shoot them. - They all grapple. - Yeah. - You could throw people. - When you see it get to hand-to-hand combat, there'll be a lot of grabs, slams, and tosses. - There's also a thing where, like, I forget the series, but like someone hides a cat in a pot when they're trying to hide from someone. And they thought that was too graphic, but they could show the cat coming out of the pot later. They just couldn't show someone putting a cat into a pot. - Okay. - Yeah, right. There was also a thing with Captain Kangaroo, where he got this thing where he would advertise Schwinn bikes on the show. And then he got in trouble from the watchdog group and he's like, you can't unduly influence children here. That's not what we do on American television. So he switched it to a promo where Mr. Schwinn would show up and be like, "Wow, these bikes really fuck, right?" But they couldn't advertise them. - Fantastic. - So imagining that Mr. Schwinn just lives like, you know, in the imaginary kingdom with King Friday. - Mm-hmm. He also advertised things like yo-yos back in the day, like Dunkin' yo-yos were a big thing. - Oh yeah. - Like even, I remember that with the professional uses. - Exactly, for tricks of the yo-yo, which are oh so popular these days. - One of my biggest things I was never able to do. I was never able to go up and down for yo-yo, really. - I can do up and down. I can do a little bit of the walk of the dog and that's it, I can't. - Oh yeah, there was a very specific group of homeschool kids like that was their life, good times. Let's see. Let's go through the ratings here real quick. IMDB has this at a 7.2 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes, 62%. And also, I'm just gonna throw a letterbox in here. It's one of the newer aggregate sites. I get new-ish, it's not new, but 3.6 out of five. So they're all kind of like mid-tier, which I think is generous, but. - That's saying a lot for this movie. - Well, I mean, it's generally aggregates are probably gonna be mid-tier because the actual scores are like twos and fives. - Right, yeah. (laughing) - Exactly, so the budget for this one was $6 million, but it's an 84. So with inflation, that would have been about 18 million if today money, box office was $5.8 million. So it did not make back its thing, but this was in Blockbuster forever. Like I do probably a hundred people that had this on VHS. Pretty much everyone that could bought this thing. To the point where it kind of went out of circulation in terms of distribution for a bit, because everyone had a copy, like why do we need a new one, right? - Well, I'm like, there came a point where the sales are coming, so this shit's free on YouTube now. - Right, yeah. I mean, there's like, I found three copies and I'm like an 8K remaster on YouTube. But also, this was the 99th highest-grossing film of 1986. - Wasn't a great year. - I mean, it lost to the My Little Pony movie and care bars movie I referenced, but also this year, Top Gun, Crocodile Dundee, Crody Kid 2, Aliens, Color Purple, Star Trek 4, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Rocky 4, Howard the Duck, Labyrinth, Highlander. Like there were a bunch of big movies, I don't know if the labyrinth did crazy numbers, but there were a lot of big movies that came out of the scene. - It wasn't gonna beat that movie. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. Nowadays, a billion dollar movie isn't that big of a thing. Like we get at least two of those a year. So like, it did, respectively. And it wasn't in theaters that long. A lot of people wanted to see this one and just missed it, because as soon as they heard about it, it was gone. And then during the 40th anniversary that happened a couple of years ago was back in theaters, and that was a big thing because a lot of people that wanted to see it when they were like six years old finally got to see it in the theater. (laughing) A lot of the podcasts that I listened to prep for this, make sure I'm not just repeating myself. We're like, oh my God, he comes out next week, I'm so excited. - Yeah, big deal, wow. - So let's see, what else? This was directed by Nelson Shen, who is from South Korea. He was an animator for Pink Panther, Spider-Man. He had a bunch of light saber animations at Star Wars. He was also an animator for The Simpsons, Batman The Animated Series, X-Men, Fox Saturday morning cartoons were a big thing coming up on the tail of this, trying to tap into the excitement of Saturday morning cartoons. It was like, that wasn't a thing. Saturday morning was a dead time network wise, and they were like, hey, kids are stupid, they'll wake up at 2 a.m. for that. - Yeah, sure. - And any other day of the week, if someone told me that I was supposed to wake up at 4 a.m. for literally anything, I would have told them to fuck themselves and die. But yeah, I had a bunch of my friends that would be like, oh my God, did you see the thing on the whatnot? I got obviously I didn't because my parents, but you know what I mean, right? And then the screenplay was by Rod Friedman, who basically wrote for every TV show that was on TV back then, Andy Griffith, The Witch, Gilligan's Island, Happy Days, All In The Family, all that kind of stuff. And then the cast list. - The cast list seats a little bananas. - It does, so I think they just got a blank check to hire the everywhere they wanted to on this thing. - I mean, you had some continuing things. - Yeah, yeah, looking from the series. - Yeah, so you were always gonna get Frank Welker in there. You were always gonna get. - Peter Cullen. - Yeah, Peter Cullen. - Fucking Scat Man Crowthers, who does not care. - So for reference, Frank Welker did Megatron, Galvatron and Soundwave? - No, no, not Galvatron. - Yeah, say Galvatron is much more fun. - Yeah. - Leonard Nimway is in this movie. - Sorry, Frank Welker was the fourth highest-grossing person ever in show business apparently. - He'd been in Rumble. - He's a frenzy-ravage. - Oh, I have a list. - He's basically in everything. - Every joke he on. - He has been in movies that have collectively made $17.4 billion. (laughs) - I don't know who Frank Welker is. He's Scooby and he's Fred. - Yeah, exactly. - From Scooby-Doo. - And then Peter Cullen did, he was the voice of Predator, which I thought was funny in the movie of the Predator. - No. - But he's also Optimus Prime and Eor. And like a bajillion other things. - I don't know why he took me so long to realize that Eor and Optimus Prime are the same person. - They're kind of yeting yang a little bit, 'cause they're Optimus Prime and Eor, which is depression. - Ooh, ooh. - And just like, we will succeed versus thanks for noise. - Right, yeah. - And then Scatman Crothers, everyone that's cool, noted them from like his musical career. And everyone else will be like, oh, it's the black guy from the Shining. - Exactly. - But this also had some fill-in stuff that you just either were changed from regular cast or we're just here for the movie that, holy shit, what was their, you know? - Right, yeah. - What was their pull around here? Because they got like, Judd Nelson to do this. - There you go. - Okay, let's go through it. - Judd Nelson to hide the missing. - Yeah, Eric and I will show him to do Rec Gar, who's basically not in this movie. - This is four years after the last Monty Python movie. - Yeah, fucking. - So he's like, around. - Cliff Jumper is in this movie for like 20 seconds. They got Casey K some to come do that for fun. - We did Shaggy and was a radio DJ forever. Like, but I'm on a bunch of other things. Yeah, Judd Nelson, who everyone knows from L. St. Elmo's Fire and Breakfast Club. - He's Rodimus Prime, who sucks, I will throw out there. - And then-- - And he's Rod. - He's Rod. - Our primary antagonist of Unicron is Orson Welles. - In his last role. - His role, the role that killed him. - Yeah, actually this was Scatman Crother's last role too. - Well, so he died-- - The last one-- - Slightly after the movie came out. - Yeah, the last one while he was alive. - Yeah. - One more thing come out posthumously, but this came out while he was still alive. - And then Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron, who, I mean, I don't have to introduce him. He's Star Trek man, but, you know. - I was gonna say he did the Frodo Baggin song. - He also was in a classic movie called 1984. - And at the time getting Bud Davis or Ed Gilbert in there was kind of a big deal. - Oh yeah, they were like cowboys. - Yeah. - Adults at the time would have known who they are and been like, oh my God, you got them. But like all the kids in the movie were like, that's a funny voice and just didn't think about it. - Yeah. - Eric Idol is wasted in this movie. Like he's fine but I'm-- - Absolutely. - Yeah. - I think that's probably what he loves about it. - Probably. - I feel like he just wandered on set one day, like in the sound booth. It was just like, hey, what do you got? And just ad-libbed everything he did. - Yep. - Sweet. - I mean, if you're paying any attention for any parts that Rhett Gar is in, all of his lines are just absolutely fucking off the wall. - Uh-huh, yeah. Well, he's quoting TV shows. - Yeah, because that's his deal. - But the kids would have been fluent in TV at the time, so it kind of makes sense. - And he says, why are you letting us talk? Oh, the TV. And also too, we forgot about the mic and machine, dude. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - It was very famous, yeah. - And Robert Stack, how can I forget? - Oh, yeah. - Unsolved mysteries, man. - The guy who-- - The man with a dose terrifying voice on TV. - Yes, the guy who used to make me wet my pants while I was younger, being around my mom 'cause my mom wants me to love watching that show. - I've since seen some episodes of that. It's not scary at all. It's just the intro music in that man's voice. - Exactly, like what happened in this day, would he? I'm like, I can't even do his voice 'cause his voice is so cool. Although he did kind of, was able to go down a little bit more for me once I saw him in an airplane. He was punching people in an airport. - That was me. - I thought he was the pilot. - Remember he was going in? - Yeah. - He was going in and we kept asking people-- - I'm the religious people in the area. - Yeah, everyone kept asking the questions. He just kept punching everyone and doing tricks. - I was like, that's awesome. - I want a great movie. We should do airplanes. - We should do airplanes. - You were gonna throw it in there. - I was. - I was. - We'll make sure we get on that. - I decided to get less dragon. - Now that we're casting short on cats. - Casting is unreasonably powerful in this movie, especially for something where the storyboarding and animation were just sloppy. - They were sloppy. For the time, it feels like a mid-tier anime, which is fine. It's fine. It's all right. - It was 80s. - Yeah, yeah. But this movie is not set on the 80s 'cause there's like a 20 year gap between season two in this movie. - Yes. - This is in the far distant world of 2005. - You know, when people have exosuits. - Yeah, exactly. That transformed into race cars around us. - I guess if we'd had a sentient race of transforming car robots living on our minds. - We might've got a different priority. - Yeah, in interton cubes. - Although I guess, most importantly, we have exosuits that are for one guy in particular, just that one guy. - We'll get into that. (laughing) (upbeat music) - BS reactor is recorded in the Midwest United States. While the music guy was working the final touches this week, a huge political election is happening. Obviously, he's a bit distracted. We all are. Find us again next week for part two if the USA is still a thing next week. All voices, music and mixing are put together by the reactor crew, all rights reserved. If you have any comments, questions, or you want to tell the humans that you crave more robot centric content on the podcast, contact the show on social media or our website, bsreactor.com. And thanks for listening. We appreciate you. 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