Asymmetrical Information

Being 14 and seeing a movie in a theater full of 8 and 9 year-old kids, the opening sequence of the Transformers movie was the most fun I've ever had.

The opening 10 minutes of the movie is pure carnage starting with Unicron eating a moon, Spike's scream of "Ohhh SHHIIiiiiit..." and culminating in a fight to the death between Megatron and Optimus Prime.

So many scarred young minds, so many...

Optimus Prime was the John Wayne of my generation, and the movie had some of his best lines:

"One shall stand, one shall fall."

"Now all we need is a little energon and a lot of luck."

"You, who are without mercy, now plead for it? I thought you were made of sterner stuff!"

That movie has everything: the Universal Greeting; voice acting by Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy, *and* Orson Welles; a supermassive robot planet that eats other planets. Then, of course, there's the Junk Planet with a theme song by Weird Al.

You may want to check out Clerks II as well

All I have to say is that "summoning Megatron" sounds like a euphemism. Not quite sure for what, but something you couldn't show on broadcast TV.

You watched Transformers?

You seem more like a "She-Ra" person.

(I grew up with Woody Woodpecker.)

I grew up watching Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussy Cats, School House Rock, and that creepy-ass "Lids-ville" show.

I really enjoyed the CBS "In the News" segment that they would run between shows. I can still remember that guy so seriously telling us that ALL the scientists in the world say that if we don't do something about pollution soon, the whole wide earth was going to FREEZE!

Ah, yes! The fairy tales we were fed.

If you've ever enjoyed an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, you should have a wonderful time 'enjoying' "Transformers" The Movie". How often do you have the opportunity to enjoy the voices of Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, and Orson Welles all at the same time?

Would you settle for a fun little animation snippet of Sludge's getting popped out their sockets by Devastator?

I always thought that the first transformers movie was a cruel marketing ploy to increase sales by killing off the long standing characters and replacing them with new ones. It was a way age inappropriate movie. I think they also realized it was a big mistake and foisted all of these hokey optimus prime reincarnation episodes on us in the TV show.

I don't think you can remake the first movie, only pretend it didn't exist. The animation in the new one looks pretty sweet though.

One of the songs written for Transformers: The Movie, "The Touch" performed by Stan Bush, was covered without permission by Marky Mark in Boogie Nights.

Original song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7mZmcpw5WE&mode=related&search=

Marky Mark/Dirk Diggler singing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C9Bng7NPPY

When DVDs of 80s cartoons and live action shows started being released I rented a smattering of them from Netflix, looking forward to the nostalgia.

But then I saw that those shows were awful! They may have been cool when I was 7 years old, but they sure don't stand the test of time.

So, even though I loved Transformers as a child I won't watch the old episodes or movie, for fear of ruining yet another treasured memory.

Christina: OTOH, many of the ones they made in the 50's and 60's do stand the test of time (Roadrunner, Bugs Bunny, The Pink Panther, Rocky and Bullwinkle). I suppose there were some pretty bad ones, too, but the better ones were intended to reach both adult and child tastes so your parents could watch along with you without gagging.

Of course, it also helped that no one had thought yet of using the cartoons to sell cute, cuddly Bugs Bunny toys, or Rocky and Bullwinkle action figures. R&B was even more aimed at adults, as a satirical show that only incidentally appealed to children too young to get most of the jokes - but satire ages badly when it's main target (Soviet Communism, represented by Boris and Natasha) becomes a historical relic. As much as I enjoyed the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, I suspect that the other cartoons that were bundled into the original show, like Peabody's malformations of history and the Fractured Fairy tales, will survive better. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic, and there will always be someone on the world stage like Fearless Leader and his bungling stooges...

Or maybe I'm being too optimistic, and there will always be someone on the world stage like Fearless Leader and his bungling stooges...

Which we can survive, as long as we have Big Dumb Moose and Squirrel to defeat them.

By the way, as a parent who had to sit thru the thing, it was a pleasant surprise how little the Masters of the Universe live action movie sucked.

Megatron's voice is done by Frank Welker, who is by far the most prolific voice actor in history, and not only voiced almost all of the original Decepticons, but also Fred, of Scooby Doo fame.

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