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The Transformers: The Movie (1986) Trivia
This was Orson Welles' final film before his death on October 10, 1985 at the age of 70. He recorded his lines five days prior, on October 5.
This was Scatman Crothers' final film before his death on November 22, 1986 at age 76.
This film is considered the "bridge" between the second and third seasons of The Transformers (1984), as several third-season characters are introduced here and several first-season characters are killed or altered (e.g. Megatron to Galvatron).
Director Nelson Shin and story consultant Flint Dille have confirmed that Orson Welles had a hard time recording his lines due to his failing health. Most of his lines included labored breathing and heavy wheezing. Shin considered most of Welles' dialogue unusable, but put the recordings through a voice synthesizer to give Welles' voice a clearer, more ominous tone. According to Shin, Unicron's on-screen voice is an enhanced, synthesized version of Welles' voice.
Cybertron's third moon, which exists solely due to an editing error in this movie, would reappear on Beast Machines: Transformers (1999), still bearing Unicron's claw-marks.
During production, the idea of transforming the planet Cybertron into a robot to battle against Unicron came up, and was quickly dismissed. The Marvel Comics Transformers issues, which had a separate storyline than the cartoon, had Cybertron as the planet form of the Transformer god Primus, whose backstory involved warring against the evil Unicron. There was no connection between the discarded script and the comic series, different authors came up with the same general idea independently.
The negatives for the matted widescreen version of the film were either destroyed or lost, and for a time only the VHS full-screen version of the movie remained. The North Carolina School of the Filmmaking in Winston-Salem carries a print of the movie assembled from different reels of other prints of the movie found in its archives. The pieced-together print is in good condition. This should be noted that this widescreen version of the movie was achieved by "matting down" the original full-screen animation, essentially chopping off the top and bottom.
This movie takes place 20 years after the end of The Transformers (1984) animated series' second season.
Spike was originally to be absent from the movie, along with the other former human characters. In the finished script, he received a crucial, if small role.
One of the early scripts included a dragon-based Autobot combiner that would have fought Devastator. In the finished story, we never get to see just what lead to Devastator's defeat.
Although a toy was not released until 2003, an action figure of Unicron was designed, but the prototype had flimsy arms and a faulty voice-chip, and was scrapped.
In 2010, an early draft of the script got into the hands of Transformers fans. It revealed that the plot went through many severe changes during writing, including different characters and a more violent ending.
Unicron's original name in early drafts was Ingestor, while Unicron's planet form would have been an actual planet. Ingestor was to be a mysterious being in control of the planet, which, upon transforming into a robot, would have had many organic-looking features, including long hair. In the final script, these two were mushed together into a single character, named Unicron, who is also a planet (though a mechanical one) which can turn into a gigantic robot. Many of his organic features were kept - such as his metallic mustache, goatee, and stomach (which resembles the abdominal muscles of a human) - however he lost his "hair".
When asked about his role, Orson Welles couldn't remember his character's name, and described his role as "a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys".
One of the original demands of the Transformers toyline and cartoon series was that no female Transformers could appear, as the toys were marketed strictly towards boys. However, writer Ron Friedman fought hard to include female robots in the Transformers lore, as his daughter was a huge fan of the franchise. This lead to the creation of Arcee, a female Autobot debuting in this movie, as well as a number of other female characters introduced during season 2 of The Transformers (1984). Ironically, despite being one of the movie's feature characters, no toy of Arcee was produced during the entirety of the original Transformers line, though at least one rejected prototype was designed. Arcee became the most famous female character in the Transformers brand, and numerous incarnations of her appeared in various other cartoons, comics, movies and toy series, but this was only in 2014, 28 years after her introduction, that Hasbro finally released a toy based on this movie's design.
Story editor Flint Dille once described the movie's script as "a Frankenstein of different drafts and ideas and people", because of how many hasty and incoherent rewrites it had during production.
Stan Bush's song "The Touch" was inspired by a line in Iron Eagle (1986) and was originally written for Cobra (1986).
(at around 26 mins) Unicron's roar when he finds out the Matrix has been passed on to Ultra Magnus is that of The Hulk from The Incredible Hulk (1982) animated series.
Nearly most of the new characters that appear in this movie were newly designed. The Hasbro toys were based on the movie's character designs. The exception was Ultra Magnus, who already had a toy in the Japanese "Diaclone" line. His character model was based on the toy, and given new colors.
The Matrix of Leadership never came up in the earlier drafts of the script, yet it is the main driving force behind the finished movie's plot.
One potential plot proposed by writer and story editor Flint Dille and creative director Jay Bacal would have involved Optimus Prime embarking on a journey to discover the origin of the Transformer race, as well as find out that their home planet is actually a giant robot itself. Using the Matrix, the planet Cybertron would have transformed into a robot to face off against the evil Transformer planet Unicron, a pawn of the Quintessons. Their script was written in response to the original movie draft which they saw as incoherent, but was discarded shortly after presenting it to the executives. However, some elements of their script did turn up in the finished film, and a drastically re-imagined origin story for the Transformers was detailed in the cartoon's third season - the Quintessons, minor one-scene villains in this film, were re-imagined as the creators of the Transformers and had no ties to Unicron.
The soundtrack to this movie has become something of a collector's item, on the format of compact disc in particular.
In a bizarre kind of way, this could be said that the Decepticon 'Shockwave' appeared in two movies in 1986, the other being Aliens (1986). In the MedLab scene, just before Ripley reaches out to hug Newt after setting off the fire alarm, there is a futuristic piece of medical apparatus with three objects handing down off of it that can be briefly seen in the foreground. These objects are actually three Transformers toys, namely the Decepticon 'Shockwave' made by Hasbro in 1985 (though it's possible that the toy might even be the earlier 'Galactic Man' sold by Radio Shack). The toys have been spray-painted a dull silver colour and are displayed in their laser gun 'mode', but with each of the robot toy's arms (i.e. the laser gun's barrel) split apart. In this 'semi-transformation' the toy is made to look looks kind of like a futuristic grasping tool or perhaps even a laser scalpel.
(at around 19 mins) "The Touch", the song playing during a montage, is also one of Dirk Diggler's singles from Boogie Nights (1997). He was played by Mark Wahlberg, who later played Cade Yeager in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).
According to John Moschitta Jr., Orson Welles was eating everything at the buffet table while they were recording for the movie.
The 2006 comic adaptation reveals that Omega Supreme and the other combiners were fighting each other outside the Ark. Also in this adaptation are the deaths of Shockwave and Beachcomber (though he lives in the cartoon). For the combiners, this can be justified since they didn't exist when the script was written.
The movie was produced at the same time as G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987), by the same company. It had been agreed that both movies would suffer the loss of their lead heroes, Optimus Prime and Duke. Production started on G.I. Joe first, but Transformers ended up being completed and released first. Optimus Prime's death sparked a huge amount of controversy, causing the writers to change Duke's death to a coma. G.I. Joe was released direct to video. Had that movie been released first, Optimus Prime might have survived.
This was Orson Welles' final film before his death on October 10, 1985 at the age of 70. He recorded his lines five days prior, on October 5.
This was Scatman Crothers' final film before his death on November 22, 1986 at age 76.
This film is considered the "bridge" between the second and third seasons of The Transformers (1984), as several third-season characters are introduced here and several first-season characters are killed or altered (e.g. Megatron to Galvatron).
Director Nelson Shin and story consultant Flint Dille have confirmed that Orson Welles had a hard time recording his lines due to his failing health. Most of his lines included labored breathing and heavy wheezing. Shin considered most of Welles' dialogue unusable, but put the recordings through a voice synthesizer to give Welles' voice a clearer, more ominous tone. According to Shin, Unicron's on-screen voice is an enhanced, synthesized version of Welles' voice.
Cybertron's third moon, which exists solely due to an editing error in this movie, would reappear on Beast Machines: Transformers (1999), still bearing Unicron's claw-marks.
During production, the idea of transforming the planet Cybertron into a robot to battle against Unicron came up, and was quickly dismissed. The Marvel Comics Transformers issues, which had a separate storyline than the cartoon, had Cybertron as the planet form of the Transformer god Primus, whose backstory involved warring against the evil Unicron. There was no connection between the discarded script and the comic series, different authors came up with the same general idea independently.
The negatives for the matted widescreen version of the film were either destroyed or lost, and for a time only the VHS full-screen version of the movie remained. The North Carolina School of the Filmmaking in Winston-Salem carries a print of the movie assembled from different reels of other prints of the movie found in its archives. The pieced-together print is in good condition. This should be noted that this widescreen version of the movie was achieved by "matting down" the original full-screen animation, essentially chopping off the top and bottom.
This movie takes place 20 years after the end of The Transformers (1984) animated series' second season.
Spike was originally to be absent from the movie, along with the other former human characters. In the finished script, he received a crucial, if small role.
One of the early scripts included a dragon-based Autobot combiner that would have fought Devastator. In the finished story, we never get to see just what lead to Devastator's defeat.
Although a toy was not released until 2003, an action figure of Unicron was designed, but the prototype had flimsy arms and a faulty voice-chip, and was scrapped.
In 2010, an early draft of the script got into the hands of Transformers fans. It revealed that the plot went through many severe changes during writing, including different characters and a more violent ending.
Unicron's original name in early drafts was Ingestor, while Unicron's planet form would have been an actual planet. Ingestor was to be a mysterious being in control of the planet, which, upon transforming into a robot, would have had many organic-looking features, including long hair. In the final script, these two were mushed together into a single character, named Unicron, who is also a planet (though a mechanical one) which can turn into a gigantic robot. Many of his organic features were kept - such as his metallic mustache, goatee, and stomach (which resembles the abdominal muscles of a human) - however he lost his "hair".
When asked about his role, Orson Welles couldn't remember his character's name, and described his role as "a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys".
One of the original demands of the Transformers toyline and cartoon series was that no female Transformers could appear, as the toys were marketed strictly towards boys. However, writer Ron Friedman fought hard to include female robots in the Transformers lore, as his daughter was a huge fan of the franchise. This lead to the creation of Arcee, a female Autobot debuting in this movie, as well as a number of other female characters introduced during season 2 of The Transformers (1984). Ironically, despite being one of the movie's feature characters, no toy of Arcee was produced during the entirety of the original Transformers line, though at least one rejected prototype was designed. Arcee became the most famous female character in the Transformers brand, and numerous incarnations of her appeared in various other cartoons, comics, movies and toy series, but this was only in 2014, 28 years after her introduction, that Hasbro finally released a toy based on this movie's design.
Story editor Flint Dille once described the movie's script as "a Frankenstein of different drafts and ideas and people", because of how many hasty and incoherent rewrites it had during production.
Stan Bush's song "The Touch" was inspired by a line in Iron Eagle (1986) and was originally written for Cobra (1986).
(at around 26 mins) Unicron's roar when he finds out the Matrix has been passed on to Ultra Magnus is that of The Hulk from The Incredible Hulk (1982) animated series.
Nearly most of the new characters that appear in this movie were newly designed. The Hasbro toys were based on the movie's character designs. The exception was Ultra Magnus, who already had a toy in the Japanese "Diaclone" line. His character model was based on the toy, and given new colors.
The Matrix of Leadership never came up in the earlier drafts of the script, yet it is the main driving force behind the finished movie's plot.
One potential plot proposed by writer and story editor Flint Dille and creative director Jay Bacal would have involved Optimus Prime embarking on a journey to discover the origin of the Transformer race, as well as find out that their home planet is actually a giant robot itself. Using the Matrix, the planet Cybertron would have transformed into a robot to face off against the evil Transformer planet Unicron, a pawn of the Quintessons. Their script was written in response to the original movie draft which they saw as incoherent, but was discarded shortly after presenting it to the executives. However, some elements of their script did turn up in the finished film, and a drastically re-imagined origin story for the Transformers was detailed in the cartoon's third season - the Quintessons, minor one-scene villains in this film, were re-imagined as the creators of the Transformers and had no ties to Unicron.
The soundtrack to this movie has become something of a collector's item, on the format of compact disc in particular.
In a bizarre kind of way, this could be said that the Decepticon 'Shockwave' appeared in two movies in 1986, the other being Aliens (1986). In the MedLab scene, just before Ripley reaches out to hug Newt after setting off the fire alarm, there is a futuristic piece of medical apparatus with three objects handing down off of it that can be briefly seen in the foreground. These objects are actually three Transformers toys, namely the Decepticon 'Shockwave' made by Hasbro in 1985 (though it's possible that the toy might even be the earlier 'Galactic Man' sold by Radio Shack). The toys have been spray-painted a dull silver colour and are displayed in their laser gun 'mode', but with each of the robot toy's arms (i.e. the laser gun's barrel) split apart. In this 'semi-transformation' the toy is made to look looks kind of like a futuristic grasping tool or perhaps even a laser scalpel.
(at around 19 mins) "The Touch", the song playing during a montage, is also one of Dirk Diggler's singles from Boogie Nights (1997). He was played by Mark Wahlberg, who later played Cade Yeager in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).
According to John Moschitta Jr., Orson Welles was eating everything at the buffet table while they were recording for the movie.
The 2006 comic adaptation reveals that Omega Supreme and the other combiners were fighting each other outside the Ark. Also in this adaptation are the deaths of Shockwave and Beachcomber (though he lives in the cartoon). For the combiners, this can be justified since they didn't exist when the script was written.
The movie was produced at the same time as G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987), by the same company. It had been agreed that both movies would suffer the loss of their lead heroes, Optimus Prime and Duke. Production started on G.I. Joe first, but Transformers ended up being completed and released first. Optimus Prime's death sparked a huge amount of controversy, causing the writers to change Duke's death to a coma. G.I. Joe was released direct to video. Had that movie been released first, Optimus Prime might have survived.
Spoiler: 
