Transformers: The Movie (TEASER)

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Hey listeners, it's MaxFunDrive, and here's a sneak peek of our bonus content for this year.

[0:06] This episode is about Transformers the movie from 1986.

[0:11] You can hear all of it when you become a member at MaximumFun.org slash join.

[0:16] Enjoy.

Stuart Wellington

[0:17] I, you know guys, we've been doing this show for a long time, and I was always waiting,

[0:21] wondering when we were going to do a classic Orson Welles movie, and we finally did it.

[0:26] But it's one of the good ones.

Dan McCoy

[0:29] Yeah.

[0:29] Take that Mr. Arkadin.

[0:32] Is that how it is?

Elliott Kalan

[0:33] Yeah, also known as Confidential Report.

[0:35] Yeah, Mr. Arkadin.

[0:37] Take that F for fake.

Dan McCoy

[0:41] Yeah.

[0:42] Other side of the wind, the posthumous release.

[0:45] Anyway, so what were we talking about?

[0:48] The Transformers.

[0:48] Transformers, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[0:49] We're doing a Transformers movie.

[0:51] We're starting out at the beginning.

Elliott Kalan

[0:53] We should say, actually, we'll say that we're starting out not at the beginning, but Orson Welles,

[0:57] I was reading about it and how he described this movie to somebody, what his role is.

[1:01] And he goes, I play a toy that breaks some other toys.

Dan McCoy

[1:05] Like, I think he had little understanding of what was going on, and he cared very little.

[1:09] And you know what?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10] He fucking crushes it.

[1:12] And yet, he does great.

[1:13] To be honest, they messed with his performance a little bit because he was on the verge of death when he made this movie.

[1:19] But I feel like he does a great vocal performance there, to be honest.

Dan McCoy

[1:22] And in a way, he might have had the most clear understanding because I had not realized until, like, reading up on this movie the degree to which, you know, so many traumatic to a generation character deaths in it were just motivated by Hasbro being like, we need new toys.

[1:38] Get rid of those old characters.

[1:40] Bring in some new characters.

[1:42] They just did not realize that kids might have grown attached to them.

Stuart Wellington

[1:45] I can't wait to guide you through the, what, the wilds of Cybertron today, Dan, and help you understand what we're about to see.

[1:54] Well, yeah.

Dan McCoy

[1:54] I mean, I watched, you know, the series.

[1:57] I watched Transformers when I was a kid, but I had never seen the original animated movie from the 80s until doing it for this show.

Elliott Kalan

[2:06] Oh, I saw it.

[2:07] I have memories.

[2:09] It doesn't make sense.

[2:09] It came out in 1986.

[2:11] I would have been five years old, four and a half years old, and this came out.

[2:15] It makes no sense that I would have seen this in the theater and yet have memories of seeing it in the theater.

[2:20] I definitely saw it in the theater.

[2:21] So I must have seen it probably on tape, but I definitely watched this when I was a kid.

[2:25] And I got to tell you, I don't know if it made any more sense to me as a kid than it did now, watching it as an adult.

Dan McCoy

[2:31] I presume that as a child, I would have known who these characters are, that these would be beloved friends to me.

Stuart Wellington

[2:39] I mean, at least one of them is Optimus.

[2:41] You know who Optimus fucking Prime is.

Dan McCoy

[2:43] You know Optimus Prime.

[2:44] Everyone knows Optimus Prime.

Elliott Kalan

[2:45] You know the basic characters, Optimus Prime, you know Spike Witwicky.

[2:49] You know all the big characters.

Dan McCoy

[2:51] Here's the one.

[2:51] I remember Optimus Prime.

[2:53] I remember Megatron.

[2:55] I remember Starscream.

[2:57] And I remember Grimlock.

[2:59] Yeah, Grimlock.

[3:00] Of course.

Stuart Wellington

[3:00] I can't talk enough about how much I love the relationship between Megatron and Starscream.

[3:07] It's two old people fighting constantly.

[3:11] It is the exact energy.

[3:13] This is a little digression, so you guys be patient with me.

[3:16] Sure, sure.

[3:16] And then I'll get into the summary of Transformers.

[3:18] Here's the exact thing that the Warhammer 40,000 writers realized that the Necrons were missing, so they injected it into this race of unthinking robots.

[3:27] They instead made them basically the Golden Girls slash Megatron and Starscream when they created the relationship between Traz and the Infinite and Oricon the Diviner.

[3:36] Which is so much funnier and cooler.

[3:39] It's so great.

[3:40] Like, I love these two, like, very bitchy characters.

Elliott Kalan

[3:42] It's the classic two villains, one who works for the other one, but they both hate each other.

[3:47] And the subservient one is always looking for his opportunity to become the top dog.

Stuart Wellington

[3:52] And the big one turns into a smaller gun that the lesser one has to shoot, which is fucking sick.

Dan McCoy

[3:59] It's like, why not turn him into a tank?

[4:01] A big gun?

[4:02] There's already a guy who does that.

Stuart Wellington

[4:04] There's something so much fucking cooler that he turns into a little gun.

[4:07] And also because it's a cooler toy.

Dan McCoy

[4:08] It's a cooler toy because he turns into a gun that a kid can carry.

[4:11] Yeah, I know.

[4:12] Okay, sure.

[4:13] As a toy.

Stuart Wellington

[4:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[4:14] Then he gets killed by the cop from Die Hard.

[4:17] Cool.

[4:19] Reginald Mel Johnson killed him.

Elliott Kalan

[4:21] The toy gun he was holding was Megatron.

[4:24] That was it?

Stuart Wellington

[4:25] That kid?

[4:26] Starscream.

Elliott Kalan

[4:27] Wow.

[4:28] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:28] Ah, Reginald Mel Johnson, why are you shooting me?

[4:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[4:33] So anyway, let's talk about this.

[4:34] I'm going to take us through the summary.

[4:36] Surit, you're going to help me.

[4:37] You're going to help me as my Sherpa through this world because I don't remember all these

[4:40] characters.

[4:41] And Dan, you are just the victim who is along for the ride.

[4:45] I'm like Carl Pilkington of this episode.

[4:47] Yeah, you are.

Stuart Wellington

[4:48] And by the way, I dropped some deep Warhammer 40,000 lore.

[4:51] If you guys have any more questions, I know it probably raised more questions than I've

[4:54] answered.

[4:54] Feel free to just pause the podcast and just bounce them off me.

Elliott Kalan

[4:58] Okay.

[4:58] Yeah.

[4:59] We won't do that.

[5:00] Bounce them.

[5:01] So this is, we're talking about Transformers the movie or the Transformers movie.

[5:04] This is from 1986.

[5:05] This is the animated movie that is not just based on the show, but it effectively is part

[5:10] of the show continuity.

[5:11] Like it happens like within the show universe, but it's set after, it's between seasons of

[5:17] the show while the show is going on.

[5:19] And one of the things that I just always love about this is the screenplay is written by

[5:22] Ron Friedman, who his, his career was half animated Saturday morning cartoons and half

[5:28] all the sitcoms of the sixties and seventies.

[5:31] So this is a guy who wrote for both Gilligan's Island and Transformers.

[5:36] He wrote for both GI Joe and Bewitched.

[5:39] Like it's amazing.

[5:40] This guy's career.

Transformers: The Movie (TEASER)

Transcript

In this episode

Description