The Transformers: The Movie

The Transformers: The Movie (1986)

Timing: 1:24 (84 min)

7.1/10
486

7.546/10
6471

7.2/10
41439

All about film

Video 7

Photo 54

Actors and characters

Release date

1986-08-08

Country

Japan, United States

Production

Toei Animation, Hasbro, DEG, Marvel Productions, Sunbow Productions, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

Genre

Animation, Science Fiction, Action, Adventure, Family

Budget

$6 000 000

Revenue

$5 860 601

Website

Director

Nelson Shin

Actors

Judd Nelson, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles, Casey Kasem, Dan Gilvezan, Scatman Crothers, Susan Blu, Eric Idle
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Ron Friedman

Producer

Joe Bacal, Tom Griffin, Margaret Loesch, Lee Gunther

Operator

Masatoshi Fukui

Composer

Vince DiCola

Artist

Audition

Carol Dudley

Editing

David Hankins
All team (35)

• The sound of the GalvanTron hand laser cannon firing is a modified sound of the Megatron nuclear cannon firing.
• Both Nelson Shin (director) and Flint Dille (story consultant) confirmed the fact that Orson Welles had significant difficulties during the voice recording process for Unicron (the recording took place shortly before the actor's death). The issue was that the recording contained heavy sighs and sobs. Shin deemed the entire Welles recording unusable for the film, but decided to fix the situation by running the recording through a synthesizer. This gave Welles' voice a more ominous tone, after which he used the updated recording in the film.
• When Grimlock says to Kup: “Tell Grimlock about the Petro-rabbits again,” this is a reference to John Steinbeck’s film “Of Mice and Men” (1939), where Lennie constantly told George: “Tell me about the rabbits.”
• This is Orson Welles' last film.
• This was Scatman Crothers’ last film.
• Characters from the second season, such as the Stunticons and the Aerialbots, did not appear in “the Movie” because they had not yet been created by the time its script was being written: the script for “the Movie” was written between 1984 and 1985, while production of season 2 only began in early 1985.
• Out of the first 18 Autobots who participated in the first episode of the cartoon series ("More than Meets the Eye"), 15 appear in the movie. Mirage, Trailbreaker, and Sideswipe do not appear in "the Movie", despite scenes with their participation on Earth being present in the script.
• Two identical robots with Cyclonus's face were created for "the Movie": one from Bombshell's body and the other from Skywarp's. Many fans later extensively debated this, trying to determine which Cyclonus was "real" and which was one of his "duplicates" under his command, just like the Swipes under Scourge. However, only one duplicate was created during the scene, and it did not appear again in either "the movie" or the cartoon series. Most believe that the “second Cyclonus” was simply an animation error. Nevertheless, this led fans to publish fan fiction about a character named Armada.
• Some pre-movie characters appear in episodes: Hauler, Hound, Sunstreaker, and Snarl.
• Despite "the Movie" having a PG rating, most of the series' characters met their demise in it: Optimus Prime, Megatron, Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn, Wildjack, Windcharger, Starscream, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Shrapnel, Kickback, and Bombshell. In the third season, we learn that Hauler also perished.
• "Transformers the Movie" served as a "bridge" between the second and third seasons of the cartoon. Several key characters from the first two seasons of the cartoon were either killed or "transformed" here (for example, the creation of Galvatron from Megatron's body).
• Scenes of Red Alert and Shockwave's deaths were included in the script but were never animated. The first's death was to occur during the assault on Autobot City, where he was to be mortally wounded in the back. Shockwave's death scene was intended to be closer to the end, during his declaration of a planet-wide alert, during Unicron's attack. Unicron's hand was to destroy Shockwave's citadel. In the finished film, after Shockwave announces the planet-wide alert, Unicron's strike covers most of the planet's surface, and Shockwave does not appear again after that.