What was your favorite Transformers film?

[Doctorwhovian]

Arcee was originally going to be in the first Bay movie, but ultimately was cut out (The design was still used to make a figure though). Her alternate form was a motorcycle.


For the second movie, the design was modified although she's somehow three seperate motorcycles all called by the same name for some reason. The Bayformers IDW comics sort of explain this I guess.

 

[Ethros]

btw, while on the topic of the 1986 movie, I've a question. I know the real-world answer is "because they wanted to sell new/more toys," but within the G1 universe is there any explanation of where charatcers like Hot Rod, Ultra Magnus, Kup, Arcee etc came from?
ie, why we never saw them in the two seasons that came before in the show. Granted there's 20 years of events we don't see between season 2 (the 80s) and the movie (2005)
I just wondered if the comics or whatnot ever covered that perioid?
Then again, other characters like the Protectobots and Omega Supreme just randomly appeared in Season 2, so it's not like it hadn't happened before.

Pretty much what others have said. The earliest drafts were written in 1985 and initially didn't have the 20-year jump that occurs in the final version, and that's why only the Dinobots and the Constructicons appear as the "big guns" even though the second season began establishing the combiner teams. The Marvel comics tended to be somewhat better at the characterization and not having new ones just seemingly appear out of nowhere, though the movie elements are a little stranger in that respect. Although Marvel did make an adaptation of the movie (using an earlier script with some elements dropped or modified from the final film), its events and characters are largely considered outside the normal Marvel continuity. Thus characters like Galvatron and Ultra Magnus only showed up in time-travel stories, while others like Kup and Hot Rod weren't regulars until they added Headmasters and Targetmasters.

Thanks for the info guys.

I do remember as a kid in the early 90s I had a random Transformers Annual which contained a comic story set in maybe the early 2000s (ie. before the movie) which had some story about Hot Rod & Kup, and how the Autobots were building Autobot City at the time. So I just wondered if there were stories like that were there plenty of others set between Season 2 and the movie.


Also when the movie was written/made was the intention that Autobot City was Metroplex, or was it simply a new base for them and that concept was used later?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I would love to see a "live action" Ultra Magnus. If there is a fifth film, I hope he's in it!

 

[Candlelight]

Also when the movie was written/made was the intention that Autobot City was Metroplex, or was it simply a new base for them and that concept was used later?

No, Metroplex was released during the 1986 toyline, and the movie was written prior to this. His character arc was split between the TV series and comics; the series depicted him as a separate entity from Autobot City, whereas the comic showed him as the core of the city, and emerged as a weapon of last resort (and munting the city in the process).

 

[Unicron]

Yeah, the Metroplex/Autobot City thing was always portrayed in a rather confusing way. The name Fortress Maximus was one his early names, and the Marvel adaptation of movie actually calls Autobot City that. The third season of the cartoon seemed to use the terms Metroplex and Autobot City as if they were the same entity, even though they were rarely shown in the same context together. It's been assumed by fans that Autobot City is a distinct non-living (but transformable) structure that Metroplex can interact with and connect to, but they're separate things.

One of Floro Dery's very early concepts for the movie showed a much different version of Autobot City, which was like a dome that could surround the city parts as a battle station. It's rather cool looking. According to Dery, he was asked to refine the finished version to include more elements from Metroplex, presumably because his toy would have been a significant new addition in 1986. This explains why the movie, while not specifically saying that Autobot City is indeed Metroplex, has the city gain some white parts during its transformation and one shot shows a tank-style turret that looks almost identical to Slammer.

 

[publiusr]

The animated film--cool spaceships and the vibe did it for me.