"Proceed to your oblivion...", proceed indeed!

Fucking love Starscream, that backstabbing little weasel.

I'm frigging thirty years old and Optimus Prime's plowing through Decepticons to that corny "The Touch" song is still awesome.

But seriously, he took iconic, enduring images had turned them into mobile shrapnel. WTF, Bay, WTF.

He's basically a robot version of Superman with all the values attached, and I wouldn't be surprised if my grandchildren are still collecting Optimus Prime figures decades on down.

When I left for college, he was in highschool, and when finals rolled around for the first time, I got a package in the mail. Turns out he had gone through our old toy bin, found the Optimus Prime we had, and mailed it to me for good luck. God is that the most perfect mix of lame and awesome ever?

Either way, Michael Bay has done nothing but ruin this franchise, even if it was just an excuse to sell kids toys. Good thing this movie's on DVD, without that tracking problem -- I'll be watching this tonight too!!

Optimus' death made me cry, while Galvatron snuffing Starscream was just hardcore. Heavy stuff for a kid starting grade school. I don't know that my parents ever knew just what they'd let me watch that summer.

You will never think of that song the same again...

Oh and The Touch will be playing at my funeral. That song rocks.

And, more importantly, is it available on the intertubes?

As someone who actually saw this in the theaters when it originally came out, had it on VHS and now has it on DVD, thank you for posting this.

To me the story in it was pretty good but the amazing artwork was what put it over the top.

Gotta also recommend the first 6-issue run of The War Within: http://www.ntfa.net/ntfa/comics/dreamwave/warwithin.php
This was set in the earliest days of the Autobot-Decepticon war, and told the origin of Optimus Prime. Also /agree on Beast Wars, it's a case in point on how good writing makes the difference even in a formulaic kids action cartoon (ok technically it's vintage 1997 CGI).

With the Michael Bay movies, there's a definite lack of respect for storycraft (though some vestiges of it early in the first movie), but for me that's merely disappointing. What irks is the visual design of the characters - jumbled up blobs of parts that all look the same from a distance and evoke no emotion. Fitting, I suppose, if most of them are there to just say two lines (if that), do some neat trick, then get blown up.

So I was kinda ashamed that before tackling said homework in the afternoons, I watched and loved this lowtech epic Japanime about . . a spaceship made out of a World War II battleship. I know. But love it I did. Maybe the child in me really wanted stories about being cool and heroic and saving everybody that didn't involve turning into an adult and years and years of time. And math, and Latin.

So, your post about robots makes me a little more sympathetic to that past version of myself. Not to mention myself now. Hey, if you can admit to your robot-loving past in the digital pages of The Atlantic Monthly, then I can, uh, also do that.

Plus, realize the power of a kickass theme song:

We're off to Outer Space
We're leaving Mother Earth
*TO SAVE THE HUMAN RACE!!!!!*

So the trial starts, with Our Heroes watching. Lone survivor stands on an execution plank, and the robo-bailiff asks the five-faced Quinteson judge for a verdict. The judge spins until a face like a skull wearing a pharaoh's helm stares forward. The judge proclaims, "Innocent!" ... AND THEN THEY DROP THE EXECUTION PLANK. And he dies. And then the trial of Our Heroes starts.

I was stunned and horrified. They'd completely upended the way it was supposed to go (again!). The juxtaposition of a Justice System rendering the correct verdict while imposing murderous injustice burned into me with more outrage at a fictional System than probably anything until the Pegasus prisoner torture-rape in Battlestar Galactica. Heady stuff. Especially for a kids cartoon created to push toys.