Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
During a conversation about Transformers: Titans Return, a webseries that brings Cullen back together with Transformers: The Movie co-star Judd Nelson and other legendary Transformers names, the voice acting legend (who long played Eeyore in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise) recalled the wild days of early Transformers seasons when none of the cast were sure anyone was watching.
“I’m a Generation One fan, always have been for many reasons, obviously,” Cullen told ComicBook.com. “It’s the beginning and a successful beginning and a continuing journey of success. Generation One, to see it all happening that way again, reminds me sentimentally of the old days. The only thing missing is the cast; I don’t work with the full cast the way that we used to. I miss the days when we would have laugh attacks and production would shut down for five or six minutes due to everyone laughing so hard they couldn’t stop. Those were the days that I cherished.”
He added that in those early days, working with people like Mel Blanc (in some non-Transformers work) and Frank Welker (Megatron), he was constantly floored by the level of talent that he was working with, even if animation was still considered something of an acting ghetto at that time.
“These creative minds, these vocal geniuses playing multiple characters, inventing them, there’s no greater thrill to be sitting and recording with people who are that capable. You’re just in awe; it’s jaw-dropping,” Cullen said. “I have great appreciation for them; and it's great to get someone like Judd Nelson back. What a great, talented person and a special kind of human being. His approach to acting is a great, great asset to the franchise. We don’t have much opportunity to work with too many other people, but Frank Welker I do. We convene together at conventions, et cetera, and we get an opportunity to back and forth with each other, which is laugh-attack-ville.”
o.supreme wrote:Its kind of like Vector Sigma...Sure you can make new Transformers without it (i.e. The Dinobots), but they are going to have limitations. In my head canon, I always envisioned the Dinobots were taken to Vector Sigma at some point between 1985-2005, which explains their vastly augmented personalities from TFTM & on.
william-james88 wrote: As a fan who didnt gro up with G1, the key to Vector sigma is what I have the hardest time making sense of. Especially when you link that to Beast Machines.
What did BM do with the Key that was wrong? In G1, it turned organic material into metal, just as it did in BM.o.supreme wrote:william-james88 wrote: As a fan who didnt gro up with G1, the key to Vector sigma is what I have the hardest time making sense of. Especially when you link that to Beast Machines.
yeah, BM screwed a lot of things up, but that's nothing new.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
I was a 1980s kid, and I remember seeing Transformers: The Movie and just being devastated by the death of Optimus Prime. How did you first find out about this plot point, and after Optimus died did you find yourself grieving for the character?
I was stunned when I first read about it. I was reading the script, getting ready to go into recording. I was with Frank Welker and I got to the page, and I just read it and when the dust settled in my brain, i said "wait a minute, this is it, I’m not coming back. Oh damn." Or whatever curse words were available at the time, I chose those that were appropriate.
It was disappointment for sure. As an actor you either learn to put up with rejections or disappointments or you’ll break, you'll succumb. I'm used to that. Most actors are used to that, getting hired for something that means a lot to them. You hope, you hope, you hope. Your hopes shouldn't be dashed because you didn’t get the part. But in my case I was a little disgruntled because there was no explanation, there was no intended meaning behind it, other than years later to find out they were just trying to create a new character to sell more toys. But at the time you interpret that as being “my character sucks, God I must have been terrible in this role.”
We didn’t get fan mail. I never received a letter of fan mail although I was told it did come. And we didn’t have the internet so there was no thermomenter to judge how popular or unpopular something was. So move on, go on to the next job.
Of course now you realize how beloved Optimus is. Jumping ahead a few years when you were first cast for the Michael Bay Transformers movie, was your approach to the film version of Optimus different than his cartoon counterpart?
I think the answer is a two-fold answer. The character traits were ultimately for me going to be the same, but how to enact them and make the change from a small television screen with painted pictures to a full-on, blown up 45-foot character who is talking to human beings in real-life form in a believable way, that was something that had to be contended with. And I might add that Michael Bay and the people in his department were very concerned whether or not Peter Cullen could act. In other words could he act in a real-life situation and the way they were going to conceive it and portray it?
I had to audition a total of three times, they weren’t quite convinced. I don’t blame them, because at the audition Michael asked me if I played any other characters and I said yes, I played Ironhide and Ironhide had a scene with Optimus Prime. There was a girl reading Ironhide not giving it any dimension. I assumed that Michael Bay was at least aware of some of these characters so I said “if you don’t mind I’d like to read that part, I did him two and half years on the television series." She said ok.
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
Sums up what I think of the series so far.Windblade wrote:Somebody explain what just happened!
o.supreme wrote:"All Things Must Pass" ....so many jokes/puns could be made here, but I'll leave that for others...
Well, that was something. Actually something I think I may have not entirely disliked...not sure yet...It certainly did make the end of the battle with Trypticon anti-climactic, but in an odd way, I feel it was kind of like the end of LOTR. There was nothing really the armies of the world could do to stop Sauron, but the destruction of the One Ring did bring it all to an end, as did giving the Matrix to Trypscream.
Oh and we see Overlord, make sure you don't forget him . Megatron, what terrible language . Also is that Mark Hamill voicing Megatronus? Just a shot in the dark, probably not, but just going by my initial instinct.
Are there any Mazinger fans here? I Initially thought of the Mikene Emperor with the flaming face, and oddly enough, Megatronus had a Mazinger-ish head in his robot form, which is again a completely new design not based on any previous rendition of Megatronus/The Fallen.
No surprise about Evil Rodimus, though they must have done this before getting renders from Hasbro about Rodimus Unicronus. Though the face-plate reveal in PotP could come complete with evil goatee.
This felt much more like Episode 1 of PotP than the end of TR, but it is what it is...Oh and it definitely was also very much like the end of Pirates of the Caribbean "Dead Man's Chest" (the 2nd one). -The Hero is dead, the Villain comes back and asks if the crew is willing to go to the place they need to go, to do the thing they need to do...It's just too bad that Optimus' Death means so little now, its pretty much a staple of every series.
I'll admit I'm more optimistic about PotP now, than I was for TR at the end of CW, but just a bit more. .
MrBlack wrote:TFWiki credits Hamill for Megatronus. So, credit to Hasbro again for upping the voice budget.
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