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Peter Cullen, a man that needs no introduction to anyone here, has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2nd Annual Children's and Family Emmys this past weekend. The ceremony was originally part of the Daytime Emmys before recently spinning off into its own thing. And who better to present such an award to Optimus Prime than Megatron himself, Frank Welker?
This is a great way to kick off the 40th anniversary of the Transformers franchise which Peter has been a part of the entirety of. Since there's a real chance that you weren't sitting at home watching the presentation online you can watch Frank's presentation and Peter's acceptance speech on YouTube below uploaded by Optimus Production.
Once again we find ourselves mourning the loss of another Canadian voice actor. Pauline Newstone, much loved voice of Airazor in the Beast Wars series, passed away on May 5 this year, though cause and age aren't known. The news comes from Garry Chalk collaborator Candice Santora who was spreading the word of her passing on Tuesday as it came with little fanfare at the time. Chalk himself apparently spotted her name during the UBCP/ACTRA Awards (British Columbia's actors union) In Memoriam segment he attended on November 25.
Outside of Transformers she was the first English voice for Frieza in Dragon Ball Z, Mum Mew in Monster Rancher, Mistress Centipede in InuYasha, Agatha Harkness in X-Man: Evolution, Haka in Mummies Alive! and various voices in Captain N.
It's with a heavy heart that we report on the passing of Peter Spellos at age 69 of pancreatic cancer. Spellos is probably best known among Transformers fans as the voice of Robots in Disguise's 2023 fan nominated Hall of Fame inductee Sky-Byte. Spellos would have also been familiar to fans of late '90s and '00s TV anime in the west as Monev the Gale in Trigun, Gilliam in Outlaw Star, Hiroshi Rara in Duel! Parallel Trouble Adventure, Bartley Asprius in Code Geass, Whamon in the Digimon franchise (among many other voices), plus Sagat in Street Figher II: The Animated Movie and various voices in Naruto, Lupin III, Fist of the North Star, and Gundam among many others. He was also a guest at BotCon 2002.
The news of his passing was posted to Facebook by his long time friend and fellow actor Fred Olen Ray. Thanks to Kuhlio of the Seibertron Twincast Podcast for bringing this to our attention.
With a lot of news to get through, we wanted to share this great interview from Variety with the CEO of Paramount, Brian Robbins. While this interview covers all the Paramount films, it does give us some incite on Transformers Rise of the Beasts. The CEO points out that the film did not do great and that the main reason they attribute is the big budget which blew up due to COVID along with reduced income from Russia (who used to be the 6th biggest market for these films) and a major underperformance in China (which only bought half the tickets expected by Paramount).
But the major part that all trades, and us, are taking away from this interview is the confirmation that Michael Bay still has a hold on the Transformers film franchise. All major decisions still have to go through him and he has the ability to veto them. We learn that for Paramount to include GI Joe in the film, they needed the ok from Michael Bay. And Bay was hesitant at first since he thought merging the two brands would cheapen the Transformers films, but he did eventually sign off on it.
Bay’s approval was tricky, because he was worried that merging the series would cheapen the other “Transformers” movies. “I called him 50 times,” Robbins says. “I would not let him off the hook. And when he finally stopped dodging my calls, we got him to sign off.”
Thanks to a heads-up from our own Sabrblade, we have our first look at the Junkion combiner teased by designer Mark Maher in the Hasbro Pulse livestream this morning. Feast your eyes on.....
Using Trashmaster as the torso, Scraphook and Axlegrease as legs, and Crashbar and another (unrevealed Junkion?) as arms, Junkasaurus comes together looking pretty awesome. Mark revealed this on social media just a little while ago, and we're glad to bring this to your attention!
What do you all think about this combined mode? Are you going to get those Junkions you may have missed or on so you can create your own Junkasaurus? Let us know your thoughts below!
Regardless of what you think of the Rise of the Beasts film, it shows that the director and writers did see the robots as the titular characters that they are rather than giant props in the background. Steven Caple Jr, the director was a fan of the source material and did good on his word to provide a Transformers movie with a focus on the Transformers as much as he could (we previously wrote why that's usually not the norm in these films). So it begs to reason why Wheeljack was such a change from his previous look, especially when he had a more accurate look in the Bumblebee movie. Well, it turns out that this decision and push was out of his hands according to this interview from UPROXX. From the interview below, we see that this more nerdy look came from the higher ups, be that Hasbro or Paramount (not that it matters, both companies must sign off on these decisions) and that Wheeljack's look was changed so that he can be more different from the rest of the cast, both in look and the personality inferred by the look. Also, we've gotten early designs of the film which show that Wheeljack's new design was done at a very preliminary stage of production, before Caple was even attached to the film. And it remained this way. Along with Wheeljack, ee have other "previs" designs to share with you from Fred Pashe, who also worked on Beast Machines back in the day. Enjoy!
"When I got into the film, they had already wanted the Wheeljack part of this picture, but they wanted to redesign it and actually lean more into the science and nerdy part of Wheeljack. They felt like the Wheeljack – I don’t know if this is the studio or Hasbro who was here before me – he was kind of falling into the lane of the other characters. Kind of tough. Ironhide, and those kind of vibes. Just didn’t feel like enough variety across the board. And so, for me as a fan, I was like, “All right, how can I keep some of the essence?” But I was like, I’m going to just dive deep into the lore and just gave him his whole sort of personality and a different look as we start to now develop and move on. But yeah, that was it. It was no shade or callbacks to the other Wheeljack at all. But people started calling Pablo Wheeljack, which I thought was kind of funny. And Cristo likes it too. He’s like, “I’m down for that.” Cristo Fernandez, who plays him, which is cool."
We thank White Bear PR for putting us in touch with Jongnic Bontemps (aka JB), the composer for the film Transformers Rise of the Beasts. While we of course hope you watch the interview, we have a summary of the key points below. While we do mostly talk about the film itself, there are some interesting bits that could interest those wanting to compose in hollywood as well as parents who would want their kids more engaged with the musical instrument they are learning. Also, please note that this interview was done before the movie's release.
Summary of key points:
- JB grew up with the Transformers brand and his favourite transformers toy was G1 Optimus Prime (with trailer)
- We go over the basics of composition, how even though it involves an entire orchestra, it all starts with a single melody and then the various instruments are included at various moments or renditions
- JB discusses how they got Steven Jablonksy involved in the score and the transition from themes of the previous films into this new one.
- JB does include parts of the Unicron theme from the original 86 Transformers movie within the film. He also notes the irony of how those chilling notes for this immense being come from a tiny glass harmonica (originally)
- JB then talks about the leap of faith he took and the massive investment he made to show the studio his vision of the theme for this film and how what you hear in the film came to be.
- We end on a extra tip for parents who are bringing their kids to music lessons and want to keep them engaged. The key is to make them play something they like and weave that with the more classical compositions they need to learn to hone their skills.
Anyone who has met Peter Cullen knows he loves his fans and is very happy to have contributed to all our lives as Optimus Prime. He takes the opportunity once again to send us his love in the new featurette for Rise of the Beasts which Paramount uploaded to Youtube today, which focuses entirely on him. This is quite novel since in the past, he wasn't as involved with the marketing campaign, and it speaks to the fact that the people working on the Transformers movies now are people who grew up with the brand and understand Peter's contribution. In this short clip, Peter states that this film is similar to the G1 cartoon, for him, since it hits all the same notes, like integrity, dignity and courage.
Also, fun fact, the Brooklyn scenes of Rise of the Beasts were filmed in Montreal, which doubled as that borough, and Montreal just happens to be Peter Cullen's home town (as well as mine).
Have you ever seen a Transformers tie in single go this hard with the promotion? The new single On My Soul is out now, by TOBE NWIGWE, NAS & JACOB BANKS. The music video is below and it is directed by Tobe Nwigwe as well. They go all out with the Transformers tie in with this video with Nas on top of Optimus Prime, Tobe on Arcee and more. Plus there are some Transformers themed lyrics including Michael BayBay.
We also have a featurette for the soundtrack of the film featuring friend to the site, Jongnik Bontemps, who talks about composing a new score for the Maximals. Check it all out below.
The Premiere for Rise of the Beasts took place in Singapore earlier today, and it was followed by a news conference where all kinds of questions were asked and answered. You can see the full conference HERE thanks to Reuters on Twitter but here is a breakdown of the more spoiler stuff (do not read beyond this if you want to avoid spoilers):
- There are no Decepticons in the film. The scene of Optimus vs a Decepticon in Brooklyn was removed from the final film. So for all those who doubted how they could fit all those factions in
- The film is officially said to not be a reboot. While it can be said to be a sequel to Bumblebee or a prequel to the Bay films, or even a stand alone film, the panel wanted to make it clear that this is not a reboot.
- Lorenzo di Bonaventura gives a really reductive take on Ironhide. Not a spoiler, but something I wanted to highlight because it really stirred me the wrong way.
- The end credit scene is a hint to a future crossover between Transformers and GI Joe
- There was a planned scene for Charlie, from the Bumblebee movie, to appear but it did not happen. She could be back for a future installment.
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