Hey everyone, welcome to More Than Meets These Guys.
This week we're doing a little special episode because a little thing called Rise of the
Beast came out.
And myself and Boo of the Excellent Underground Dine-In, who does a lot of our GIFs and a
lot of our images, he's gonna be on with me this week because as much as it seems like
I know about Transformers, he knows a lot more.
And he has this great list of Easter eggs throughout the movie because that movie is
chock full of Easter eggs.
So thanks everyone for being here and let's get started.
Hello.
I was just riffing there, man.
Sorry.
So yeah, we saw it ourselves on Saturday.
And I know you saw yourself recently as well.
Oh yeah.
First of all, what was your impression?
Oh, I loved it.
Yeah, it was great.
It pretty much, it met a lot of the expectations I had for the movie.
Yeah, same here.
Actually exceeded a lot of the expectations I had for the movie because I was not really
looking forward to how the beast is gonna look, how they acted and so on.
And we didn't get a lot of them, but what we got I liked.
And they touched on so many very special touchstones of the Beast Wars lore, which is really nice.
I think we're gonna go into that a bit as we go on.
Oh yeah.
The same thing here.
I loved it.
I have a problem putting Double B up with the rest of the Bay movies because it's kind
of his own separate animal.
But of all those big cast movies, I think it's my favorite of them.
So yeah, very happy with it.
And little things that I was worried about and people who were kind of complaining about
that I thought I was gonna have a problem with came out really nicely.
Yeah, I liked the way they did the beast modes on there because I mean, if they went, I guess
in the same vein as the TV show, then we'd end up with like Lion King.
Yeah.
And I think that would have like kind of taken some of the believability out of it if they
looked like real animals.
Yeah, exactly.
And honestly, having them sort of, I guess demigods or avatars to this indigenous people
was a really good choice, I thought.
I mean, you saw that with the, I guess it was early drawings that they found in the
temple of large animals and people worshiping them.
So it was all a nice touch.
Yeah, like I said, I thought it was fantastic too.
I was surprised our friend Jim, he's from the old Axel and Underground days.
He said that thing like excited.
And he said, yeah, there's small gripes, but he says that thing was such a great movie.
He actually, he's very, he is very much into the arts, very much into, you know, filming
photography and he had nothing bad to say about the movie.
He thought it was fantastic.
Yeah, it's a popcorn movie.
We all know.
Oh yeah.
There's another way around it.
It's not transformers.
Yeah.
It's not high art.
We didn't go home in the afternoons after school to watch, you know, the masterpiece
theater came to watch Transformers.
Right.
So, yeah, man, let's get this started.
I really like how they started on their beast world, which, you know, with Ape Link, which
is a nice throwback to the botcon Ape Link.
There's a double Easter egg there because you know who Ape Link was actually kind of
based on, right?
No, I don't actually.
Glenn Hallett.
Nice.
Yeah, they were both former engineers.
Nice.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's one of the first Easter eggs you get is, you know, first of all, it's the first
botcon character to show up in, you know, one of these live action movies.
Yeah.
And there's also one that is based roughly on Glenn Hallett.
Yeah, one of the three.
Yeah, one of the three H's.
Yeah.
So that's actually really cool.
You know, I miss those old botcon days.
The other I feel like they're a lot more fun, a lot more personable.
Yeah, they were a lot of fun.
Oh, yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, so you get that and that was, you know, it wasn't a long fight or anything
like that, but it kind of gives you the weight of how that movie is going to go.
The entire movie is going to go.
He pretty much gets taken out quickly.
Oh, yeah.
And did you catch that they played Unicron's theme, like a new version of Unicron's theme
in the beginning?
Man, I'm going to watch it again.
All right.
Yeah.
It was from the 1986 movie Unicron's theme.
Yeah, they have like a really heavy synth version of it when he first says that and
you hear it more when he starts eating.
Okay.
I'll definitely check it out.
It may have been like low because the theater we were in, you know, there's the heavy bass
surround sound.
Yeah.
And there's a piano in there, so that'd be a really good thing to watch not in the theater,
which is weird to say that because you want to see things in the big surround sound theaters,
but I feel like you miss a lot of subtle things like that.
Right.
So I'm going to be glad to check that out as well.
But I, you know, people, a lot of people are asking the insignias because of course he
rips off the maximal insignia and spot welds it right on his arm.
Right.
And so a lot of people are asking a lot of the insignias are, I mean, you have a record
insignia with the two hammers.
Yeah.
That's the actually the tread and circuits records insignia from like the newer comic
they did what?
2021?
Yeah.
2021.
Yeah.
They have the Audubon Elite Guard, which is, which, you know, is made big by the animated
cartoon.
Of course they had, you know, Predacons on there.
So, you know, obviously there are Predacons in this world.
Right.
So now those kind of need, you know, and of course there's also Decepticon symbol.
Oh, yes.
And there's mercenary symbols on his grill.
It's got several mercenary symbols.
Sound Blaster from the War for Cybertron trilogy.
Like the Quinnason style faces.
Right.
Okay.
I have to get back in there to watch that again.
Then that's really so nice.
Nod's it's basically showing what's all in this universe.
Right.
Or at least what was in the universe before Scourge Metal.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
And that's, that's the truth too.
Right.
And of course we get introduced to the Big McGuffin pretty early, which I had no problem
with at all.
That was, you know, there's going to be a McGuffin and big high stakes, you know, movies
like this.
Oh yeah.
I mean, even if you go like the national treasures, you know, it's the Declaration of Independence,
you know.
Yeah.
It doesn't even matter what it is.
It's just how it gets the plot moving along.
Right.
Ocean's 11, you know, they're going after the cash.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, it's always something everybody wants.
Yeah.
And this is another Easter egg because, you know, Transwarp comes straight from Beast
Wars episode one.
They come through Transwarp portals, which travel through space and time.
And then you have a reference to that later when Airazor says they're from the future
and the past.
There are more advanced race essentially.
Right.
Which the Maximals and Predacons were.
They were basically more, I guess in the Beast Wars cartoon, more fuel efficient.
Oh yeah.
Archaic inner John Guzzlers.
Exactly.
And I mean, you get a lot of throughout the film, you know, how, you know, Primal will
say this is how I pictured Optimus Prime.
Yeah, I guess you build up a hero image in your head.
I mean, he was obviously named after Prime.
Oh yeah.
Well, and if they're from the future, then he's going to be a different Optimus Prime
because they're going to see that end result of Prime rather than, you know, it's like
we have George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.
If you met him in their like teens, you'd probably be like, wow, this guy's a jerk or
something.
Or, you know, Thomas Jefferson.
Oh, well, man, I don't even want to go there.
I knew a lot of people who really idolized Andrew Jackson when I was growing up.
Yeah exactly.
Growing up in the South.
So, oh Hickory.
He makes like a whole snowball.
Yeah.
So, yeah, you're introduced to a really good villain.
And I think Andrea said that this is a really brave idea for them to go with a major Transformers
movie that didn't have Megatron or a form of him as the main villain.
Because it's like the constant struggle is Optimus Prime versus Megatron.
It's back and forth or Galvatron or whatever else you want to call them.
So to have a completely separate villain.
And you know, there's no way to mistake it.
He's a villain.
I mean, there's no, you know, no shades of gray here.
Oh yeah.
He's really evil.
Oh, and he's a double Easter egg because, you know, there's a reference to Scourge,
the Unicronian from the 1986 movie.
And then there's Scourge from RID, the robots in disguise, who was like the evil truck.
So it's like they kind of merged the two of them together to make this guy, that guy.
Yeah.
You had him ready.
I did.
I found him the other day while I was looking at these stuff.
You were zooming them around, weren't you?
Man, these are great desk fodder because they're so small.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
They're working Hot Wheels tracks.
They probably do actually.
Yeah.
They're about the right size.
So yeah, you have, you have that as a double Easter egg, which, you know, by the way, Peter
Dinklage did a great job.
Oh yeah.
The dude has weights behind his voice.
And I mean, if anyone wants to watch the Game of Thrones, you know, you know that he has
menace behind his voice when he wants to.
So that was really good.
But he was really scary.
I mean, you see him through the jungle with like, it's all dark and you see the, like
the dark energy, John burning in his chest and his eyes.
Man, that was a great way to bring him in like that.
Oh yeah.
He looked creepy.
Oh, he did.
He was almost like undead, especially like when you see his face in the end, it's like,
he's almost got like a zombie transformer face under there.
Oh, a hundred percent.
And I agree with that.
I think with, well, I can kind of move this along though.
He said the whole gathering of the Maximals and Ape Link names Primal the new leader,
and he tells me to get out of there.
So with some hesitance and some resistance, they finally take off, grab the key and leave.
And I like that they just had this like, almost like a teaser thing right before the art of
the story of the people get involved.
And I got to say, man, I'm definitely not a fan of people in Transformers stories.
Shia, Megan Fox and all that stuff.
They had their funny moments, but it just got really annoying after a while.
You wanted to see more robot action.
But I liked Noah's story.
Anthony Ramirez.
It was a believable story.
He got discharged from the army and he's trying to find work.
Of course, you're going to have something like he's a electronics wizard.
He can hotwire cable boxes and that sort of thing.
Because like Walberg's character in the five and six, he had to have some sort of, he was
an inventor or whatever.
Cade Yeager.
Yeah.
But yeah, so yeah, honestly, Noah, I didn't mind him at all.
He gave a believable reason for him to be in the situation he was in.
And he didn't look like he was jittery, dirty and sweaty all the time.
Like Megan and Fox and Shia.
He wasn't glistening.
Missed him.
Break your stomach now.
Yeah.
But yeah, he actually looked believable.
And Elena's character, I don't think that actually is his name.
I heard it a few times.
You're in science.
I'm in science.
My wife is in science.
We know how interns struggle.
Oh yeah.
It's tough.
And that is a 100% believable situation.
Yeah, it looked very accurate.
Oh, it was very accurate.
You said that was kind of silly.
Like no, that's 100% accurate.
So one realizes they have a, they have a, not every scientist or, you know, person in
the museums like this, but there are people out there and say, like, oh, I've got someone
I can beat up and abuse.
Cool.
You're going to do all this stuff for me.
Oh yeah.
I'm going to do it for your credit.
Yep.
That's legitimately the life.
It could be the life of a, of someone doing that.
So, you know, I liked she was a completely believable character.
It did not feel like, what's the word I'm looking for?
It didn't feel like they were trying to find a, a black actress and Hispanic actor.
They actually just felt like they belong there.
Right.
There's no virtue.
No, no virtue signaling.
Yeah.
No, they fit very well with the story, which is great.
Yeah.
Well, and it's New York, New York's a melting pot more so than probably anywhere else in
the U S. Yeah.
It was Brooklyn in the nineties.
Right.
And so that's, I mean, uh, one of my good friends, Ariel, you know, he's, I want to
say he's from, uh, I don't think he's from Brooklyn.
I think some points he's in a yell at me about this.
So I'm going to get it wrong, but he's in that, that general vicinity.
One of those, you know, one of those, uh, those areas on the boroughs.
Yeah.
So yeah, that's the way it is.
You know, you have people in your neighborhood, you know, you know, you, you work with, so,
you know, he's trying to move on and get out of that life.
And um, you know, he gets hooked up cause he can't get a job because he was discharged
dishonorably from the army, I guess, or I guess he was honorably discharged, but he
didn't get a good review.
That's what a landing officer.
Yeah.
So, yeah, of course.
Did you catch the Cybertronics on the date when it flashed 1994?
I did catch that.
I didn't think that look at it.
Cause you know, I've been able to, you know, like, it's kind of gibberish.
It's not really the actual maximal Cybertronics.
They just look like them.
Like they're kind of pieced together from the symbols, but yeah, they shift into 1994,
but that's the first time you see the maximal Cybertronics language pop up.
And yeah, by the way, everyone he's listening or watching or whatever, they legitimately
went after the actual languages that were from the Beast Wars show.
Oh yeah.
They, they did a deep dive.
I was really happy and I don't even, I don't think I caught everything they referenced
to Beast Wars.
The guy you could tell he's a fan or someone who is helping him was a big fan.
I like that.
That made a big difference.
Oh yeah.
They did a deep dive into a lot of this stuff.
Yeah.
Which is fantastic.
I mean, it makes the movie better with it being such a good movie and having all these
things for actual fans to see that were layered in there.
Right.
And it wasn't just, they dove into the show.
It seemed like they dove actually into the fan culture because they're almost like in
jokes from the fandom itself that were popping up in there.
Yeah.
So I'm sure you have those written out.
You have your list of Easter eggs.
Yeah, I got my list.
So yeah, I mean, the plot moves along and he gets the guy in the neighborhood and who
he, I guess he did the cable walks for to, yeah, Reek.
Yeah.
Oh God.
Sorry.
I didn't think of the name, the guy from the crow, Reek.
Oh, no, the Reek.
I'm seeing a game of Thrones.
Oh God.
That's too.
Geez.
This Reek was a lot cooler.
So yeah, he gets another man.
I actually liked the character too.
He's in there.
He gets, hits him up with the job, stealing the car from, I guess, an expensive, you know,
garage.
Oh yeah.
It was in a hotel.
That's right.
Yeah.
Fancy hotel.
A couple of weeks.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, once again, this is all believable.
This is all stuff you can see happening, you know, and he's, he kind of goes, it's kind
of a, yeah, kind of a goofy, like the comedy of errors getting in there, but he gets in
there and yeah, the whole thing with, you know, I don't know if Mirage was just screwing
with him or he was just having fun with him or he was just like, you know, kept locking
the door on him.
You put the slim gym in there, pulling it up, trying to unlock it.
Oh, I'm pretty sure he was messing with that.
It fits the character to just, just a toy with him.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So he gets in there and he's like, you know, he's, he's, here's the trim is transmission
going across from often as prime.
You can't get, get the car going.
It's all kinds of stuff going on.
He's trying to hot wire him.
And that's shades of, you know, Raul and tracks from make tracks.
Oh yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
That was set in New York also.
Yes.
True.
Yeah.
Raul and Noah.
So yeah, actually there's a lot of shades of make tracks with this, you know, including
the possibly messing with those wiring a little bit whenever he goes back to the garage.
Oh yeah.
Or no, that was a, when he was outside of his, uh, his apartment and the headlights
go off anyway.
Yeah.
He messed up there.
And then also at that same part, he complained that he got his paint scratched by his brother,
which right a little bit of tracks is vanity carried over.
And that was, that was cool too.
You know, honestly, the whole chase was, was great.
You know, you, you realize why, you know, he's got mirage.
He's not the, uh, our, you know, G one, all your mirage, but honestly, yeah.
I think you were saying he feels more like a hot rod character.
Oh yeah.
He definitely has that, that youth element to him, but also the way, you know, uh, Pete
Davidson sounds, it sounds a little bit like Judd Nelson's hot rod.
It does.
You know, I could see that voice coming out of the IDW hot rod actually.
Oh yeah.
But, uh, yeah, man.
Uh, so he gets, he, um, takes him to this, uh, to the garage where he's, they've all
going to meet up, you know, the, um, Oh, sorry about his powers, his abilities.
Yeah.
He actually matches more closely to the original tech specs for mirage and the transfer.
Yeah.
He was more, I guess like a displacer beast.
Oh, nice.
Like he would appear where he wasn't, you know?
So yeah, it would throw off where he was rather than just, uh, being invisible.
Nice.
Visibility was added for the sun bow show, but according to the tech specs in the transformers
universe profile, uh, he would basically make images of himself where he wasn't.
Nice.
Okay.
Yeah.
So it's all that he could, they get to that, uh, the garage and everyone else shows up,
but, um, you know, I'm just primed is really angry in this.
That dude is, he is like grumpy as hell.
Um, you know, once again, this is not, uh, the Bay universe prime.
This is, uh, the bumblebee universe prime.
And uh, he's, you know, do any white has, uh, he brought a human there and he's like,
yeah, you know, he's going to help us.
And, uh, it was, it was a whole thing where you get the, you get the impression he's walking
around saying, you know, you know, how do you do is like mirage stay there, stay hidden.
He's kind of making fun of his prize voice.
Cause he's that character.
That's oh yeah.
And he makes a reference to big, when there was a plot point in big where they were trying
to design a new transformer.
Yeah.
That was the original.
Yeah.
That was totally, that's somewhat one of those fandom jokes.
I think that they worked in cause almost every, at least the old school transformer fans all
were like, oh wow.
I remember there was a, someone talking about on one of the Facebook groups about, uh, they
they're kind of ticked that you should be able to have like skyscraper sized, you know,
transformers fighting and that even plays more into that.
I was totally the transformer.
Well, and then big, they decided, he told them it'd be better to have a bug.
And then, you know, later in the movie, there's like bug transformers everywhere.
Yeah.
Nice.
Okay.
I'm this, we're in like the first half hour and there's just all this stuff already.
Oh yeah.
And well, I'm going back to Elena's story.
Yeah.
When she gets the air razor statue, that's a reference back to the transformers comics,
the matrix quest.
Oh, it was like the, like the Maltese Falcon, but there's a say the Maltese Falcon.
Yeah.
It's called bird of prey.
There's 62 in the American comics and it was a two 62 through two 64 in the UK comics.
I remember that maybe they split them up.
Yeah.
Night, night be figured prominently because he's the detective.
Oh yeah.
And I mean, yeah, that's the, I think the only time you see in G1 where you have just
a statue of a bird like that, that's the MacGuffin and it was a main MacGuffin of that story.
Yeah.
And once again, it was MacGuffin of the Maltese, the Maltese Falcon was the MacGuffin of that
entire story.
Oh yeah.
And the symbols on her, the Cybertronics on the statue are the letters Q and B.
Yeah.
I think we're, we asked you about that later on and it's being this for somebody and initials
or it means something, but yeah.
So yeah.
So yeah, she, she takes a closer look at the thing.
What happened actually?
Is it there yet?
Yeah.
They have the whole, the guy gets to go back to the garage.
They're all discussing what to do with them and Mirage gets it.
He basically plays to know his need to make money.
Oh yeah.
Dude, man, you help us.
We'll get this thing.
We'll move on and you can, you can let you sell me and then I'll just get out of there.
And he's like, what do you want to be?
I was like, I can be, I can be a Porsche.
I can be a Ferrari.
I can be F1 racer, which plays to the original design of Mirage.
Right.
And the Mirage that got changed, they changed his name to Dino from, what was it?
Revenge of the Fallen.
Is that right?
Maybe.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, he was a Ferrari.
That's right.
That's kind of a nod to that also.
Once again, there's the Easter eggs are plentiful.
Oh yeah.
They're loaded.
Yeah.
So they, they kind of, you know, I, and I got to admit, I really was worried.
I would really dislike RC, but she came out really well too.
Oh, the dark of the moon.
That's what it was.
Dark of the moon.
Okay.
Dark of the moon.
Yeah.
RC came out really nice.
Ducati motorcycle.
Yeah.
She's basically been a motorcycle ever since, uh, got to enter John.
Yeah.
You don't say enter John's the first time she popped up as a motorcycle.
Yeah.
She's like, she's that way in like one of the babies that might've been a real fringe
of the fallen.
That was a friend to the fallen.
Yeah.
Well, there's like three RCs.
They looked weird and kind of horrible, but yeah, they had Vicon legs.
Oh God.
Yeah.
The real legs.
Yeah.
They had, or they had stands.
You can, I don't know.
Anyways.
Right.
So that she looked really good.
Um, bumblebee was back to his old Camaro body.
So you know, once again, he's, I think that's the way he looked at the end of bumblebee.
He changed his form to a Camaro.
He just kind of goes off in the, in the, in the, in the sunset.
Right.
Cause he went from Volkswagen to a Camaro.
Yeah.
And there's actually a reference to the 2007 movie in that part when, uh, Noah asked him,
are you a possessed car?
And then in 2007, Sam's like, I'm being chased by Satan's Camaro.
That's right over that.
So yeah, that's not real.
I'm an alien.
Like that's easier to stomach.
Yeah.
I like that.
You know, uh, the whole, the whole thing with them, you know, it was, it was a, I don't
know.
It felt like once again, real.
And also Andreas, uh, our friend Andreas said this as well.
They all feel like they have weight and they have gravity and everything moves around.
Like they're real instead of like a billion little parts moving all the time.
So they feel like they're liquid and they don't weigh up very much.
They all seem like they have the mass of a Freightliner or a Camaro or, you know, a Porsche.
It feels that I don't know.
It seemed like they got the weight and the gravity of the, of the different forms.
Right.
And I like how they had like just enough kibble on them where you could tell what they were
before.
It wasn't like it all disappeared and turned little shards.
Like yeah, you could still see hints of their form in their robot mode, which that's one
of the things I liked about transformers.
You can kind of make out like you could always tell Starscream was a jet.
Yeah, exactly.
You look at Optimus, you can tell he was a truck.
So there was a lot more of that.
Steven Capel Jr., the director said he actually wanted to work more of that in.
So the vehicle mode didn't completely disappear when they became robots.
I mean, it shouldn't.
There's a whole point there.
They're supposed to look that way for a reason.
Right.
In the, I mean, even go back to the beasts, they have weight and they have mass.
You know, they, when they walk around, you hear the thump, the thump and they have a
gurgling in their chest kind of thing.
So all that was really nice.
You know, but you still had things that make them differentiate them as when the robots,
like you know, the Mirage has like, it looks like a, like a headphones like around the
back of his head.
Right.
It had these kinds of, he had the certain things about them that still give him some
differentiating looks as a, as a robot, which is nice.
It gives him character.
Yeah.
It does.
You know, I gotta say also they were really big on the appearance of, you know, trying
to be quiet.
I was trying to be driving up quietly.
He transforms quietly and walks into the garage.
Quiet.
I mean, as quiet as you can be.
All that.
There, there weren't banging around and falling in Sam Witwicky's backyard, stepping off
flower pots and stumbling over the garage.
And yeah, yeah, there was, there was still a little bit of that.
They played to the little bit of that when, when Noah goes to his apartment and talking
to his little brother, he kind of like, standing on the car, but you know, there's still, as
he stood on that car, I was like, that, that roof's not going to hold him.
And then they started breaking.
I'm like, ah, there it is.
Yeah.
And he falls around and stuff.
Yeah.
So, you know, they, they go to the, he goes like to the, the, to the museum on the island
to retrieve the key.
And I like that they, they, they make a point in saying like, you know, he's like, where
are we going?
Like moving the phone without a signal that I can't see.
Yeah, exactly.
When you can't see.
So it establishes that, you know, we're, we're getting that, that out of go.
I guess that, um, there are you reasoning mirage as the lens and not Noah.
Right.
I think that we can see the signal.
Yeah, exactly.
We're, we're like, we're kind of like as Mirage.
We're not as the human, which I thought was a nice little touch.
It was very subtle too.
So yeah, you know, he goes there, he, he breaks in, he hears the, which he hears the window
break and Noah shows up.
He's in like starter starter gear, like a starter jacket and pants stuff.
It's like, who are you?
I'm Janitor.
You're the janitor.
And, uh, yeah, you know, he was, he's not a good guy.
He's trying to be a good guy, but he's, he had a lot of problems.
So he's just like, look, I gotta, I gotta do this.
It's important.
And he, okay.
He does what every, every person in a movie like this does really badly tries to explain
around the whole thing.
Right.
So there's a couple of Easter eggs in this part too.
That's right.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
When she's looking at the, uh, trans warp key under the microscope, you see four characters
in the cyber Tronics.
That's actually the word door that spells out door D O O R in maximal.
And then when she's looking up the, uh, peruse unexplained glyphs article, the names of the
editors of that article were a Sahi, Takara and Daniel Tommy.
So it's a Takara Tommy reference.
That was nice.
I didn't catch that at all.
Yeah.
Well, it's real fast because she pulls it up and then scrolls off the screen.
But yeah, next time you watch it, watch right when she pulls up that screen.
Nice.
I'll definitely do that.
Um, so yeah, it's almost a relief though, when, uh, when they blow the side out of the
museum, is this like, can we get on with this?
There's this whole weird tension there and you know, the security guard gets taken out
and the, uh, they, they get thrown around and the little freezer guys, I guess they
call them freezer.
They don't call him anything on there, but yeah, it's a freezer.
Yeah.
It looks like almost like frenzy from, uh, from, uh, 2007 movie.
Yeah.
They're pretty, uh, they're fantastic.
They're just like, I was like little minions or whatever little, you know, you guys to
send in differ, uh, smaller things like people.
Oh yeah.
Oh, one more thing.
She was looking at the glyph of optimist primal, like, you know, she sees the cheetah one and
the rhino and then if you look at the bottom, it actually says that linguists have determined
that this one is called optimist primal.
Like it literally says optimist primal in the, like the footnote underneath the picture,
the caption under the picture.
So someone's working on the, uh, translating the Maxwell language.
Yeah.
But I guess the indigenous people who spoke to them that they spoke to said he's called
optimist primal.
Nice.
Yeah.
So yeah, next time you watch it, look at the bottom of that picture and you'll actually
see it says optimist primal at the bottom.
It doesn't name cheetah or a Rhinox in their pictures.
So I guess we're gonna have to like stop and as soon as I get this, uh, you know, it gets
released on streaming and that's there and stop frame it and watch every little thing.
Oh yeah.
Deep dive.
Yeah.
So the whole thing moves along and I like that there's not like, I think the problem
a lot of people had with the mix of the 2007 movie and Leo, the, uh, I guess dark of the
moon is dark.
The moon had so much going on that it was going on 2007.
Barely any like robot fighting, like, but he had this like nice little teaser at the
beginning of, um, of, um, what's his face barricade and, and, um, don't be right overall.
It was nice to get right into this with their, all the, you know, mirages in his, uh, dump
truck mode.
Oh yeah.
Which was kind of ridiculous.
He's in that and, uh, and they all, he's kind of like watching out for him and he sees all
of the, uh, you know, the tarot cards show up.
So all the other ones show up and there's a big fight, which is pretty brutal.
I mean, I, you don't always know how the, or the things are going to show up on, on,
on screen.
I was, uh, what was it?
A scrap hook.
I'm a huge fan of how he came out.
Like his, the ball on the battle trap, battle trap, not scrap, but grab a trap.
Thank you.
That's another thing.
Yeah.
Battle traps, the weight of that, of that record ball, do anything hit you felt it.
Oh yeah.
Oh, and did you catch the, the Marky Mark references?
They were driving up there.
That's right.
Yeah.
Marky Marky, Marky bunch.
It's going to be an actor.
I did guess that.
So yeah, I got a Mark Wahlberg reference there.
Yeah.
Which is, oh, and when optimists in that same part, uh, told Bumblebee, he didn't want him
to go to that drive-in movie anymore.
That's a reference back to, uh, transformers was it number one, the Marvel comic where
that's, they all went to the drive-in movie and that's where Bumblebee met Buster.
That's nice.
Yeah.
Man.
So yeah, it's, they did their research.
They dug in to like the mythos.
Yeah.
That's great.
I haven't heard that coming so long.
Oh yeah.
It goes way back.
Oh, that's literally like the first piece of transformers lore published.
That's fantastic.
God.
I mean, yeah.
Whether you can say those things about it is if you get the joke, you get the Easter
egg, that's even better.
But without that, you know, it's kind of a funny thing.
Like, I don't want you to listen to those movies anymore because you know, right.
It's bad influence.
Yeah, exactly.
I've seen all these lines, you know, with kids, when you have kids, you deal with that
too.
Like, what are you watching?
I don't want you on YouTube today.
What are you watching on there?
Yeah, exactly.
There was, there was an incident back when my son was younger with my, my now ex-wife,
we had to go because I think we were separated at the time we had to go and sue my son's
preschool because he dropped a, I'm going to, you know, paraphrase or like shorten it here.
He dropped a WTF, but you know, didn't see WTF.
He said the whole phrase, you know, in this little private preschool and going, and I
looked at my ex-wife and like, so where'd you hear that at?
Yeah.
It was drive in movies.
Not that quiet, but.
Yeah.
Anyways.
Yeah.
So, uh, I mean, all that was fantastic.
He gives the, like I said, you're on the island, that big fight is going on and they are brutal
and so much so that the stakes are like pretty much shown right there where he takes in a,
he takes out moment right there.
Oh yeah.
And this is the introduction of Nightbird to the live action stories.
And you know, that's a reference back to a season two G1 episode that you just did on
here not too long ago.
Yeah.
It would have been nice to have the famous scientist.
Oh yes.
Dr. Fujiyama, the famous scientist.
The famous scientist.
And you know, actually the, the face was more, um, was more avian looking, like more of like
a hook, a beak thing on it, but it didn't look that far off from like the original concept.
Um, of course, you know, she, she flies and she transforms, you know, they were more of
a bird motif into her ninja look.
So it was kind of a mix.
Yeah.
Which is fine.
Good in Mortal Kombat.
Um, so yeah.
Oh, and Optimus has his ax, his energon ax from the first episode or second episode of
Transformers.
Yeah.
He, uh, he starts out with the sword then changes up to an ax, which is nice touch.
And it's not, he gets knocked out of his hand and, uh, that's what the whole thing is going
to be coming up.
He's grabbing it and he runs over to try to use it.
And uh, you know,
Yeah.
He was really shocked when, uh, Scourge just overpowered him.
I actually, I kind of felt like that was a, that was a, um, reference to, uh, the end
of the Transformers prime with a bone.
He takes up the, uh, the, um, star saber and takes out Megatron.
Oh yeah.
At the very end.
Yeah.
I could see that.
Well, there's our guys.
It's also, that's when Scourge mentions primus.
He tells them, uh, you know, you call yourself a prime primus would be ashamed.
So once again, we're bringing that into the, uh, the realm of, uh, and I like that they
refer to Unicron as a dark God.
He's not just a big Transformer.
He's not just a Galactus.
He's a dark God.
Then he's Brim for Earth's is primus also.
So, you know, you can essentially, you know, well, I hope they would, you make the connection
where, you know, there's, there's lots of, uh, different ways they describe primus and
Unicron, depending on which show you're watching.
And, and, uh, you know, which kind of theory you go with.
Yeah.
I think they'd do like three different ways in the comic.
But yeah, so primus and Unicron are like the, um, the, they're dualistic.
Yeah.
It's like a yin yang thing with them.
And for those that don't know it, yeah.
Primus is basically like the creator God of the Transformers.
And in some cases he's Cybertron itself.
Yeah.
And, uh, which I liked that they, they did not follow the, the Transformers prime, you
know, origin for Unicron, which they did in the Michael Bay universe where Unicron was
Earth.
Cause obviously it's kind of complicated things a lot.
That's also why I changed my, uh, little avatar here to my primus picture.
Is that the keeper there with them?
Yes.
Keeper with primus.
That was, you know, from like what issues it was like, um, what was it?
It's 61, 61, I think.
Yeah.
What's the name of that issue?
Primal Scream.
That's right.
Yeah.
So it kind of tells Gremlock and Mulvey and maybe Blaster.
Jazz.
Like the whole story of how he came out and how he, uh, originally, uh, Unicron and him
were the same being.
Yeah.
Or, well, they, he was made from the sentient core of the universe.
Yeah.
And Unicron had come from the previous universe.
He'd eaten everything and went to sleep and then woke up.
My new universe had formed around him.
So he just started tearing it up.
And yeah, that's, that's one of the three different versions of the origin story.
Yeah.
Later they did one where they were like one being that was divided and they, they've got,
yeah, like you said, several different origins.
And honestly, I can actually explain that away.
I mean, you can say like, well, you know, that's, that's just, um, you know, maybe people
have different myths about the same origin story or, you know, creation myth.
Oh yeah.
The original one that Simon Furman wrote was very much like, uh, Zoraastrianism.
The way they have their, you know, benevolent creator God, which is a Hura Mazda.
And then you have Angra Mainyu, which is like their destroyer.
In a lot of ways it's also, you can look at, um, you know, um, was it, I'm trying to think
of the, uh, it's Krishna and, um, I'm going to blank on the name of the dark goddess of
the destroyer.
Oh, Kali.
Kali.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Kali.
I mean, that's, that's a, that's a classic, um, you know, kind of myth of like, you know,
a creator, the cycle of creation and destruction.
Yeah.
Which, so I mean, honestly, it gives us also a little more, I guess, I don't know, um,
mystical kind of sense to it.
Yeah.
Um, anyways, yeah.
Moving along though, there's their, their, their course, um, they're going to grieve
Bumblebee, but they, they take them with them.
And um, I actually, I stepped out of the, uh, the theater to use the bathroom at this
point, apparently as were, um, um, Stratosphere shows up.
Yeah.
And as well, you know, back and forth with, uh, with mirage.
Oh yeah.
Mirage finds out who's coming and he's just like, Oh, not him.
Oh, I was going to say with the, uh, Terracons, when, uh, Airazor has given her exposition
about who they are.
Yeah.
And you know, they ask, well, your Autobots, your Maximals and who are they?
Their Terracons.
That's a reference back to Transformers Enderjohn where the Terracons served Unicron.
That's right.
Which again, you know, um, yeah, that's Unicron trilogy they worked in, which is rare to see
worked into the live action.
And people are saying, why are they using Terracons?
Terracons are there, or they were, people were caught up on the idea of the Terracons
were the, the G1 Terracons, like hunger, um, Ripper snapper.
Yeah.
The abominus combiner.
Yeah.
So like, no, no, there's, there's been a lot of Terracons in the, uh, the different
shows.
Yeah.
And this is leaning definitely more towards the, I guess the Energon Terracons.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
So, uh, yeah, that, that alone was a nice touch to showing all that.
But so yeah, yeah.
I noticed a Stratosphere looks like the old pilot, the old British pilot from the Mummy.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
He's got like the, the leather, like big old mustache.
Yeah.
The mustache and all that.
And he's almost got like little goggles on top of his head too.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Like the black mask.
Yep.
Yeah.
They, uh, of course they, they, you know, fly out to Peru because you know, Elena's
solve, solve where this is coming from.
Right.
So they go check out the, uh, the temple because that's where they, they've discovered these,
um, the link to this, I can't remember the name of the temple.
Uh, it's a temple of the sun.
Temple of the sun.
Thank you.
But there was a, yeah.
Oh, about Stratosphere.
Uh, he was originally a Revenge of the Fallen toy.
Yes, he was.
Which they had Optimus like parachute out of the plane, but you know, they never referred
to him in the movie, but when they made the toy for that plane and had the little Optimus
with it, you know, they named it Stratosphere.
So this is actually a reference back to that toy from Revenge of the Fallen.
So it's his first live action appearance.
Yeah.
And same kind of plane too.
Yeah.
Which is nice.
I kind of appreciate that too.
So yeah, they land in Peru and, uh, then, you know, Wheeljack shows up.
And I didn't know what to think about him.
And I, you know, I didn't know how I felt about it, but once I heard him talking, I
was fine with it.
Oh yeah.
I was okay with it.
And there's the, uh, the little joke, I think, uh, Noah's making, talking about his accent.
What'd you get your accent from?
He's like, what do you, what accent?
Oh yeah.
With Wheeljack.
Yeah.
And, uh, he made a reference back to the Skids of Mudflap from Revenge of the Fallen.
Right.
Cause he called him, he said, that sounds pretty racist, man.
And then, yeah, how can it be racist?
He's a robot.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And that was, I think that's actually a quote from Michael Bay.
I think Michael Bay said that in an interview somewhere.
I'm pretty sure he did.
I remember hearing about that.
Uh, but yeah, that's directly back referencing Skids of Mudflap.
Like come on.
Oh yeah.
They're very racist, man.
Um, so yeah, they, they go on the, uh, like the little thing they do in this, this town
with this festival going on, they have to go through what's become another, it's a church
on top of where the temple was.
That's go through the whole thing.
And you know, once the end, Elena is, uh, they, they do the whole stuff to you sneak
really easily into this, uh, church.
Oh yeah.
Through the parade, which that's a reference to a plague of insecticons.
Is it?
Cause they remember where, uh, Side Swipe had to tunnel underneath the parade.
That's right.
So they were going down that like the one ravine and there's a parade right there.
Yeah, that's right.
So yeah, that's a Easter egg back to that.
And if you watch the parade, there is a float that looks like a rhino and then there's a
Jaguar float, which I guess is a kind of reference to Cheetor.
Yeah, nice.
So yeah, the main big one you see when it's like doing the bird's eye view, you'll see
it's a big colorful rhinoceros, which there are no rhinoceroses in South America.
Well, there's one.
Yeah, there's one big metal one.
So yeah.
And I like to get to the, you get to the temple and they're looking for stuff and he's like,
he starts looking at the stonework and she says that that was made in the, that was built
in the 1500s.
That's not what we're looking for.
Once again, you know, showing that she's like, okay, I'm not just here as the, you know,
plucky female lead.
She's like, no, I actually know.
I know she's the expert.
Yeah.
And uh, which I love the end of the movie.
She gets credit finally for something like this.
But yeah, back to this though.
I mean, she's a, they figured out it's like, you know, like a national treasure kind of
I was like, okay, turn the faces this way.
They all, it all opens up.
I like that they get into this and they, of course the, um, the terracotta are on the
way they're, they're following the Autobots.
They knew something's going on.
Uh, Helena and nowhere down there under, underground and they make points.
They like, no one's been here and you know, millennia, which, you know, that's kind of
a cool thing and they kind of followed through this whole, well, actually if I know none
of those freezer robots.
Yeah.
And, uh, and the calendar on the ground there that, you know, where they did the little
open up it's unicorn.
Yeah, it is.
It has his rings and all that.
And it has a skull face in the middle, like death.
So yep.
And there are four maximal symbols on it and there's four maximals in the movie.
Exactly.
So there's a lot of symbolism worked into that.
Oh yeah.
Uh, yeah, they're kind of paraphrasing, paraphrase, or I kind of work through all this.
Uh, they, they, you know, Noah has the L a hand flashlight gun thing.
He finds he has, which, um, I was kind of wondering what they were doing with that.
Cause I don't know if that's a really a play on anything else they've done before.
It was just something, something's kind of moving along.
I think that the closest thing I could think of was from, uh, darker the moon, the little
gadgets that, uh, Q gave Sam, Oh yeah.
I see it shot star screaming the eye with it.
That's what it reminded me of.
I can see that it looked a little cleaner though, but yeah, yeah, it was definitely
not as janky more ergonomic.
Yeah.
They come out into the jungle and they're over there and you know, immediately Brian
Wall shows up and you know, jumps down and starts yelling at him and counting his chest
and stuff.
And then, why are you here?
Why are you looking for the key?
Um, but back in the tunnels with that, and that tomb, was there anything in there that
was a, like a little Easter egg also?
Well, there was a maximal cyber Tronics on the edge of the slab.
They slid off.
Yeah.
But it doesn't seem to spell anything in English.
It looks like it might be a code or it could just be gibberish.
Yeah.
Cause it's just, it's a string of letters and there's a number in front of each of the
sets of letters.
So I don't know if that's some kind of cipher or they may have just throw some random symbols
up there.
That's possible.
I don't know if they put that much effort into it.
I got it.
I had to say they probably are trying to do something with it.
So it seems almost like they, it's something hidden in there.
Cause it looks like it could be something.
Cause it's set in like segments, like their words, like there's a block of five, five
five, then a block of four.
And then I want to say a block of three or four at the end.
And then there's numbers before each block.
So yeah, it could be some kind of cipher that we just haven't been able to break.
And I actually, I put it through some cryptography programs and they couldn't really get anything
out of it.
So it may just be random.
It's still a secret.
Yeah.
Who knows?
But, excuse me, they get out there and of course they come up with the thing everyone
has seen in the trailer, you know, the Maxwell's all show up and the Autobots all show up and
there's a whole, you know, like, you know, who we are and that sort of thing back and
forth with, and there's a little exposition going on with all this and the Maxwell's take
them to the indigenous village, which was just kind of cool.
It didn't seem, I say this as it was a white guy.
It didn't seem exploitative at all.
It seemed just, you know, this is part of it.
This is where they live.
This is their thing.
It didn't feel like the girl from, what was that episode?
The, I'm trying to remember that they had the Incan pyramids.
Oh, Fire on the Mountain.
It didn't seem as...
Rich's girl in town.
Green crystals hold all the energy back.
Right.
It didn't seem like that though.
It was just kind of nice.
Yeah.
Well, and you have the mention of raw energon at this part.
Yeah.
And you know, that's obviously a reference right to, well, let me reference the Beast
Wars in reference to, I would say Prime.
Oh yeah.
Well, and the IDW comics where they had the Regenesis where different planets were seeded
with energon by Shockwave.
Yes, right.
But it's all inert like Beast Wars.
Right.
It was not usable.
Right.
It had to go through a process to become usable.
Yeah.
And I almost feel like that had something to do with, I don't know if that was something
like in Beast Wars, you had the, they had the Vox burn off, a lot of the energon and
became, you know, some of it became more usable.
And Prime, it was the whole thing with dark energon and such because it was, you know,
Unicron has a reference.
So there's a lot of references.
Yeah, it needed a big energy infusion basically to stabilize it.
And you got that from the Planet Buster in Beast Wars.
And then-
That's right.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Sorry.
Oh, and also the symbol that Elena wrote down from the temple, she copied it down.
There goes the code, that's X. That's the maximal letter X.
So it's QBX was the-
XB, XQB.
XQB, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, I mean, that could be someone's initials for all we know.
Oh yeah.
Oh, and when Noah is talking to Elena and saying, we'll have to destroy this key when
we get it, because it's a danger, that is a reference to the Nebulons from Rebirth,
Part 3, where they wanted to destroy the key to the plasma energy chamber, because it's
a threat to their world.
That's right.
So yeah, they dug up some like season four Easter egg right there.
Killed the McGuffin, man.
Because Optimus was telling them, you can't destroy the key.
It's important.
And the Nebulon's like, no, I don't listen to him.
We got to destroy that key.
Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, that whole thing progresses along and- oh, thunderstorm here apparently.
So yeah, we have all that going on.
Scourge shoots this clampy thing onto A-Razor.
It looks like, it almost looks like, it looks like Cosmic Rust a bit.
I guess this is more like an infection.
He's altering her or whatever.
And I don't know if that was a reference to anything in particular.
Yeah, it looked like an infection.
At first, that's what I thought it was Cosmic Rust.
And it almost looked like the viral pod that Tarantula shot onto Rhinox in Beast Wars.
Kind of.
Low road, because it had the little legs kind of pop out on it as it flew.
It's true.
I mean, it wasn't exactly like that, because that had like a fluid pod on it.
But yeah, same type of device.
Yeah, but yeah, it delivered like a virus that changed her personality, which also,
I guess, is a reference to...
Guerrilla warfare.
Guerrilla warfare, yeah.
So yeah, I mean, it may have just been a vague reference.
It could just be that it was the same sort of thing.
Instead of a cyber B, they kind of did the weird little thing.
Cyber facehugger.
Yeah, exactly.
So you know something's going to come out later.
It's like your check off his gun.
Right.
Oh yeah.
And you see it, they don't hide it.
She sees it and she's like, mess with it.
It's a problem.
She says it's going to be fine.
You know it's not going to be.
Oh yeah, when Scourge touches you, it leaves a mark.
That was her.
And it's like, that's the zombie bite.
Yeah.
Oh no, no, it's just a scratch.
You're exactly right.
Yeah.
Like that's going to come up later.
Airazor was the guy who said he wasn't bitten.
He hides it.
He pulls a shirt sleeve down.
No, no, I'm not bitten at all.
What are you talking about?
I got myself shaving.
Your arm?
Yeah.
I'm really hairy.
So yeah, that whole thing plays out and they're still trying to say they have, they get the
other side of it.
But you know, of course, Scourge is going to show up and you know, when they're trying
to, no one wants to destroy the key.
It's Airazor.
You know, it turns to that point, jumping out of it.
And of course, grabs the key and flies off of it and gives it to Scourge.
So actually, no, flies off with Elena.
Elena.
Yeah.
So they chase her.
And Airazor is also covered with Maximal Cybertronics.
It's all over her chest plate and on her shoulders, but it was too small for me to make out what
anything said.
Hmm.
Okay.
So it's a lot too.
I mean, she's, it's like, she's all tatted up.
Yeah, it may just been like, I don't know, I guess maybe said dressing, maybe.
Oh yeah.
Maybe like when we get the 4k DVD, Blu-ray, we can zoom in and see what it is.
There you go.
But also the RC and Wheeljack team up, you know, how they team up several times in the
this movie.
In the original drafts for the 1986 Transformers movie, RC and Wheeljack were a team.
Oh, really nice.
Yeah.
So.
He wasn't killed.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, he wasn't meant to be killed at all in the original drafts and the storyboards.
It just said an Autobot, but that's that shows like they've obviously seen that the way they
team those two up.
Yeah.
I wonder, I wonder if that, that little, that one frame from the original 1986 movie was
an afterthought.
They threw that in there with like wind charger and Wheeljack.
Oh yeah.
And the, well, the, the storyboards, it looked like smoke screen.
Oh.
And it just said an Autobot next to wind, wind, wind charger was named, but the guy
next to him wasn't.
And they just threw in Wheeljack.
That's too bad.
Yeah.
Of course he shows up in victory.
Was it?
Yeah.
It was victory because he helped turn God, Jenry into victory Leo.
That's right.
So, you know, he got better, I guess.
He was as bad as Des Bummelvue was.
Oh yeah.
Well, and in Japan, they actually explained it.
That's the Binaltech Wheeljack that came over from the other universe.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So he's a dimension hopper.
He's a slider.
It's Wheeljack for you.
So yeah, moving around along though.
I mean, they, so Scourge gets the key.
He, he does this really cool thing that when he addresses Unicron and almost like he has
his virtual reality like set up with his, the platform where he talks to him.
Right.
And it's kind of cool.
I wondered almost if you were seeing kind of things how he sees it.
Right.
It wasn't really affecting the world around it, but it was, yeah, it's how he sees things.
So he does a whole...
When he got smacked around though, he really moved.
Yeah, he did.
Unicron wasn't gentle.
No, no.
And that was a nice reference to how Galvatron was tormented in the 1986 movie.
Right.
He killed him.
He, he, you know, tormented him.
And he also told him, you know, you'll wish you died with your planet.
Yeah.
So that means he ate his world and I guess he kind of Noren ratted him.
Exactly.
Silver Surfer.
Yep.
Which, you know, that's, that's the one, the big things people say like, you know, in this
obvious Unicron is definitely grabbed.
He's lifted off of Galactus.
So once again, you have your Herald.
Right.
Which is, you know, Silver Surfer, Nova, what?
The Fire Lord was the other one.
Yeah.
Like saying, it was a string of them.
Yeah.
They did a what if where Aunt May was his Herald.
Perfect.
Oh God, that's the Aunt May Amigo.
The one who had the man hand.
Oh yeah.
That thing was horrifying.
God.
So yeah, that whole thing happens.
The, he starts, he has the I guess the whole thing.
I don't know where it comes from.
It just kind of forms out of the ground or something.
The whole table dirge thing.
Oh, yeah. I think what I was looking at, because you saw it was all like
it was a dead volcanic magma chamber. Yeah. Yeah. OK.
And then when it formed, though, you started seeing the magma seeping up
to turn the lava made lava pits at the bottom.
So I think it was actually drawing like the andesite or whatever it is
into it. So it was pulling up the magma.
Yeah. You sound like you're a geologist.
I know a little bit. Yeah.
So yeah, you have that whole thing happen.
So, yeah, I guess you can say it was, you know,
it was constructed out of raw materials right there.
Yeah. That'd be my guess for it, because it makes sense.
From the effects. Yeah. Really convenient explanation for it.
And we had another beast wars reference earlier with the indigenous tribe.
Yeah. Because they, you know,
the optimist didn't want to make friends with the humans.
Like he didn't want contact with them.
But saw the Maximals had befriended an indigenous tribe.
And that's going back like Una and Chalk Beast Wars.
Yeah. Where it wasn't they didn't just rescue them.
Like they would hang out with them and teach them.
Yeah. They're their protectors.
So yeah, yeah.
Megatron didn't take them out. Yeah, he tried. He tried.
The so, yeah, the whole thing's happening.
And so he opens up the the passageway, the portal.
It starts opening it up.
It's going to take a while to open up, to be big enough for Unicron to come through.
But all those, those like, I guess, kind of shock troops come out of the
foundation, the the.
I don't know, the structure.
Yeah, they were just kind of coming out of it.
Yeah, like they had the kind of no right there.
Yeah, which I that was kind of something
I didn't put together with anything else, just, you know,
I guess there's a convenient way to have shock troops.
Yeah, that was your cannon fodder just showing up.
Exactly. Well, you got to have some of them fight.
So, you know, everyone shows up.
Well, I guess before that, they're all they're doing the thing.
And the neighbor looks up and says, they're here or they've arrived.
Oh, yeah. And you see big optimists standing on the.
Yeah. The horizon there.
They all they all line up because, you know, that's how you want to start a fight.
You all want to line up a row so people know where to fire.
I was waiting for them to start snapping their fingers.
Talk about becoming a jet. Exactly.
They're going to West Side story. Oh, God.
Oh, and on the key, the transwork key, the second piece.
Yeah, there's two times when they first presented to them.
The Cybertronix is mirrored.
It's backwards. OK.
And it says he who opens the door in Cybertronix.
And I think that was actually the first piece.
Like they use the wrong prop because it says door
going the right way when Elena is looking at it.
So I think that was actually that piece.
But when Noah is going to destroy it and it's laying there in the sand,
it says, what is it?
Oh, the keeper, the keys.
Yeah, right. He's all. Yeah.
So, yeah, it says that along there.
So it's a completely different inscription and it's going the right way.
So that's why I think they might have
accidentally switched props because they looked a lot alike.
Yeah, they they all look like that could have been.
Or maybe it's got, you know, the same inscription is mirrored on each piece.
That could be also. Yeah, it could be either way with that.
And when they're making their plan,
Wheeljack makes a rat trap quote.
Oh, yes, right. Yeah.
And it sounds like we're going to we're all going to die.
Which is right. We're all going to die was rat traps catchphrase.
But man, the the fight was great.
You know, finally see Maxwell's maximize.
Right. Oh, yeah. And that was the other thing.
He actually yelled maximize, which was the activation code from the Beast Wars show.
Yeah. And honestly, I mean, Primal would find Cheetah Cheetah moves so fast
that really get a good look at him.
Kind of kind of get me. But, you know, Rhinox looked cool.
He looked big. He looked like a big menacing, you know,
figure. Oh, yeah. Freaking big hammer.
Yes. Yeah. It was cool.
The war hammer. That was great.
And so, you know, the whole the whole fight is going on and, you know,
it's it's starting to you know, it's it's going pretty well for the for the
Maxwell's and the Autobots.
And then it was a big enough unicorn start coming through.
So he starts shooting through all the, you know, I guess, the little minions.
Yeah. The little scorpion minions.
Yeah. And and they're like, oh, they're kinder eggs.
Yeah.
It was a little bit like they're they're thinking like, oh, this is going to get
really bad. And that's what Stratosphere shows up.
And the re the resurrected bumblebee fires on the theater when I was there,
people lost it.
And oh, yeah. And the whole Energon resurrection thing,
that goes back to Revenge of the Fallen because that's how they brought jetfire
back. And I think that's the only thing that's going to be in the movie.
They're back. And also they needed a source of Energon,
which is why they needed the Matrix for Optimus.
Yeah, exactly.
So that fits.
That's within, you know, this the live action universes, I guess, lore.
But if they're dead, you can just give them enough Energon and they'll come back.
Jolt them enough to wake up.
Right. Yeah, that whole thing was great in that he's like he's falling and taking
out those little eggs, her little minion egg things.
And Nightbird shows up to goes after him and the whole fight goes on.
And you picked up on a great reference to the episode.
I can't remember the name of the ones where the spark of the spark.
OK, I thought it was the one where where Tarasort gets a lot of energy,
I guess it was on the spark.
Oh, that was power surge. Yeah.
But yeah, this one, it was the introduction of Air Razor.
That's right.
You know, and the first time they really went into sparks,
you know, in the lore at all. And yet.
At the end, she shoots him to pieces and he falls
very similar to the way that Nightbird's pieces fall.
One piece of the other head falls, you know.
Yeah, I was almost waiting for her head to drop right center screen like Tarasort.
And before that, though, there's a part where Unicron says he
I guess he's talking to Optimus and he says,
the world is already mine.
And that could be a veiled reference to that Unicron is actually
in the future that the Maximals came from.
So if this isn't a separate reality, then he could still be inside the Earth.
Like, that's a hint that he is in there.
Like that world is already mine because it's me.
I mean, that could be.
Yeah, that could be a veiled reference to that, because, you know,
they like to toy with us with that to leave it ambiguous.
So, yeah.
So, yeah, all that stuff's going on.
Bulb comes back, kills Nightbird.
And I love the whole team with Prime and Primal to take out Battle Trap.
Yeah.
Which, once again, the Terracons, the minions of the Terracons,
the Scourge, but you had Battle Trap and Nightbird, neither of them were weak.
They were tough.
They were for a reason.
They were they were minions of a dark god.
100%.
I did notice how, you know, he was the Scourge and his minions
were essentially invincible, but, you know, not really.
Right.
Well, that's like Beast Wars as well, because every time someone new shows up,
they're invincible until like the next episode.
Yeah, that's true.
Rampage is unstoppable until the next episode.
Right.
Yeah. But then everything is going on.
And, you know, of course, Elena and Noah go to try to stop for a convenient
tunnel underneath that bridge, which, you know, the convenient stuff for the plot.
Right.
Well, it was a maximal design, though.
That's why it had maximal Cybertronics controlling it,
because it came from the key.
OK. So, yeah, I guess they weren't worried about.
Humans messing them up because, you know, they're the good guys.
There's a there's all that's going on.
And they're saying something in.
I guess Scourge saw them down there and reaches down and grabs out Noah.
Mirage gave him away.
That's what it was.
Yeah. Mirage like, go Noah.
Like, oh, what's this?
It's right, because Mirage shows up as a he's trying to like,
get take care of Scourge by himself.
It's supposed to distract him.
Yeah, he's trying to pull a hot rod.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, you don't Megatron.
So, yeah, he gave away any, you know, so he pulls, you know,
Scourge pulls him out of there and Elena is down there.
She's she does her thing, you know, and takes out one of the little freezer guys.
So she's over there trying to code break the the the the bridge,
the key and all that.
But I I like how he did all this with Noah and Mirage.
So, you know, Noah's about to get killed.
And, you know, he covered Mirage covers covers him up.
And I guess, you know, it's his back shot out.
Yeah. And
so he's like, you know, like, hey, I promise you're a little brother.
I would take care of you.
And so he he once again gives him a part of him and like,
creates this like kind of really cool exosuit.
And they did it really well.
I didn't know how it was going to look.
Oh, yeah. And the director, you know, Steven Capel,
John said he said that's a direct reference back to the exosuit
from the original movie.
Perfect. Yeah.
He said that's what inspired that because.
If I recall in the interview, he said that wasn't in the original script
and he thought about that and he wanted to add that.
It's perfect.
I mean, especially considering how we how the movie ended
and who he met at the end of the movie. Yeah.
And they were actually it's more like the Master Force.
It's the way it made him faster, stronger.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought.
It looked like a Master Force suit.
Even like the point there, he had pretty nice guns on him.
He had, you know, jetpack and everything.
Oh, yeah. He had he got an upgrade.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That a doubt.
And then that whole fight goes on.
And I really, really like the whole, you know, prime
finally taking out scourge, ripping us his way.
Did was it Mirage or or Noah that ripped off his face mask?
Oh, yeah. Mirage kick the face mask off. Yeah.
Yeah. He looked like a like a like a like a unwrapped mummy or a lich or something.
Yeah. He had a little chains.
If you look, he had small chains holding his face on.
Yeah. So and part of his cheek is gone.
Like one eye is just kind of barely hanging there.
Actually, you know, kind of remind me of the same kind of look that
the the mummy from the first Mummy movie.
Right. When he's got the holes in his face.
Yeah. Yeah. But is, you know, with this style.
Right. Yeah. I could totally see that.
Yeah. You know, prime, you know, had him have a good fight.
And he eventually takes me out.
He shows his face in the magma.
It burns it and basically rips him apart.
And there's a prime wars trilogy reference there.
So he says, yeah, this is the power of a prime.
There you go. Yeah.
And Noah hacked the hinges.
You do remember from remember Go with the Flow, the episode from Beast Wars
where they were teaching the the proto humans how to fight Predacons.
And they told me you hack the hinges, basically stab them in their joints.
That's right. And I did.
Yeah, he hacked his hinges.
He did like a like Mary.
Oh, you're a brandy buck on the witch king and got him right in the head.
And got him right in the ankle.
That's right. And let prime get him.
Nice. And, you know, they they they
everything about the key, it's hacked and, you know, it gets basically
it gets undone and the the riff starts closing and everyone's,
you know, getting sucked in.
Prime says, you know, get basically says, I'm going to do this
so you can all survive. Yeah.
And of course, Noah shows up and saves them and they get out there.
You know, we'll get all the way from all the drama.
That essentially they get away, which is it was a nice,
you know, thing where it sucked all that technology out with it.
Mm hmm. And including pulling the unicorn out with it and everything like that.
All the minions, everything went out with it.
And if you watch when Optimus transforms, you know, they do the big heroic exit
and he transforms into a truck.
Yeah, he transforms exactly like well, not exactly, but like the G1 toy.
Head and all. Yeah, I saw that.
Yeah. The arms go to the side and everything.
Yeah, that was really nice.
My son noticed that first. He's like, he did it like the toy.
That's nice. Yeah, I kind of I saw that,
but it was so much going on that I wanted to, you know, stop and, you know,
what? Yeah, when you watch it and watch it, it's like it's a pretty reasonable
facsimile of what he did.
And, you know, in the TV show, too, he transformed like the toy in the G1 cartoon.
So they all get out of there and, you know, everything's cool and.
And, you know, everyone's happy and, you know,
you know, the Maxwell's go off there, the other thing,
and they have this big, nice alliance now.
And, you know, they everyone kind of got away except for Mirage.
You don't know what happened to him because it looks like he's dead.
And they even go back in stratosphere when they're flying back and,
you know, no one's looking at the suit hanging up.
It's almost like he's mourning Mirage. Yeah.
Looking at the suit, which in the test screening, which, you know,
they had the guy last week that went to the test screen last year.
He said that there wasn't a Mirage like
resurrection scene or come back scene like he was just gone at that point.
In the test screening, and they decided they needed to fix that,
which I'm glad they did, because it's a great character.
Oh, it's great character. And he you know, he came back.
He reminded me, you know, the old Frosted Snowman cartoon.
Oh, yeah. They put the hat on him.
You put the Ottawa symbol on the hood ornament and then, you know,
he comes back, happy birthday.
Yeah, man. I was a big fan of P.
Davidson doing that.
Oh, he did a great job. Had fun doing it.
Yeah. I love seeing that the premiere.
He had the all blue, you know,
Jogging suit with big Ottawa symbol on it.
Oh, yeah. He was having a lot of fun with.
Oh, he's living it up.
Alaina, like I referenced earlier, she, she was like,
Oh, really? Because in the test screen, they didn't have that.
And when they asked the people, because, you know, they interview them
or have them fill out cards.
And that was one thing that everybody was saying is, well,
what happened with Alaina?
Where's her conclusion?
And so they added that.
To the final version, because it was left out of the first one.
That's a good conclusion. I like that.
Oh, yeah.
And she got to come up and got the credit finally.
Yeah.
And then she was like, oh, I'm going to go with the
one that she was talking about, and she got to come up and got the credit finally.
Yeah, exactly.
It was only asking this, though.
I haven't read that document is the GIG reference at the end of it.
Was that in the original test screen?
No, I don't think so.
I don't think. Yeah, I don't think it was.
I really like that.
You know how he kind of lead them on the job interview.
So you want to tell me about your friends out there?
You know, important, no, he's just trying to do his right.
He's like, I'm talking about it again.
That's good. It's a good answer.
And I don't know, they had the he opened the he did the I guess was the picture.
Oh, yeah.
Open the the the panel and share the
and look like it kind of reminded me of the the the M.I.V. headquarters.
The he said, did you see what the plaque said?
I did not.
It was the real hero award and had an American flag.
So it was a real American hero.
Nice.
What was really working on down there?
It looks like it looked like a pod from the 2007 movie.
Oh, no, that was a Terracon drop ship.
OK, that was what that was.
Yeah. Yeah.
Scourge came down in the beginning when he fought Ape Link.
Right. OK. It's the same ship or a similar ship.
If it's not the exact same thing.
OK, perfect.
That's what they dug it out of the out of the river and pulled it up.
Yeah. They're going to reverse engineer some technology out of that.
Cool. And also his the guy's name is Agent Burke, according to his card.
Uh huh. OK.
There wasn't a G.I. Joe named Agent Burke.
But there was a character who was
the spy who rooked me was the episode and they had like the James Bond guy
that was with them that kept, you know, making Flint mad.
Yeah. His name was Agent Matthew Burke.
Nice.
So that may be a reference back to that or it has to be.
Coincidence.
Not that this got to be.
I mean, all the other G.I. Joe names they could have used, they didn't.
That's great.
I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, though, it was it was a fun movie.
I enjoyed the hell out of it.
And I mean, it's it's at this point
it was about to hit two million in ticket sales.
Oh, yeah.
It's it should be back to being a success.
I mean, I would hope.
We haven't gotten to the idea of the the online sales or the DVDs
or what the sales or anything like that are Blu-ray sales.
Oh, yeah, that's yeah, that just keeps building and building.
And I think it just opened across the, you know,
in an Asian market, too, which is market is actually one of the biggest markets
for Transformers movies.
Oh, and the test screening, they had like a very different ending
in the test screening, Optimus got pulled through the portal
and they had a after credit scene that showed him
waking up in space and Unicron's there with them like he's with Unicron.
And like let the cliffhanger.
Oh, that would be cool, too.
Yeah, it seemed almost like they were going to go back
to the whole Nemesis Prime thing, but I think they decided they already did that.
So they didn't do it really well either.
It was a that was a that was a mess.
It was odd.
But yeah, in the test screen, yeah, they had like that whole cliffhanger
where Optimus is stuck on the other side of the portal.
He pulled a Tony Stark.
That's right.
Man, OK.
Those are all the Easter eggs that I caught.
I mean, and like with the power of the prime scene, that was also
the first time that Ron Perlman played Optimus Primal.
Yep. And the first time the Optimus Primal teamed up with Optimus Prime.
Yeah. And it would have been really cool to have Gary Chalk
do the voice, but I think Ron Perlman did a good job.
Yeah, he did a good job.
I always want Uncle Gary on me.
Yeah, I know. I know.
I mean, all of it was good.
Honestly, Rimex didn't really have a whole lot of lines.
That was that was David Sabolov, wasn't it?
Yeah, in the test screen, he had one line
and they actually made a joke about him not having any lines
because when he speaks, I think Noah goes, you can talk.
They said that in the test screen.
That part got cut out.
But that was like a little joke about him not having any other lines in the movie.
But David Sabolov, if I recall correctly,
he did Aplink's voice also and Battle Trap.
He did. He did.
Aplink, yeah. And Battle Trap.
Yeah, I believe he did Battle Trap also.
And a lot of people said that when they heard Aplink,
they thought it might have been Gary Chalk.
So David Sabolov may have been channeling some Uncle Gary into it.
Oh, I'm sure he was. I'm sure he was.
Well, cool, man.
This is going a lot longer than I thought it was, but there was a long movie.
A lot. We could have talked about this a lot longer.
So, oh, yeah.
And I guarantee you there are Easter eggs that we missed.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very layered.
So definitely check that out.
As soon as I get to see it again in theaters,
but if not, then definitely going to get it streaming.
So you'll watch all those things over and over again and drive my wife nuts.
And it's worth seeing over and over again, because every time I watch,
I watch it multiple times and I see something new every time.
Yeah. And it's not like the other like the earlier Bay films where
you see new things because there's so much going on that you can't focus on.
This is like there's like layers of, you know, nostalgia hidden here and there.
I heard I saw I read a lot of reviews saying it was a mess.
Like there's too much going on.
And I don't agree at all.
It was the whole ending, the whole ending battle.
There's a lot going on, but it didn't seem like it wasn't a mess.
I could see it wasn't a lot of blurred stuff.
Yeah, the camera tracked pretty well, I thought.
Yeah, yeah, I did, actually.
All of that.
The Maxwell's looked like they didn't look blobby at all, which I was afraid of.
I think on the trailer Primal, when he transformed, he looked a little blobby to me.
But when I saw the movie, it was not at all.
Oh, yeah.
When that was early CGI in those trailers, too.
Exactly.
I hadn't finished it yet.
Everything about it looked great.
So I was really happy about it.
And there's a director's cut coming out.
That's what I hear.
He was he wanted to have some more stuff in it.
I guess he had a bunch more than he had to cut for time.
Yeah.
And there were some that they cut because of the test audience.
Yeah.
Because there's a scene where Optimus kills a Decepticon named Transit.
Really?
Yeah.
In the beginning of the movie.
And they felt that it kind of slowed down the pace at first, because it's going in how
Optimus misses Cybertron, you know, and he's mocking him about Cybertron.
And then he dumps his body in the river and there's like all these dead Decepticons in
the river down there.
Holy crap.
And yeah, they say that was kind of dark and they hadn't developed the CGI for the river
part.
But he says the the transit fight is almost finished anyway.
So he's going to add that in the director's cut.
But he says the river dump scene won't be there.
He says it was kind of dark and it wasn't ever that part wasn't finished.
I'll say again, he's an angry Prime.
Oh, yeah.
He's a grumpy Prime.
All right, man, I appreciate you doing this with you tonight.
I want to get something out there because Ed had a busy last weekend, so we weren't
able to record the usual episode.
But I want to get this I'll get this put up soon as possible.
And thanks for everyone for checking us out again.
And thanks, everybody.
Yeah, definitely.
Check out the Axon Underground net.
That's where Boo is Webmaster until it's laid off.
Yeah.
For all the money you get paid from the owner.
Yeah, that guy didn't pay me anything.
I'm busy.
Just like scourge.
Right.
He just torments me.
Exactly.
All right, guys.
I'm getting busy.
By the way, a little, you know, back to what we have been referencing a lot of last
episodes.
Simon Letch, who has the Sunbow archive.
He was able to get the
Sunbow archive.
He was able to, you know, kind of wriggle out of his dire straits he was in.
He's, he's not homeless.
So that's a good thing.
So yeah, he got his rent paid.
So yeah, everyone helped with that.
Thanks a bunch.
You know, I'm sure he's a lot more thankful than I would be.
But he does a lot of good stuff.
I think has a lot of great stuff out there for everyone.
So I want to make sure we could do what we could on our end.
Yeah.
So check out the Axel on the Underground net and check us out on YouTube and I'll get it
put up there.
And, you know, if you like it, give us a good rating, give us a thumbs up YouTube.
Tell your friends, tell your parents, tell your kids, tell everyone.
Write your congressman.
No, don't do that.
Thanks a bunch.
Good night.
See you all later.
More than meets these guys podcast is performed by Evan Johns and Ed Strickland.
Research is done by Evan Johns, Ed Strickland and with special research help from Boo of
the Axel on the Underground net.
Graphics and images in the video portion are created for the podcast exclusively by See
Hooper.
Special thanks to everyone who makes this podcast more enjoyable every week.