There's a mythic quality to Transformers

and it speaks to me, it speaks to a lot of the fans.

[electronic whirring]

[dramatic music]

Hi, I'm Matt Hullum, Executive Producer

of Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy.

And this, is Every Transformers Generation.

So Transformers has evolved significantly

since it first started in 1984.

There've been a whole host of series and films

and each one of these is broken up into,

what fans talk about as a generation.

Transformers: Generation One, 1984 to 1993.

So Transformers, the TV show ran from 1984 to 1987.

It was based on a toy line that ran from 1984 to 1990,

produced by Hasbro, of course, and Takara.

It accompanied the toy line.

The cartoon set up the basic story of Transformers

that most other incarnations were going to follow.

It has two warring factions of robots on the plant Cybertron

and they leave in search of resources.

The factions crash land on earth

and, millions of years later, begin their battle anew.

They're going at it, through time, through space.

It's epic, everything about it is epic.

So that early series introduced a number

of the iconic characters that we all still

know and love and are so integral to Transformers.

Talking about Optimus Prime,

who's just this incredible leader,

makes these resonant, giant speeches and inspires everybody.

Megatron must be stopped.

No matter the cost.

He's not just a hero that goes out

and punches people in battles.

He's like a thinker.

He's absorbed with the ethical and moral quandaries

of war

and battling his fellow Transformers.

He wants to do the right thing

but where the right thing is not always easy to see.

But he keeps a prime moral code to himself.

You know, all sentient beings deserve freedom

and that we should all be unified, 'til all are one.

'Til that day.

'Til all are one.

Those are really powerful things that resonate.

That's the great thing about the Transformers.

I think that Optimus Prime really encapsulates

as a character that it's about doing what's right.

And it's about doing what's just.

I bet Optimus Prime'll be glad to see us.

Bumblebee, who was always that lovable sidekick,

we all wanted to get to know.

And in the early series, Bumblebee was a Volkswagen Beetle

and we had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle

in my family at the house and so

it was nice to have my own Bumblebee.

It never transformed for me, which was a disappointment,

but I liked having that connection.

On the bad guy's side, you know Decepticons,

you got Megatron, you got Starscream, you got Soundwave.

All so evil, all so wonderful

in how evil that they are.

There will be nothing left of him but molecular crumbs.

Victory is mine!

But I think the biggest moment for me,

in my early love of Transformers,

was going to see the movie in the theater.

♪ Transformers ♪

♪ Transformers ♪

I remember so well going to see this movie.

And I had a couple of friends, you know,

who were really into Transformers as well

and we were just blown away.

I just remember being in the theater

and thinking like, this is the greatest film

that will ever be made in the history of time.

It has everything you could possibly want.

♪ You got the touch ♪

♪ You got the power ♪

Arise Rodimus Prime.

There's a mythic quality to Transformers.

And it speaks to me, it speaks to a lot of the fans.

You know I think Generation One of Transformers spoke to me,

spoke to a lot of people because

the themes were just really big and universal

and you felt connected to them

and then they would do things, you know,

that you really hadn't seen in a kid's show,

in a cartoon before.

Some day an Autobot shall rise from our ranks

and use the power of the matrix to light

our darkest hour.

Having Optimus Prime die in a moment of self sacrifice

in the movie was really powerful.

And also something that in some ways, you know,

aged up this story for kids who felt like man,

they want to see something more than what,

something was more depth out of their entertainment.

I always loved that and it inspired me,

inspired us to try to put more elements like that,

you know, into the story.

I love that movie so much and I've

always wanted to work on anything related to Transformers.

[speaking foreign language]

Transformers: The Headmasters.

Supplanting the rebirth in Japanese continuity,

The Headmasters occurred one year

after the return of Optimus Prime.

Introducing the title characters

of the Transformers universe in a totally different way.

The Headmasters of the Japanese series

are a group of small Cybertronians

who departed the planet millions of years ago

and crash landed on the inhospitable planet Master.

To survive its harsh climate,

a select few Cybertronians constructed larger bodies called

transsectors to which they connected, as the heads.

There was a very obvious effort on head writer

Masumi Kaneda's part to make Masterforce

a fresh start as a mecha story.

Introducing an entirely new cast of characters from scratch

rather than using any of the previous ones.

I guess one of the things that's so interesting about

the Japanese offshoot of Transformers

is that it does show what a big world this is

to play in and how much opportunity there is

to tell a lot of different stories.

And these characters really have

enough depth to them and are,

have been drawn out well enough

that you can take them in a lot of different directions.

[Male] The heroic Autobots are led by Optimus Prime.

He's more than meets the eye.

Transformer Generation Two, 1993 to 1995.

G Two was a Transformers toy line

which ran from 1992 to 1995

in conjunction with the corresponding comic book series

and edited reruns of the G One cartoon,

with a smattering of CGI animation laid on top of it,

This was the only change in the content.

How weird is that?

They made a whole new series that was the same,

except for a couple of CGI things.

So although there wasn't a whole lot of change,

this is where the concept of generations came from.

And fans started to differentiate

between different eras of Transformers,

which would become really important

for understanding the story and the universe over time.

[dramatic music]

Now, obliterate them!

Beast Wars, Transformers, 1996 to 1999.

The series is set in the future

of the original Transformers franchise, Generation One,

and features the Maximals and Predacons,

new factions who have inherited the mantle

of the Autobots and Decepticons respectively.

While engaged in battle, the Maximals and Predacons

from each faction crash land on an unknown planet,

which is revealed to be Earth,

and must find a way to return home

while continuing their war.

Beast Era is also the first time

you see Transformers turn into something

that's not a machine, into these beasts.

If you think about it, even the Dinobots

are machines of some type.

But now you've got a wholly new way, an era

for the Transformers to metamorphosize,

to transform as they do

and that's another thing that really adds

a lot of complexity and depth to the Transformers universe.

Now, I think one of the reasons Beast War

is important for Transformers overall is that

it introduced a lot of new elements.

They really expanded on the canon

and they progressed the story forward.

So I think for a lot of fans, Beast Wars is great

because it really gave the Transformers universe

more depth, more breadth, took you places

that you hadn't seen before and that was really fun.

So this series is really unique

in that it advances the Transformers canon forward,

but still touches upon what made

the original series so special.

You see how the Transformers species evolve over time,

letting you see what happens after the original series,

but you still get a glimpse of what happened

at the very beginning of Generation One.

One moment in particular really highlights this,

when the Maximals find the Autobots ark.

The Maximals know they needed to protect their past

to save their future.

And before they leave the ark,

Optimus Prime opens his eyes

and connects with Optimus Primal,

connecting the two leaders over time.

So one really important piece of the Transformers backstory

to understand and to know about is the ark.

The ark was the Autobot ship that they took

from Cybertron to escape being exterminated

essentially by the Decepticons.

They made it all the way across the universe to Earth,

they crash landed,

and then they were asleep for millions of years.

And didn't wake up until present day, 1984,

when the Transformers Generation One story begins.

I really do love the ark storyline and, you know,

the Transformers being asleep for millions of years,

because they're both really suggestive

of other mythic stories you know?

You think of like Sleeping Beauty

and you think of Noah's Ark in the Bible.

And you think of these tales

that have been told throughout time.

There's a very Odyssey, you know,

Homeric kind of quality to their journey.

That's something that you don't usually

see woven into a cartoon that was aimed at kids and,

you know, really promoting a toy line.

It's a connecting thread that kind of ties

all of the worlds of Transformers and the Autobots

and Decepticons storylines together over time.

What characters can you name in any other kids show

that have a backstory that lasts

literally millions of years?

They've gone through time, they've gone through space,

they've done everything you can possibly imagine

to end up in the moment they're in now.

That's what makes this all so epic.

[singing in foreign language]

Beast Wars II.

The anime uses conventional animation

rather than the CGI of it's predecessor.

Beast Wars II tells the story of a battle waging between

Lio Convoy's team of Cybertrons

and Galvatron's army of Destrons on the planet Gaia.

As Lio Convoy and Galvatron fight

over the mysterious energy source known as Angolmois energy.

I think that mythic quality is one of the reasons

that it has spoken to Japanese audiences,

spoken to American audiences,

speaks to people around the world,

because it really doesn't matter

what the setting and the dressing is you know,

when you are telling stories and tales

that are literally told over generations

and go beyond the bounds of time.

You know, it invokes this heroic journey

that speaks to us no matter what the context is.

And the fact that they're transforming robots

is just icing on the cake, that's super cool.

[dramatic music]

Beast Machines: Transformers, 1999 to 2000.

Direct sequel to American Beast Wars

taking place within the continuity

of the original Transformer series.

The Maximals are back on Cybertron,

but have suffered amnesia from the Beast War saga.

Don't you hate that when that happens?

When you get amnesia in the middle of your story,

what can you do?

It also reverted to trans-metals Optimus, Cheetor,

Rattrap and Blackarachnia back to their original forms.

Finding the Oracle underneath the city,

the Maximals are turned into techno-organics

to survive the virus.

Now they must master their emotions

in order to transform again.

The Maximals soon learn that Megatron got free mid-flight

during their time travel back to the future,

ending up there long before they showed up.

He conquered the planet and now

he plans to take their sparks.

They are over, you lost.

So the Beast Era also features

the first fully CGI animated Transformers.

And that's something that really allowed the animators

to try new things, get more expressive interaction,

they could match the movements

of the characters better to the toys,

and you can see the entire process evolve.

That's something that we wanted to do as well

with War for Cybertron, make these characters feel

really real and grounded emotionally,

but also physically make them feel like

you could see them in real life.

And with CGI animation,

I think we get closer to that than we've ever gotten before.

Transformers: Robots in Disguise from 2000.

AKA Transformers: Car Robots,

Robots in Disguise was a single

animated series consisting of 39 episodes.

In this continuity, Megatron recreates the Decepticons

as a sub faction of the Predacons.

It was originally conceived as a reboot

of a self contained universe, separate from

any of the other existing Transformers universes.

It was later retconned as part

of the Japanese Generation One timeline.

One of the things that's interesting about the way that

they've released all of these different Transformers series

is they don't stick with just one age demo

or one type of storytelling throughout

these different generations.

The Transformers is a very multigenerational

and very accessible franchise

because they've made some shows that

I think are for younger kids,

and they've made others that are more adult

and then we've got the movies as well

that kind of our four quadrant

and accessible to everyone.

Over time, I think Hasbro's done some really smart things

where they've gone back and essentially rebooted the show

or retold the show in a different way

so that new audiences can be brought in.

The Autobots live to help and protect others.

Predacons exist only to conquer and destroy.

How am I supposed to know who to trust?

People age up, you know, they want to see

different things out of this universe as they get older,

the younger generation kids, who want to have

the same experience that I did

when I was growing up and watching Transformers,

be introduced into this new world that's accessible to them.

As long as hatred exists,

I shall remain impervious to attack.

Unicron Trilogy.

Armada follows the Autobots and Decepticons

discovering the powerful Mini-Cons on Earth,

which are revealed to be weapons of Unicron.

Energon, set 10 years later,

all of the Autobots and the Omnicrons

and their fight to stop the Decepticons

from resurrecting Unicron with Energon.

In Japan, the series Transformers: Cybertron

showed no ties to the previous two series

telling its own story entirely.

The writers attempted to change certain plot elements

from the Japanese version to remedy this,

this largely added up to references to Unicron,

Primus, Primes and Mini-Cons.

So now we've got an entire trilogy

that's based around Unicron.

It was the first example I can think of,

when I was a kid, of seeing

what's now known as a super villain.

I have summoned you here for a purpose.

Nobody summons Megatron!

Then it pleases me to be the first.

We'd had trucks transforming and planes transforming,

but this is a guy who can transform into an entire planet!

He is the ultimate super mega mecha villain ever.

He's first introduced into the canon

in Transformers: The Movie.

They really wanted something that was larger than life,

to be presented on a larger than life

format of the movies and it worked,

it was voiced by legendary actor and director Orson Welles!

And lends that gravitas, you know,

and bravado and everything else you would want

out of a vocal performance to this character

that would just, you know, was designed to just dominate.

For a time

I considered sparing your wretched little planet Cybertron.

But now, you shall witness

its dismemberment!

So flash forward 14 years later,

from our first introduction of Unicron in the movie,

and now we've got an entire trilogy based around Unicron

and the idea of Unicron is just so large,

it's beyond the scope of anything we had seen in

Transformers, in the narrative before.

So the war between the Autobots and Decepticons

all this time has not just been, you know,

an actual physical battle,

it's an ideological battle, right?

They're fighting for like, what do they believe in?

What do they do?

And now you introduced this character of Unicron

who's essentially a God, almost unstoppable.

It gives a new dynamic to who you thought these characters

were and the intensity and the gigantic scale

of what everyone is fighting for.

One thing that is really fun about Transformers

and interesting is that the universe is so big now

that there are all of these things within it,

characters, places, battles, you know,

a lot of history that, you know,

you want to go to and expand upon and learn about.

And there are certain indelible characters, like Unicron,

that are so big that they keep recurring

at different points through the history.

But I think one of the things that makes them special

is not overdoing it.

You want to have a gigantic event for particular character.

That's worth the wait.

It's a great thing if you don't overdo it.

[dramatic music]

Transformers, the live action film franchise.

Everybody knows these.

They're gigantic, over the top, unbelievable.

Like the pinnacle of Hollywood filmmaking, essentially.

The work done by ILM is something that nobody had ever seen

at this scale and size and complexity,

all of the little details of each transforming piece.

There's a lot of humor in these films which is really great.

I think one of the things that they got

really right in this series that I've always loved

is that the human characters,

they have some great dramatic storylines

and these films just give you such a sense of scale.

For the first time in live action,

you're seeing humans interacting with these CGI Transformers

in a way that looks totally real.

You really get to see what this

would look like in real life.

It's materialized the way that you kind

of dream about as a kid playing with these action figures,

you really sense the drama and the compelling, epic war

between the Autobots and Decepticons.

You know, they're just a really

fun ride all the way through.

So the first movie was titled Transformers.

Pretty straight forward.

That was in 2007, directed by Michael Bay.

He went on to direct several more,

including Revenge of the Fallen in 2009,

Dark of the Moon, 2011,

Age of Extinction in 2014

and The Last Knight in 2017.

The most recent live action Transformers movie

was directed by Travis Knight, it's called Bumblebee.

A prequel to the other Transformers movies,

goes back to the eighties,

which was a really fun setting for this movie.

We get to see how Bumblebee arrives on Earth.

Even though they're giant mega spectacles,

they also do a lot of character work

and a lot of work in advancing the narrative

and the story and the universe of Transformers over time.

I think that the film series was so iconic

and so beloved by so many people,

because it didn't matter whether or not

you knew Transformers, you know, to enjoy it

and I think a lot of people were introduced to Transformers

the very first time by this series.

And you just have this gigantic scale.

It's worthy of being in a movie theater,

of it being cinema.

Seeing the scale with them against these human backdrops

in these cities and smashing into freeways

and all the crazy stuff that happens,

you really get a sense of just how epic

the entire design of this universe is.

The design of the Transformers

was pretty different in the live action films,

but I think it really worked

because they were really showcasing

what they could do with CGI.

You had a lot of intricacy to these models,

that I think gave them a sense of realism

that you maybe wouldn't have able to achieve

if they had had a simplified lines as is appropriate

for a cartoon or any kind of animated show.

I think in the end that serves the purpose

of making it feel real,

making it feel grounded and making it feel larger than life.

All of the little mechanics

and the things that turn and twist

and transform feel real and feel like

they belong in the real world.

The most recent live action Transformers movie, Bumblebee

you may remember the first five minutes

of this incredible scene from Cybertron,

the world just feels you know, complete.

Sonically it's interesting, visually it's interesting.

Everything about it has a nice weight to it.

The characters have a more defined a gait,

I guess you could say.

And we wanted to emulate that as much as we could.

The way the characters feel, I think,

is really important to their believability.

Bumblebee just did a fantastic job with all of that.

I think Bumblebee is so beloved

because he's loyal and brave and kind of selfless at times,

but he's still charming and funny and unusual

and you know, he's been through

so many different iterations,

he's kind of the perfect companion.

Transformers: Animated 2007, 2010.

Transformers: Animated is set in 2050 Detroit.

50 years after Transformers crash landed on earth,

when robots and humans live side by side.

The Autobots assume superhero roles, battling evil humans

with Decepticons having a smaller role

until Megatron resurfaces.

Darn that Megatron.

While the series is not a sequel to the live action movie,

they have many thematic elements in common.

Most notably the central role of the Allspark

and the revelation that all modern technology

has been reverse engineered

from the dormant body of Megatron.

Transformers: Animated is really interesting

in the era it lands cause 2007 to 2010

was kind of the dawn of this rebirth of the superhero.

Across the spectrum, DC movies

and Marvel movies really took off

and here you see Transformers: Animated do a lot of that.

Portraying these characters that we know

in more of a superhero type fashion than we've seen before.

[dramatic music]

Aligned Universe, 2010 to present.

Hasbro created the Aligned Universe

with an attempt to unify all

the Transformers media into one single continuity.

It was kind of a big task.

This consists of two novels,

several video games, a few animated series,

along with supplemental material.

Let's start with Transformers: Prime from 2010.

Transformers: Prime focuses on the super heroic Autobots

of Team Prime, which consists of Optimus Prime,

Ratchet, Arcee, Bumblebee and Bulkhead.

Throughout their battles, the Autobots

are aided by three human children and, with their help,

attempt to protect the Earth from

the villainous Decepticons and their leader Megatron.

The changes and additions the series

makes to Transformers lore

include the ancient planet sized transformer Unicron

serving as the core of the Earth itself,

emphasizing the idea that Earth

and Cybertron are twin planets,

MECH, M-E-C-H, a human faction led by the villainous Silas,

whose sole purpose is to create a new world order

through cutting edge technology

stolen from the Transformers,

the necromantic Dark Energon,

a more unstable and dangerous version of Energon,

which can be used to bring the dead back to life

as mindless zombies called Terrorcons,

and the Predacons being the Transformers' ancestors,

having gone extinct until they were

recreated by Shockwave to serve the Decepticons.

This series has everything, it's got zombies,

it's got Unicron being the core of the planet.

I mean, it's got everything, it's crazy!

I have been transformed in learning about this.

Maybe instead of calling it the Aligned Universe,

they should have called it the Transformed Universe

because they've taken all of these pieces

that are just so amazing and mythic,

and they figured out a way

that they all make sense together.

I don't know how they did it, it's crazy.

Transformers: Go from 2013 to 2014.

Transformers: Go is a Japanese exclusive sequel to

Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters.

There are two chapters, Samurai and Shinobi.

Both however, share the same basic plot.

Two humans, one descended from a line of samurai

and one from ninjas encounter the Predacons,

who are attempting to steal powerful ancient artifacts,

called the Legend Discs, to revive their leader, Dragotron.

However, the discs summon two teams of Autobot Swordbots,

each corresponding to the human partner's ancestry.

From then on, with the help of Optimus Prime,

they combat the Predacons while attempting

to retrieve all of the Legend Discs.

Transformers: Rescue Bots, 2011 to 2012.

This was aimed at a younger generation of Transformers fans.

Unusual for a Transformers cartoon,

it features no Decepticons.

No Decepticons!

Though they are mentioned from time to time.

Well, okay I'll take a mention

from time to time if I can get it.

Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy, 2019 to present.

It;s a sequel to Transformers: Rescue Bots.

So if you think about the Aligned Universe,

they were doing a lot more than just figuring out

how all these disparate story elements

could somehow fit together into a cohesive universe.

They also were expanding on some of the ways

that we look at and think about Transformers.

There's more kid friendly stories.

There's, you know, these legendary

kind of Japanese inspired stories.

And somehow they all managed to

not only make the story elements and the characters

fit together in a continuitous way,

they also just broaden your concept

of what Transformers can be

and I think that's what makes it compelling

for anybody to come in and tell a story

in the Transformers universe.

Cybertron is in danger.

The peace treaty has fallen apart.

The treaty was a false hope, we both knew that.

Transformers: Prime Wars Trilogy, 2016 to 2018.

The first arc of Transformers: Prime Wars

is the Combiner Wars.

40 years after the great war between

the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth,

two factions return to Cybertron

where Optimus Prime defeated Megatron in a final duel,

ending their war permanently.

A council of worlds was forged

consisting of Rotimus Prime, Starscream

and Mistress of Flame ruling Cybertron

and Caminus in an uneasy peace.

However, the rise of the Combiners causes

destruction and death on Caminus,

setting Windblade, the City Speaker of the Titans,

on a quest for vengeance.

Another mythic thing from Transformers, we have quests.

Meanwhile, the Combiner Victorion is on her own mission

to find the Enigma of Combination.

Enigmas, quests, mythic.

Arc two, Titans Return.

Following the end of the Combiner Wars,

the Titans are awakened and Trypticon

begins to wreak havoc on Cybertron.

To combat Trypticon, Wind blade gathers up

a raging team of Transformers to resurrect an ancient ally.

And while some may be forever changed by the events,

others may not emerge with their sparks intact.

Arc three, Power of the Primes.

Following the death of Optimus Prime,

the rest of the Transformers must band together

before Megatronus the Fallen

can wipe out their species forever.

Transformers: Cyberverse, 2018 to 2020.

Cyberverse uses characters and elements across

G1, Beast Era, the live action film series,

animated and the Aligned continuity.

The series focuses on the adventures of Bumblebee,

having damaged his memory chips,

he and Windblade must recover his missing memories

in order to help him remember his mission on earth.

Unfortunately, the Decepticons are after their friends.

The series is intended to focus more on characters

and their mythology and utilizes

the evergreen character designs.

It is set in a new continuity

and is not a sequel to any previous series.

If you think back to Generation One,

and kind of all of the Transformers animated series

that you've seen over time, they're very much episodic,

which is very common through storytelling from the era

that it was born in, from the eighties.

But now we've all kind of evolved

as consumers of entertainment and as storytellers as well.

There's a lot more serialized storytelling being done.

In terms of animation I think it presents new opportunities.

Characters arcs can be drawn out over

a longer period of time so you feel like

you really know the characters in an intimate way

that you can't do in episodic storytelling.

That's a very exciting thing about Cyberverse

and we're excited about doing

a similar thing with War for Cybertron.

Just generally speaking, being able to tell this universe

in a serialized narrative way,

just gives so much more opportunity

to really flesh out these characters

and make each story hit home

in a way that you can't do when you're limited

to 22 minutes of episodic television.

I have done what I have to do

to end this war.

Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy.

The first arc of Transformers: War for Cybertron

is called Siege.

And it's really, in many ways, directly connected

to some of the events in Generation One of Transformers.

There's a civil war that's been referred to

many times throughout the transformer saga

and Siege actually takes place

on the last day of the civil war.

And so it's something that fans have never gotten to see,

a period of time that's pivotal in the Transformers legacy

and story that finally has been put on screen.

It's, you know, a battle that we all know,

but haven't really seen much detail before.

What I really loved about Bumblebee

is they went back earlier in time

and I was really excited with War for Cybertron

because we get to do a little bit of that as well,

go back to an earlier point,

tell something about these characters or show you new things

about the way they relate to each other.

That's hopefully in keeping with the rest of the continuity

and the rest of the series,

but maybe adds a little bit of a different perspective,

a different color to what you've seen before.

Megatron has a very evil and dubious plan

how he can wipe out the Autobots once and for all basically.

The spark is a vessel of life.

In the hands of Megatron, there's no telling

what he might do.

What I loved about the story is that it does pay homage,

going all the way back to Generation One.

And it has some of the elements that I really like,

the Autobots you see a lot of thinking about

how they should approach the war

and how they should approach the fight

and trying to be ethical and trying to figure out

what's the right thing to do?

Even if they have to make gigantic sacrifices

to save the day and do the right thing.

And with the Decepticons, there's always

more than meets the eye.

As it's not just about their battle with the Autobots,

there's all of this internal

kind of Machiavellian stuff happening

between the different characters and you get the sense

that everyone there is always trying

to get a leg up on each other.

I just love that character dynamic

because it gives much more complexity

and on the good side, you're weighing all these

really tough ethical dilemmas

and on the Decepticons, the bad guys side,

they're not only fighting against the Autobots,

they're also going through

a lot of their own internal machinations.

Now it's my turn!

I think all that complexity really provides a lot of fun

twists and turns and plot development along the way,

because we have this entire history of Transformers,

all these cool elements,

we get to kind of like pick and choose, you know,

what to put in there and telling stories

about the different characters,

where they've come from,

that are relevant to the conflict

that they're in at the moment.

Going back to be able to talk about this civil war,

but also do it in the context of fleshing out

some of these characters that we all know and love

and some that maybe hadn't gotten

as much attention in the past

and also bring in all of these rich story elements

that, you know, sometimes when you go into the movies

for the first time, live action movies,

sometimes animated movies and other animated series,

there's just a lot to play with.

And so it was fun for us to be able to tell

a unique part of the history but have the flexibility

and luxury, I guess you could say,

of having such a rich universe to draw from.

You know, for us to be able to

show more of the Transformer's history and saga

and bring it to screen was really exciting.

You know, visually you look at what

Transformers Generation One really accomplished

in terms of setting the style and tone and aesthetic,

the colors, the, you know, the palette

and just the iconic feel of these characters.

We wanted to pay homage to all that

and felt like there was a lot of

the early artistic reference that we could draw on.

Luckily, our supervising director

had worked on the original Generation One cartoon

so there was a lot of ingrained knowledge there

that he was able to bring out.

But then another thing that we really wanted to do

was modernize the look and feel of the cartoons and,

you know, take them into this new era

of anime and adult animation.

Hopefully what's unique visually about this series

is that you've got an animated story

that uses CGI and is a combination of references

going back to Generation One of Transformers,

all the way up through the live action film Bumblebee

and drawing on bits and pieces of all that

to present something that is cinematic and serialized

and gives you a lot more, I think,

character depth and complexity, and hopefully nuance

to these characters than you've seen before.

You think of characters like Elita-1 and Optimus Prime

there've just been little tidbits of what her story was

and you know, how she fit into the overall picture.

But here, I think in this series,

you see her really being the heart of the Autobot struggle

and you see why she's so important

to the decision making that the Autobots go through,

how they advance the story

and how we get from point A to point B.

[dramatic music]

And that was every generation of Transformers.

Hope you learned a little something

about the Transformers franchise.

It's a big world, and now you know how it inspired us

in making War for Cybertron.

Thanks for watching.