Fridge / The Transformers: The Movie

Fridge Logic in The Transformers: The Movie.

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance:

• Why did Galvatron finally do what he flat out refused to do as Megatron and kill Starscream? Two possible reasons: (1) Unicron's reformatting of him may have had a subtle influence on his thought patterns. He was rebuilt to find the Matrix, and this was likely prioritized in his mind, with the additional thought pattern of destroying any that obstructs this goal, and what was Starscream if not obstructive? (2) Along with his own reformatting, he also got new minions. Among them, Cyclonus. Who was all the things Starscream wasn't: Loyal, competent, and powerful. Megatron is implied to have kept Screamer around due to not having better options. That changed when Cyclonus, who is all the things Starscream is, only better, came along. No wonder Galvatron vaporized him. Starscream had finally outlived his usefulness.
  • Or, more simply, that Megs had been willing to put up with Screamer as long as Starscream kept failing. By this point, Starscream had won. Megatron was only still alive by pure dumb luck, and was arguably stuck in a Fate Worse than Death, getting his whole identity warped and enslaved by Unicron. This was beyond the last straw. No wonder he finally let Starscream have it.
• After their first fight, the Junkions become instant friends of the Autobots. Why? Because the Junkions love Earth TV and the Autobots help protect the Earth. So by helping the Autobots, the Junkions insure that Earth will survive to produce more TV shows.
• Wreck-Gar got transmissions of Monty Python's Flying Circus, so he must have learned to imitate Eric Idle's voice.
• Wouldn't a planet made up entirely of accumulated junk be the equivalent of a planet made of amputated limbs and guts to a bunch of Transformers? Likewise, wouldn't the Junkions be regarded as a race of Frankenstein monsters?
  • Not really. If it didn't come from a Transformer, then it's just a piece of junk. Transformers have tools that are separate from themselves. They would be no more uncomfortable with that than a human would be in a junkyard full of broken wooden (read, organic) furniture.
  • I believe the implication is the Planet of Junk is made from various non-sentient machines (like broken-down spaceships), not pieces of dead Transformers/sentient robots.
• No Optimus Prime on the movie poster? That's because he gets killed relatively early on... Which leads to Fridge Horror when you realize that the poster was teasing kids of the death of their idol before anyone had a clue.
• Why does Megatron specifically say "such heroic nonsense!" with an almost pitying tone when Ironhide tries to grab at his foot? Because it is literally heroic, and literally nonsensical, for Ironhide to try and fight him at that point. Ironhide is alone, severely damaged, and surrounded by a dozen heavily armed Decepticons who don't realize he's functional and have just told him their battle plan. His best rational course of action would be to play possum until he has a chance to relay his information to Autobot City... or at least wait until no one's looking to engage the self-destruct or something similar. Megatron realizes this immediately and makes that offhand comment, almost to himself, as he puts Ironhide out of his misery. Galvatron or any other version of Megatron would likely have said something like "you fool" or "you still want to fight?" or something similar. This is because G1's Megatron does appreciate acts of heroism, and would consider it worthy to continue to fight against doomed odds; but because he's also more than a tactical and strategic match for Prime, he realizes Ironhide's just being an idiot at that point. It's actually a very subtle piece of characterisation which no one but a big fan of the series would have appreciated.
• Astrotrain says they have to "jettison some weight" or that they'll never make it back to Cybertron. At first this seems like bad physics—they'd have to worry about mass, not weight, and why would he be unable to get back to Cybertron? Simple. He's a shuttle—he has to brake to make it to the surface as anything other than a crater, and that is when he'd really be feeling weight as we know it. Why doesn't he have enough fuel to brake with all the Decepticons aboard? Also simple. Megatron said earlier that the Decepticons had intended to use the Autobot shuttle to attack and presumably leave later, either with the same shuttle or under their own full power. They not only hadn't planned for a half-broken retreat, Astrotrain wasn't even their original getaway vehicle. Chances are they also all burned up most of their Energon in the fighting at Autobot City as well.
  • More simply: Astrotrain was just trying to make up a convenient excuse to get rid of Megatron. Note that in a few other episodes before, such as "Triple Takeover", had him actually plotting to betray Megatron... and now was the perfect opportunity to dump him out into space and potentially seize a coup (though naturally he couldn't take part in the actual fight for leadership, as he is the escape vehicle).
    • Not to mention it was Astrotrain who placed the crown on Starscream's head. Maybe they were working together?
  • Delta V is a thing. In order to accelerate enough to reach Cybertron in a reasonable timeframe, then slow enough to land safely, Astrotrain has to manage his fuel budget. More mass takes more energy to accelerate and decelerate. Yes, "mass" is the more correct term, but how many kids in 1986 would have even known what the word meant? "Weight" gets the point across well enough, even if it isn't technically accurate.
• Why does Soundwave ignore Starscream disposing of Megatron? Because, with him overthrowing his leader, he had no power to stop him and the other Decepticons willing to sacrifice him and would likely have lost in a physical dispute with them all. Pushing an all out brawl among the entire crowd for leadership not only weakened most of his opposition, but gave him the chance to take the role himself and make the order to save Megatron with no one able to question him.
  • The part about Soundwave intending to take leadership so he could order Astrotrain to go back for Megatron was actually in the script, but was cut for time.
• "Instruments of Destruction" makes perfect sense as a theme for the Decepticons. We later learn in the cartoon canon that Decepticons were originally created as military hardware, i.e. instruments of destruction.
  • Also, the "iron birds of fortune" line is very fitting considering that many notable Decepticons (not that the Autobots don't have them too) have aerospace-based alt-modes (the Seekers (F-15s), Cyclonus (Cybertronian jet), Astrotrain, Blast Off (both space shuttles), Vortex (helicopter), Blitzwing (MiG-25), Octane (Boeing 767), etc.)
• During Starscream's coronation, only five of the six Constructicons are present, with Bonecrusher being absent, or at least offscreen for most of it. Considering how surly they are over the whole ordeal, Starscream is likely keeping Bonecrusher away from the others so they can't form Devastator and crash the ceremony.
• "Dare to Be Stupid" initially seems to be just quirky incidental music, until everyone starts dancing to it, raising the disconcerting possibility that it actually is the anthem / battle hymn of the Junkions. Since it is a pastiche of a comical post-punk band, and a disjointed collection of mangled Earth clichés to boot, this is altogether appropriate for them.
• Galvatron's answer of "Here's a hint!" To Starscream's stammered questions of if he's Megatron could be taken either way; "Yes, and I'm here to take revenge", or "No, because Megatron was too full of himself to do this".
• In the Autobot City battle scene there are three Transformer point-of-view shots in quick succession. First Blitzwing, then Perceptor, both of whom see displays with ordinary Earth alphanumeric characters. Arcee's viewfinder, however, shows only colourful and blocky alien glyphs. Since she is the only one of the three never to have had her form reconfigured for Earth-suitability, this makes sense.
• It's never said how the Decepticons captured Cybertron. However, the season 3 character Marissa Fairborne, and a cameo from Cobra Commander, proves that the show's in a Shared Universe with G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, along with the Inhumanoids and Jem too, as all these shows share a news reporter character named Hector Ramirez. The Autobots took time to help clear out these extra threats, which the Decepticons used to relocate to, and capture, Cybertron.
  • In addition despite the Decepticons taking over Cybertron, the Autobots were likely in a better overall position with Autobot City as a energy generating facility and the moon bases as beachheads. The Decepticons had Cybertron sure, but did they restock the energy of the planet? They'd have won a propaganda coup by taking the planet, but how valuable was it for them? This also serves to show, again, why Megatron is the leader and not Starscream: Megatron sees the energy production at Autobot City as the real threat, as without it the moons are untenable. Starscream just wants to get rid of the moon bases for being closer and near their controlled Cybertron.
• By the end of the movie, the main colors of the Autobot and Decepticon leaders match the colors of their faction logos.

Fridge Horror:

• Inside Unicron, we see a long line of bodies being carried to be dropped in, and they were falling pretty frequently. Firstly there's the sheer horror of the fact that every second Daniel took to blast that cover another fell to their agonizing death, and then there's the question of where all the ones after the Autobots in the line went.
  • One possibility is that the conveyor got shot up and stopped working as well, although this leads to more horror, since the victims were therefore trapped hanging from the ceiling until Unicron went up and took them with him.
    • It would be strange if the freed Autobots didn't free those who were hanging.
• In the show's episode "The Search for Alpha Trion", some of the female Autobots are suggested to be lovers with some of the male Autobots, two particular parings being Chromia and Ironhide as well as Firestar and Inferno. Since Ironhide died in this movie and Inferno disappeared with his fate unspecified, Firestar and Chromia are likely heartbroken that their boyfriends fell in battle. Then there's Elita One. If she wasn't killed during the Decepticon takeover of Cybertron, she probably had an awesome Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and either got herself killed, committed suicide to be with Prime in the Matrix (maybe even had a Suicide Pact with him), or survived to wallow in self-pity.
• Cybertron is one thing... but what if Unicron decided to take a trip to Earth?
  • That was considered at one point... but ultimately dropped.
• Any Autobot that doesn't show up in later seasons can, very arguably, be put on a casualty list. Not just the ones we see die or know were intended to die, but if you add the Autobots who only appeared in the first two seasons who never appeared after it...
  • Speaking of casualties, though Shockwave's implied death scene wasn't animated, the fact that he doesn't appear after the movie —as evidenced by Kup being in what was Shockwave's watchtower in Call of the Primitives— (though Shockers was supposed to appear in the Five Faces of Darkness five parter) indicates that ol' One-Eye indeed bit the dust when Unicron attacked.

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