live-action gobots movie

[vynsane]

no, it's not happening (yet) but this article made me think: it would be AWESOME if someone actually made a GOOD movie out of the crappy transformers knock-off.

so let's write it.

now, i have no fucking clue what the gobots 'mythos' was all about. i barely remember anything about them besides 'leader-1' 'cy-kill' and the purple/pink/black ferarri lady gobot. but if bay's 'transformers' has taught us anything, it's that you can ignore the original mythos and still make a shit-ton of money.

[anarky]

There really wasn't much GoBots mythos. It really was a shitty knockoff. Here's what I can remember:

1) They came from a robotic world called Gobotron. I'm not making that up. That should kill any suspicion there was more to this cartoon than "let's rip off the Transformers!"

2) Swear to God, the factions were called Evil GoBots and Heroic GoBots.

3) While on Gobotron, they turned into Earth vehicles.

4) Their only weapons were "lasers" fired from their fists. Except for Scooter, who didn't have any lasers, since he was supposed to be a kid, or something. Even warplanes didn't have any missiles.

5) Their transformations (gobomations?) exactly matched the toys. This meant that faces that were visible on the underside of cars and such were equally visible in the cartoon. The only exception was, again, Scooter, who had a totally different transformation from the (surprisingly cool) toy so that his moronic face would be where the headlight should normally appear.

6) They came to Earth in the present. I don't recall there being any explanation.

7) Their names were always silly. Always. Even when they were names that would be cool for a Transformers (like Turbo), they were silly for the GoBots.

The human characters were knockoffs of Transformers humans, particularly Chip, the Witwickys, and a particularly transparent knockoff of Doctor Archevil (whose name always looks retarded when written).

9) They had human brains. This was never explained aside from being mentioned in an episode where some super-robot had to accept the Evil GoBots were imperfect because of their human brains.

10) Cy-Kill was a sort of half-assed Megatron. Leader-One was a cross between Optimus Prime and Adam West's Batman, though without any of the cool. The other two main Heroic GoBots were Scooter, who makes Wheelie from the Transformers movie look like fucking Adrian Brody in the Pianist, and Turbo, a sort of hybrid Ironhide/Sideswipe type whose only memorable trait was the incredibly stupid catchphrase "Time to go!" He uttered it at least six times per episode. I can't remember the two other main Evil GoBots. There was, of course, a rotating cast of other toys you could buy.

Here's my idea: since GoBots was a total ripoff of Transformers, why not write the fucking awesome Transformers movie anyone but the Orci/Kurzman/Bay team would've come up with, and simply switch all characters from Transformers to GoBots? Anything from Transformers not in the first two movies is fair game (for instance, the two main humans can be Spike and Sparkplug, maybe mentioning their brother, Buster, but the last name Witwicky is off-limits).

Imagine....

"Four million years ago, they came to Earth from Gobotron. Heroic GoBots Guardians and Evil GoBots Renegades, locked in an endless civil war. Now, on Earth, they continue their conflict, disguising their presence from humanity by converting their bodies into automobiles, airplanes, and other mechanical devices. It is a world transformed, a world where things are not as they seem--it is the world of the GoBots!"

[vynsane]

hahaha! awesome.

according to wikipedia the factions were named the 'guardians' and 'renegades' at some point, but yeah, originally they were just stamped as 'friendly' or 'enemy'!

[anarky]

Had a couple of minor details wrong. They were Guardians and Renegades, which isn't much better. (Edit: you just posted that!) Apparently the human brains comes from their being descended from a humanoid race driven to the edge of extinction. (Never mind that the original GoBots aren't alive, and certainly didn't have any genitalia, so how the fuck do the current ones have brains?)

Also, I forgot one major, major detail: the "superweapon" of the Renegades has a pretty fucking classic name: Zod!! I can't find the vintage commercial, but he was this weird dinosaur thing that rampaged all over, and you had to "deactivate" him by pushing a red button on his belly with a spear (included). A friend had him, and he was fucking cheap. But he was still named Zod!



And, for a taste of how immensely shitty the cartoon was:

[Ran]

I think the other main bad guys were Crasher (a female black car that was sort of a Baroness rip off) and Cop-Tur (a helicoptor, who was a little short on intelligence).

The Rock Lords need to make a cameo in the film. Yes, they are transforming rocks.

[mabudon]

Makes me wonder, thinkin about the rock lords- remember how He-man also featured (at one point anyways) rocks that "transformed" into characters (I remember 2 of their names, Stone-dar and Rokkon)

Which one was knocking off which, and why did the idea seem good to the originator, then good enough to rip right off??


I made a great list of awful GoBot names years ago- the flat-out worst one has got to be Dumper

I wish there was no such thing as several of the names I recall

[Ran]

Thanks to youtube for reminding me how bad Gobots really were. Back in the day, I had Leader-1 and Turbo. It looks like Cykill and Coptur barely transformed. I looked all over for the Zod commercial too, but couldn't find it anywhere.

[mabudon]

yeah Leader-1 and cop-tur and screw-head are 3 I recall that basically went from horizontal to vertical to suggest "transformation"

Oh and wasn't the gobot transformation "gobot-izing" or some such thing?? They damn sure couldn't call it trans anything

[vynsane]

nah, leader-1 kinda transformed like the seekers from TF. the legs pulled out to be longer, the arms popped out from the side, and the nosecone of the plane folded down into his chest to reveal the head. actually, it was a lot like the seekers. just like, one-third their size.

[anarky]

And reversed, since the nosecone was on his back. The arms also simply pulled out instead of swiveling from the center.

[mabudon]

never thought you guys would be the type to fucking defend the fucking GoBots

Oh and there should be hordes of gratuitous swearing but done funny, not crass- like if Dave Chappelle wrote it

[vynsane]

hey, man, they still sucked, but give them at least the small amount dignity that they deserved while sucking so much.

[mabudon]

Sure, I get that, granted

Peter Cullen HAS to be Leader-1 and he has to at one point say to Cy-Kill (in his "roar" type voice) "FUCK YOU, MegaTRON!!!!" and Cy-kill can totally be caught off guard and say "Wha???" which gives Prime Leader-1 a chance to nail him but good... actually a ton of funny, odd TF references (only done kinda "sideways" if ya follow) would be really funny

Perhaps some sort of mass-shifting being pointed out as totally ridiculous... and the scale should remain constant throughout- best example, Scooter (in order to be the same size in robot mode, as they all were) would have to be a comically huge scooter, too big for any human to control and obviously not a human-use vehicle (especially with the talking face)

And fuck you for even bringing this up Vyn, thanks to you I watched 8 minutes of the episode "crime wave" and it made me fucking dizzy and mad, the show was even worse than I remember (and for some reason despite hating it thoroughly I watched the piece of shit almost every damn day- must have been shortly after I discovered marijuana or something)

[Ran]

To pay homage to the other Turbo from the 80s, the movie character should spontaneously break dance at some point in the film.

[mabudon]

Good idea- and if the Rock Lords are in it, one needs to be called "Fukor" (pronounced "few-core")