Your Popzara Pals celebrate 40 years of Autobots and Decepticons waging war across the galaxy – and our imaginations – as our own Cybertronian warriors Nate Evans, Chris Mitchell, and editor-in-disguise Sebastian Stoddard assemble in epic cybernetic roundtable chat about two animated features that perfectly everything we love about Optimus Prime, Megatron, and the rest: 1986’s Transformers: The Movie and 2024’s Transformers One.
Listen as the gang discusses how Hasbro and Marvel were able to (literally) transform a product designed to sell toys to children into one of the most beloved and resilient franchises in history – and how it took veterans from Pixar to restore luster to a premise that was starting to feel a little rusty.
Listen further as they explore how Transformers has upended expectations for decades, how a generation of latchkey kids came to accept death and loss, Orson Welles’ journey from Rosebud to Unicron, what the Michael Bay films got right, how Chris Hemswoth honors Peter Cullen, possibly the most quintessentially 1980s soundtrack ever, the surprising connections between Transformers and Sylvester Stallone, the genius of AOR King (and Popzara fan) Stan Bush, and more. It’s an episode beyond good, beyond evil, and beyond your wildest imagination.