“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”

I was eight years old the first time I read those words, on the little card on the back of the box the original Optimus Prime toy came on.

See, one of the many things that set Transformers apart, as both a toy line and a storytelling vehicle, was that they established them not just as Robots In Disguise — as robots that changed into vehicles, something already mind-blowingly cool by the standards of anyone who grew up in the 1980s — but as individual characters. As an impressionable boy who had not yet even hit double digits when Transformers premiered… well, it’s not hard to see why, twenty-two years later, Optimus Prime is still one of my greatest personal heroes.

In 1984, Transformers first appeared on our TV screen; it was, in many ways, little more than a glorified toy commercial, but the writers — some of whom have gone on to be among the most beloved and respected writers of American television animation — did their best to make it something more. They didn’t just throw the characters they were given together, slap together a thin excuse, and call it good; they gave the characters personality and drive, and strove to make even characters that were nothing more than repaints of the same mold (such as the original three Decepticon Seekers, Starscream, Skywarp, and Thundercracker) distinct and unique in the viewer’s mind. They gave us a story of a planet of machine life, Cybertron, that was itself a great machine, and the war between its tyrannical overlords, the Decepticons, and a heroic band of rebels, the Autobots, who kept the Decepticons from taking their hunger for conquest and power off of their homeworld, sometimes with little more than simple grit and determination.

They even gave us a reason for their arrival on Earth: desperate for energy sources — the Autobots to continue to fuel their resistance, the Decepticons to complete their domination of Cybertron and take their conquest to the stars — they move to an energy-rich planet, our own Earth. But not the Earth of today; the Earth of millions of years ago.

However, the Decepticons attack the Autobot ship as it travels to our home planet, and the ensuing battle damages them all, leaving them in stasis until they are awakened in 1984 by a volcanic eruption.

The show went through two seasons, and then a very well-produced — by the standards of the time — feature film, followed by a third season and an abortive fourth “season” consisting of three episodes. The franchise lay semi-dormant — existing mostly through a few toy lines and some comics — until a renaissance came a few years later with the runaway success of Beast Wars. Since then, Transformers has mostly stayed active on television, and done phenomenally well through multiple toy lines.

And, thus, we come to the most recent incarnation of the mythology, and arguably the one most long-dreamed of by fans. And, up until a few years ago, it would’ve been just a pipe dream.

A live-action Transformers movie. With Steven Spielberg behind it, and Michael Bay directing.

The entire Transformers fandom is, right now, deciding whether or not this is a good thing. We’re just getting drabbles of info here and there; an article on Ain’t It Cool News here, a sneaked photo of what might be a vehicle mode there. Some of it has raised fan ire, such as Prime’s vehicle mode apparently being a big red semi (good) with what seem to be blue flames (… er, not so good). Some of it has been almost too good to be true, such as the announcement that none other than Peter Cullen, the only true voice of Optimus Prime (as any fan of the original series believes, anyway), will be returning to voice the Autobot commander.

Personally, I’m hopeful. One of the biggest changes, to detail-oriented people like me, is to the eyes of the Cybertronians.

Back in 1984, animation was pretty cheap, especially in America, where even now animation technology and refinement lags behind that of Japan. One of the many ways that they saved money with the designs of the Cybertronians was by drawing their eyes as being a simple uniform color, with no details such as an iris or a pupil. Decepticons had eyes that blazed red, while the Autobots had eyes of cool, friendly blue. We do know through a third-season episode that at least some Transformers have a full mechanical eye behind that lens, however.