“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.

Now, the teaser posters show us something much different: a highly detailed, obviously mechanical eye, reminiscent of something like a mix between a jet turbine and a camera iris. It’s complex and interesting, and of the highest professional caliber in design and execution. To me, at least, it’s hopeful that one of my favorite mythologies will get a retelling that will be both available and appealing to the mass market.

I keep using that word. Mythology. It’s a pretty big word, isn’t it? People use it to describe the stories that compose religions, frame and shape entire cultures… and I don’t think it’s out of place here. More than that, it’s appropriate — over the years, as we’ve gone from incarnation to incarnation, we’ve moved from the classic cartoon known as G1 to a sequel/prequel series, Beast Wars, and its generally- disliked sequel, Beast Machines, into entire reboots of the universe in new and different ways, reusing the characters and fundamental themes — the Autobots and the Decepticons, fighting a war over their homeworld that is ultimately drawn to Earth, involving the human race inextricably in the conflict — as repeating motifs rather than a simple continuity.

Let’s compare, quickly:

After Beast Wars, which was a very good sequel (though it had some odd backstory) that ultimately involved its characters very closely in the aeon-old war between Autobot and Decepticon, we had Beast Machines, which seemed to have been written and directed by a man who either didn’t know or didn’t care about the ideas behind Cybertron and its native inhabitants, instead positing an idea about Cybertron’s history that made little sense. I shan’t go into details here, but rather I’ll move on.

Beast Machines was followed by a line known as Car Robots in Japan and Robots in Disguise, or RiD, in America. RiD suffered from poor writing and storytelling even in its original Japanese incarnation, and, in the US version, even named the Cybertronian factions oddly, giving us Autobots and Predacons as our main groups. (There were a small group of “Decepticons” later, but, like most of the villains, were little more than comic relief.) The toy designs were superb, however, engineered almost entirely by Hasbro’s Japanese partner in the Transformers franchise, Takara, and that alone succeeded in drawing many fans (such as myself) back into the fandom.

Following Robots in Disguise was the line known as Armada in the United States and Micron Densetsu (Micron Legend) in Japan. Unfortunately, while the writing and voice work was quite good in Japan, the American dub made many unfortunate — and sometimes downright silly or stupid — changes to the show. Add to this the inheritance of much of the voice talent from the predecessor shows, but with clunky dub dialogue and poor direction, and the show was much harder to watch than the CGI-era shows done by Mainframe (that’s Beast Wars and Beast Machines). However, Armada/Micron Densetsu did give us a whole new universe, a much more well-thought-out one than CR/RiD, and it returned to us our long-absent, proper villain factions, the Autobots and Decepticons. Sadly, the toys were, for the most part, not up to the standards set by RiD, with one very wonderful exception: a toy of the villain from the original cartoon movie, Unicron, who was reintroduced late in the series. I should note that no proper toy of him was ever produced before then, though a couple of prototypes were made (one very bad one in the mid-80s, for the movie, and another for a Japanese-only spinoff of Beast Wars that also used Unicron as a villain), and a statue or two as well.

Armada was succeeded by a true sequel, using the same universe and same characters (for the most part), called Superlink in Japan and Energon in the US, which picked up ten years after Armada, and once again featured Unicron as the show’s ultimate villain. Like the previous show, it suffered immensely in its trip across the Pacific; while I’ve not seen Micron Densetsu, I have seen fansubs of the entire Superlink series, and while it foundered a bit later in the series, it was, overall, quite enjoyable. One of the better choices made was a nice reference G1; in the American version of Armada, Megatron had changed his name to Galvatron when he received his power upgrade/new paint job, but in Micron Densetsu, he’d remained Megatron. Then, when he was revived in Energon, he was once again Megatron for no readily discernable reason, and retook the Galvatron name again later in the series. In Micron Densetsu, however, he did not change his name with his power-up; instead, this change came in his resurrection early in Superlink, when he corrected his minions after resuming his command over them. (It should be noted that his design in this series is a very deliberate homage to the cartoon version of G1 Galvatron, especially the recolor of the character later in the series.) There were other G1 references, as well, though many of them were oddly missing or changed in the Americanization of the show.

The follow-up to this series — the last Transformers production we’re getting until the movie next year, in fact — was called Galaxy Force in Japan and Cybertron in the US. The American version of the show promoted it as a third part in the Armada-Energon series, and even rewrote story elements to tie in Unicron again. Galaxy Force, however, has at best a tenuous connection to Micron Densetsu and Superlink; in truth, what little is there seems to have been put in so that the American rewrite can more easily tie into the prior series. However, the show was chock FULL of references to G1, and it was easily on par, in terms of writing, with Beast Wars. I and many fellow Transfans who followed the show with me were thrilled with it, both with the many homages and references to G1 and the superb toy and character design, and the story that seemed to have been planned out in great detail from the first episode to the last.

The point in writing out all of this is to make clear that, when Transformers has been good, it’s been very good — Beast Wars and Galaxy Force in particular — and the new movie has not only the many expectations of fans who simply love G1 to live up to, but it must also live up to the high watermarks set within the franchise history. Not only do our beloved heroes have to be created with the best modern special effects technology can give us, but it must be plotted, scripted, directed, and acted to at least the standards set by the franchise itself, if not better.

We know the cast is up to it. We know the director is up to it. But if Optimus Prime with blue flames is what they think Transformers is… I can’t help but feel some trepidation that won’t be allieviated until July 4th, 2007.