The Transformers "War Dawn" Act 2-Shout! Factory DVD Version

David Wise's second season Transformers episode, "War Dawn", is famous for the origin stories of Optimus Prime and Elita One, as well as the mysterious fate of Dion and giving the Aerialbots (particularly the brash Slingshot) a reason to dislike the Decepticons. However, the episode also features a slowed-down second act, which was done to pad the episode's length when Sunbow balked at the original conclusion to Act 2 (which featured Megaton ripping off Orion Pax's arm and using the limb to decapitate the unwitting Autobot) and having no other option when Wise refused to re-write the scene.

This video is from the recent complete series DVD set by Shout! Factory. Besides the substantially shorter run time for this video (4:48, as opposed to 5:07), there are some differences from the broadcast version, and even the earlier Rhino DVD release. First, the speech and sound effects have been altered from the Rhino release to resemble the slowed-down track from the broadcast version. Second, the background music is glitchy, as parts of it skip (listen at 1:48 and 4:01, for example). These changes help to illustrate that, while the increased video quality of the 35mm masters is nice, using them as the source for DVDs results in alterations from the show we grew up with because it was edited on video (much like Star Trek: The Next Generation and the '80s version of The Twilight Zone).

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• transformers
• war
• dawn
• animation
• inconsistencies
• errors