The original Transformers cartoon was known for its blurry lines when it came to
continuity.
Things like what is the right color for Rumble,
Rumble: "I must have static in my rectifiers."
Mirage: "Now that's the smartest things you've said all day!"
Rumble: "Re..really?
Hey!
What's goin' on?!"
The proper origins of the Constructicons,
Megatron: "...temporary base right on schedule.
They were worth the time we spent building them in these caverns."
Scrapper: "Back on Cybertron, we ALL admired your buidlings Grapple.
They were works of art."
...and this one.
Who became Cyclonus?
Now i'll be diving into spoilers if you've never seen it, so, be prepared.
Communication Robot: "Hey!
You're not supposed to be in here!"
Scourge: "Who says?"
"Communication Robot: "Hey!
I'm stuck up here!"
Cyclonus: "Everybody's gotta be somewhere."
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Cyclonus is the loyal
second in command to Galvatron.
Released as part of the 1986 lineup of
Transformers toys, Cyclonus was the Decepticon space jet sold alongside
Scourge, the blue space hovercraft as one of many new characters created for
Transformers the Movie.
In the film, he uses his space jet form to carry Galvatron
into battle.
sighs
Cyclonus also took down Hot Rod and Kup's shuttle in space.
In season three of the cartoon, he shows himself to be a worthy Decepticon when
he leads the Decepticons to find his leader Galvatron after he was thrown
across the universe after his battle with Rodimus Prime.
Upon finding his
leader in a pool of plasma on the planet Thrull, he wisely sent a Sweep to pull
him out.
Cyclonus sometimes would take the brunt of Galvatron's abuse.
While his loyalty
was without question, Cyclonus thought it was best to bring Galvatron to the
intergalactic psycho ward Torkulon to help repair his frayed
psyche.
"Subject exhibits a severe failure in reality processing and malignant
plasma neural tick.
You were wise to bring him here."
In the original 1986
movie, Megatron and a group of his Decepticons are discarded in space after
the Battle of Autobot City.
There they run into Unicron, the giant planet eating
planet Transformer who rebuilds Megatron into Galvatron.
The rest of his troops
are rebuilt as well.
Now if you're paying attention, you will notice that
when they are about to be reformatted you can tell that Thundercracker,
followed by Shrapnel and Kickback are brought to the left.
Meanwhile Bombshell
and Skywarp are brought to the right.
The next shot shows the grey bodies of
Thundercracker in the forefront with the two Insecticons behind him and are
reformatted into the same body type.
Scourge is obviously Thundercracker and
the other two are Sweeps. this isn't contested, at least in Thundercracker's
case for the most part as it's clear to the audience who is who.
But in the next clip, Bombshell is in the forefront while Skywarp is behind him.
Both become the same body type as well.
The next shot is where the confusion
sets in.
One Cyclonus followed by another, Cyclonus's Armada,
and then Galvatron ship is introduced.
As Galvatron boards his vessel only one
Cyclonus followed by Scourge and now three Sweeps fly across the screen.
It's
at this point that Cyclonus is now one character throughout the rest of the
movie and season three, barring any animation mishaps, while the
Sweeps are Scourge copies and multiply a number.
If we're to follow it at face
value it would be exactly as Unicron himself said.
I will provide you with a
new body and new troops to command.
However fans could not let this one go.
We all know that Megatron became Galvatron.
It's easy to see that
Thundercracker became Scourge, and it's safe to assume that Kickback and
Shrapnel became Sweeps.
With Cyclonus fans could not agree.
To some he was the
loyal trickster, Skywarp.
To others he is the Insecticon master of mind control,
Bombshell.
Fans who believe he was Skywarp have a multitude of reasons why
he became Cyclonus.
For starters, the 1986 toy catalog would replace Skywarp and
Thundercracker from the Decepticon planes with two new toys.
The conehead Decepticons, Ramjet, Dirge, and Thrust are still present since they were
still being sold, and they show up in season three.
The blue hovercraft, Scourge
replaces the blue F-15 jet, Thundercracker, while the purple space jet, Cyclonus,
replaces the black with light purple highlights F-15 jet, Skywarp.
From a toy
perspective this makes sense.
Megatron has been replaced by Galvatron, and his
troops follow suit.
Furthermore, on the toy catalog, the Insecticons are still
being advertised.
They also appear in season three but that could be
considered an animation mistake.
And the Insecticons do have the ability to clone
themselves.
Note that they also still advertise Starscream, probably not to give away
that he was dead - or that he was coming back as a ghost.
Also, Skywarp was loyal
to Megatron.
While he wasn't intelligent like Cyclonus, he was the Decepticon who
revived his leader first.
Why not promote the Decepticon who followed Megatron
right from the first episode?
Furthermore, Bombshell has, like his Insecticon
cohorts betrayed Megatron more than once.
He was very intelligent though.
His
Cerebro Shells were able to control other Transformers when he needed to, and
he helped upgrade Nightbird to attack the Autobots, making Starscream extremely
jealous.
How could this untrustworthy bug become second-in-command of the
Decepticons?
At least that's what Skywarp proponents will tell you.
To the ones who
simply believe that it's Bombshell, personality, loyalty, and color are
irrelevant.
Storyboards make it clear that this cerebral Insecticon was the
only one being changed into Cyclonus.
Even though Skywarp is present, those on
the Bombshell side state that he became a Sweep like the rest.
Bombshell is in
the forefront and we have one Cyclonus.
So, that's it.
Case closed.
Even the IDW movie adaptation laced it over still making
Bombshell Cyclonus, with Skywarp becoming a background Armada.
But they also killed
Shockwave in that comic, which is a discussion for another day.
The 3H Botcon
comics featured both Skywarp and Cyclonus side by side, having Skywarp
state, "Even when you were a bug, I hated your stinking circuits!"
However in Japanese continuity, the E-hobby comics imply that Cyclonus was
once Skywarp, and he regains his ability to
teleport which he used to have.
This only adds more fuel to the fire.
Even the UK comics state that he was once "Life Spark", a misunderstanding about
his identity from an early draft of the film.
In that early draft, instead of
throwing them out to space, the Decepticons returned to Cybertron, and
they brought their dead to the Decepticon Hall of Heroes to place their
life sparks into urns.
It's there that the Decepticons battle for who would take
over as leader of the Decepticons.
The resulting battle would end up causing
one of the statues to topple on to Megatron, sending his life spark, along
with the ancient Decepticon heroes' life sparks into space where they meet
Unicron.
The script then states that these life sparks became Cyclonus,
Scourge, and their clone counterparts.
While this doesn't happen in the
finished film, we do see the Decepticon statues during Starscream's coronation.
Now there are those in a third camp.
They believe that only Megatron was alive
when the Decepticons met Unicron.
He rebuilt the carcasses into brand new
Decepticons for Galvatron to command.
Also, the Transformers Universe profile
books, which were written by Bob Budiansky before the script was
finalized, have the profile for Cyclonus, which states that he is built from the
parts of dead Decepticons and remnants by Unicron.
This can make the whole
argument irrelevant.
Out with the old, and in with the new.
In
fact this is exactly how the script of the movie handles the new Decepticons.
There is no mention of which Decepticons are thrown out of Astrotrain, and it
refers to them as dented, dinged, and dead as they are floating through space.
It
then states that their bodies are remolded into the new Decepticons.
The
idea that Scourge had copies called the Sweeps carried over with Cyclonus.
You
would have the same body type as duplicates known as his Armada.
But this
concept was dropped during production.
This could also bring in another
argument that he is literally a Frankenstein of both Skywarp and
Bombshell.
While the storyboard shows Bombshell, the instruction
underneath says longshot on other Decepticons, meaning more than one.
Since
there's only one Cyclonus moving forward, the intelligent and loyal Decepticon
could be exhibiting aspects of both.
Also for a bit of clarity, some think that the
Cyclonus clone was killed by Grimlock when the Decepticons attacked during the
shuttle escape.
While this did happen in the IDW 20th Anniversary comic, the movie
shows that a Sweep explodes from Grimlock and the Dinobots fire breath.
When Cyclonus was hit, Galvatron was piloting him.
This does
however raise the question if the Sweeps were fully sentient, but that's a
discussion for another day.
So you're probably wondering what I think at this
point, right?
My theory is that it most likely makes sense for Cyclonus to have
once been Skywarp, with Bombshell clone parts used in the mix.
All of the Sweeps
were once insecticon clones, since the originals appear later in the
film, and they even appeared in season 3, even if I much rather see them squished.
This probably also is why they seem to have the ability to replicate, hence Sweep
6
& 7.
So to me, Cyclonus was always Skywarp.
But what do you think?
Are you on the
Skywarp side, or on the Bombshell side?
Or are you on the side that he is just a
new character, or both combined?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section
below.
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And as always,
until next time.
Till all are one
In the days of Megatron it was not like this
Well they were the same guy