- I've always wondered if my intense affection for Transformers: The Movie has anything to do with its quality or if it is instead the result of a traumatic bonding experience in which I witnessed many of my favorite childhood characters die in the film's first half-hour. Regardless, I should admit up front that I have grown up into one of those adults who spits on the ground when he hears Michael Bay's name in connection with Transformers. I own the extended Vince DiCola soundtrack and listen to it much more often than you might guess. On a good day, I can recite the film's entire opening narration, and on a really good day I can even nail Victor Caroli's awesome 80's narrator voice. What follows here will not be the most objective review I have ever written.
- According to 8-year-old me, Transformers: The Movie is totally the awesomest thing ever. A robot planet eats other planets, lots of robot characters die gruesome robot deaths, Optimus Prime kicks some robot ass, and there is even mild robot profanity. According to late-30's me, this is still a surprisingly compelling film, largely thanks to Nelson Shin's kinetic direction and some really outstanding art, animation, and voicework. Although much fun has been made of the fact that this was the great Orson Welles' last film, there is something to be said for mixing together a cast of old voiceover pros (including Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Neil Ross, Scatman Crothers, and Chris Latta) with a stable of film/TV legends (including Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack, and Eric Idle).
- The film's plot is that of every Transformers cartoon, comic, and theme song, namely that the Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons. The new ingredients in this case are a giant-sized destroyer of worlds called Unicron (Welles), a race of evil five-faced slavers called the Quintessons, and a lovable bunch of trash TV addicts known as the Junkions. There are also several new regular Transformers thrown into the mix, mostly as replacements for the many series regulars who get mowed down early on. And yes, kids, if fleeting glimpses of Autobot corpses aren't enough to keep you awake at night, the film follows Optimus Prime all the way to the operating table to watch him slowly expire while surrounded by his devoted friends...excuse me, I must have something in my eye.
- Although everybody agrees that the prodigious death rates in Transformers: The Movie were largely a ploy by Hasbro to overhaul the toy lines, there is something to be said for introducing such high stakes into an after-school cartoon. Deep down, it is probably appropriate for kids to discover at a young age that war is not the bloodless, laser-beam filled pastime shown in G.I. Joe, for example. That said, the film's real appeal for me comes from its hard-rocking, high-octane approach to kids' filmmaking. For my money, there aren't many more exciting action cartoon sequences than the prolonged assault on Autobot City and Optimus Prime's heroic last stand, nor are there many alien environments as memorable as the weirdly cyber-organic world of the Quintessons or trash-strewn planet of Junk. Most of my tastes have changed considerably since I was eight, but on this one I was right the first time.
