Transformers: Greatest animated movie conceived by man? My 8 year old self would say yes.
Some of you born after 1991 might be confused. Well, that’s really your fucking fault. It’s shameful that you call yourselves “nerds” and yet you seem to be absent of the most trivial of GEEK knowledge.
I remember making this mistake with a co worker once telling him how much I loved the Transformers movie (he didn’t) and we almost got into a fight until I explained to him that in 1986 a movie based on the Generation 1 Transformers was released into theaters.
How could this movie have failed at the box office? I mean, it’s got Orson Welles playing a planet eating planet. Citizen Kane Himself!
If you’re unfamiliar with this movie than how can you really be a movie geek?
Orson Welles does have something going for him though. His final movie was a milestone in animation even if it was not a box office smash in comparison to the toy-line.
A bit of a synopsis for you: Autobots rage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons (just in case you are unaware of the plot)
Although, the real purpose of the film is to update the toy line that coincided with it. It’s works in the same way that Transformers: Age of Extinction works. You know the forth movie in the live action Transformers saga that stars Mark Wahlberg instead of Shia Lebeaf who starred in the 1st three. If you ever wonder what happen, from what I understand the toy-line that accompanied the movies was not doing well anymore and Hasbro ask them (Being Paramount the company making the movie) to change it up so that they can change up the toy-line.
Same thing happen with the 1986 version. A new toy-line was coming out and the filmmakers had to make a movie based on those changes. Which destroyed the childhood of many of us living in the 80s at that time.
It was like they killed Biggie or Tupac
The most famous scene in the movie was when the big truck died. It upset a lot of kids in a way no one saw coming. All the filmmakers and the toy makers were thinking was that the kids would love all the new toys they are going to shove down our throats, but no, all we could think about was Prime’s cold metal slab turning grey on that table.
But this is a landmark in animation. A cartoon for kids merchandising had a major character die and stay dead (at least until season three). Sure, he was just a robot (or was he)
How many robots do you know rest on the Sabbath?
It’s a critical point, and set a standard between cartoons and animation. Optimus Prime was not the only major and loved character to die in the film (Like I said, they were “killing” the old toy-line). I was not as upset about the others as I was never that big on the Toys myself.
More of a Joe man, myself
I did had a few, like Prime (Nooooooo), but it’s interesting that some of the characters that were not killed in the flick, were the toys that I had. Like Bumble Bee, sound wave and The Dinobots
No doubt that the Dinobots never failed to be a best seller
Although I did like some of the new toys like Galvatron and his new troops. Hot Rod seem like he could have been a cool new toy. That was until he became Rodimus Prime.
Quick explanation (and spoiler) Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, right, so if he dies they would need a new leader, so a story arch in the movie is that a new addiction to the transformers myth called the Autobot matrix would find a leader in the ranks and he would use the matrix to light their darkest hour. That guy was a teenage like robot who transformed into a 2005 hot rod.
Or what we thought a 2005 Hot Rod would look like in 1986
After gaining the Matrix he would than grow twice his size and a trailer to his back to look like a Optimus
Cause I guess all Primes have to be trucks
Gotta tell you, it’s hard to like a decent looking toy when you realized the cost was the death of one of your favorites (Extra slap in the face was that the Rodimus Prime toy came with the ghost of Optimus prime which was a all white version of Optimus. Making Prime seem more invaluable to the Toy line and our lives).
I wish they had released a Unicorn toy. That would have been cool to add to my toy collection. Unicorn was the planet eating planet Orson Welles played in the film, and one of the coolest moments was when that planet turned into a massive robot. I herd they created a prototype but never released it. Oh well.
Another groundbreaking moment in the film was the language. One of the main characters used the word Shit. I mean, even as a kid I used the word shit constantly, Yet it phased me when I herd Spike, one of two humans in the 1986 version of Transformers (interesting switch from the live action movies that focus on the human characters) use the word shit.
This was an ironic concept tossed in by the filmmakers. As Hasbro was trying to sell toys to the kids, Sunbow who made the movie thought they could aim it at teens and young adults by adding in the curse word (Along with a string or pretty hard hitting animated violence) to change it from a G rating to a PG rating.
Though it may not seem like much today, Transformers: the movie was paving the way for more adult animation. Cause it would not take long with such movies like Akira that would be imported to America two years later and achieve an even bigger following. Transformers itself had a big anime influence on it’s design as well and may have been a gateway for many of us who like that style of animation.
As an adult, what I like a lot about this movie is how trapped in the 80s it is. The Hard Rock soundtrack (Still one of my favorites to this day) produce by a composer named Vince DiCola, who also produced the music for Rocky IV (Another soundtrack that’s pure 80s). To this day I listen to the soundtrack (which has only up kept the concept that this is the greatest movie ever).
Some of my fav songs off the soundtrack was of course rock band Lion (who I never herd of) singing their version of Transformers theme song, rock band NRG (who I never herd of) singing the song Instruments of Destruction , and Stan Bush (?) singing the song “You go the Touch” although to be honest, I like this song cause it was oddly featured in the movie Boogie Nights when Dirk Diggler tries to develop a singing career. It’s just like, if you saw Transformers in the 80s as a child then all of a sudden saw a movie about porn which the main character was singing that song, it just makes you go “that was odd”
I’m sure some of the guys who made the live action transformers feel the same way. Some of the heroic lines that come out of Optimus Prime’s mouth in that movie were literally ripped off from what he said in the 1986 one (then again, the same actor who played Prime in 86 played him in the live action movie so..)
But this rant I’m doing on the movie does not really match up to the title of the subject. That’s because I just saw the DVD celebrating the 20th anniversary of the movie (So it was released ten years ago). Some of the audio commentary was nice enough to point out the flaws of the film. One ongoing theme was how some transformers that die earlier in the film seem to appear later in the film. One of my fav animation mistakes was at the beginning of the film when Optimus Prime is supposedly contacting his troops who are on a moon base while he’s on Earth. then in the next cut those Autobots he was contacting are literally standing right next to him.
Another thing, that was constantly pointed out was that the scale of some of the characters did not make any sense. Like one that I did notice as a child was the idea that the dececicon, Astrotrain (one of my favorites) is known to be big enough to cram a bunch of his fellow Instruments of Destruction (I do love that song) into his vehicle mode no problem, but during one scene, his inner body kept fluctuating from the troops needing to suit down to enter him to being able to get in a full fledged rumble big enough that the contructicons could form devastator within him.
Plus, it’s never clear just how big the planet sized Unicron actually is. In one scene his horns can match the size of America. Then in the very next shot they are the same size as Megatron.
It’s one of those things you should laugh at, but for me, I held this movie in such a high regard of animation only to have it pointed out to me that it was not perfect. More messed up my mind than anything, which is crazy because the same people who are pointing out the flaws love the movie more than I do, and are only pointing out the flaws cause they seen it so many times to realize them, but still it’s gonna take some time to get use to, Just like Nelson Shinn, who was the director of this movie and many episodes of Transformers who did the audio commentary with one of the writer’s who kept trying not to point out how Shinn fucked up.
But anyway, despite that, I still love this movie as a huge influence on what would become a huge love of anime, specifically movies that were geared toward more adult themes, and it’s still far better in my opinion than the 2007 live-action version that belong to all you kids born after 1991.
