If only because Michael Bay is ruining childhoods left and right on screen, let’s take a step back in time, fellow sleepless Steemians and consider an animated flick that did a spectacular job of ruining childhoods when it was released. Yes, I’m talking about the original The Transformers: the Movie. You know the one. The one that traumatized kids and killed all of our favourite characters.
There was a reason for that of course, Hasbro was doing away with its current batch of toys and introducing an entirely new line, headlined by Rodimus Prime and Ultra Magnus and Galvatron. They admit now that it didn’t occur to them that killing Optimus Prime, Ironside and all the rest of our favourites and villians would be such a heart-wrenching set of moments for the young audience the film was aimed at.
Oops, spoiler alert. Sorry.
I had Transformers. I had Swoop, still my favourite and the character that makes me so mad at the Transformers: Age of Extinction introduction of the Dinobots. BAY. GOT. RID. OF. SWOOP. AND REPLACED. HIM. WITH. THAT. TWO-HEADED. ABOMINATION. I had Skyjet, who Bay replaced with that creepy, old jet in Revenge of the Fallen. I had Cosmos, who hasn’t appeared in any of the live-action flicks as far as I know, and other assorted little Transformer toys.
But I digress. Transformers: The Movie, complete with the rock soundtrack is what this is. Who isn’t singing, “You’ve got the touch” to themselves right now. I know I am. Sorry, again, digression again.
Transformers: The Movie is set in 2005, twenty years or so after the original television show and Optimus and his pals are on one of Cybertron’s moons and Megatron is on Cybertron ruling things. Laserbeak presents spy footage of Optimus asking Ironside to go to Autobot City on Earth to get the energon they need to launch an attack on Cybertron. Megatron decides to intercept, take the ship and attack and destroy Autobot City. Ironside goes, gets attacked and killed, as well as all of his crew and we, as kids in theatres all gasped in shock. We meet new autobots, Hot Rod, hanging with Daniel (Spike’s son), Kup, Springer, Arcee, Ultra Magnus and Blur. There’s fighting, autobots and decepticons die, Blaster calls for help and Optimus Prime arrives and plows through all of the old Decepticons, destroying them as he meets Megatron in a final confrontation.
And dies.
And a million children started crying.
And that is only the first act.
Meanwhile, in space, a giant metallic planet called Unicron is devouring every other planet it comes across, all of which appear to be peopled by sentient robots and made of metal as opposed to earth (dirt, etc, you know what I mean). He’s headed for Cybertron. Megatron, mortally damaged is ejected into space by Star Scream and Unicron takes him and re-creates him as Galvatron, ordering him to get and destroy the Matrix of Leadership, an object that, until his death, resided in Optimus Prime’s chest and now sits in Ultra Magnus’. Galvatron attacks Autobot City again and the Autobots scatter into space and crashland on different robot planets. All sorts of chaos ensues, there’s a Weird Al Yankovic song, robot fish and sharkacons, Quintissons and a planet called Junk covered in Junk and Eric Idle. The Dinobots of the old series, angry and fiercely independent become buffoons for the new series, sadly. Then everybody attacks Unicron and the Matrix is opened because one day a hero will rise that can open it. Turns out it’s Hot Rod, who becomes Rodimus Prime and the war between the Autobots and Decepticons ends, at least until the new season of the tv show.
This movie is awful. And awesome. And lightyears better than the live action flicks. It traumatized us by killing our heroes and, like the show it was based on, blatant in its “check out this new toy” salesmanship but it was just fun and stupid and colourful. Orson Welles provided the voice of Unicron, in what was, essentially, his final role. Leonard Nimoy was the voice of Galvatron, Judd Nelson was Hot Rod. They didn’t make a toy for Arcee because they didn’t think boys would buy a girl Transformer, which was stupid then and is still stupid now.
They put out a Twentieth Anniversary two-disc dvd which has some fascinating extras and, recently a blu-ray edition, which I haven’t seen. It is fun for all of the old school Transformers lovers, like myself who played with the toys. I do wish I still had them, not necessarily because they would be valuable, they would break because I would keep transforming them.