On the boards there is this thread.
http://www.chud.com/community/forum/thread/126668/transformers-the-movie-1986-appreciation-thread
Which starts off as a simple appreciation thread and ends up bearing witness to a massive cross time zone watch along of the cartoon Transformers movie. I’m kind of proud of it, and everyone involved.
I think in many ways it’s a perfect example of what a movie can do. Now I am in no way claiming this film is good, far from it, but the sheer level of enjoyment and fun that it generated cannot be denied. This movie inspired people all over the world to join together and watch it while chewing the fat online. In all honestly it’s one of the best times I have had while being a member of this site and I look forward to doing it again sometime.
So I think it’s long passed due that I pay tribute in Blog form to a very bad, but very fun film.
What we have here is a film that was created to kill off a load of old characters to make way for new toys. In no way should it work, but it kind of does. The opening sequence of the battle for Autobot city is far more epic than anything in ether of Micheal Bay’s films, it’s cheesy as hell but you actually get a sense of tragedy as these characters (on both side) are killed. And lets face it that pretty impressive for a kids cartoon.
As a kid I remember watching this and being pretty shocked when they suddenly started killing off all these characters. In the TV show no one ever got hurt let alone died yet in the first 5 minutes of the movie 5 major characters are killed onscreen. That of course is just the warm up to a massive battle that ends with the death of the Autobot leader Optimus Prime.
And that is where it all goes wrong.
Even as a child I could see that the natural successor to Prime was Springer, yet for some insane reason he hands the leadership over to Ultra Magnus, who is without a doubt the worst possible choice. Seriously if for no other reason than to see I’m right re watch the movie and you will see that everything bad that happens to the Autobots from that point on is the direct result of a bad decision made by Magnus.
Now prehaps the series of events that follow are designed to make Hot Rod look so much better, i don’t know, but it’s hard to deny how bad Magus is as a leader. Lets look at the facts.
1. Cant command his own troops: It falls to Kup and Hot Rod to finally round them up and get them on the ship during the second Deception attack
2. Cannot win any battle: This happens a lot in the film but the stand out moment is this. While battling the Deceptions in space he not only fails to save his second ship containing half his troops, but blows up his own ship to save his worthless ass. To top it off when warned that his friends are in danger his reply is “I can’t deal with that right now”.
3. Gets killed: And not in some kind of epic battle like Prime, instead he stands their like a numpty while Galvatron orders his troops to shoot him. Way to go man, not only does that not help your troops but looses you the matrix as well!
Basically this is not the man you would want to be lead into battle by.
We haven’t even touched on the amazing voice cast, Eric Idle, Leonard Nimmoy, Orson Wells, Robert Stack* or the insanity of the later part of the movie, suffice to say the film ends with Unicron ripping his own leg off, before exploding.
And if that does not get you to watch it nothing will.
Ultimately i think if you were a kid in the 80’s you will still (sort of) love this movie, and i don’t think that’s a bad thing. As a film fan every film we watch does not have to be a classic, if that movie (however bad) brings us some pleasure than that’s all fine and Dandy, enjoy its childishness and don’t be ashamed of that.
I’m going to leave you know with one of the greatest things abou this movie, and a quote from the above thread, that tells you all you need to know:
PAUL ALLEN: After working on this and Rocky IV Vince DiCola retired. Why? Because he had perfected music.
*but he was Ultra Magnus so screw him