Product: The Transformers - The Movie (1986)
Rating: 4.0
Excellent fantasy action film! Gen X memories galore!
Ah, the summer of 1986.. I saw this movie twice-- the second time, because I was too scared to go see ALIENS..As a kid back then, i was totally into going to see this film-- and I was not disappointed--I felt the death of PRIME was done tastefully-- I felt then, as I do now, that comic-book/animated action shows should deal more directly with the consequences of violence, that sometimes people DO get hurt and die-- the anti-injury imperatives imposed on most post-70's animated US shows are potentially more injurious in terms of perception of reality, than the reality that some people feel they're protecting kids from--Enough ranting-- this film introduced many "new" characters into the Transformers canon, including Kup, Hot Rod, Galvatron, and more-- Most importantly, Arcee, the female Autobot, makes her debut! You would think that all the Transformers were monks! Also, like Optimus Prime, many characters meet their final fate in this film-- Such is the nature of war... The Autobots' human sidekick Spike was college-aged during the TV show; in the movie, he's all grown-up, with a son, Daniel. Like his father, Daniel is drawn into the Autobot/Decepticon war whether he likes it or not... Spike even gets to utter a mild expletive, which caused a few laughs in the original theatrical version (it was excised from the original VHS home version)..The planet-sized threat of Unicron is reminiscent of the character Galactus in Marvel Comics' FANTASTIC FOUR comics.. Seemingly omnipotent, granting powers to those who will do his bidding, and needing the energy of entire planets to survive... The connection is made even more curious when one considers that Marvel's Animation Studio in L.A. was key in co-producing the TV series, along with Hasbro's SunBow productions.Unfortunately, even the celebrity voices in the cast (Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson in his brat-pack heyday, and the legendary Orson Welles) couldn't make this film a hit at the box office. The toy tie-ins were obvious, and, to many, this film just smacked of commercial exploitation.. But to fans of the show, it was way beyond a simple excuse to say "buy this stuff!"On top of all that, is the sobering reality that in the United States, animation, as a story-telling form, is seemingly cursed to be perceived as only valid for telling stories to children. in Japan, anime' has long been an accepted element of adult-consumed pop-culture. But even the technically excellent TITAN A.E. (produced by the now-defunct 20th Century Fox Animation Studios) could not escape reaching only animation cultists at the box-office. Certain inroads have been made-- for example, the SIMPSONS TV show has been a hit with adults for well over a decade now-- and the recent success of Dreamworks' SHREK 1 & 2 and Disney/Pixar's collaborations (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Bug's Life, The Impossibles) has revealed that adult appeal and animation don't have to be at odds with each other..A Japanese-produced sequel to THE TRANSFORMERS has been airing on cable and is being produced for home video now-- Perhaps, if it is a big enough hit, we may see a long-delayed sequel in the franchise...