Product: The Transformers - The Movie (1986)
Rating: 3.0
Only for the nostalgic and the die-hard.
Having collected Transformers toys and comics for almost 20 years now, they've always held a soft spot in my heart. But nostalgia aside, let's face it, the Transformers movie has not aged well. Even back then, it was not the cinematic tour de force that many now hail it to be. It was released at a time when most fans were beginning to outgrow the series. The toy line had grown so huge and convoluted that nobody with middle class parents could hope to keep up and each month more bizarre and, frankly, stupid characters were coming out (Pretenders, Headmasters, and a whole army of robots that combined to make bigger robots). Keeping up and remaining a fan became increasing difficult and frustrating and Hasbro was losing much of their core fan base at the time.This movie represented the end of an era, too little too late, a funeral toll for a generation's love for the "Robots in Disguise", arguably driving the final nail in the coffin and removing Transformers from popular culture for nearly a decade until the Beast Wars resurrected, in a twisted manner, the original concept which has now, more or less, come full circle with the modern toys and cartoon.If anything, the one clear mistake was to kill off Optimus Prime (sorry to spoil the surprise but if you didn't know that already, you're exactly the person this movie would hold no appeal for). For a nation of young boys having grown up with this champion-of-good robot/semi-truck as the latter-day John Wayne role model figure, it was nothing short of traumatic to witness his demise and have it all glossed over with the introduction of some cheesy nobody called Rodimus Prime. The manner in which the movie attempted to excuse it all with a series of bad 80's glam rock ballads about hope and light was just plain insulting. Moreover, to witness the death of other such integral characters like Starscream and the effective death of such pivotal roles like Megatron (okay, sure, he's bigger, badder, and meaner, but he's just not the same anymore as Galvatron), was like watching your whole childhood come unraveled. Mind you, these cartoon robots formed for many of us a sort of modern substitute for the mythologies of old, and to watch it so grotesquely rewritten in the course of a single film was nothing short of blasphemous.But all childhood memories aside, it's just a bad movie. The storyline is bizarre, introducing characters and settings so quickly and randomly you get the feeling it was written during an overnight drinking binge. The pace is haphazard, with cheesy, "feel good" scenes alternated by grim and heavy scenes which attempt to convey gravity and seriousness but just come off maudlin and melodramatic. All accompanied by a perfectly awful guitar opera soundtrack with which to watch all your most beloved characters die, only to be replaced by paper-thin, gimicky substitutes (okay, so this guy talks really fast, this guy always talks in rhyme, and this guy quotes commercials... got it. Whatever). An all star cast of voice talent, including Leonard Nimoy, Orson Welles, Eric Idle, and, oh yeah, that guy from the Micro-Machines commercials, does nothing to save this plodding dud and, in retrospect, seems a bit over the top.In short, this film left a whole generation of boys feeling jaded, jipped, cheated, and insulted. It's no wonder the whole genre died shortly after, as fans grew up and discovered cars and girls.For nostalgia sake alone, it's worth a single viewing, and for the pop-culture value, it's worth owning. But if you were born in the 1980's or after, just rent it and have an older mentor help you through the confusing and muddling parts. And be patient and understanding if he seems a little bummed out afterwards.