Product: The Transformers - The Movie (1986)
Rating: 4.0
There's more than meets the eye
Unlike most fans or kids from the 80's I didn't have the honor to watch the Transformers tv series as a kid. The only giant robot show i watched in the 90's was Power Rangers and Gundams. Fortunatly though, I got hooked on the Michael Bay live action film so I wanted to watch/play anything Transformers related. So I bought this U.K. import of the animated 1980's film. I'm not going to really critisize the features on the blue ray version. It is dissapointing not to get deleted scenes, commentary, etc. I'm going to critique the story and how they portray the characters.In my opinion this has got to be one of the best transformers films I've seen by far. The story is pretty solid and unique for it's time but it may confuse viewers of my generation at times. For example, the weapon that the Autobots use to kill Unicron is called "The Matrix". Everytime I hear that I think of the keanu reeves movie. Also, I can't help but feel that this movie was somewhat inspired by starwars at times. The transformer that is shaped like a planet reminds me of the death star, the female autobot looks like she has princess lei hair, and when they activate the matrix you can hear lightsaber sounds, and supposedly the begining of the film was suppose to start with starwars like text at the begining of the film to inform the plot to non transformers fans.One of the biggest and controversial scenes I've seen in the movie is the death of optimus prime. I heard that many kids left the theaters crying because they couldn't believe that the main character died so early in the film and in a brutal way. Seriously, if you think that the Michael Bay films are a bit violent these ones sure do pack quite a punch. Literally 15 transformers get killed in the first battle sequence of the movie. Also there are two scenes where swearing is involved, the worse is when a guy screams "OH SH@T! What will we do now?!" So be careful when showing this movie to kids. I wouldn't show it to them unless theyre 8 years old.All in all, it's a good film and it ties number 1 when the First Live action Transformers film.