Transformers - The Movie (Animated) (DVD)

...The basic premise of the Transformers was thus: they were robots which could transform into vehicles. Neat, huh? Well I think so. I used to love the Transformers show (though I remember it from re-runs), and my love for the show almost rivaled my love for that other legendary 80’s kids TV classic, ‘Thundercats’. Now there was a show. Anyway, the Transformers toys took off all over the world and became the No. 1 toy which children would scrawl in ...
...detail. The storyline of the Transformers TV series revolved around two separate kinds of robots living on the planet Cybertron – the heroic Autobots, led by the magnificent Optimus Prime (hero, icon, leader, cool dude) and the evil Decepticons, led by the maniacal Megatron (nasty, evil, bad, bad, bad man errrr robot, sorry). The Autobots and the Decepticons had been fighting for years for control over their home planet with little success. However, ... more

It would be the best pub quiz question ever. Surely. ‘What was screen legend Orson Welles’ last movie?’. Come on, you must know it! Come on! Give up? Well actually Well actually THIS is the last movie to feature Orson Welles before his death in 1985. Betcha didn’t know that one huh?

**EDIT: I have since been informed that this wasn't Orson Welles' last film. Drat it. But still, it's his PENULTIMATE film, so remember that if it ever comes up in a pub quiz!**

‘Transformers’ the TV series premiered in 1984 and was an instant smash hit in the US, the UK and Japan. It became something of a global phenomenon, largely as a result of the toys which accompanied the series. The basic premise of the Transformers was thus: they were robots which could transform into vehicles. Neat, huh? Well I think so. I used to love the Transformers show (though I remember it from re-runs), and my love for the show almost rivaled my love for that other legendary 80’s kids TV classic, ‘Thundercats’. Now there was a show. Anyway, the Transformers toys took off all over the world and became the No. 1 toy which children would scrawl in their best spidery joined-up handwriting on their letters to Santa Claus and this undoubtedly contributed to the success of the TV series. The toys, therefore, would transform from your standard robot toy into a car or a plane or whatever else (one transformed into a gun… cool…) which guaranteed hours of fun.

Some background detail. The storyline of the Transformers TV series revolved around two separate kinds of robots living on the planet Cybertron – the heroic Autobots, led by the magnificent Optimus Prime (hero, icon, leader, cool dude) and the evil Decepticons, led by the maniacal Megatron (nasty, evil, bad, bad, bad man errrr robot, sorry). The Autobots and the Decepticons had been fighting for years for control over their home planet with little success. However, the TV series opened with them taking their fight from Cybertron to our wonderful little planet of Earth. Now, if you were anything like me you would have wondered why the heck they would want to come to Earth. I mean, they live on this fantastic planet with the coolest name imaginable (if there was a referendum to change the name of Earth to something I’d sure as heck vote for Cybertron, how cool a name is that?) and they travel the entire universe to come to our tiny little planet. Anyway… the TV series was highly entertaining, if a little poorly animated, and dealt with both tribes of Transformers trying to get back to Cybertron and collecting enough Energon cubes to fuel the ride home. Now, doesn’t ‘Energon’ sound so much better than our fuels?

A cool thing about the Transformers was that (with a few minor exceptions with a few minor characters) the Autobots took the form of cars and couldn’t fly while the Decepticons, being the sly dogs that they are, appropriated the forms of jets, thus enabling them to fly around the place, a distinct advantage over their Autobot enemies. You’d think that that would guarantee victory, wouldn’t you, but no, the clumsy, stupid Decepticons would be foiled by the most stupid of things or some calamitous twist of events or Megatron or one of his cronies not killing the Autobots when they had a chance. It’s the old James Bond syndrome – why the heck would you want to waste time thinking up an imaginative, creative way for your arch-foe to die when you could just shoot them? If Megatron was half as evil as his reputation would suggest then he would have blasted several holes in Optimus Prime before the end of season one. But then I suppose that wouldn’t have made for a very satisfying TV show for kids, would it, having their idol killed off? Wait and see…

Okay, so to the movie. The movie picks up some time after the TV series and we are told that the Decepticons have conquered the planet of Cybertron (they finally got their act together it seems) and the Autobots are planning a major assault on their several moonbases surrounding Cybertron. They also have a neat little place called Autobot City on Earth, but we’ll get to that soon enough. Oh yeah, while this is going on there’s a giant Transformer called Unicron (who transforms into a PLANET, yup, no wussy little Ford Fiesta for him) who is going around the universe eating planets. Why he does this is never explained, but I guess if you’re the size of a planet then you must be permanently hungry, so I can see where Unicron’s coming from. And that’s where Orson Welles comes in, the man who lived the later years of his life the size of a planet playing a planet… how worryingly ironic.

I won’t give away too much of the plot, I promise. Anyway, the Decepticons are able to hijack an Autobot run the Autobot City on Earth (thanks majorly to the piss poor security on their moonbase which apparently allows Decepticons and any old Tom, Dick or Harry to roam around unchecked, spying on the Autobots and their plans). This for me was a shocking part of the film, barely ten minutes in and we see the Decepticons tear the Autobots asunder. For the first time we see Autobots actually killed! Imagine how alarming this was to a child who had become these robots biggest fan! It is obvious that the producers of the movie were keen to make some kind of break between the TV series and the movie – no character was ever killed off in the series and here we see Autobots coming under heavy fire – four Autobots slaughtered in a matter of seconds. This is powerful stuff for kids. One Autobot, Prowl (who transformed into a police car and was the Autobot strategist) was killed and then we see fire and smoke emerging from his mouth and eyes before he slumps to the ground. Nice. Another, Ironhide, is shot down by several Decepticons before making a last-ditch attempt to stop Megatron, the result of which is him having his head blown off. Another, Brawn, supposedly the toughest of the Autobots, goes down after being shot in the shoulder… Brawn, you let the side down there, mate. The attack was of particular devastation to me as three of my favourite characters, Prowl, Ironhide and Ratchet (I never cared for Brawn) were summarily killed on the spot!

Cut to Autobot City where we are introduced to a variety of new characters, including Prime’s deputy Ultra Magnus, along with the fast-talking Blurr, Springer, Hot Rod (voiced by Judd Nelson), Kup, the female Autobot Arcee, Perceptor (who transforms into a microscope, how novel and how utterly useless in battle), Blaster (who transforms into – get this – a radio) and the human Daniel, who spends the entire movie annoying the heck out of the audience. Autobot City is literally blitzed and we see the once mighty city devastated and destroyed. Autobot City now looks like Dresden during World War Two, and two more old characters, Wheeljack and Windcharger, are bumped off during the battle. But wait, hope is at hand! Here comes Optimus Prime!

Prime saves the day and turns the tide of the battle but at a major price. Him and Megatron have a titanic clash which exposes Prime’s too trusting nature when he is delayed by Megatron’s pleading, only for Megatron to pick up a gun and blast Prime into oblivion. Well, almost. Summoning up his last reserves of strength, Prime finishes off Megatron before slumping to the ground, critically wounded. So in the space of roughly half an hour the status quo is completely changed – both sides have suffered tremendous casualties, both leaders are vanquished and the Decepticons are forced into retreat.

We see the stark difference between the Autobots and the Decepticons in the manner in which they deal with their wounded. The Autobots gather around the fatally wounded Prime in his last moments, while the Decepticons jettison their wounded brothers to make room on the shuttle home, including Megatron. Enter Unicron and the set-up for the rest of the movie. Unicron transforms Megatron into the even more menacing Galvatron and gives the other ‘dead’ Decepticons new bodies. The rest of the movie, which I shan’t detail as I think I’ve taken the plot far enough, deals with the Decepticons pursuing the Autobot Matrix of leadership, which Prime has carried and passed on to Ultra Magnus, on orders from Unicron, as the Matrix is the only thing that can defeat him.

While the animation in this film is still far from perfect, it is vastly superior to the television series, which was prone to animation and continuity glitches. The storyline is intense, engaging and involving. Witnessing characters we had followed over the years of the TV series just being killed off in so easy a manner, characters who had dominated the TV series (the four characters killed in the shuttle were key characters in the series) just being done away with was hard to comprehend. The death of Optimus Prime was also a shock and a sad moment of the movie, as Prime dies and the colour fades from his eyes and then his whole body goes grey. By and large, the new Autobots that are introduced during the movie are pretty cool and even though this is the first time we see a lot of them we become instantly familiar with them and come to like them just as we did the old guys (though the memory of Ironhide will live on in my heart). Kup, an old warhorse much in the vein of Ironhide, is especially entertaining, such as when he is telling the forever-wonderful Dinobots about his battles with the ‘Petro-rabbits on Alpha 9’. Arcee varies from being a decent Autobot warrior to reverting to being a damsel in distress permanently in need of being rescued. Other new characters, such as Blurr and Wheelie, leave you wondering if they were running low on ideas, though Daniel, the human, is far and away the most annoying character chiefly because he serves no real purpose other than to have a kid in it so that children watching it can put themselves in his place. Other than that, he’s a whiny brat who the Autobots should probably have jettisoned into space… There is the strong sense that the execution of the old characters was purely for commercial purposes, in order to bring a line of new action figures. The influx of new characters would cause problems when the TV series resumed, as it heralded an age of constant new characters, and kids would be hard-pressed to follow the show and remember all the new characters names as well as fork out the cash for the toys, and the show would indeed fold under its own weight after a few more years.

The soundtrack, by Stan Bush (who?) is fantastic, so totally 80’s hair metal, overflowing with cheese. Look out especially for novelties like ‘The Touch’ and ‘Dare’, which are absolutely fantastic songs which Van Halen would be proud of. The character voices are also faultless. As well as the aforementioned Welles, this movie also features the vocal talents of Scatman Crothers (Jazz), Eric Idle (Wreck-Gar), Judd Nelson (Hot Rod), Leonard Nimoy (Galvatron) and Robert Stack (Ultra Magnus). Quite a stellar cast it seems. The movie is at times relentlessly dark, which is completely unlike the happy-go-lucky-let’s-go-find-some-Energon tone of the TV series, but it undoubtedly works. In fact, this is a darn fine movie. If this were a live action movie it would be up there with ‘Braveheart’ and its ilk in the epic category.

Critics really dislike this film, saying that it is poorly animated, the plot is terrible and the score is too heavy. But who ever gave a damn about what the critics have thought? Half of them haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about anyway. Yes, the plot can meader on times (a long stretch devoted to the planet Quintesson being one example) and the animation isn’t perfect (this is 1986, remember) but as far as being a piece of storytelling which can entertain all ages, this is fantastic, absolutely phenomenal, and surely one of the best children’s movies of all time which goes deeper than being JUST a children’s movie. Timeless.

Coincidentally, this movie is set in the year 2005. I am already storing up supplies for the Decepticon attack. 

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