The Transformers: The Movie 20th Anniversary Edition
Twenty years down the road, the film version of a popular cartoon seems less depressing, but it still isn't what it could have been
The Transformers: The Movie 20th Anniversary Edition
Voices of Judd Nelson, Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles
Directed by Nelson Shin
Written by Ron Friedman
Original theatrical release: 1986
MSRP: $21.98
By Tasha Robinson
In one of many special featurettes on the 20th-anniversary, double-DVD release of 1986's The Transformers: The Movie, story consultant Flint Dille casually explains why the film spinoff of the popular TV series killed off so many of the series' fan-favorite characters: "We thought of the show as a toy show," he admits. "We just thought we were killing off the old product line and introducing a new product."
Actions have consequences, war has casualties, and the bad guy actually talks about killing ...
That decision horrified the Transformers fans of 1986, and Hasbro took so much flak that it hastily changed the end of its contemporaneous G.I. Joe: The Movie so that a key character, Duke, was merely wounded rather than killed in battle. But while the unceremonious murders of many well-established characters seemed cavalier and ill-planned, all the graphic deaths did give Transformers: The Movie a startlingly adult edge. It was a box-office flop when it hit theaters, but it's gradually grown in fans' memories and in reputation, becoming something of a cult, midnight-movie staple over the past two decades.
The film opens in the far-flung future of, er, 2005, with a gigantic robotic planet named Unicron attacking and devouring a smaller world of robots; shortly before his death, filmmaker Orson Welles provided Unicron's voice, in what would become his final project. As Unicron closes in on Cybertron, homeworld of the sentient, shape-changing robots known as the Transformers, the evil Decepticons have conquered the planet. But the noble Autobots, under the leadership of Optimus Prime, are about to attempt a revolution. Unfortunately, they're short on vital energy, and when Decepticon leader Megatron learns that they're vulnerable, he stages a series of raids and destroys many of them, including Prime. Still, he's mortally wounded in the process, and his longtime rival Starscream finally disposes of him and takes over leadership of the Decepticons.
Meanwhile, a few Autobot survivors, including new character Hot Rod (voiced by celebrity guest Judd Nelson), flee across the galaxy, spawning a series of running battles. And the half-dead Megatron encounters Unicron, who offers him new life in exchange for finding and destroying the Autobots' Matrix of Leadership, the one thing Unicron fears.
Many features—just not enough content
The 20th-anniversary edition of The Transformers: The Movie comes with a ton of features, including widescreen and fullscreen versions of the film; cast and crew interview featurettes and commentaries; a Pop-Up Video-style edition of the movie, with trivia provided by fans; a Japanese-only TV episode ("Scramble City") with fan commentary; tiny scraps of unused footage; TV and theatrical ads; and animated storyboards for a few scenes. It's a lot for the serious fan to explore.
Casual fans and the first-time curious can just stick with the film, which has aged unevenly but is still a decent thrill ride. The howling '80s-rock soundtrack is pretty cheesy, though the chase scene incongruously set to "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Dare to Be Stupid" is still a bit of a rush. The animation often isn't that big a step up from the original TV version, though the colors are far sharper and richer and the film's many mechanical worlds have more fiddly detail. Mostly, the filmmakers tried to give the show a sense of scale with a lot of swooping, soaring, spinning "camera" work, which makes the film's almost nonstop battles and chases fairly dizzying. The motion is often jerky or clumsy, but overall, this looks reasonably good for a 20-year-old animated movie.
And it really is disconcerting and a bit thrilling to see an '80s TV show change so that actions have consequences, war has casualties, and the bad guy actually talks about killing his enemies instead of using some euphemism. Megatron (and his upgraded version, Galvatron, voiced by Leonard Nimoy) screams "Die!" so many times in this film that it's easy to forget what a taboo any mention of death was in '80s cartoons.
Still, given the money and attention that went into this big-screen film, it's disappointing how many of the old, well-established characters go down with minimal resistance—or just never show up—in order to make room for members of Hasbro's next-generation toy line, who here seem largely interchangeable and generic. It's easy to see the film that might have been had the filmmakers concentrated on making the characters bigger and better, instead of just the explosions.
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