Transformers The Movie (1986) 30th Anniversary:
So it was the mythical summer of 1986 and I was 8-about-to-turn-9 and "The Transformers" were my world, but my childhood world was crumbling around me as my parents were going through a nasty divorce, my father was fighting for custody of me, he and I moved out of the home I grew up in until that point and as much as my father did to make this time period not be horrible for me (frequent trips to the pizza parlor/arcade, a toy store shopping spree on my birthday) for some reason when The Transformers started advertising that a movie was being made and shown in theaters I never got a chance to see this when it hit theaters that summer.
So 30 years removed, and as a 39 year old guy I revisited this movie (and have so every few years anyway) and took off the rose tinted glasses to just give it an honest review. The movie is cheese. Good, fun cheese, but it's flawed. It always has been, but I guess nostalgia gets in the way of seeing flaws. I'm 39 now, as I said, and my father would have been 31 when this came out. And honestly, if my father did take me to see this film I wonder.. would he have picked up on some of the biggest flaws as he sat there in a theatre watching this with me? I could just imagine him thinking: "So I'm a dad and I just took my kid to see a movie based on these toys that he really loves and they kill each other and there's heavy metal music, and one of the guys in this movie swears."
So the negatives: 80's heavy metal is the primary score for this film. Did they go with heavy metal because robots? Beloved characters die. It's been said and written that they just did this to phase out characters in the retail toy line. The writing has some iffy moments. For instant: they're in space and they need to jettison weight or they'll run out of fuel before getting to point b from point a in one scene. THEY'RE IN SPACE. I know this line was written so a few characters can be dropped in space to later become new characters. But come on. I guess at the time 8-9 year olds wouldn't care or pick up on that unless they're smart or they're watching the movie with their dads. Also, the movie does bite off Star Wars quite a bit. I mean the big threat in this movie is a gigantic planet destroying planet. And I just wonder why they felt the need to have a character randomly swear? I mean it was also the decade that decided one of the most violent movie franchises of the time "Rambo" could be given a toy-line and animated series for kids...
The positives. The music. Yes, I said earlier it's cheesy 80's heavy metal, but it's kind of bad ass. There's also a Weird Al song that is literally the best Devo song not written by Devo. The other iconic song from this movie was resurrected/paid homage to in the 1997 film Boogie Nights in an iconic scene with Marl Wahlberg. Who oddly enough is now in the Michael Bay version of The Transformers films. The voice actors that took a pay check in this film are actually a pretty good list of actors when you think about it: Orson Wells as the planet destroying planet (in his last role) Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson, Eric Idle, Robert Stack, Scatman Crothers (who actually voiced his character when the show first aired anyway), and so on. The animation is good in parts, a lot better for obvious reasons then the animation we got in the TV version of the series. And despite the storyline biting off Star Wars at time the movie has it's place in the mythology and history of the series..
Anyway, I ended up turning 9, living with my dad, eventually was able to rent a copy of this to finally see (they edited out the swear for the home video rental version) the series came to an end and we all moved on until we became adults with Nostalgia and eBay.