This next piece of info is going to shock the world to its core. Volcanoes will be razed from the sea and drown the world in magma. Mothers will kill their babies in the crib like vipers in the night then drink their blood. Holy people the planet over will shed their vestments and denounce the presence of a higher power before running off of cliffs into the sea like the glorified lemmings they are. All of this will happen when I say the following: before today, I’d never seen Transformers: the Movie. Sorry to end the world like that, but I couldn’t hide my terrible secret anymore…
Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to slaughtering this sacred cow before somebody tries to revoke my geek license, shall we? If I could just find my high powered bolt gun and sledgehammer…
For anyone who may have forgotten what the movie’s about (either thanks to age or swimming through a haze of sweet gray smoke since the last time you’ve seen it) or for the two other people who were with me in having never seen the movie before today, here’s the Kwik-E-Mart version: the virtuous Autobots (several of which aren’t even automobiles…) and the nefarious Decepticons are conflicting alien robot racess from the planet Cybertron whose civil war has since spilled over to our sleepy little marble of Earth. The movie picks up in the year 2005. The Decepticons have taken over Cybertron, but the remaining Autobot armies continue to play underdog resistance group against their long time foes. Things come to a head though when the groups’ leaders Optimus Prime (Autobot) and Megatron (Decepticon) finally have their last big hurrah and face each other in ‘bot-on-‘bot mortal combat. Thanks to impetuous Autbot Hot Rod though, Megatron blows a few sizable holes into Optimus before Prime tosses Megatron’s tin plated ass down a ravine. While the Autobots bid a fond farewell to their leader, the big guy passes on the all powerful Autobot artifact known as the Matrix of Leadership (think of it as their Excalibur) to his second-in-command Ultra Magnus before his paint job turns black and gray and his warranty expires. As for Megatron, his power hungry second-in-command Starscream dumps the bastard’s ass out of their space born retreat ship and leaves him to float in the blackness of the void for eternity so he can take control of the Decepticons.
And all this is only the first 30 minutes.
As all this is happening, we’re introduced to the equivalent of a Transformers deity: Unicron. Despite being no more than two letters away from sharing his name with a unicorn, Unicron does not in fact turn into a cybernetic horse with a magic horn. What does he turn into? Well, you know how the Transformers turn into cars and jet fighters and ghetto blasters and vibrators and shit? Well, if the fucking Death Star was a Transformer, it would be Unicron. The guy floats around space eating moons and planets and turning everything into fuel to keep running his ass around to other planets so he can continue the cycle. Marvel Comics fanboys and fangirls take note: he’s a combination of Galactus and Ego the Living Planet. Anyway, this monster is targeting Cybertron for his next meal, but the only thing ol’ Uni fears is the Matrix of Leadership… for whatever unexplained reason. As such, he salvages Megatron and few other Decepticon cast offs and upgrades them new hardware to make them his emissaries, turning Megatron into Galvatron: meaning he now has a new paint job, a larger and much pointier helmet and turns into a laser canon now instead of a handgun… how he managed to shrink his giant robot mass down into a handgun never made any fucking sense to me anyway.
And so, the rest of the movie follows Galvatron as he wastes his previous dissenters and leads his new army in search of Ultra Magnus, the Matrix (“down the rabbit hole”) and the rest of the good guy supporting cast. Speaking of which, in response to the Unicron situation, we now have two groups of Autobots to follow: one of which crash lands on a planet of primitive, beastly Transformers and the other of which lands on the planet Junk, which is nothing but a giant scrap yard… whereas, if it were made today, a planet named Junk would be the home of those vibrator Transformers mentioned before. Both sides deal with conflict on either orb (including a giant judicial egg robot with five faces and a race of Road Warrior type Transformers whose language consists of commercial buzz phrases and whose battle song is Weird Al Yankovich’s “Dare to Be Stupid”…) and before it’s all said and done, Ultra Magnus gets blown all the shit and Megatron Galvatron makes off with the Matrix, blinging it out on a length of chain and intending to use it to make Unicron bend to his will. This of course goes all wrong and one pissed off Unicron takes robot form, bringing Hell down to Cybertron and forcing the Autobots and Decepticons to swarm their common enemy like those sentient toys in Small Soldiers trying to pick a fight with Godzilla. It turns out Hot Rod was meant to be the next holder of the Matrix and it evolves him into a souped-up garbage truck named Rodimus Prime. Unicron gets blowed up from the insides and the day is saved for end credits everywhere to roll with reckless abandon and a song in their hearts… namely a cover of the Transformers theme as played by Lion… yeah, I don’t know who they are either… though this article brings a few interesting tidbits about the group to light.
And now, let the complaints begin! First things first, the soundtrack is abominable. Yes, I’m sorry kids, but a lot of ‘80s music sucked and the shit staining this soundtrack is no different. From the bad cover of the classic Transformers theme (that sounds like something Dio would do while on Prozac) to the confusing use of “Dare to Be Stupid” during a big fight scene (what, they couldn’t Devo or some other similarly sounding experimental electronica group to put something up instead?) to the ear-bleeding “The Touch” that ruins every scene it plays over (sorry guys, I know a lot of people have fond memories of this song thanks to this movie, but IT’S SHIT!), if I never hear this soundtrack again it’ll still be too damn soon. Stan Bush, you’re on notice. Keep it in your pants or you’re done. Next up: voice-acting and pointless nonsense!
It’s obvious that Judd Nelson was only used for Hot Rod because of his popularity with the John Hughes crowd, as the man does not nor has he ever had a discernable voice. Exhibit ‘A’: This is the only time the man’s done voice work. I rest my case. As for Leonard Nimoy, though the man has a recognizable voice and a built in cult following to go with it, why the Hell was he used for Galvatron? Seriously, when I hear Nimoy’s voice I either think of Spock or the delightful musings of “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” (only three feet tall!), not a genocidal robot that turns into a laser canon. Besides, this movie segued into the third season of the series and they knew they wouldn’t have Nimoy back to do Galvatron’s voice, so what the fuck?! And what’s the deal with Eric Idle (and airplane food)? Between Idle’s already thick accent, the digitization of his voice into “robot mode” and the fact that his character Wreck-Gar only spoke in broken sound bytes from TV commercials, I couldn’t tell what he was fucking saying without subtitles half the time! Why bother? Seriously, I’m asking. Why? As for Orson Welles, I has no problem with him voicing Unicron and I understand he was probably just trying to pay his rent like everyone else at this point, but it’s just sad that the man who played Citizen Kane had to end his career on such a low note. It’s almost as sad as Bela Lugosi becoming a morphine addict and dying during shooting for Plan 9 From Outer Space…
Being a big animated commercial for toys, I’m not going to be too harsh with the head slapping moments. It’s not high drama and though I could definitely see it being more palatable in smaller, episode-length doses, watching it as one long action sequence with such a large cast that the only thing differentiating them at time is the color of their paint jobs (and of course Arcee, who has the distinction of being the first Tranformer with… tits) gets repetitive. There are two moments that I’d like to address though: Optimus Prime died because Megatron shot him several times. It was impossible to save him and his spark was snuffed. Not even an hour later, Ultra Magnus is blown to pieces defending the Matrix from Galvatron… and is easily re-assembled and turned back on by Wreck-Gar and his salvage yard grease monkeys… seriously guys, how many times should be forced to say “what the fuck!?” while watching a 90 minute movie? My other in-movie unhappiness came from the introduction of the character known as Wheelie, whose sole purpose is to lead the Dinobots (because you can’t have a new Transformers toy line without the Dinobots!) into a cavalry rescue of our imperiled heroes. It’s not so much the lack of purpose of Wheelie that bothered me, he just reminded me of Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur while he was riding around on Grimlock’s neck and I hate anything that reminds me of Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur… Enough with the bashing though, let’s try to find a few diamonds amidst all this roughage.
As a fan of the third season of “Transformers”, I enjoy the movie because it helps establish what happened after season 2 and before season 3. I loved watching season 3 back in the days when the Sci-Fi Channel used to run it daily in the mornings before school and always wondered who the Hell these so-called Transformers were, why there was a moon-sized Transformer head floating around in space, and what had happened to Optimus and the majority of the other ‘bots I’d grown up with a few years earlier. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I understand it all now and feel like a sizeable gap of my geek life has been properly spackled. It introduced a number of new characters and locales that would go on to further development in the series and, again, as a fan of the stories that came out of this movie, I can appreciate that... though that's not a technical achievement on the part of the movie, so I don't know if it really deserves any points for that. Also, it was good to catch up with all my old pals from Cybertron, and genuinely upsetting to watch a number of them actually killed in an attempt to make the movie legitimate. It’s weird because you watch a number of Autobots gunned down early on and as you watch the lights of their eye fade out in close up, it’s like the writers are telling all the fans, “Oh yeah, we’re fucking serious and you better be ready to have your world rattled, damn it! Take that!” and that’s when it settles in that this is more than just another episode of the series. Interesting and I think my inner child might’ve suffered from minor mental trauma as a result.
Don’t think me a snob. I can enjoy a good stupid movie as much as the next guy (Ghost Rider anyone?), but maybe I just can’t get behind Transformers: the Movie because I lack the childhood bias that goes along with it. I’m not saying such a bias is a bad thing, as I gladly make note of in both of my Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reviews, but I guess I just missed the boat with this one and I’m coming into it 20 years too late to approach it with the magic and sense of wonder that’s required to really get the full effect… and no, not Wreckx-N-Effect, so scrap that now before it goes any further! You know that if you say their name three times they’ll appear in your home and rape all your house plants!
