The Transformers: The Movie (1986) Movie Review & Film summary, Cast

This was supposed to be a piece for the site Natsukashi, but a number of distractions got in the road of that auspicious event ever working out. Nonetheless, I present it here, at long last.

I am forced to face the fact that I am getting old. Not, like, Supreme Court judge old, but in the sense that I’m slipping beyond 30 with the velocity of a powerless spaceship plunging into the atmosphere. Born in the neutral zone between Gens X and Y – depending on what smart-ass article you read – I get on better with the latter, but have to acknowledge, on occasions, my loyalties to the former, when the grimy chic of Pulp Fiction or Veruca Salt’s “Seether” cuts into my brain much like Unicron’s signals to Galvatron in this film, forcing me to bow down to my true masters. It only bothers me in the sense that one is confronted by slowly but inevitably shifting cultural references.

Back when Megan Fox was a mere glint in the eye of her mother’s yoga instructor, The Transformers was a venerable ‘80s toy marketing scheme provided through some sixty-odd half-hour episodes. I often wrestle with the questions that thinkers have posed for some time, about the colonisation of the imagination by Hollywood, advertisers, and the like. I always suffer from a split of reactions to such questions. As often as such musings seem pertinent, they just as often they seem to be to include an element of chauvinism, be it cultural, intellectual, nationalistic, or even merely generational. Is an attachment to Transformers really so more stunting than an attachment to, oh, I don’t know, Biggles, or the Thunderbirds, or all the other tawdry touchstones of past youth cultures? I do wonder, however, to what degree was my mental landscape polluted by growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the most media-glutted decades in human history. Was my imagination colonised? Yes. And in the end I think that was a good thing.

I would never pretend that Transformers was a towering work of sci-fi fantasy, but it did belong to the rich, oddly ambitious first wave of Manga to arrive outside of Japan, works that first implanted the dreaded Geek chip into my brain. As a boy then, everything interesting seemed to come out of Japan. Godzilla. Monkey. Astroboy. The Macross Saga. Battle of the Planets. Voltron. Space Battleship Yamato. Ulysses 31. They were often crude and mercenary in purpose, but they also had a depth and interest in the outlandish that occasionally breached the outer edges of real mythic narrative and genre poetry. They had an honest eagerness. The recurring images were fascinating and delightful – the monstrous science-derived beasts smashing cities, the concept of smaller entities forming together to make larger ones, often to take on said monstrous beasts. Using old or humdrum technology as the shell for futuristic wizardry. The use of long plot-arcs and a firm grounding in group dynamics. These weren’t just corny, illogical power fantasies like the American superhero comics. They were inspiring because they approached adventure tropes through a high-tech lens, involving genetic engineering, space travel, robotics, the fusion of human and machine (in a rather less icky fashion than David Cronenberg was portraying it, but part of the same zeitgeist). After the monumental success of Star Wars, something was confirmed in English-speaking countries that the Japanese had known for some time, which can be expressed as a formula:

Sci-fi + action + young audience = money³.

And so, Transformers. Watching Michael Bay’s stratospherically noisy, blissfully incomprehensible film revival of put the original movie into my mind again, and I knew that at some point I’d be driven to it again. I was once glued to the screen, watching the goody Autobots combating the evil Decepticons (Dickens would have been proud of those names). When The Transformers: The Movie came along, the franchise, and its grip on the youthful imaginations of me and my friends, began to wane. The movie made a bold move to sever us from the past and make us look forward to the future. And buy the new toys. It was devastating when, twenty minutes in, Optimus Prime, Autobot leader and paternal warrior symbol for us all, died. Other deaths were barely less affecting, like those of familiar baddies like Megatron and Starscream, whose battle of egos had been one of the major pleasures of the series, in their contrasting malignancy: Megatron, tyrannical and grim; Starscream, pitiless but clownish and faintly queeny. All we had known did fairly pass away, replaced by garishly designed new characters. And yet we’d also had our sense of drama expanded out of the familiarities of kiddie fare, into the world of life-and-death struggle. This was the world of grown-ups.

Well, not that serious. The plot: Gigantic robotic intelligence Unicron (voice of Orson Welles) scours the galaxies looking for civilisations he can eat, presumably keeping out of the way of Galactus to avoid a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the ongoing war of the Autobots and the Decepticons has entered a new, deadly phase – in 2005, young lad Spike (Corey Burton), every boy’s surrogate in the show, has grown up, and is aiding Prime (Peter Cullen) and the Autobots from their bases on the moons of Cybertron, the Transformers’ home planet. They’re planning to take back their home world. But Megatron (Frank Welker) has his own plan. He captures an Autobot shuttle, eliminates the crew, and pilots it to Earth, to make a surprise raid on the Autobots’ fortress-city there. On Earth, things are peachy – there are those glittering mountains and meadows nobody can quite do like a Japanese animator. So peachy that indolent Autobot Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) likes to go fishing with Spike’s son Daniel (David Mendenhall). Hot Rod leaps into action when the Decepticons arrive, joining fellow Autobots like Arcee (Susan Blu), the sexiest non-biological being this side of a Gossip Girl cast member, the Dinobots, like by dim stalwart Grimlock (Gregg Berger), and old-timer Griff (Lionel Stander). The Decepticons nearly batter their way into the city, but Prime arrives and proves his mettle, totalling hordes of Decepticons before getting down to a to-the-death rumble with Megatron. Which proves to be the end of both of them – Megatron shoots Optimus only because of Hot Rod’s hamfisted intervention, and Optimus delivers Megatron a crushing blow. The Decepticons make their escape, and Starscream takes the opportunity to eject Megatron and other wounded warriors. Prime expires after handing over the “Matrix of Power”, a mysterious energy source that, it is prophesised, will “light our darkest hour”, to Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack), a “simple warrior” who may or may not be up to the job.

Drifting through space, Megatron and the other wrecked Decepticons are rescued and upgraded into super-bots by Unicron, who needs the Matrix of Power to be destroyed, being the one object in the universe that threatens his supremacy. Megatron’s planet-scale ego is ruffled in being enslaved by this planet-scale entity, but he is happy enough with his new design and designation as Galvatron, and his new voice provided by Leonard Nimoy. He storms Starscream’s coronation on Cybertron and shoots his traitorous minion, who memorably disintegrates into a pile of carbon shards. Galvatron leads a new attack on the Autobot city, forcing them to flee into the depths of space. Hot Rod, Griff, and the Dinobots are separated from Magnus, Arcee, and the rest. They fight their way across a strange planet ruled by weird four-faced alien dictators who rule a race of robotic “Sharkticons” and like to feed prisoners to them after superfluous trials. They escape in a ship thanks to diminutive helpful bot Wheelie, and after Grimlock impresses the Sharkticons sufficiently to make them rebel. Meanwhile, having crashed on a junkyard planet, Ultra Magnus is killed by Galvatron, having been unable to open the Matrix, and Galvatron steals away this totem, planning to blackmail Unicron with it. The inhabitants of the junk planet, cavalier robots who all speak in the voice of Eric Idle and in a language derived from Earth advertising (a self-referential touch if ever there was one) capture the rest of the Autobots, but soon prove friendly allies.

Unicron devours the Cybertronian moons and all the Autobots – and Spike – upon them, before heading to Cyberton. Galvatron tries to make him back down with the Matrix, but is only eaten for his pains – the Matrix won’t work for him either. Unicron proves to be a transformer himself, changing into a gigantic demon-bot (based on Fantasia’s Chernigov), and lays waste to Cyberton. Hot Rod’s ship crashes into Unicron’s eye, and he and the rest of the Autobots try to survive Unicron’s deadly innards. Daniel manages to save his father and other Autobots from being melted, and Hot Rod battles Galvatron, at first hopelessly outmatched. When he wrestles away the Matrix, he is transformed into the chosen leader, Rodimus Prime, and tosses Galvatron head first into space. He then opens the Matrix, which burns Unicron out from within, his head spinning away into the void as his body explodes. Rodimus declares a new age of peace and cooperation to the surviving Transformers.

It’s easy to get a laugh out of singing “The Touch”, the Stan Bush song heard first when Optimus rolls into action, and again when Hot Rod opens the Matrix. Part of that’s due to Paul Thomas Anderson’s cruel use of it in Boogie Nights, as the quintessential ‘80s pulp power-pop. One thing I had forgotten about this film is that the soundtrack is an almost ceaseless cavalcade of such music, the synthesiser beats and tenor yowls that define a window in pop-culture history. The score of Transformers: The Movie outdoes anything else for revealing how hilariously crappy that musical epoch was, and might in fact have been the first blow that started us on the path to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. No-one could pretend it was cool again. The lyrics are peppered with ludicrous bon mots like “If it’s against the law you bet I’ll break it!” and “Look for Mr Goodbar!” Say wha? Yet it’s hard not to get a little goosepimply when Hot Rod grasps the Matrix and turns the tables on Galvatron, to Bush’s wailing strains – “The Touch” does rock in its corny fashion.

And so does the film. The Arthurian tale of callow knight rising to greatness, grasping Excalibur, and turning the tide, works some classical magic, especially through the film’s relentless pace, which has real dramatic integrity and narrative energy. It’s also the rare film spin-off from a TV show that understands the difference in each medium’s narrative demands. If TV series are built around constant refrains of familiarity, films require vigorous assaults on familiar situations. The Autobots spend the bulk of the film clinging to existence, constantly assailed by superior enemies and a hostile universe. The death of Optimus leaves them anchorless, lacking a true central authority. Even Ultra Magnus proves all too vulnerable. Presuming the fan base’s familiarity with the situation, the film leaps into new territory. It steals from the first Star Wars trilogy egregiously. The flight-and-fight move out of security into the unknown comes from The Empire Strikes Back, and the finale uses Unicron as Death Star. Who Unicron is, where he comes from, and what relationship he has with the Transformers, is never dwelt on. In fact, absolutely nothing is dwelt on. The Transformers: The Movie is eighty-three minutes of hyped-up noise and colour.

But my memory did not really mislead me. The film does rocket along enjoyably, and it has a kind of reckless, fervent joie-de-vivre that’s hard to fake. To my aging mind that accommodated itself to such ambling filmmakers as Tarvkovsky, Angelopolous, and Malick, the pacing I took for granted as a kid is, in hindsight, amazing. It doesn’t breathe, or bore. The animated robot characters are better drawn – in every sense of the word – than the humans in many blockbusters these days, if in a one-note fashion. Griff is gruff and full of war stories and shaky wisdom; Hot Rod lippy but gutsy; Arcee maternal and girly-tough; Grimlock thick but lovable. The imaginative background is often unoriginal, but it’s also dynamic. The film’s stand-out feature is the vocal cast – in addition to the series regulars like Cullen and Welker, the presence of Welles, Nimoy, Stack, Stander, and Scatman Crothers, is almost bemusing. Welles barely knew what the hell it was all about. But a sense of fun had never been Welles’ lack. Stander probably loans the film the most character, with his weathered, humorous vocal work, and the dialogue has notable smart-ass snap.

My memory chiefly betrayed me in terms of the quality of animation, which, though superior to the TV show, is still not exactly, well, Fantasia, with jerky action, and a lack of shading and detailing to figures and backgrounds. But there are some impressive visions, like when Hot Rod fights off schools of robotic piranhas, and the fantastical innards of Unicron. Logic isn’t worth bringing into the equation – the lore has breadth, but not depth. Where all these robotic whatsits came from is never explained, or why they all, regardless of planet or environment, ape earthly biological forms, or why, when away from earth, they retain the forms of our technology. And the difference between the Autobots and Decepticons is never defined beyond traits – good guys noble, brave, friendly, etc; bad guys venal, cruel, and speak in huskier voices.

Was my imagination colonised? Did I buy their toys, slurp their Coke, eat their McDonalds? Yes, I did. But eventually that influence faded, and the other meanings took their place. In fact I took to heart the messages of the films I watched then, which often completely contradicted the circumstances they arose from. The Transformers: The Movie doesn’t exactly fill me with nostalgia for a more innocent world. Actually, it’s not at all innocent, either in concept or product, but it does have a kind of driving élan associated with ‘80s culture that’s entirely missing from our current over-produced, joyless blockbusters. Whenever a PT Anderson uses “The Touch”, or a Parker and Stone compose something like the soundtrack for Team America: World Police, or whenever Ben Stiller makes a movie, they are both satirising and eulogising the glorious phoniness of the youth culture anyone under forty recognises with intuitive understanding, that ‘80s world of Bon Jovi, Marty McFly and Optimus Prime. We are forever bowing their heads to another lost Eden, a Paradise from which we were expelled prematurely.