Transformers: The Movie (1984)

[Chedney Honks]

I don't particularly like Transformers but I watched this as a kid when I did really like them and I had great memories of it, the one time we rented the video out. Anyway, they've done a 4K release of it in the States (probably coming out over here soon enough) and I just thought fuck it. Comes in a nice little tin and I got some preorder discount and free shipping so it was like fifteen dollars or something. Edit, yeah, just seen October 25th over here and 33 quid for the same version so I got a good deal I reckon, relatively speaking. Here it is.



Anyway, I sat down to watch it and while I had to acclimate to some characters' voices and kids TV dialogue, I really rather enjoyed it. It's about 90% shooting and transforming and fighting and various states of peril and chase sections, ragging round or flying, blasting lasers, big thick synth pads and hair metal balladry. There are also about three million Transformers in it. I didn't realise they had originally intended it as an intro to the next wave of characters, without anticipating the popularity of the first lot, which is why they killed so many of them off! That definitely adds something to it, though. It feels pretty brutal for a kids' film. It's like Splinter getting hung, drawn and quartered in the first Turtles film after ten minutes, or maybe Seinfeld having a brain haemorrhage in The Pilot.

Excellent soundtrack, as I say, both tunes and sound effects. Those Transformer noises are still great, many of the voices sound cool, especially Soundwave. Some of the voice actors are very unexpected and good, such as Eric Idle and obviously Orson Welles. Blurr and the kid are quite annoying, but largely the voice work is a lot of fun. I liked Blurr as a kid from memory, so it'll just be I'm getting old. Great blaster sound effects. Animation is also pretty good. I think Toei Studio was involved. It definitely looked way better than the TV show, as you'd expect. Colours are great on the 4K HDR disc, really bold, but it probably looks equally good in HD SDR. It's not something with a shitload of colour gradation, obviously.

Anyway, I enjoyed the darker tone, the violence and the action, all the Transformers, the sense of doom and genuine threat and maybe best of all, Rodimus Prime. Utterly ridiculous name but a cool guy.

Anyone remember this? I think it's worth a revisit, with a fair warning that it's fundamentally for children.

[Chollis]

criterion collection has let itself go

[Chedney Honks]

Haha. It actually would be a great Crito.

[The Culture Bunker]

I must have first watched it when it came out on video, as I would have been surely too young (five) on it's release in 1986. I remember it making pretty much no sense at all - then about 20 years later, I saw it on VHS for a pound on Oxfam, bought it and still couldn't figure out big chunks of the plot.

[madhair60]

I really like this goofy bollocks. The Unicron sequences look incredible at times. And the music, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaVcpfncOWs

[Magnum Valentino]

Ba weep gra na weep NINIBONG?

BA WEEP GRA NA WEEP NINI BONG!

Big laugh during the incredibly gorgeous opening sequence at the use of that big comedy Hanna Barbera CHOMP sound effect. Totally misjudged.

[Chedney Honks]

Haha. I love Eric Idle's voice work in this. Such a mad, irritating effect and accent but you eventually come to really enjoy it.

[Dusty Substance]

Funnily enough, I saw Transformers: The Movie for sale in Oxfam today. Thought about getting it but it'll probably sit unwatched for years.

As a kid it was one of the best films of all time. I'd watch it over and over again. It had a bit of everything - Action, laughs, tears (when

Spoiler alert

Prime dies

[close]

). Starscream was very much a favourite in the Substance household. We seemed to love any screeching character who tried to aspire to greatness (Daffy Duck was another favourite).

In fact, this film became such a family fave, that we would refer to it simply as "The Movie" (we watched films in our house, so there was no confusion).

I watched it so many times that it almost certainly imprinted itself in my brain. One time, years after having last seen it (I would have been about 20, still living at home but my parents were away), I got drunk, then smoked a joint and had a real bad head rush, close to having a whitey I went to bed but the room was constantly spinning and all I could see was a grid. It seemed to go on for hours but I soon slept it off. This vision of a grid stuck with me for years until one night, stoned again but accustomed to the effects of weed, I re-visited The Movie and this scene stuck out as the source of my "grid vision": https://youtu.be/hzNsOGt3bHk?t=131

[ImmaculateClump]

It's "The Transformers: The Movie" according to the front of that tin.

[Dusty Substance]

It's "The Transformers: The Movie" according to the front of that tin.

Ugh. That's disgusting. Like when people who say "Star Wars: A New Hope" or "Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark".

[Small Potatoes]

I really like this goofy bollocks. The Unicron sequences look incredible at times. And the music, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaVcpfncOWs

I always loved how either the singer or the songwriter didn't really read the lyrics/script they'd been given, because he clearly sings "the evil unicorn".

[ImmaculateClump]

Ugh. That's disgusting.

It's not right. I don't like it.

The Transformers
The robots in disguise

[FredNurke]

They really do sing 'The Transformers' in the theme tune, though. Repeatedly.

[ImmaculateClump]

They seem to drop the "the" more and more as it goes on - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ5xyUWoM4U
Check this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ5xyUWoM4U&t=450s

[SteveDave]

I saw this film at the Monico (a local suburban cinema in Cardiff which is now flats) and I remember screaming my head off at the "Howard The Duck" trailer that played before it because of Jeffrey Jones face with worms/lightning coming out of it. I was an astute child.

We watched it ("The Transformers: The Movie") with our son recently and he loved and so did I. I also discovered where a friend got some lyrics for a song called "Tell Me What's Shakin'?" from.

[greenman]

Its really when Transformers let the more obvious anime influence run loose isnt it? the god monsters eating planets, weird multi faced aliens presiding over insane kangaroo courts and a high kill count rather than the safer previous Saturday morning adventures.

[Spiteface]

I believe it was done by Toei Animation, was it not? Might explain why.

It's really the only part of "Generation 1" that is as good as the nostalgia suggests amd holds up.

I arrived at this conclusion a few years ago when I watched pretty much the entire G1 animated run, even the Japanese-exclusive shows Headmasters (which basically replaces Rebirth/season 4 in Japanese continuity and kills off Optimus Prime all over again), Super God Masterforce and Victory (which is notable for having a Decepticon leader called DEATHSAURUS and a still-alive Wheeljack, because the Movie isn't canon in Japan).

Headmasters still feels like a "Season 4" to start, but as soon as most of the old favourites bugger off, it gets more and more anime-ish in feel.

[Magnum Valentino]

There was an episode of Headmasters on the DVD copy of The Movie I had and the voice acting was extremely funny. I've meant to watch more ever since but it probably wouldn't hold up

[FredNurke]

Not over 35 episodes, but there are some great compilations on Youtube. The lines "Darn that Soundwave! *yaaaaawn*" and "Fortress Maximus has come himself!" come immediately to mind.

[petercussing]

I remember being so pumped watching this as a kinder in the cinema that i unknowingly started singing out loud to the music when Hot rod and Sam are driving and hoverboarding back to base at the start and didn't realise until the row in front started turning round and looking at me

[Spiteface]

There was an episode of Headmasters on the DVD copy of The Movie I had and the voice acting was extremely funny. I've meant to watch more ever since but it probably wouldn't hold up

Ah yes, what is affectionately known as the "Singapore Dub"

The Headmasters set I have has that and the Japanese audio with subtitles. Masterforce and Victory sadly not.

They're interesting to watch, seeing characters of latter-day toys that never appeared in the western run - "Powermaster Optimus Prime" is a notable one. It ain't Optimus in Masterforce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pBXONiNA7U
So 80s anime it hurts.

[popcorn]

I had this on video as a kid and it was probably my single most-viewed film/TV thing until I was about 12. Used to watch bits of it over and over again.

It's an extremely strange film. It really is dismally cynical - as others have said, the writers have talked about how they were given clear instructions to kill off the cast to introduce the next set of toys. And it has the feeling of an entertainment product produced by a set of people who had no real idea what the fuck was going on or what they were making. But it's also wonderfully creative and odd, sort of by mistake?

It seems to take a lot of the purported appeal of the series and chuck it in the bin. The whole idea is that they're robots in disguise, they're cars and trucks and planes. But hardly any of the film is set in a human environment - it's just a weird fantastical scifi adventure, so it's scifi cars driving around alien planets and futuristic fortresses stuff. Then again, I'm not sure how much of the TF show before it made much use of the premise either, beyond the fact that it's cool the robots can turn into cars and drive around... I know the movie far better than I know any of the actual 80s TF series or comics or whatever.

The music! I do think a lot of the naff 80s synth-prog kind of kicks arse. It was made by a man called Vince DiCola ffs, goodness gracious. The Unicron theme is particularly sinister and interesting.

I wonder what made the production team decide to use hair metal. Rather than it feeling like an obvious choice made as a consequence of the time and place, it's like someone on the team just thought hair metal was badass and put it on some test footage and said hell yeah and that was that. The hair metal version of the TF theme is kind of blandified though, it's reduced to straight 4/4. By far the most interesting part of the original theme is when it does the cartoon "autobots wage their battles to" descending bit with the odd time changes and then the key change and the brief "more than meets the eye" melody.

[Magnum Valentino]

Why don't you do a fucking remix of it then Popcorn, put it out on the b-side of Smooth Criminal (Loser Mix) on Loser Records.

(Naw like I'm actually going to look up this prog version right now, never seen the OG Transformers)

[Replies From View]

I like it when they go from being a robot into being a shotgun

[Camp Tramp]

I'm surprised that Carbombya City didn't make an appearance.

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Socialist_Democratic_Federated_Republic_of_Carbombya

[Spiteface]

It's an extremely strange film. It really is dismally cynical - as others have said, the writers have talked about how they were given clear instructions to kill off the cast to introduce the next set of toys.

It gets better when you realise the only reason Spike says "Oh SHIT, what're we gonna do now???" [nb]This was actually cut out of the UK version[/nb] upon realising him and Bumblebee's plan to blow up the moonbase to kill Unicron didn't work, was purely to bump up the film's rating in America.

That one expletive made it such that parents HAD TO accompany kids into the screenings of the film, so they'd see the movie and the new toys introduced, and therefore which ones to buy for their kids that Christmas.


Marketing!

[Hobo]

I had a dvd copy that used that line over and over in an odd remix music bed.

[samadriel]

It gets better when you realise the only reason Spike says "Oh SHIT, what're we gonna do now???" [nb]This was actually cut out of the UK version[/nb]

Ahh, I always wondered why people talk about swearing in TFTM, when I'd never heard any as a little 'un.

[ErnestTakadichi]

Fuck me, I absolutely adore this. I think it was the second film I ever saw in the cinema (first was Young Sherlock Holmes, the year before) - and I'd been reading the Marvel UK comic since it started in 1984.

It's one of those things I'll watch and think, ah, that's why I like the things I like. Frankly my glasses couldn't be any more rose-tinted.

It's just insanely paced ("Decepticons, to Earth! To Cybertron! To Earth!", all in the space of about 5 minutes) it's wildly creative, and stupidly funny. The whole DARE battle/electronic music sequence is just amazing. "Come on down, Autobrat!"

Although I was only little when I saw it, I never cried about Optimus Prime dying, I guess being square in the target demographic I was too busy being hyped that even more awesome and radical toys were coming out.

[ImmaculateClump]

First film I saw at the pictures was return to oz.
Frightened the living shit out of me.
It's great!