Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Transformers - The Movie (1986)

My Rating: 30%

Now as some of you know, I have been researching as to what exactly Transformers is outside of bay's movies. So with the third film coming and to set up in possibly making a video review of all Transformer movies so far i'm going to rereview the animated movie. and there isn't much difference other than unlike bay's movies, except that this one is totally for kids.

plot: (WARNING:since it's transformers and all, and I do this with my Transformers reviews anyway, i'm going to tell the whole plot. so if you don't want anything spoiled, skip this.)It's 2006 and the Decepicons have control of Cybertron. The Autobots lead by Optimus Prime, only have footholds in Cybertron's two moons and a fortress called Autobot City on Earth. THe Deceptcons hijack an Autobot ship heading for Autobot City and attack it. During the battle, Optimus Primecomes with reinforcements but while cripples Megatron, is killed in the process. Before he dies, he makes his friend Ultra Magnus leader of the Autobots and bearer of the Matrix of Leadership saying that one day an Autobot will rise and use the Matrix to light their darkest hour. While they mourn his death, the Decepticons retreat. And as a final attempt to get rid of Megatron and become the leader of the Decepticons, Starscream convinces the Decepticons to get rid of the Decepticions that were injured in order to lighten the load for the Decepticon that's carrying them, Astrotrain, and made Megatron one of them. While Megatron drifts into space, he and his fellow beaten Decepticons bump into a planet sized transformer named Unicron who tells Megatron to destroy the Matrix of Leadership and be hsi servant in exchange for giving him and his Decepticons new bodies and a ship and not getting destroyed. And so with the new body, Megatron turned into Galvatron and started to attack the Autobots (but not before getting the rest of the Decepticions back by totally obliterating Starscream.) the fight leads the chase into space and separates the Autobots into two groups. one ends up in a world of the freaky aliens called Quintessons and also came to the misfortune of befriending a guy named Wheelie. The other group end up in a junk-yard planet full of transformers called Junkions lead by Wreck-Gar eventually Galvatron find Ultra Magnus in the Junk planet and kills him and takes the Matrix planing to use it against Unicron. The Junkions eventually became friends with the Autobots, then they repair Ultra Magnus like nothing happened and eventually the other Autobots meet up with them and so even though they have never heard of Unicron during this whole movie, they know that he's the main bad guy and so they headed off to go get them. before they get there, Galvatron attempts to use the Matrix to destroy Unicron. Unicron responds by transforming into his robot mode, eating Galvatron, and flying to Cybertron to destroy it. Autobots come in and get inside Unicron and while everybody is off with their own problems, an Autobot named Hod Rod bumps into Galvatron, who still have the Matrix, and so to fights him. Then all of the sudden, the Matrix starts glowing and then Rod Rod get a hold of it and turn into Rodimus Prime. Then he turns on the matrix which totally destroys Unicron and somehow that means the Autobots have control of Cybertron again and live happily ever after until seasons 3 and 4 of the original series which are total pieces of crap.

in a way the movie was good to watch if you want to see transformers outside of bay's movies. especially since it actually involves (more or less) with cybertron and other transformers things that have to do with them in sapce...or just all around, away from Earth. But what really kills this film is how within 30 minutes into the film, all the characters you could possibly care about, Autobot or Decepticon, are dead. Brawl, Rachet and Ironhide are killed by Megatron, Galvatron totally blasts Starscream into ashes, in my opinion Megatron and i believe Thundercracker and Skywarp really died when they turned into Galvatron and his henchmen because to me they were totally different people. And then there's the most classic as tragic death, Optimus Prime. you want to know how big his death actually was for everybody? let's put it this, it was the start where Transformers started to become "Ruined Forever" where the people who make Transformers make a mistake that causes the love for Transformers to be destroyed. Another apparent general term for it, or at least from what understand from Transformers wiki is "Childhood Rape" You see with this film, their general idea was to use this movie to get rid of the old products of toys and get in with the new. But they were entirely clueless what most characters, mostly Optimus Prime. I mean even now with Optimus there's stuff like the Nostalgia Critic making a Jesus figure out of him or fan like my friend Jimmy who often has Optimus as a profile pic and even has his religious views on his profile as "In Optimus Prime I trust." With Optimus' death just from back then, this movie ended up with result like people leaving the theater and the makers getting angry mail from parents getting all "why did you kill Optimus? my child has been in his room for two weeks crying." Like I said, Childhood Rape. Anyway, those from the original bunch that don't get killed hardly appear at all in the movie or in the show later on. That's weak...if I was a kid back then I would've wanted to see so much more of Soundwave. So for the rest of the film you are left with a whole bunch of character that are debuting in this movie that you don't give two craps about. so really, it's the fact that there still are Autobots and Decepticons fighting each other and the fact that there's some planet sized evil transformer that tries to kill them all that's...more or less the only reason left for you to see the rest of the film.

Actors/Characters: what also gets you is that a lot of new characters that we did not enjoy at all, are played by famous actors. such as Wreck-Gar who was voiced by Eric Idle (man that was shocking when i found out that he was in this movie, let me tell ya.) Wreck-Gar was just some weird transformer that only talked in TV commercials & shows which mostly didn't make sense and you wouldn't even catch what he said most of the time. and you couldn't find out because there are no subtitles for the DVD to this movie. (weak) And then there's Leonard Nimoy who did the voice of Galvatron which was nice but also proves my case on how find Megatron and Galvatron totally different characters even though it's the same person. and of course there's Unicron being all evil...oh yeah, fun fact, Unicron is voiced by Orson Welles. and then...there's Wheelie. anyone remember that little Jack@## of a decpticon Wheelie that transforms into a blue toy monster truck? that creep that was humping Megan Fox's leg? anyone? anyone? well this guy is an Autobot, and he's more annoying. so annoying that it's just the will of the writers that he gained the trust of the autobots let alone became friends with any of them.

Screenplay: here's an example of how ridiculous it is that any of the autobots (these particular ones called Dinobots) got to even trust Wheelie and also as to how bad most of the dialogue is in this movie when it comes to just the autobots. at this point in the movie, the Dinobots got separated from Kup and Hot Rod when their ship crashed on an unknown planet and this is how Wheelie jumps in:

Wheelie: Friend find, look behind.
Grimlock: Who say that?
Wheelie: Friend find, look behind! Friend find, look behind!
Grimlock: [Looks away from Wheelie]
Wheelie: You go wrong way, you fool I say.
Grimlock: [seeing Wheelie] Me Grimlock fool?
Wheelie: Get me you got, no fool you not!
[laughs]
Grimlock: Me Grimlock no like you!
[attacks Wheelie]
Wheelie: [grabs a sling shot and fires a boom that hits Grimlock's nose.]
Grimlock: why boy hit my nose?
Wheelie: Wheelie say, find friends today!
Grimlock: Me Grimlock say, we on our way!
see? how weird was that? and also bear in mind that Wheelie has this squeaky voice that was unfortunately voiced by Frank Welker. and when it came to introducing Wheelie after rescuing Kup and Hot Rod, Grimlock just instantly called him his complete friend. i mean maybe that's not the worst of it but you can tell with that one that the dialogue is mainly just bad.

Sound Effects: the sound effects are alright when it comes to transforming as stuff, but there's a lot of points were you hear something that just doesn't work, for example, there are several times were they use lightsaber sound effects for sparks and explosions...how weak is that?

Action: the action is not all that great...and in a way, it still was the highlight of the movie. one thing that just irritates me with any transformers movie or comic or tv show so far is how it gets messed up as to how a particular transformer gets hurt. which some show actually make sense as to why someone easily defeated this guy like pokemon due to their many types, you don't get to much of a specific idea. you can ssume and that's it and even then there's points where a transformer gets hurt in a way that doesn't make sense. i mean it makes sense that prime is dying when he's got holes in his stomach and stuff after getting shot a few times by Megatron, but then there's times like before Megatron tries to finish Prime off, Prime punches him one more time which send him flying off the edge and falling about what would be three stories in their point of view, which you would think it wouldn't exactly damage someone like Megatron, but they made it so that fall was enough to make him practically as close to death as Prime is so he has to be carried away from the battlefield by Soundwave. that's just ridiculous.

Music: most of the music was weirdly used. mainly on how there was nice happy 80's music even at points were Autobots are fighting for their lives. i mean the music got more serious later on in the siege of Autobot city, but still they played happy music in the beginning of that. this is practically the Battle of Pelennor Fields important that Megatron doesn't get through their defenses and they begin with music that makes it seem like it's not all that serious dozens of Decepticons are attacking Autobot city. let alone the fact that Megatron, Devastator, Starscream, Soundwave, Astrotrain, Blitzwing, Thundercracker, and so on are among them. the two ups to the music are that they made it sad and creepy when Optimus Prime died...especially since during that point, his body kinda withers which made it all the more creepy and sad. and i thought the theme for Unicron kinda made him all the more menacing when it comes to him.

so there you have it. while there's no Megan Fox, lines like "I am Megatron", or something like Devastator's nuts shown. this is still a bad movie. it's better than bay's movies in small ways but it's still bad. and that's my review for The Transformers: The Movie.

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