Dare! Dare to believe you can survive

Remember 1986?

1986 was the year that brought us the screen gems The Hitcher, Aliens, and Children of a Lesser God. 1986 is also responsible for dumping on us the baneful scourges Top Gun (Tom Cruise = Gross) and Crocodile Dundee (Linda Kozlowski in a thong... I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.).

In 1986, we also saw the sectacular of animation, The Transformers: The Movie hit theaters. This pretty much forgotten feature is an underappreciated quasi-masterpiece that my former roommate Jason--a huge anime fan who doodled Sailor Moon cuties anywhere there was blank space--saw as one of the finest examples of American animation. Jason's admiration of this film in 1997 put the retrieval function of my brain into overdive. I saw Transformers: The Movie back when it was released in 1986 and was as shocked as everyone to learn that Spike, the Autobots' human friend and occasional recipient of sweet robot love, had a foul mouth and could be provoked to exclaim, "Ah Shit! What are we gonna to do now?" However, it had been years since I had thougth about the movie, so I was unable to discuss it's artistic merit with my disappointed roommate.

Seeing the Transformers movie was so high up on my priorities' list that I finally sat down to watch it again yesterday, approimately nine years after that motivating conversation with Jason and about 20 years after I saw the film for the first time.

The Transformers: The Movie has one powerful soundtrack. Vince DiCola, contributor of song to both Stayin' Alive and Rocky IV, is in fine form with this film. The hard rocking anthems drive the story foward. The souped up version of the Transformers' theme song performed by Lion during the opening credits get our engines revved up, and the motivating tunes perfomed by then unknown (and still unknown) Stan Bush keep the movie audience's adrenaline a pumpin'. Lyrics like "You got the touch! You got the power! Yeah!" add strength and power to a film full of strength and power.

Who's in this movie? Who's in the movie? Well let tell you who's in this movie. A-list talent that lent their voices to this major motion picture.


It is a year after The Breakfast Club made him a star. In a move to prove his versatiltiy as an actor and show the world that not only can he play a high school rebel, but he can also be a convicing sports car/robot in disguise, Mr. Nelson tackles the role of a young Autobot trying to find his path and reach his full potential.


Mr. Spock tries to shed his good-guy image and becomes one of the most merciless villans to hit the big screen. Galvatron is a revamped Megatron, bigger and better and purple. He no longer needs assistance to shoot his load; he can handle it all by himself now.


The host of Unsolved Mysteries is not yet known to the young movie going crowd as the host of Unsolved Mysteries. He is an Optimus Prime wannabe who is handed the mantle of leadership after his superior's demise. Ultra Magnus is pretty worthless. Sure, he's a big semi truck with missiles, but what good is that when you are pretty worthless. He botches things up and almost costs the transfomers their home planet of Cybertron.



Mr. Welles gives voice to one of the biggest villans ever. Unicron is so big, that when he gets hungry, he has a planet for lunch. The man who gave the world Citizen Kane must've seen somthing special in this film. It was one of the last that he completed before his death in October 1985.


Nothing is sacred, so nobody is safe. Like the killing off of Janet Leigh at the beginning of Psycho and the gruesome disembowlment of Drew Barrymore in the first scene of Scream, many imporant veteran characters lose their lives very early in The Transformers: The Movie. As a kid, I was utterly taken aback to witness the annihilation of Star Scream, the traitorous fighter jet/robot in disguise Decepticon. If it happened to him, it could happen to anyone.

While watching this film, I could not help seeing similarities between it and The Matrix trilogy. I'm not making any accusations, but...

1. One of the alternate titles for The Transformers: The Movie was The Transformers: The Matrix.
2. On his deathbed, fallen leader, Optimus Prime, instructs his fellow Autobots: "Do not grieve. Soon I shall be one with the matrix."
3. After scoring an important victory against their powerful foe, the good guy transformers hold a rave to celebrate.

Like the television series before it, The Transformers: The Movie is ultra violent. (It's not bloody because robots don't have blood.) Weapons are being fired left and right. Destruction and mayhem rule the day. However, there is also just a touch of sweet robot love. The movie, of course, took it a little further than the television show. A humanoid robot trying to hook up with a dinosaur one does test the boundaries of decency in my opinion.

Well that is what I think; that is The Transformers: The Movie in a nutshell. I know, I did not give any information about the plot. I did not want to accidentally give too much away and spoil the movie since I know that you are on your way to the video store to rent it just as soon as you close your web browser.

Cheers.