Do I Turn In My Geek Card…
…if I think Transformers: The Movie sucks?
Some context. I watched this movie in the theaters, as a kid. I was big into Transformers. Like really big. Watch all the cartoons and own the toys big. So I remember watching this as a thirteen year old, and my dad saying I was glued to the screen.
(Yeah, I was about to outgrow them shortly after.)
So recently, during the huge snowstorm I brought Transformers: The Movie into work. My coworker is also a big geek, and he was telling me about how I didn’t know what I was getting into, since he practically memorized the film. I said “come at me, bro,” and we started watching.
It was sad, because the movie is horrifically bad.
I’m not a guy who is a film snob or anything, but this was Italian science fiction film bad. As in, the story makes no sense. It’s the future (2005 to be exact) and the Autobots have allied with humanity. Meanwhile the Decepticons are plotting a raid on earth. They hijack a ship, and some surprising carnage results.
Of course, you wonder why they need to hijack a ship, because it’s not like there’s any planetary defenses, or even more than fifteen Autobots on earth. But they do. Cut to the Autobot Hotrod, fishing with Spike’s son. They notice that the ship arriving on earth is damaged, and Hot Rod fires on it, spoiling their surprise attack.
Then we have a big battle which culminates in a lot of Decepticons being maimed, and Optimus Prime dying. He passes on the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus, and crumbles into dust. Meanwhile a big planet called Unicron is trying to eat planets.
The fleeing Decepticons toss into space the battered Megatron and all the other Decepticons wounded in the fight. Unicron comes across them, and the screenwriters rip-off Marvel by having Unicron make Megatron his herald. No, really, Unicron in the entire film is a hands-on, robotic Galactus. Now turned into Galvatron, the new herald and his wolfpack of Transformers hunt the Autobots and the Matrix of Leadership, the only thing that can harm Unicron.
It sounds good, but watching it again you realize that it really is on the level of a Michael Bay film.
The art switches between competent 1980’s animation (though nowhere near the level of The Bionic Six or Silverhawks) and some really bad work. The thing that will grate you the most is that they cannot keep scale to save their lives. Unicron and Grimlock are the worst offenders, changing size relative to others frequently. Even then, the biggest upgrade to the art is more shading.
Grimlock starts out badass when he and the DInobots fight Devastator, but then is turned into an idiot for the rest of the film.
There’s a lot of clunky words, mostly from the veteran Autobot Kup. The actors seem to just dial them in every time they come across one. Like the universal greeting: Ba-weep-gra-na-weep-ninnybog. Yeah. they say this. Three times. Actually any time Kup opens his mouth you want him to shut up.
He’s not the only one. Blurr (voiced by an actor famous for talking really fast) grates on the ears. Hot Rod is bland, and overacts like mad. Leonard Nimoy does as good a job as any one possibly could, but Orson Wells as Unicron can’t overcome some ridiculous dialogue. Pretty much only the original voice actors come out sound decent. Eric Idle especially is wasted as wreck-gar
We are introduced to the stupidest transformer in history, Wheelie. He rhymes in a high-pitched metallic rasp, uses a slingshot as a weapon, and breakdances. Yes, breakdances.
And just a lot of not making sense. The Autobots flee earth for some reason, despite having no real reason to do so. After all, aren’t all their defenses there? Spike’s son Daniel is inexplicably along for the ride, despite having no reason to do so. Unicron likes to call Galvatron back home to berate him for letting the Autobots go despite him being much closer to them at the time than he was later. Megatron has to reach down for a hidden pistol to shoot Optimus with, despite his transformed mode being a gun. Lots of things like this.
No really, it’s a mess. This isn’t just being hypercritical, because I had no reason to when rewatching it. This was discovering something I liked as a kid was really, really bad.
Pretty much there were three things that were good about it:
The soundtrack, which was very eighties. It’s better to listen to outside of the movie though, as it doesn’t always match the action.
The battle on earth, which was surprisingly violent and grim
Arcee.
found at http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/summer-wonderfest-2010-exclusive-resin-arcee-kit/19326/
Yeah, admit it. She was hot. Many a budding otaku discovered robot girls back in the eighties due to her. The roots of 2-D is better than 3-D run deep. Anyways.
Still, it’s sad to realize something you liked so much as a kid is, well, crap. Especially when “You’ve Got the Touch” is a geek anthem. You realize how much of geek culture is transitory and dependent on its time to be considered good. When the time passes, and the culture changes, you have to face facts that what you liked sucked. Not everything is like that, but it’s a little sad at how many popular things actually are. Another example that sparked this post was the PlayStation game Parappa the Rapper. Legendary in its time, but picking it up now I realize the game is virtually unplayable due to a horrible gameplay system that gives no indication when the correct time to hit a button is.
Is there anything you once loved that time showed was worse than you thought?
