First of all I will admit that the level of animation is far, far superior to the frequently goof-ridden TV series and that Transformers: The Movie looks more like Akira or Ghost in the Shell than the TV show. It adds a whole new level integrity to the Transformer's universe but it's a damn shame that the story had to be crap of the lowest order and that there are still technical faults within the animation. I know there are always going to be goofs whether a movie is live-action or animated but Transformers has always had a shocking amount of them.
I know that many people are going to hate for this and call me cynical but this is not really a movie. It's an 85 minute toy commercial. Orson Welles was right. Many of the Autobots and Decepticon's die (including Starscream, thank God, he truly was irritating) but are soon replaced by new characters. It's like Hasbro was subliminally telling kids to throw out the old toys and go buy new ones.
Set in the unfathomably distant future of 2005, when we'll be living on the moon and skating around on hover-boards, the gobbledygook plot involves a giant planet-eating robot planet called Unicron (barely an anagram of a certain magical creature, for no reason) and his mission to destroy the 'Autobot Matrix of Leadership', which is obviously inside Optimus Prime. It begins with the Autobots and Decepticons doing their usual battle of blowing up each other's stuff but what is bugging is that in the show they rarely get hit and certainly never die if they do. But here loads of them are killed-off easily and without any particular attention. So many of them fall it's hard to keep up. The "story" moves so fast that it becomes almost completely incomprehensible.
None of these new characters have the same appeal. Once Optimus Prime is dead the new leader, Ultra Magnus, doesn't yield his authority or leadership with any special flair. Megatron is left to die, while floating in the depths of space and is reconfigured/evolved by Unicron into Galvatron, who doesn't seem to be any kind of eviler, just a new toy.
The Matrix of Leadership happens to be a glowing ball in Optimus Prime's chest and when Ultra Magnus get his hands on it the movie could have become a 'chase for the bland MacGuffin' kind of story. But it continues to meander and go in eccentric/weird directions. The subplot involving the junk planet and the shark-bots and the judge and jury who execute robots for being guilty AND innocent is just baffling. What the hell is all that about? And even worse is the guff with the dancing biker-type robots with the leader voiced by Eric Idle. I mean...what? Either I accidentally took an acid and went on a weird trip last night or this film is just random nonsense.
The main thing that makes this film so inaccessible is the almost total exclusion of human characters. An older Spike is in it for a few seconds and his son Daniel has a bit of character development. But where is Sparkplug? Where are any other humans? About 2 minutes of it is set on earth and everything else, set in space, seems kind of alienating (pun intended). I know we've seen the Transformers battle on Earth loads of times before in the TV show but this sudden switch of locale and whole new assortment of characters made it feel like something I had no familiarity with.
I realize that the transition between seasons 2 and 3 had to be steep and drastic (a 20 year story gap and loads of new toys...sorry characters) but it needs more time to develop than this and everything feels rushed and hasty with no focus on pacing, coherence or character. The constant 80s rock is kind of fun though and Vince DiCola's score is fun. I truly miss this kind of hedonistic music, it may not fit the film terribly well but it has a nice kind of nostalgia to it.
Vividly animated it may well be, but I found this film to be so asinine and dumb. I can only watch it with severely lowered expectations.
I know that many people are going to hate for this and call me cynical but this is not really a movie. It's an 85 minute toy commercial. Orson Welles was right. Many of the Autobots and Decepticon's die (including Starscream, thank God, he truly was irritating) but are soon replaced by new characters. It's like Hasbro was subliminally telling kids to throw out the old toys and go buy new ones.
Set in the unfathomably distant future of 2005, when we'll be living on the moon and skating around on hover-boards, the gobbledygook plot involves a giant planet-eating robot planet called Unicron (barely an anagram of a certain magical creature, for no reason) and his mission to destroy the 'Autobot Matrix of Leadership', which is obviously inside Optimus Prime. It begins with the Autobots and Decepticons doing their usual battle of blowing up each other's stuff but what is bugging is that in the show they rarely get hit and certainly never die if they do. But here loads of them are killed-off easily and without any particular attention. So many of them fall it's hard to keep up. The "story" moves so fast that it becomes almost completely incomprehensible.
None of these new characters have the same appeal. Once Optimus Prime is dead the new leader, Ultra Magnus, doesn't yield his authority or leadership with any special flair. Megatron is left to die, while floating in the depths of space and is reconfigured/evolved by Unicron into Galvatron, who doesn't seem to be any kind of eviler, just a new toy.
The Matrix of Leadership happens to be a glowing ball in Optimus Prime's chest and when Ultra Magnus get his hands on it the movie could have become a 'chase for the bland MacGuffin' kind of story. But it continues to meander and go in eccentric/weird directions. The subplot involving the junk planet and the shark-bots and the judge and jury who execute robots for being guilty AND innocent is just baffling. What the hell is all that about? And even worse is the guff with the dancing biker-type robots with the leader voiced by Eric Idle. I mean...what? Either I accidentally took an acid and went on a weird trip last night or this film is just random nonsense.
The main thing that makes this film so inaccessible is the almost total exclusion of human characters. An older Spike is in it for a few seconds and his son Daniel has a bit of character development. But where is Sparkplug? Where are any other humans? About 2 minutes of it is set on earth and everything else, set in space, seems kind of alienating (pun intended). I know we've seen the Transformers battle on Earth loads of times before in the TV show but this sudden switch of locale and whole new assortment of characters made it feel like something I had no familiarity with.
I realize that the transition between seasons 2 and 3 had to be steep and drastic (a 20 year story gap and loads of new toys...sorry characters) but it needs more time to develop than this and everything feels rushed and hasty with no focus on pacing, coherence or character. The constant 80s rock is kind of fun though and Vince DiCola's score is fun. I truly miss this kind of hedonistic music, it may not fit the film terribly well but it has a nice kind of nostalgia to it.
Vividly animated it may well be, but I found this film to be so asinine and dumb. I can only watch it with severely lowered expectations.