Though I grew up playing with and watching "Transformers" for whatever reason, the animated film I knew only from reputation and hadn't actually seen. I watched it recently, and found to be well made, if a little confusing (as you might imagine given that it's supposed to sit between a couple of seasons of the show).
Unicron (Orson Welles) a giant, planet devouring, robot awakens, and heads for Cybertron and the Matrix of Leaderhip, the only weapon that can destroy him. The Matrix currently sits within Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) leader of the Autobots, whose war with the Decepticons has become a galaxy spanning conflict - even arriving on Earth.
I liked the look for the film, the animation has naturally dated somewhat in the 34 years since it came out, but the style gives me a nice nostalgia buzz. The sound effects too, including that iconic transforming noise are good, but the music, particularly the licenced stuff is generally pretty awful.
The trouble though is that the films plot exposes that troubled writing process that it went through. It's not so much a film, as a collection of scenes, some of which bare little association to the overall plot, but do conveniently pad out the run time (I'm looking at you shark/robot planet). Also despite the death of Optimus Prime being quite effecting at the time, now it's hard not to have at least one eye on the idea that the whole film is about freshening up the roster and creating some new toys to sell.
It's a nice nostalgia buzz for those there at the time, but I can't imagine it has much to offer any younger viewers.
Unicron (Orson Welles) a giant, planet devouring, robot awakens, and heads for Cybertron and the Matrix of Leaderhip, the only weapon that can destroy him. The Matrix currently sits within Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) leader of the Autobots, whose war with the Decepticons has become a galaxy spanning conflict - even arriving on Earth.
I liked the look for the film, the animation has naturally dated somewhat in the 34 years since it came out, but the style gives me a nice nostalgia buzz. The sound effects too, including that iconic transforming noise are good, but the music, particularly the licenced stuff is generally pretty awful.
The trouble though is that the films plot exposes that troubled writing process that it went through. It's not so much a film, as a collection of scenes, some of which bare little association to the overall plot, but do conveniently pad out the run time (I'm looking at you shark/robot planet). Also despite the death of Optimus Prime being quite effecting at the time, now it's hard not to have at least one eye on the idea that the whole film is about freshening up the roster and creating some new toys to sell.
It's a nice nostalgia buzz for those there at the time, but I can't imagine it has much to offer any younger viewers.