Review of The Transformers: The Movie (1986) by Gaelan D — 05 Jan 2009

Transformers: the Movie was dense. Kids were forced to watch a pretty reasonable reflection of chaotic mise-en-scene for a chaotic war foray. This movie captures the feeling of battle better than any movie I've seen besides obviously Saving Private Ryan.

Kids were confronted with absurd death caused through folly, cold murdner, perversion of justice ("ïnnocent!" screams the judge to the hanging man.), the innocent being called to greatness at times of adversity (a kid has to survive the same gauntlet as giant transforming robots and has to save his father), diplomacy, respect of one's elders, sacrificing one's self in certain death against an insurmountable foe, redemption (the man who truly killed Optimus Prime is called to lead the autobots), so on and so forth.

Apparently it had big words, words that you don't hear in modern children's movies. 'Dubious' is dubiously advance for children, apparently. The animation is involved; despite being hand-drawn, I've never seen a CG scene that crunches that much effort. We can display each individually moving hair on a blue furry animal, sure, but damn if I've ever seen so much work to make a complicated mechanical structure move smoothly.

I can forgive the two main flaws of the story, that of a terrible 80s-metal soundtrack (though songs were appropriate to the context and tended to provide positive messages) and the idea that a fresh young robot, never seen before, can rise to the top of planetary leadership.

That being said, the Matrix of leadership functions as the mandate of heaven. So it makes sense after all (though it could have been made more explicit.).