‘The Transformers: The Movie’: 35 Years Later

August 8, 2021

My life was changed considerably in December 1984. My Uncle Brian and Auntie Joan had popped around to exchange Christmas pleasantries with my folks and to give a 6-year-old me a little present. I asked them, years later, why they’d picked that toy, that particular toy, to give me and, disappointingly, there was no real reason. It just looked interesting, apparently. That tiny toy was Huffer. In Transformers parlance: a Generation 1, Series 1, Autobot Minicar. I was hooked.

Huffer transformed from a small truck – about the size, or thereabouts, of my Hot Wheels and Corgi cars – to a not-much-taller robot with weird silver hands. I didn’t have any of his other friends or enemies, but wanted to know more. Thanks to my Mum and one of my brothers, Huffer was joined, in 1985, by Grimlock, then Soundwave (with Buzzsaw the cassette tape), and the floodgates opened. Then came the Marvel UK comic – initially reprinting the Marvel US Transformers comic but, running more frequently, they also had to include back-up strips and Transformers stories written by the Marvel UK talent (such as Simon Furman, who is the absolute go-to writer for anything Transformers to this day).

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At some point, I discovered the cartoon series. This was a hard won affair. Over here in the UK, the cartoons weren’t run in a complete episode block. They were serialised, in painful 4-6 minute sections, on a kid’s breakfast TV show (WACaday – a weekday spin-off of a Saturday morning show, Wide Awake Club), that either relied on you being on the same school holidays as wherever the show was being broadcast from, or trusting they’d air each episode segment at the same time each day so your VCR would capture the show – that is if you even had a VCR! So, for a good while over here, the cartoon could only be digested in tiny, broken up, and often confusing, sections until the initial “Arrival From Cybertron,” the “More Than Meets the Eye” arc, hit retail VHS in the UK in 1986.

And then news of the movie began to seep through…

The Transformers: The Movie opened in the US on August 8, 1986 (December 5, 1986, in the UK), and… didn’t actually do very well, unfortunately. From a budget of between $5-$6 million, the return from the US alone was just $5.8 million. Even the big names thrown at the voice acting work (Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Idle, Judd Nelson, joining series regulars such as Peter Cullen and Frank Welker) didn’t exactly help in attracting an audience, and were possibly unknown and wasted on the majority of the kids who went to see it. This was also Orson Welles’ final acting role – he recorded his lines just five day before he passed away on October 10, 1985.

Set 20 years in the future, in 2005, the movie opens with a warning shot of serious intent as the giant, planet-sized, monster Unicron devours a world full of living, breathing beings just to fuel itself before heading off on its merry way to parts unknown, for now. We then find out the war between the Autobots and Decepticons isn’t going great for the Autobots. Then the Decepticons hijack an Autobot shuttle with the intention of using it as somewhat of a Trojan horse to launch an assault on the Autobot base on Earth. Much fighting ensues, and we discover Unicron has plans to eat Cyberton if the Decepticons don’t deliver the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to him, and on we go from there. Oh, and did I mention all the Autobots on that hijacked shuttle were brutally killed?

Of course, back in those days, whilst being the ideal target audience and slap in the eye of the consumerist storm, I wasn’t to know that the cartoons, and movie, were primarily just commercials to push the toy line. That’s why five original, series 1, Autobots are killed off within the first 10 minutes of the film on board that shuttle, and even more Autobots and Decepticons not long after that. Despite many injuries, there were never any deaths in the TV series, but Hasbro execs wanted some of the old toys to be killed off to make way for the 1986, series 3, toy line. So the new figures would take centre stage.

The pinnacle, most memorable, of these deaths is Optimus Prime himself. I’ve only cried three times in the cinema, so few that they’re memorable. The first time was when E.T. seemingly died in E.T., the third was when Uncle Ben died in the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film (it wasn’t long after my Dad had died, so I was going through some things…) and the second time was when Optimus Prime died. According to a 2019 interview with screenwriter Ron Friedman on Den of Geek, he tried to talk Hasbro out of killing Optimus Prime in the movie. Prime was the “…heroic father figure…” of the Autobots. Hasbro ignored that warning for they had things planned, apparently. Needless to say, killing Prime backfired massively and in 1987, Prime was back in the TV cartoon and back in toy form by 1988. The damage to the movie was already done, though. I mean, what parent would want to take their kid to see a film where their heroes get shot to pieces, sometimes pretty graphically?

Something else which can’t have helped the numbers is that 1986 was literally swamped with movies. In the months leading up to Transformers being released we had the likes of Short Circuit, Space Camp, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Karate Kid Part 2, Labyrinth, The Adventures of Milo and Otis, The Great Mouse Detective, Flight of the Navigator and, I suppose, at a push, Howard the Duck, to name a few. By the time Transformers hit the silver screen, a lot of cash had already been spent on cinema tickets.

Beyond the actual deaths of our beloved toys and heroes, the film is a fairly solid story, when compared to what we fans were used to in the cartoons and comics. It paves the way for future series’ of the TV show and introduces some good characters, especially the likes of Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime, Kup, Blur and Arcee. Galvatron continues to kick arse in the momentum of his previous form as Megatron and Ultra Magnus is, well… possibly the weakest character, arguably. Supposedly an experienced soldier and commander, but with the charisma of a wet fish and, let’s be honest, he gets his backside handed to him in the movie, so he can’t be all that great. I think we all knew he was never going to be the next leader after Optimus, didn’t we…?

But what of me and my obsession – which, at one point, saw me banned from talking about the return of Optimus Prime on a 1988 family holiday? By the end of the ’80s and into the early ’90s, I had most of the entire run of Marvel UK Transformers comics which, thanks to the back-up strips, had also paved the way for my addiction to US comics in general. I had Transformers wallpaper in my bedroom, the duvet and pillow sets, school stationary, rucksacks, lunchboxes, trainers, endless t-shirts, storybooks, audio books, and videos. By the time I moved my stuff out of my parent’s house, the actual toy collection filled a wardrobe – a massive set compared to what my friends had, but quite modest when you look at some fan collections. I even have a comprehensive guide book to all the ‘vintage’ figures that I’ve made use of in researching this piece, and 7 versions of the movie (VHS, 4 DVDs, 1 Blu-Ray, and a digital copy). I still watch it every so often, though I continue to get something caught in my eye when Optimus shuffles off his mortal coil. I make sure nobody notices.

My lasting thought on my entire affair with Transformers to this day is simply this: Thank the gods my Uncle and Auntie didn’t buy me a Gobot!