The Transformers: The Movie opened in the US on August 8, 1986 (December 5, 1986, in the UK), and it 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 help attract an audience. They were possibly unknown and wasted on most of the kids who went to see it. This was also Orson Welles’ final acting role—he recorded his lines just five days 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.
The Decepticons hijack an Autobot shuttle to use 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 Cybertron 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 movies 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. 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, as they apparently had things planned.
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. What parent would want to take their kid to see a film where their heroes get shot to pieces, sometimes pretty graphically?
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Something else that can’t have helped the numbers is that 1986 was 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 deaths of our beloved toys and heroes, the film is a fairly solid story 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.
He is 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. We all knew he would never be the next leader after Optimus, didn’t we…?
But that didn’t stop my childhood obsession with the franchise, which included comics, duvet and pillow sets, school stationery, rucksacks, lunchboxes, trainers, endless t-shirts, storybooks, audiobooks, and videos. It is still a franchise we love today, and there is undoubtedly much more to come.
