Transformers, humanoid robots that can transform into vehicles or planes, are divided between the good—the Autobots—and the evil ones—the Decepticons. The Decepticons, led by Megatron, attack the Autobot City on Earth, and in a serious clash, the Autobot leader Optimus Prime is wounded and dies, giving his Matrix box inside of his body to his successor, Ultra Magnus. A wounded Megatron is thrown into space like trash by Starscream, but is found by a giant robot-planet entity called Unicron. After reviving him in a new body, Megatron becomes Galvatron, since Unicron wants him to find the Matrix from the Autobots, which poses a threat. In an attack on their spaceships, the Autobots are scattered on several planets. Galvatron kills Ultra Magnus, while Unicron transforms into a giant robot. The Autobot Hot Rod crashes into Unicron and uses the Matrix to destroy it.
While not as good as some fans make it out to be, the feature length animated film of "The Transformers" is still a sufficiently entertaining and exciting flick that works thanks to its 80s flair and nostalgia. The story is a tad too convoluted, rushed and all over the place, starting in medias res, without any kind of introduction to its characters or setting, and thus the viewers must either have prior knowledge from "The Transformers" animated TV show or they will be "lost" in the midst of all this, yet basically the story follows the typical 'good vs. evil' concept, with the two Transformers, the Autobots and Decepticons battling each other. What is surprising is that there are only two human characters in the entire film—the kid Daniel and his father, though even they are only reduced to a footnote—while the entire rest is made up out of the robot protagonists, making this truly a movie about the Transformers. The movie is unusually serious and gritty—the protagonist, Optimus Prime, dies already halfway into the film—with only a couple of moments with some humor (upon returning with new superpowers, Megatron kills and disintegrates the robot who betrayed him, Starscream, and crushes its crown, adding: "Does anybody else want to step into his shoes?"; upon landing on a garbage planet, Daniel comments how they are on a "junkyard capital of the Universe"), yet this does not help that much in giving the movie weight or integrity, since it sometimes drifts into very chaotic subplots. There is overall some charm in this 'rump' edition, filled with incredible voice cast (from Robert Stack as Ultra Magnus up to Orson Welles (!) as the villain cyborg-planet entity Unicron) and some outburst of fantastic music, one of which is the fabulous song "Dare" by Stan Bush, in which the kid is driving in the Transformers car up on the hill to greet a landing spaceship, which offers some pure escapist bliss and joy.
Grade:++
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