When I was little, I always thought the theme song lyrics were “robots in the skies”, not “robots in disguise”. True story. Oh, and every time I say “Transformers”, I always have the urge to sing the word as it’s sung in the theme song, and in an 80s rock-star voice to boot. Transformaaaahs!

Anyway, I apologize if this post turns out to be less-than-awesome. I just decided about five minutes ago that I was going to do Transformers. The inspiration struck me to write about that instead of the other stuff I had planned. I’m also going to go ahead and split this into two posts, because I’m firing on all cylinders right now and I might as well use some of that energy for my seventh and final post of the Nostalgiathon. So there. (Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I can’t find any decent ones!)

So…I like Transformers. However, this is a fairly recent development and I’m hardly a hardcore fan. I enjoy the characters, and the animated movie, and some of the toys. But until last year, I was barely familiar with the franchise at all. I knew the theme song and who Optimus Prime and Megatron were (who the hell didn’t?) and that’s where it ended.

See, contrary to what you might think, I was and am a girl, and in the 80s I was more interested in Rainbow Brite and Teddy Ruxpin than robots (which should be pretty obvious if you’ve been reading this blog at all). Also, I sort of missed out on the heyday of Transformers not just because I was a little girl, but because I was about three years old when the movie came out, and after the movie, the popularity apparently took a big nosedive.

How’d I come to like Transformers when the odds say that I should hate it or at least be indifferent to it? Well, it all started with the animated movie. My fiance has fond memories of it, so I decided to watch it with him sometime last year. I also felt obligated to do so because it’s an 80s cult classic.

Needless to say, I enjoyed it immensely even though I didn’t know who the hell anybody was. I’ve been considering writing a full-fledged review of it, but I think a (relatively) brief one will suffice.

Reasons to Love Transformers: The Movie

1. The animation. It’s really good. Probably some of the best animation to come out of the 1980s. It’s flashy, colorful, and stunning at times. Everyone’s favorite characters are looking better than ever (well, before they get killed off, that is).

2. The music. The soundtrack to this movie is one of my favorite animation soundtracks ever, possibly one of my favorites period. Yes, some of the vocal songs are cheesy 80s rock tunes– okay, they’re ALL cheesy 80s rock tunes –but the score itself is not to be missed, especially if you love synth music. It fits with the movie so well and really adds a lot of atmosphere. Even a couple of the vocal songs are nice– mostly just The Touch and Dare, though. The others I could take or leave, though they do fit into the movie well enough.

3. The dialogue. This movie has better one-liners than it has any right to, being an 80s animated film based on a 30-minute toy commercial– er, I mean television show. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody; if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about.

4. The characters! I’m going to take some heat for this one from fans, probably, but I happen to like Hot Rod, Kup, and Springer a whole lot. (Note that I said Hot Rod and not Rodimus Prime.) However, Wheelie is on my shitlist same as he is on everyone else’s. He’s the Jar Jar Binks of Transformers.

Anyway, the chemistry between Hot Rod and Kup is so much fun. But I tend to like that whole “old codger versus young punk” thing. They both seemed to have so much more depth to them than some of the original guys. Not that I don’t like those guys, but you gotta admit they aren’t exactly well-rounded characters. Also, remember that when I saw the movie, I had no idea who Ratchet, Wheeljack, Ironhide or any of the other guys were, so even when they snuffed it, I was like, “Uh, okay. That sucks, I guess.” So I have a pretty different perspective than most.

5. They took this movie seriously. Aside from the silly songs and the one-liners and dumb stuff like Wheelie, this movie is serious business! They don’t pull any punches. You see Autobots and Decepticons alike get destroyed. There’s lots of darkness and danger. There are a couple of swear words. Hell, they even had the balls to kill off a beloved hero and icon. Maybe this is why it was a box-office failure– it was too far ahead of its time. Only recently has America been making animation that even comes close to being “adult”. The look and feel of it are more like what’s typical of Japanese anime than American animation.

Phew, that went on longer than I thought it would.

Stay tuned for more Transformers ramblings, coming soon!