Is it just me, or is Transformers: The Movie the franchise's peak? - novathak1976

Is it just now me, or is Transformers: The Pic the franchise's peak?

(Image credit: Shout! Manufacturing plant, Platform Entertainment)

It shouldn't have worked. In the early '80s, toy giant Hasbro launched their "robots in disguise" via a triple terror of comics, a Television receiver series and action figures. The jump to the big screen in 1986 was simply the next stone's throw in a marketing master plan. Likewise, The Transformers: The Movie's decision to kill uncomplete the characters was undoubtedly a cynical plot to innovate new toys.

Still, it formed the film into a ferocious and unflinching masterpiece that the franchise has yet to surpass. For make no mistake: 'Formers '86 is – in the words of uberfan/expert Chris McFeely – "an unrelenting end-fest". Start as information technology means to go on with megabot Unicron eating an entire world, it comprises 84 minutes of genocide, executions and straight-up murder as fan faves are unceremoniously taken out.

The pièce de résistance? Autobot drawing card Optimus Prime brutally dead by Megatron. Following reports that some kiddie viewers found Prime's demise overwhelming, one producer later admitted they went too farther. Or did they? In reality it gave young 'uns a lens for looking at tough topics – corresponding war and mortality - in a safe space. At uni I secure with a friend over our shared love of the film, and when he died a few years later it continued to speak to me with its dear honesty.

Bumblebee (2018) — (Image credit: Paramount)

The story's dramatic work developments attention deficit hyperactivity disorder much-needed weight unit: a quality too often absent from Michael Bay's live-action adaps, which cente carnage at the expense of character. Even 2018's Bumblebee – which punished many of Bay's excesses and is largely considered the best of the bunch up – can't touch the heart-wrench of Judd Nelson's Hot Rod and his journeying to redemption.

And speaking of the cast, whatsoever movie that likewise boasts Leonard Nimoy and Orson Orson Welles (who completed his carrying into action American Samoa Unicron just years before qualifying away) demands respect. Add to this composer Vince DiCola – of Rocky IV fame – laying pour down thick '80s synths and you've got the ideal marriage of aesthetic fizz and Shakespearean gravitas.

Of course, the unusual 'Formers feature their moments, but there's an unblinking clarity to the '86 version (which will encounter a 4K UHD release later this calendar month) that makes it the unsurpassed past a Cybertronian sea mile. Or is it just me?