I'm sure they realized that the film was merely a shill for the toy manufacturer and did not want to feed that fire in me. I had to settle for the soundtrack. Often, this was my way of experiencing films I was not allowed to see. I'd stare at the cassette cover while listening along, drawing my own versions of the characters or props featured in the cover art. Comic books were still a year off for me, so soundtracks on cassette helped to fill the void.
My peers relayed tales of profanity and graphic violence unfolding on the screen. My interest in this film was high to say the least. I begged a friend to dub a copy onto VHS. I provided him with a blank cassette and he dubbed Top Gun (1986) and Transformers: The Movie onto it for me. He also dubbed for me a tape with Summer School (1987), Alien (1979) and Crocodile Dundee (1986). This friend had a shit-ton of movies his dad had dubbed from rentals, probably somewhere near a hundred cassettes each with two or three movies.
Anyway, like most, I found the film a bit tedious though punctuated by some excitng sequences, ideas and designs. After seeing the low-quality animation afforded by the television show budget, the feature-quality animation was glorious by comparison. The animation style and the overall design sense is greatly informed by what the Japanese market was doing with shows like Gundam and Macross. The American market had very little to offer from Japanese animation, but what we had seen from their giant robot shows (Robotech) looked amazing to Western eyes. So, Transformers: The Movie also served to feed a growing hunger for their product.
The film did deliver on violence and featured a couple of cuss words, which was super cool to me at the time. Major characters from the TV show were summarily and unceremoniously dispatched within the film's opening twenty minutes. Apparently done to introduce the upcoming line of figures, the show's creators did not anticipate the audience to react so strongly to the death of main character Optimus Prime in particular. So, they brought him back to life in the show. But it wasn't the same. Optimus, along with almost all of our other Autobot friends from the show (and a few Decepticon's) had been slaughtered.
Whatever, it is a corny show (read: movie), but it continues to dazzle me with its bold choices like killing nearly the entire cast of the TV show. There was nothing else like it in the American market besides Bakshi's stuff and Heavy Metal (1981). So, Transformers filled that gap as well for kids like me who had seen the commercial for the rated R cartoon, with no chance of ever seeing it. This film depicted genocide in its opening minutes. This wasn't the detached destruction of a planet of faceless Alderaanians. They took it a step further, putting a face on the monstrous act. All in all this movie is weird. It depicts a race of cybernetic organisms alien to Earth and their adventures in war across the universe. There are perhaps two or three humans in the story and most of the action takes place on alien worlds. I love it for that reason. It is far removed from the confines of humans and Earth-bound tales. It holds the same charm in this regard as The Dark Crystal (1982). It is truly otherworldly and that is a real treasure to me. It is not a good movie, but it is a thrill to look at its bizarre depictions. You know, like Tron (1982).
