50 Things I love about The Transformers: The Movie (part 1) (1-5)

50 Things I love about The Transformers: The Movie (part 1) (1-5)

Since many people enjoyed my 50 things I loved about Return of the Jedi, I figured I’d give the same treatment to a movie I’ve really enjoyed from my childhood. I’ve already reviewed the movie, but this will give me a chance to dig further into what makes this movie important to most children growing up in the 80s.

I am going to go through these with more detail than my Jedi one. So, I will only post 5 at a time. Enjoy…

1. Optimus Prime dying: Yes, this was the point when most boys (some girls) were shocked to discover that their favorite childhood hero died near the beginning of the movie. It took a lot of balls to kill him off and then introduce a whole new group of heroes, then replace him with an Emo Autobot. Yes, I cried when Prime died in the movie. It still shocks me today! (They would later bring Prime back in the show.)

2. It is the year 2005: This nearly shocked me as much as Prime dying. The creators of the film decided to jump ahead nearly 20 years in the future. Instead of an Earth based story, we now had a whole galaxy to tell stories in. The tone of the film was certainly more sci-fi. We also learn that the Autobot, during the 20 years, lost Cybertron, and were losing the war. This was another ballsy move by the people behind the movie. The jump ahead gave them enough space to introduce new characters without introductions. (Hey, they showed during the gap between the second season and the movie.) Too bad, our real 2005 didn’t turn out this way.

3. Director Nelson Shin: Listening to this guy in the commentary, you can tell he loves his work in the movie. He’s very proud of the work his team did. Toei Animation followed Mr. Shin’s leadership and made the movie feel bigger than the show. Shin is also one of the few South Korea directors to have one of his films to open both in North Korea and South Korea.

4. Vince DiCola’s music: With a mixture of rock and techno, the movie’s music completely stood out from the music that was used on the first two seasons of the show. His autobot theme is very good, as well as his music used in the Death of Optimus Prime. However, his best theme was by far the Unicron theme. (The best use of it is during the opening.)

5. The Transformers (Theme) by Lion: I loved this rocked out version of the main theme. (However, there is an unused remixed version using DiCola’s "Autobot/Decepticon Battle" theme, with Lion’s lyrics.)

So, what does Unicron do when he can’t eat a full planet? Does he place the remaining portions of the planet in a giant Ziploc bag?