Transformers: The Movie [UMD Mini for PSP]

This was a great cartoon movie which connectsfrom the TV series boxset which you can buy to the movie came out just before season 4 somewhere in the 80s. I love the hit called the touch.

10/10

First of all I will admit that the level of animation is far, far superior to the frequently goof-ridden TV series and that Transformers: The Movie looks more like Akira or Ghost in the Shell than the TV show. It adds a whole new level integrity to the Transformer's universe but it's a damn shame that the story had to be crap of the lowest order and that there are still technical faults within the animation. I know there are always going to be goofs whether a movie is live-action or animated but Transformers has always had a shocking amount of them.I know that many people are going to hate for this and call me cynical but this is not really a movie. It's an 85 minute toy commercial. Orson Welles was right. Many of the Autobots and Decepticon's die (including Starscream, thank God, he truly was irritating) but are soon replaced by new characters. It's like Hasbro was subliminally telling kids to throw out the old toys and go buy new ones.Set in the unfathomably distant future of 2005, when we'll be living on the moon and skating around on hover-boards, the gobbledygook plot involves a giant planet-eating robot planet called Unicron (barely an anagram of a certain magical creature, for no reason) and his mission to destroy the 'Autobot Matrix of Leadership', which is obviously inside Optimus Prime. It begins with the Autobots and Decepticons doing their usual battle of blowing up each other's stuff but what is bugging is that in the show they rarely get hit and certainly never die if they do. But here loads of them are killed-off easily and without any particular attention. So many of them fall it's hard to keep up. The "story" moves so fast that it becomes almost completely incomprehensible.None of these new characters have the same appeal. Once Optimus Prime is dead the new leader, Ultra Magnus, doesn't yield his authority or leadership with any special flair. Megatron is left to die, while floating in the depths of space and is reconfigured/evolved by Unicron into Galvatron, who doesn't seem to be any kind of eviler, just a new toy.The Matrix of Leadership happens to be a glowing ball in Optimus Prime's chest and when Ultra Magnus get his hands on it the movie could have become a 'chase for the bland MacGuffin' kind of story. But it continues to meander and go in eccentric/weird directions. The subplot involving the junk planet and the shark-bots and the judge and jury who execute robots for being guilty AND innocent is just baffling. What the hell is all that about? And even worse is the guff with the dancing biker-type robots with the leader voiced by Eric Idle. I mean...what? Either I accidentally took an acid and went on a weird trip last night or this film is just random nonsense.The main thing that makes this film so inaccessible is the almost total exclusion of human characters. An older Spike is in it for a few seconds and his son Daniel has a bit of character development. But where is Sparkplug? Where are any other humans? About 2 minutes of it is set on earth and everything else, set in space, seems kind of alienating (pun intended). I know we've seen the Transformers battle on Earth loads of times before in the TV show but this sudden switch of locale and whole new assortment of characters made it feel like something I had no familiarity with.I realize that the transition between seasons 2 and 3 had to be steep and drastic (a 20 year story gap and loads of new toys...sorry characters) but it needs more time to develop than this and everything feels rushed and hasty with no focus on pacing, coherence or character. The constant 80s rock is kind of fun though and Vince DiCola's score is fun. I truly miss this kind of hedonistic music, it may not fit the film terribly well but it has a nice kind of nostalgia to it.Vividly animated it may well be, but I found this film to be so asinine and dumb. I can only watch it with severely lowered expectations.The Blu-ray is in 1.85:1 1080p and looks good but there's a lot of dirt inherent to the animation process. Though it is a huge step up from the old DVD, I have to be honest. The sound is in standard, non HD, Dolby 5.1. There are quite a lot of extras too, including an episode of the show (in Japanese) and an episode of Beast Wars.

Sure, the plot is paper thin but who cares? The glam rock combined with the amazing animation creates this incredible experience that anyone who has even a passing interest in transformers should absolutely check out. I plan to buy a 4K tv so I can watch in the highest quality

Despite being a HUGE Transformers fan as a kid, for one reason or another I didn't see the film on its release so have had to live with the feeling that I missed out on an important part of my youth ever since.Well, having now seen it, the good news is that the TF film is an entertaining and occasionally inspiring piece of work. The characters are solid (helped no end by the excellent voice cast) and the script is of good, if not great, quality. The film was originally shot in various non-widescreen formats and was cropped top and bottom for its cinema release and the way the makers of this DVD have transferred the print means that we see the whole film, rather than the cropped cinema version. I initially found this irritating, with large borders showing at each side of the screen, but have grown to appreciate it somewhat more over time. I nevertheless think that the film would look more cinematic and less like a TV show if the widescreen format had been preserved.The bad news is that the animation can't compete with that which kids are now used to seeing every day on the cartoon channels, often being only as sophisticated as that used in the original Transformers TV series. The sound is also a bit of a mixed bag, serving up some great sound effects but also some at times indistinct dialogue. Whether this is inherent in the master copy, or a by-product of the transfer to DVD, is unclear. The other issue I have with the film is the fact that it appears occasionally little more than a contrived way of getting rid of old characters and replacing them with new ones, maybe with pushing toy sales in mind. A number of old favourites are despatched within seconds of appearing on screen, often without saying or doing little, if anything, of value. I suppose that the film was a sort of transition piece between the old and new Transformers, so I won't blame the makers for it, and having loads of new characters would have added a sense of freshness to the franchise at the time.It's apparent from the first few minutes that the film was a work of genius when it was released back in 1986. Some of the opening scenes in particular are reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster of that period and would undoubtedly have served to make for memorable watching. The problem is that, whilst the film would have been untouchable back then, it can't really compare to what we've seen since. I doubt that many kids today would bother with it, whilst some older Transformers fans would be unable to get past its shortcomings. That's not to say that it isn't worth buying, because it is, I just can't shake the feeling that I would have appreciated it far more as a ten-year-old than I ever could today. I won't mark it down for those reasons, primarily because it was made for kids in 1986 rather than adults in 2007, but I still wish that I had seen it on its release, when I was less likely to spot its faults.

Drama, action and hard rock. What's not to love?I saw it at the cinema on its release in 1986 and I can recite the whole film and still get goosebumps from the opening scenes.PS: Who's Michael Bay?

Still holds up, shame it’s not in uhd. Music is amazing

honestly one of my favourite films from when i was growing up and seeing it again for the first time in ages just brought back so many cool memories of the transformers.