Welcome back to Sci-Friday! Some 20 writers on the Substack platform are participating this week. This means that a lot of smart folks are sharing sci-fi recommendations! I’ll tag those folks so you can check out their work at the end of this piece.
Today, I want to bring you on a bit of a nostalgic journey with me to a very important movie in my childhood: Transformers: The Movie. I’m going to focus on the 1986 film I saw in the theater at age 10, then again at age 11, and then again on video several years (and then, several decades) later.
If you want to go back and check out some of my previous sci-fi recommendations, here are Time Travel Paradoxes, Five Great Sci-Fi Reads, Five Dystopian Future Films, Five Sci-Fi Comedies, and my Favorite Sci-Fi Shows ever.
If you were my age and you grew up where I did—Columbia, South Carolina—you almost certainly discovered and fell in love with the Transformers around 1984. Hasbro had just bought an innovative Japanese toy company, and they tapped the creator of Robotech, borrowing heavily from the style used there.
None of this history mattered to 9-year-old me when the toys hit the shelves in the US, but the incredible idea of a humanoid robot that could transform into a car (plane, gun, whatever) was amazing. As good as the toys were, things really kicked up a notch when Marvel Comics was asked to write a backstory, so they published a limited series of comic books.
The series of comics was incredibly successful in its own right, and so Marvel decided to continue after the limited run of four comics. Here is where I enter the scene: my first ever comic book was an issue of Transformers, given to me by someone who no longer wanted it.
I was intrigued by owning this important piece of history, as far as 10-year-old me was concerned. I wanted to collect the rest of these valuable time capsules, so this launched me down a super nerdy path of collecting comic books very seriously for the next decade or so.
Then, the TV show came out.
Few after-school rituals could beat racing home in the mid-80s to watch Transformers. Sometimes, we’d congregate at the house of one kid or the other. Sometimes, we’d break out our toys when the show was on.
Every time was an important experience, where my imagination got to run wild and gain worldbuilding inspiration for my own experiences playing with Transformers.
I was inspired by necessity and invention to create my own “transformers” out of paper, using scotch tape to hold the edges together, and creating foldable hinges. A paper robot would turn into a car through several clever (for a ten or eleven year old) manipulations.
All of this just sets the stage for the movie, but I really wanted to bring you with me there, to the cultural and personal significance for the moment the film was released.
The TV show was great when I was a kid, but it is scarcely even watchable today, even taking into account powerful nostalgia. Instead, the memories fall flat on their face, driven down by the gravity of hastily made cartoons.
The movie isn’t like that at all.
First, the animation is incredible. They really put the work in, and it’s a pleasure to watch, even today. Sometimes I get chills watching scenes like this one, where Unicron transforms for the first time from a planet into a demonic robot.
Oh yeah: cartoon characters die in this film. They also swear—maybe once or twice total, but still shocking as a kid, this added an unexpected element of realism.
But it’s the cast that really sets this film apart nowadays for me. Let’s just fly through some bullet points:
Orson Welles plays Unicron. Orson Welles! This guy singlehandedly created Citizen Kane, performed and directed Shakespeare, and probably goes down as one of the smartest humans of the 20th century.
Leonard Nimoy provides the voice for Galvatron. What an amazing villain!
Eric Idle of Monty Python fame plays Wreck-Gar, a sales-y transformer. Idle is perfect for this role and gets to showcase a little comedic talent.
Judd Nelson, Matthew Broderick, and an original song from Weird Al (“Dare to Be Stupid”) are the icing on the cake
I could go on about this movie for a lot longer, but I wanted to leave this in your hands as a plea to check out the film. With that being said, let me leave you with that Weird Al song and the scene that goes along with it:
Other Sci-Friday Folks
So today was a recommendation from me, but not a list. Most of the folks writing for Sci-Friday are likely to give you a list of recommendations within a particular subgenre or medium. I continue to be grateful for the participation of all of these folks, who have encouraged one another (and me) to keep writing about sci-fi specifically.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and are well worth checking out when you have a moment.Did you grow up with the Transformers in your life? If not, what cartoon or show really twisted you up in the same way this franchise did for me as a kid?
This movie is very well done, we tried to go back and watch the show but it just didn't hold up. They got all of the sound effects right in this one as well which is important in an animated film.
As a major Weird Al fan (my wife and I saw him live once in concert, it was amazing), I had no idea Dare to be Stupid came from this film. I kinda really want to see it now. Do you need to watch the show to get the background for the movie, or can you watch the movie on its own?
I didn't watch Transformers; my shows were Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. Being homeschooled, we got episodes from the library and so forth, until Netflix came out. I tell you what though, on a separate note, the Iron Giant movie. That *tore me up*. I haven't rewatched it to this day.