The Transformers: The Movie

An animated film that came out of the television series. The story is set years after the period the series covered. The war continues and the Autobots take heavy losses in an attack. That section at the start caused enormous argument at the time: many characters watched for years die in the first half hour. The aim was to refresh the toy line and the film does it directly. The real threat is something else: Unicron, a being the size of a planet that eats the worlds in its path. The only thing that can stop it is a matrix carried by an Autobot. The narrative is a story of generational handover: leadership changes hands and younger characters come forward. Visually the film is far more ambitious than the series; the space sequences and transformations are drawn in detail. The soundtrack is made entirely of 1980s rock. Orson Welles is among the voices; he played Unicron and it was his last work. Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson, Eric Idle and Robert Stack are also in the cast. Nelson Shin directed. It failed at the box office on release and later became the most-cited production among followers of the series. An important instalment for anyone who likes 1980s animation and follows this series. For a viewer expecting a children's film, the deaths are hard and were shattering for children at the time.