The Original Transformers: More than meets the Eye?

It's been some while since I posted anything in this blog, largely due to fatigue. I'm so tired right now that I don't even have the time to snarkily apologize to the dozen or so loyal readers not compelled by blood ties or need to read this blog.

At any rate, let me share an interesting article by Slate writer John Swansburg on Why the original Transformers movie is better than Michael Bay's, a title that will live on in my short term memory as one of the most artlessly, but laudably blunt feature articles ever to come from Slate writer John Swansburg on the original Transformers movie. While Swansburg has, as of this writing, yet to construct, even upon revision, a coherent argument regarding the merits of the original Transformers movie with the one by Michael Bay, I appreciate his insights on how the death of Optimus Prime in the former was a significant event for teenagers of all stripes:

Only in our wildest dreams did we think that the show might celebrate its liberation from network television by letting loose with a curse word. And only in our scariest nightmares would we have imagined that a mere 20 minutes into the movie, Optimus Prime, the most beloved of Autobots, would be killed by Megatron.

To use a phrase I learned the day I saw Transformers, "Oh, shit!" No one ever died in these shows. Even in G.I. Joe, a cartoon about a special U.S. Army strike force, no Rattler was ever shot down without the pilot first safely ejecting. But in the Transformers movie, the death toll was jaw-dropping. More than a dozen marquee characters are dispatched in the film, among them one of my personal favorites, Starscream, the Decepticon malcontent always scheming to relieve Megatron of his command.

Despite my poor understanding, at the time, of the even more gruesome reality of a media-generated wave of crass consumerism, I was genuinely touched by Prime's sacrifice, and was drawn in eagerly to the rather quaint storyline that detailed the Autobots' quest for a successor. Swansburg goes on:

It's funny to listen to the filmmakers on the DVD talk sheepishly about killing off all of those characters, Prime in particular. They genuinely regret it. But in watching the movie again as a grown-up, you realize that Hasbro's profit motive had the unintended consequence of forcing the movie to tell a much more sophisticated story than might otherwise have been possible. With Prime off to the great scrapheap in the sky by the end of the first act, the movie becomes one about finding a leader who can take on Prime's mantle and defeat not just Megatron, but also Orson Welles' Unicron, eating his way through the galaxy. And in a nice mythic twist, Prime's successor turns out to be an Autobot no one—not even Prime—thought it would be.

Despite the technological innovations that allow the spectacle that is Michael Bay's Transformers to become a reality, some people still prefer the mythic permanence of the water and ink stained cels in, funny enough, Orson Welles' Transformers.

Photo Credits:
Poster of The Transformers - The Movie (20th Anniversary Special Edition) (1986) comes courtesy of Amazon.