Transformers: Leave Your Brain at Home

A question was posed to me in the comments of my last post. Does the Transformers movie give an accurate description of the original characters? The answer is a bit complicated: Yes and no. First off, let me begin by saying that I enjoyed the movie for what it ended up being: a popcorn action flick.

All reincarnations of the Transformers have made changes to the characters. This includes the Beast Wars, Robots in Disguise, the Unicron Trilogy (Armada, Energon, and Cybertron), and the most current series, Transformers: Animated. That being said, the characters that best retained the personalities of their Generation 1 (or G1, refers to the original 1980s era Transformers) namesakes in the movie are Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Starscream.

It helps that Optimus was voiced by Peter Cullen, the same person who voiced him in the 80s. Bumblebee had the most character development of any of the Transformers in the film (a direct result of Steven Spielberg’s influence as Executive Producer), even though he only had a few lines of dialogue due to having a broken voice synthesizer throughout most of the film. In the original cartoon series, Starscream was always trying to take the mantle of leadership away from Megatron and claim it for himself (he briefly succeeded in the 1986 movie). There is some debate amongst fans as to whether or not some of the missiles that were fired at Megatron in the final battle of the movie came from Starscream. Supposedly we’ll find out next year when the sequel is released.

There were some “controversies” among fans, such as the flames on Optimus, not using a cab-over-engine semi, and his retractable faceplate. Others include Frank Welker not being cast in the role of Megatron, Bonecrusher not being a Constructicon, and Starscream’s “chicken legs” design. Those didn't bother me, though, and I was able to see past those controversies, and the flaws of the movie in general, and enjoy the movie for what it was.