The Transformers: The Movie (condensed)

Guest Week II continues…

Before Keanu Reeves ever uttered “Whoa,” obsessive fans were glomming onto a completely different Matrix.

This movie would have been much more palatable if it had not suffered from the dreaded Dark Crystal Syndrome: every other line in the movie referenced a prophecy that the Autobot Matrix of Leadership would “light our darkest hour.” Combine that with the youthful incompetence of Hot Rod (played incongruously by Judd Nelson) and you have a formula plot lifted straight from the first chapter of Foreshadowing For Dummies.

A true fan, of course, would overlook this minor failing and would instead savour the lavish battle scenes, inside humor, and the completely eclectic voice talent roster that greatly simplified all future “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” games. (At least Orson Welles—magnificent as the voice of the monstrous Unicron—exited on a high note; pity poor Raul Julia, his last film was Street Fighter: The Movie.)

Anime fans would point out smugly that Transformers: The Movie is almost scene-for-scene identical with SF Shinseiki Lensman; of course, the latter has the same annoying plot holes with none of the tongue-in-cheek humor, so the competition boils down to which sucks more. Transformers fans can take solace in something else, for parody is the ultimate compliment: seeing the Unicron transformation scene so lovingly mocked in Spaceballs was pleasing indeed.

Anyway, so here’s the comic. Not sure I like the flat shading or the retro-Peter-Max-style heavy strokes. As James Lileks remarked, it brings to mind the noisome efflux from the Sid and Marty Kroft crap factory. I probably should’ve stuck with stick figures…