G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)

 "I hope you both get fleas!"

The previous year, the creators of thisfilm gave us Transformers: The Movie. It was, for a great big toy advert, genuinely quite good for what it was. The script and the dialogue were genuinely good for trhe kind of thing it was. I loved it as a kid. I appreciate it now, load of old tosh that it is.

Ten year old me also loved this. Forty-five year old me, while being regularly hit by blasts of nostalgia, can appreciate that this film, which went straight to video, just isn't very good.

I'm British, so therefore we have the complex Action Force/G.I. Joe thing. Let's not go there. Instread, let us acjnowledge that G.I. Joe belongs to Larry Hama. His superb and lengthy run on the comic book is THE true version. The cartoon was rubbish, full of silly fantasy elements. Yeah, like this. I mean, the baddies are a hidden civilisation with some silly Graham Hancock origin, with a science based on organics, who plot to use space spores to reduce humanity to mindless snakes. This is not the sort of gritty, witty stuff that the esteemed Mr Hama would write.

Also, the focus on Lt Falcon is unmerited- given the stakes, what does he matter? Also, the new trainee Joes I barely remember, hinting that the film must have come out when the toys were experiencing a drop in sales. 

The animation is superb, very anime, very active camera angles. But the characterisation, dialogue and most of the voice acting are shocking. Compared to Transformers: The Movie, this is very poor. Yes, there's a good set piece with Pythona. Yes, Burgess Meredith is always charismatic. But this is a tragic misfire, whatever ten year old me may think.

Transformers: The Movie (1986)

"Bah weep graahah weep ni ni bong."

I was born in 1977. Thus I care nothing for anything other than what is now called "Generation One". I'm firm in my belief, having rewatched bits as an adult, that the TV cartoon was casually tossed away crap, far inferior to the comics which were the true carriers of the flame. And, being British, I'm lucky enough to have been blessed with Simon Furman from early on- we got Target: 2006. And yet this film (comics canon!) is a huge part of my childhood, watched and rewatched many times. This time I watch with a critical eye- and no little trepidation.

So is it actually any good if you strip away the nostalgia? Well, yes, much as its roots as a cynical advert for toys are far more visible to me at forty-one than they were at nine. It has a truly awesome soundtrack, for one thing, and opening titles that, at one point, seem suspiciously to be channelling Tom Baker era Doctor Who title sequence tunnel. It has Orson Bloody Welles, for another. Unicron is, of course, blatantly based on Galactus, and for someone supposed to be planet-sized his scale compared to various Transformers isn't very convincing. But yes, destroying a world at the start creates a certain epic scale.

This film was, of course, planned far earlier than 1986, so the deaths of so many early Autobots- Prowl, Ironhide and Brawn among them- seems very cynical. Kids, all your favourite toys are dead. Now get your parents to buy some new ones. And why does this Decepticon attack happen to suddenly kill loads of Autobots where countless previous attacks haven't?

Anyway, we get a big cinematic battle for Autobot City- which evokes the toy Metroplex without actually being it- and the umpteenth epic battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron which this time happens to result in a dead Oppy (awww!), who promptly hands over the Creation Matrix to wet drip Ultra Magnus, and a badly injured Megatron  Then, inside a bizarrely large Astrotrain, a load of injured Deceptcons are jettisoned- the ever-awesome Starscream (Chris Latta was a legend) gets rid of Megatron, of course, but also, I spotted, Bombshell, Skywarp, Thundercracker and Shrapnel, at least. So we have Unicron upgrading Megatron to the much tougher Galvatron and his voice from Frank Welker to the much more famous Leonard Nimoy; not sure how this works diagetically.

Anyway, we get a few set pieces and some picaresque adventure on various planets inhabited by sentient robots. (Is this because the Singularity eventually happens within every technological civilisation and life is ultimately replaced by AI? I'm overthinking this, aren't I?) This gives us a chance to highlight new character such as Springer (who clearly has the hots for poor Arcee), and especially Hot Rod and Kup, who are in the shops now, kids. It also gives us the ridiculous idea of the TV-talking Junkions, silly dancing, Eric Idle and Weird Al Yankovic, so it's not all bad, even if that stupid "me Grimlock" way of talking for the Dinobots is utterly cringeworthy.

The ending, with Hot Rod becoming the Autobot messiah, is obviously lifted straight from all them legends about young Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone, but his defeat of first Galvatron and then Unicron is deeply satisfying, even if it also inexplicably leads to a sudden Cybertronian utopia. Have all the Decepticons been ethnically cleansed off screen or something?

This film is at once very, very silly, extremely cynical and deeply awesome all at once. I loved every frame in spite of everything.