The Four Color Media Monitor

I'd written a time or two before about the unsuccessful Transformers: The Movie cartoon from 1986, intended by Hasbro as one of the most idiotic notions for how to replace their first line of toy models with a second, wasting a lot of money on a cinematic production in the process, and thought of addressing at least one more item on the subject. 3 years ago, a film critic wrote about this at Watch to Watch, and how the film may have been quite a setback for how to market a movie-length cartoon where characters die:

Hasbro had released two series of toys by the time Transformers: The Movie was released, which included 104 characters in total. The film would mark a transition for Hasbro to start using more original designs for its toys, and with so many already being used, the company decided to kill off several of the foundational characters. The problem with this was, first, one of precedent; the Transformers syndicated series never killed off characters, and had told 65 stories that explored the identity and personalities to make even the smaller and less significant ones familiar or beloved. But second, these story choices would likely mark the first time that the child audiences that collected the toys would experience a death scene.

Certainly Disney had ventured into darker territory in the late 1970s and early ‘80s with its storytelling, and there were some live action films like E.T. that skillfully navigated perilous scenarios for their characters but arrived at safer, happier places by the end. But even (or especially) 35 years later, Optimus Prime’s death remains an astonishing spectacle in a cartoon clearly made for kids that looks a little more polished than the series it was based upon but for the most part duplicated its colors, its lighting, and its tone. I remember being shocked as a kid just that the characters used profanity for the first time, but it was nothing short of devastating to watch Prime lay on a cold slab as his vitals slow to a flat line, the blue glow of his eyes flicker out, and his body turns grey.

With a future toy line to showcase, Prime wasn’t the only Transformer who died in the film — and he wasn’t even the first: in an opening scene, Megatron and the Decepticons intersect an Autobot shuttle and they do everything to its crew except take prisoners. And later, Megatron and a few of his henchmen suffer a fate similar to his iconic adversary. But they are almost immediately transformed into their next-generation versions, where by comparison moviegoers get to watch Optimus Prime’s “soul leave his body,” as director Shin described it. It subsequently came as little surprise that critics were either baffled or appalled by the film, which they characterized as a feature-length toy ad, which of course it was. But what’s more unexpected is how unprepared the storytellers were to the backlash that ensued by killing off these iconic characters, starting with children themselves and inevitably moving on to parents furious about having to console or explain mortality after taking their children to the feature-length toy ad.

G.I. Joe: The Movie followed soon after; in fact, it was supposed to be released first, but production delays held it up, and the box office failure of Transformers: The Movie prompted them to rejigger it for direct-to-video. But those obstacles ended up giving the production time to react to the criticisms of Transformers — in particular, viewers’ profound disappointment that a beloved character died. They had similarly embarked on a throat-clearing exercise with G.I. Joe, with the plan to kill off none other than Duke, effectively the main character in the series. In the film, Duke is seriously wounded and goes into a coma, but because of Transformers: The Movie, uncredited screenwriter Buzz Dixon created replacement dialogue after what was supposed to be his death scene — which is still in the film — that first indicates he has gone into a coma, and later, that he successfully recovered from it, although he is never seen again.

After that, very few children’s oriented stories even went near topics like death, although of course they were willing to explore war, violence and destruction. Pain and fear were systematically eliminated as tools, much less consequences, for characters in kids’ shows and movies, unless they were used in the service of telling some sort of lesson. Especially in animation, when you watch a younger character get subjected to some form of violence, their reaction is almost invariably one of indifference, and often of enjoyment. In an early scene in The Angry Birds Movie, for example, Red punts a little blue bird who disturbed his sleep into the ocean, and the film makes a special effort to indicate that the little bird enjoyed the experience. Even where the character’s aggression is the cornerstone of the plot, the recipient of his rage is unbothered, and even delighted, by how he expresses it. And the original Despicable Me works overtime to highlight just how much fun Gru’s orphans are having at all times, no matter what sort of dangerous scenario his choices might have landed them all in.

I think some of the biggest mistakes, while nothing new, are how these American-made cartoons keep getting marketed almost wholesale for children's consumption. Or, for children under 16, say. And while death is one thing, the alarmingly nasty way some of the robots were junked was clearly too much even for a PG-rated cartoon, whose other grievous error was that it didn't stand on its own, and the slaughters were for commercial reasons, not artistic ones. I'm sure some people who'd seen it came to wonder if the toymakers were desensitized to violence, and the mistake the filmmakers made was assuming that, because these are robots awaiting the curtain call, they could get away with visiting jarring violence upon them. As the resulting failure and angry reactions of parents at the time made clear, that's awfully naive thinking on the producers' part. Some disgust can also be leveled at Marvel's 3-part adaptation of the movie, which saw Ultra Magnus get dismembered by Megatron-turned-Galvatron's henchmen, even if he was repaired shortly after by Wreck-Gar and his "tribe". What if any children who'd read that scene were traumatized by that too? Just because that was comics, as opposed to a cartoon proper, is no excuse. As I now recall, while Spike Witwicky and Bumblebee may have survived in the movie, in the comic miniseries, they did not, recalling that was where they got sucked into Unicron, and never reappeared for the remainder of the story. In other words, a very slapdash form of difference between comic and cartoon, that made the Marvel miniseries all the more tasteless and pointless.

And while I do appreciate that one of their producers, Ron Friedman, tried to talk Hasbro executives out of killing off Optimus at the time, something that's unclear in hindsight is whether Friedman extended the same defense to at least a few other Autobots who were dumped on the scrap pile during Megatron's attack on the craft: Ironhide, Ratchet, Brawn and Prowl, for example. Sure, it was in very poor taste to kill Optimus, but that doesn't mean the lower-ranking are expendable, and Ironhide may have suffered a worse fate than Optimus did. Those Autobots slain in the movie may have been resurrected since the turn of the century, especially when new comics continuities were established. But if Friedman did nothing to defend them back in the day as he did Optimus, that's decidedly pathetic. I will say though, it's pretty flattering a villain like Starscream was kept in the electronic afterlife for some time, recalling he reappeared as a ghost in the TV cartoon's 3rd season. But, for those Autobots who'd perished in the shoddy 1986 movie, did they ever have the same privilege of returning as robo-phantoms? Probably not. And that's decidedly problematic. A rank-and-file robot can't be considered any less valueable than the team leader, and this point is firmly valid for human and humanoid characters in pop culture too.

More recently, last year, a writer at Fatherly tried to argue in the movie's favor, which I honestly can't bring myself to do, based on how forced the whole "project" looks to me. Yet they do have something eyebrow raising to say regarding the issue of human parenthood:

...(Also, where’s Daniel’s other parent? Was there a mom? Another dad? Someone else? Was Spike a single dad?)

This is something that may have crossed my mind year ago - where's Daniel's mom? Was it the girlfriend whose name may have been Carly? Nothing's clear from what I can recall. This has got to be another flaw in some past works of fiction - you have a father figure, which is fine. But that doesn't mean the mother should be absent. Even today's woke culture doesn't seem interested in fixing said flaws with the way women see such contempt leveled at them, and how they're reduced to political tools in the process.

And in the end, this history account certainly says something about huge setbacks in creativity for animation in Hollywood - for all we know, the 1986 Transformers cartoon film may have really damaged the potential to explore tougher themes like the Japanese have long explored, in movies and TV shows that, in sharp contrast to the absurd commercial path taken by Hasbro, usually featured their own characters that had little to do with merchandise, and were anything but marketed squarely at children. Of course, failure to cultivate a more teen/adult market for animation is another embarrassment the USA industry's got to shoulder. Though the Simpsons may have changed things somewhat back in the day, much of the dreadful mentality that held back movies still remained for years after, and today, you have animators pushing wokeness upon children instead of taking the challenge of marketing the content for adults. This is exactly why the USA animation industry is still such a fiasco.

Labels: animation, golden calf of death, history, licensed products, marvel comics, violence