I love the 86 movie but it sometimes makes you think. Both transformers and robotech pushed the pg rating and tried for more adult like film. Both failed and bombed due to adult backlash. This makes you wonder would the transformers film have been a hit if it was aimed for kids and not full of curse words, deaths, and having the shows main hero only show up for 10 minutes of the whole movie only to kill him off leading to a backlash that forced them to bring him back the next year! (that would be like going to see the he-man movie only to have him show up for 10 minutes then die and get replaced by man at arms for rest of the movie!) Like i said i like the film but would it have been a hit it was less adult? Care bears, smurfs, pokemon, rugrats (which was a big hit with grown-ups),spongebob and the littles all had hit movies and some had sequels. Transformers could have been one of them! What do you guys think?
Compared to the Care Bears and My Little Pony movies, the GI Joe movie - basically its peers - how badly did it bomb? It did its job in wiping the slate clean and forcing old product off the shelf. Ultimately it was a vehicle to sell new toys, which it did.
I guess we'll never know. For what it's worth, I loved the 1986 film for being more adult and more akin to the comics.
Man, the 1986 movie really does keep fascinating people. I count at least three threads on the first page of TFGD.
I loved this movie beacuse of it. It wasn't anything like the TF's we were watching on TV. This is why I love G1 and season 3.
Well they murdered everybody that us as kids loved. But again that what made it cool @ the same time. Killings in a CARTOON MOVIE?!... It wasn't well advertise @ the time.
The film had so many problems that a more kid friendly without the deaths really wouldn't have caused it to smash any box office records. When parents back then took their kids to see a cartoon movie at the theater they were expecting something they couldn't get at home. So a Disney movie might have some success but too many parents like mine would say you see this stuff for free every day on TV. It's also going to be tough a sell a movie that replaces all the old characters and introduces too many replacements. Just imagine how a Sponge Bob movie would bomb if Sponge Bob, Patrick, Squidward, and Mr Crabs all got replaced by brand new characters. While there are parts of the '86 movie I enjoy it's just really badly written and it jumps around in the tone so much to just make a train wreck at points. Plus animated feature films were just in a rough period back in the 1980's lots of mistakes and failures were made until the modern formula got worked out to make films that the kids would enjoy without it being two hours of torture for the parents. In the 80's we were still a long way from things like Pixar.
Care bears did so well it saved the studio from going out of buisness (due to rock and rule bombing) and spawned two sequals. The smurfs movie was a huge hit and started the "movies based on cartoons" trend of the 80s. How bad did transformers bomb? Howard the duck made more money! Both care bears and smurfs trashed transformers! (which is really sad.)
When my Dad took me to this movie back in 86 we left the theater and had a talk about how death is permanent. He actually like the movie because it stopped sugar coating the topic of death. No going into a coma or parachuting out of a freshly exploded helicopter. This was death and death sucked. All this coming from a child psychologist.