"One shall stand, one shall fall"...because Hot Rod is a friggin' moron. My poor Dad, who wouldn't know an Autobot from an autocrat, had to suffer through The Transformers: The Movie when it came out back in 1986. Me, I was nine years old and if it transformed I was into it. Transformers, Go-Bots
, whatever. For a lot of kids my age back then, seeing this movie on the big screen was like a religious experience. It was the first time most of us saw the toys we played with in live-action in a movie theater like that. All of my favorites were there front and center and larger than life: Ultra Magnus, Soundwave, Starscream. It was incredible. The cruel realities of such violence were also visited upon us in a way not many kids were prepared for, when the seemingly invincible Optimus Prime was finally bested and killed by his nemesis Megatron.Transformers: The Movie is so good even to this day it trumps anything Michael Bay will ever give us in his live-action He used Optimus's death in his movie and found a way to sap it of it's power and meaning by removing any hint of character from all of the Transformers. The way Optimus is revered by his brethren and feared by Megatron is never portrayed to the degree it needed to be. Bay should've watched this film a few more times and taken closer notes.
