[9] The soundtrack comprises electronic music composed by Vince DiCola and songs from rock and heavy metal acts including Stan Bush and "Weird Al" Yankovic.
[10] After a Decepticon assault devastates Autobot City, Optimus Prime wins a deadly one-on-one duel with Megatron, but ultimately sustains fatal injuries in the encounter.
The Autobots are hunted across the galaxy by Unicron, a planet-sized Transformer intending to consume Cybertron and who transfigures Megatron to become the enslaved Galvatron.
Hasbro's exclusively toy-focused agenda demanded a product refresh, to be contrived by the on-screen death of many prominent starring characters, at the protest of some creators of the film and TV series.
At the time of its release, the film underperformed at the box-office and received generally negative reviews for its plot and violent deaths, while praising the animation, voice acting and score.
Optimus passes the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus, telling him that its power will light the Autobots' darkest hour, and dies.
The Autobots find Ultra Magnus' body and are attacked by the native Junkions led by Wreck-Gar, who had hidden when Galvatron arrived with his forces.
With the Decepticons in disarray, the Autobots celebrate the war's end and the retaking of their home planet while Unicron's severed head orbits Cybertron.
Victor Caroli serves as narrator, while Norman Alden, Scatman Crothers, Regis Cordic, Stanley Jones, Jack Angel, Roger C. Carmel, Michael Bell, Clive Revill, Hal Rayle, and Don Messick play minor roles.
Slate reported that his "voice was apparently so weak by the time he made his recording that technicians needed to run it through a synthesizer to salvage it".
[6][26] Box office returns were booming across the industry, but several other small young distribution companies were similarly failing due to bulk production of many cheap films.
[6] Furthermore, The Transformers was reportedly "lost in an already-crowded summer lineup" including Short Circuit, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Labyrinth, Big Trouble in Little China, The Karate Kid: Part II, Aliens, Howard the Duck, Stand by Me, Flight of the Navigator, and The Fly.
The film was originally released in 1987 on VHS,[32][better source needed] Betamax, and LaserDisc in North America by Family Home Entertainment.
[34][35] The company released the film on DVD on November 7, 2000, with a newly remastered print based on the US version, and restores Spike's swear.
[37] Following Rhino's home video rights to Sunbow's catalog expiring, Sony Wonder released a two-disc 20th-anniversary special edition on November 7, 2006.
The extras include several audio commentaries, newly produced behind-the-scenes featurettes, storyboards, commercials, and an episode from Transformers: Victory – "Scramble City: Mobilization".
Its extras include many from the Remastered edition, plus fan commentary, a fan-made trailer, interviews with Peter Cullen and Flint Dille, and the "Scramble City" OVA.
On January 25, 2001, Pioneer LDC released the film on Region 2 DVD with Japanese and English audio (which was presented in the UK version).
Many perceived a thin but darkly violent plot appealing only to children, based on blatant advertisement, unintelligible action and supposedly lookalike characters.
The day after release, Caryn James of The New York Times wrote: "While all this action may captivate young children, the animation is not spectacular enough to dazzle adults, and the Transformers have few truly human elements to lure parents along, even when their voices are supplied by well-known actors.
"[8] Scott Cain of the Atlanta Constitution reported a "packed theater", but complained that "as a jaundiced adult", he "never had the slightest clue as to what was taking place" even after consulting several excited children (who assured him it did not make sense for them either, but "who loved it anyway") and the four-page studio synopsis (which he could not reconcile with what he had seen).
He was disappointed that he couldn't identify the voices of several famous actors and concluded that "non-stop action is sufficient for kiddie audiences but ...
"[43] In The Ottawa Citizen, Richard Martin wrote: "It's everything you'd expect from a Saturday morning cartoon blown up to feature length and designed to sell more toys to more kids.
"[44] Jack Zink of South Florida Sun Sentinel declared: "Dino De Laurentiis has seen the future, and it is spare parts", calling the film "a wall-to-wall demolition derby for kids".
As "an animated, heavy-metal comic book [with a] maddeningly simple story", he said "The art and graphics may be substantially more complex than the TV series but the net visual result is less impressive than most viewers have a right to expect.
[45] In a contemporary review later published in his Movie & Video Guide, the film historian Leonard Maltin gave the picture the lowest possible rating and wrote, "Little more than an obnoxious, feature-length toy commercial...That deafening rock score certainly doesn't help.
He recalled the film giving him a new curse word and childhood trauma: "Only in our scariest nightmares would we have imagined that a mere 20 minutes into the movie, Optimus Prime, the most beloved of Autobots, would be killed ...
Contrast that with Michael Bay's vision, where the robots basically abandon their transforming skills to have endless, violent punch-outs that annihilate cities.
"[48] Kashann Kilson of Inverse wrote in 2015: "[N]ostalgia is a funny thing: for many of us in the 30-and-over Transformers fan club, that first movie was an integral part of our childhood.
In 2018, it said "the shadow of death hung like a black curtain" over the film and called the psychedelic scenes of Unicron's world-eating guts "a futuristic rendering of Dante's Inferno" in "apocalyptic detail".