Michael Bay, eat your heart out. What 1986's The Transformers: The Movie lacked in CGI madness, oversaturated action sequences, and gratuitous explosions as seen in the modern Bay-helmed franchise, it made up for in real-deal relationships (between transforming alien robots, but still) and a truly tense space battle that would determine the future of the Transformers' home planet, Cybertron.
After the Decepticons make landfall in Autobot City, hacking and slashing as many Autobots as they can, only a small group remains: Arcee, Blaster, Blurr, Hot Rod, Kup, Ultra Magnus, Springer, Perceptor, and the human Daniel Witwicky (David Mendenhall). Good ol' Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) and his band of Dinobots arrive as reinforcement, and Optimus takes down the Decepticons in no time at all, though in the middle of the climactic tumble with Decepticon leader Megatron, he's mortally wounded.
But it's an animated film and the injury happened right in the middle, so surely he should survive, right? That's where you're wrong. Optimus doesn't wake up to roll out once more; he stays down, passing the Matrix of Leadership to Ultra Magnus (Robert Stack) as he passes away. The Transformers are more than meets the eye, indeed.
