… with a rather remarkable opening scene.
“Billions dead, kids! Make sure to buy our toys!”
The movie was a cynical cash-grab, make no mistake. Every decision was calculated by uncaring suits to create a more effective toy commercial. The existing Transformers toys were slowing down, so they needed to bring in an all-new line. How did they do that, plot-wise? By on-screen *murdering* almost all of the original characters. In 1986, that was something kinda shocking to us younguns.
The movie as a whole is a bit hard to watch now due to the cringe-inducing dialogue and a lot of the half-assed voice acting and the quarter-assed animation and the full-assed mid-80’s metal soundtrack… but at the time it was that rarest of things: a cheap cynical product that *worked.* That the Big Bad of the movie was a creature *nearly* out of cosmic horror only made it better.