What Transformers: The Movie Taught Me About Writing

 In 1986 Hasbro released Transformers: The Movie. For them it was supposed to be a place where they could retire old characters and introduce customers to new characters. Their Brilliant plan back then was to make the new characters more appealing was to show all the old beloved characters being killed off in a violent and gory fashion.

It was a DISASTER.

The movie bombed so badly it only made $5 million at the box-office.

Many kids who did pay to see the movie left the theater upset. Many were crying about the death of Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, Prowl, and Starscream.

Older kids like myself were just apathetic. That movie gave us the incentive to grow up and move on to stuff like girls, sex and clothes.

The damage to the Transformers brand in America was so extensive that it didn’t recover for nine years. Needless to say No one cared about Rodimus Prime, Kup, Wheelie, Arcee Galvatron, Headmasters, Targetmasters, Powermasters, Action Masters or any of that crap because it shelfwarmed like no tomorrow back in the late 1980s here in the South Bronx. I still remember seeing G1 Powermaster Optimus Prime for $14.99 at Woolworth’s and Trypticon and SkyLynx at a Korean store for $20. I remember seeing action masters at Forbidden Planet for just $1. 

And these were toys that went for $50+ a retail.

Thanks to the damage the movie did the Transformers Brand fell off for close to a decade. It didn’t start rebuilding momentum until 1996 when Hasbro released the Beast Wars line with new characters and a new storyline.

The valuable lesson I learned back in 1986 after watching Transformers: The Movie is that killing off old favorites may seem shocking in the short term, but in the long-term all it does is alienate people.

What Hasbro didn’t understand back then is that viewers built a relationship with those characters over the course of two years. That they saw these characters as friends. And some identified with them and their personality traits.

To them, watching friends they had grown close to killed off so indifferently in just a few minutes time was emotionally devastating. In some ways it was like watching a loved one die right before their eyes.

Sure, it was the horrors of war, but a small child watching their friends die horrible deaths onscreen is pretty traumatizing.

And after watching a friend die on the silver screen, it’s hard to get excited about buying a bunch of new toys or watching a new cartoon based on them.

That’s why all those new and improved Transformers like Rodimus Prime did so poorly at retail.

Needless to say at the young age of thirteen I learned it wasn't smart to not kill off popular characters in such a brutal and violent fashion. 

Moreover, I learned it wasn't smart to try to push new characters on a traumatized audience. Because they're grieving the loss of their friends All they're going to do is instantly reject the new characters and the new concept.  

At 38 I’ve learned to value the relationships my audience of readers have shared with the characters I’ve created.

I still regret killing off E’steem at the end of Isis all the way in 2002. But I quickly realized the error of my actions and brought her back in The Temptation of John Haynes once I saw her potential as a character.

As I’ve grown in my craft, I’ve learned that the readers’ relationship with the characters is important. And I can’t be indifferent to the personal connection readers have formed with their characters over the course of a story or a series of stories. When the reader forms enough of an emotional connection to care about a character or a story, they tell other people about that story. They tell them where to buy the books.

That word-of-mouth can make or break a writers’ career.

It may be the writers’ right to kill off their characters, but it’s the readers’ right to stop spending their money buying that authors’ books. While it may be shocking to kill, cripple, or mutilate a popular character at first to spark slow sales and generate general interest, it’s going to cost a writer readers long-term.

If readers feel betrayed by the death of a popular character, they stop buying that writers’ books. That anger can easily cost a writer sales of a new book, especially if it’s part of a series.

Now the writer can introduce a new version of a character or a even bring the old character back in another book to remedy the situation with alienated readers, but the damage is done. Even after the "return" of  Optimus Prime, the Transformers franchise faltered in the United States for nine years. 

It’s hard to rebuild a relationship with a reader once it’s strained. Once a reader has that experience which sours them on a story or a series of stories, there’s a high chance that they walk away from a writer and their work permanently.

Moreover, they tell their friends to walk away from that writer’s work. Once a customer is lost it’s hard to get them back.

It took nine years to rebuild the Transformers brand in the United States and make it commercially viable again after the disaster of Transformers: The Movie.

Some writers never get that second chance after their first bad story.

As a writer I’ve come to understand that the readers’ time is precious. That every second they spend reading one of my stories is time they could spend doing something else. And I need to value their time by giving them the best reading experience possible.

And shocking the reader isn’t very entertaining. In fact it gets tedious when it’s overdone like in the case of the gratuitous violence in Transformers: The Movie.

Killing any character should only be used if it works towards the organic progression of the storyline. When a writer uses death as a plot device to get out of a jam it cheats it doesn’t make for compelling reading.