'Transformers': From toy story to serious art?

By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY

Alas, poor Optimus Prime. The children of the '80s knew you — a robot of infinite strength, and a most excellent big rig, too.

Maybe it's a stretch, but just as Hamlet once contemplated the skull of Yorick, the jester who entertained him as a boy, the twenty- and thirtysomethings of today are getting the pop culture equivalent with Transformers. The action-adventure film, opening nationwide Tuesday, revisits the shape-shifting robots that take the forms of trucks, sports cars, jets and helicopters.

But unlike old Yorick, Optimus Prime is literally returning from the grave (after being killed off in the 1986 animated film) to entertain a new generation, courtesy of the big-budget Hollywood epic, a new line of toys, a Cartoon Network animated series next year, and an array of spinoff comic books and video games.

More than two decades after the Transformers became a phenomenon, what accounts for the endurance of these warring shape-shifting alien robots?

"There is a lot of stuff from that era that nobody cares about, but the key is, you cared about the Transformers on an emotional level," says Tom DeSanto, a producer of the new movie who also helped bring X-Men to the screen.

"It was really well written for a cartoon that came on after kids came home from school."

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