GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords

GoBots War of the Rock Lords follows along the footsteps of the Challenge of the GoBots TV series and expands into a feature length 75 minute runtime, featuring plenty of action and adventure with some notable GoBots for all the GoBot fans out there. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but can tell you it was a great film for the GoBots, best know for CyKill, Leader 1 and more.

Since the first Transformers movie was released, Warner Brothers needs to take advantage of its license of the GoBots and release it to DVD. It's long overdue and there's plenty of robot fans and GoBot fans out there waiting for this film and the TV show box set. DVD/Blu Ray for 2011? Vote yes to the GoBots on DVD/Blu Ray, let Warner Bros know!

This film is a 75 minute animated commercial for the Gobots toy line. The animation was produced by Hanna-Barbera, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Since I was nearly 30 years old when this toy line was introduced, I didn't expect to really understand the charactors, and the plotline.

As I watched this epic, I kept wondering what made Roddy McDowell do a voice for this thing. Musta been paid major bucks.

The bad guys are destroying everything in their paths, and the good guys (the GOBOTS®) are out to get them. Lots of pointless shooting, and noise. Perfect for the kids of the mid '80's.

The color and animation is typical Hanna-Barbera. The backgrounds were decent, but the stilted animation style hurt the flow of the story. Perhaps Tonka (the toy maker) just couldn't see paying more for better work. If they had, this film would be better.

Hanna-Barbera is not at fault here. They are capable of some fine work, and have done fine work in the past. This, unfortunately, is not the one.

This film was rated G. If there had been live actors instead of animation, this thing would be rated PG. What's the difference?

I admit I did watch more of the GoBots in childhood than I did the original G1 Transformers. Yes, they do have their similarities but some of the characters from both shows have personality.

Anyway, the Rock Lords movie was an interesting piece. Yes, we get all-new characters in the form of a race of golem-like beings and it wasn't bad. I used to watch this movie all the time but I can't remember the last time I saw it. The Rock Lords were an interesting species. And in all honesty, these stone beings should have gotten their own series a long time ago. With all the reboots going around at the moment, it seems likely. I mean, you can only cover so much in one movie. And all those characters should have been fleshed out too.

Rock Lords might not have aged gracefully but it had an interesting plot. The main stars who played the Rock People did their jobs quite well. I'm not sure I'd watch it again but I can always look on YouTube to see what I remember and what I don't.

If you're not a fan of transforming robots, then this is probably skippable. If you like cheesy yet interesting popcorn plots try it. I'm sure it's a lot better than those live Michael Bay Transformer films.

You'd think that with all of the money that Tonka was making selling Gobots they could come up with new and better ideas than Rock Lords. I was almost 10 when this movie came out and frankly I didn't really see what all of the fuss was about. A transforming rock shtick that was probably done because Tonka running a bit low on ideas. I can't even begin to tell everyone how disappointing this movie was to me. Maybe it was because I was a preteen and I really didn't care or it could have been because I was getting into other things.

If I had the chance to compare this movie to the Transformers movie I'd have said that the Transformers would have won hands down. The Transformers movie was nowhere near as violent as this movie was and even then at least the writers of the Transformers movie waited until somewhere near the middle before they even started killing off characters. In this movie we see a character being killed within the first five minutes of the movie.

Needless to say if I had 1000 monkeys on 1000 computers they could come up with a better idea than this.

Totally generic, forgettable trash. Boring story and terrible animation (typical of Hanna Barbera). Not much different than the equally forgettable TV series, except with this they got "celebrity" voices. Hanna Barbera should never have been hired to make a robot cartoon. There was a reason Transformers is remembered and loved and Gobots gone and forgotten-- the difference in quality of their respective television shows. Both were good toys, but Transformers had fun stories and great animation (for its time). Gobots was standard Saturday Morning schlock. I strongly suggest get the DVDs of "Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos" (currently out on Region 1) instead and see how the Gobots & Rock Lords should have been done.