It’s a great time to be an Orson Welles fan. On Aug. 30, his once difficult-to-see masterpiece Chimes at Midnight is getting a Criterion release. And on Sept. 13, cinephiles the world over will finally get a chance to closely study the Orson Welles’ performance that, out of all the groundbreaking, wonderful roles he took over the years, was unquestionably his last. In contrast to monomaniacal productions like Citizen Kane or F for Fake, Welles for once turned in a performance that blended beautifully with an ensemble cast. And what an ensemble: Robert Stack, Casey Kasem, Scatman Crothers, and Eric Idle! I’m speaking, of course, of The Transformers: The Movie, in which Welles originated the role of Unicron, the planet-sized Transformer who transforms into a planet and also eats planets.
The film’s original tag line was “Beyond good. Beyond evil. Beyond your wildest imagination,” and from the very first scene, in which Welles shows up and implacably devours a planet, he infuses the role with a Nietzschean amorality that shines through every frame. You can’t teach that sort of screen presence—you can only watch it in awe. And the reading he gives lines like, “You are to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. It is the one thing—the only thing—that can stand in my way,” shows years of radio work paying off. The dedication Welles put into the role is evident from a conversation he had with biographer Barbara Leaming shortly before his death:
You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I’m destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.
The new Blu-ray is from a pristine 4K transfer, so the cut-rate animation will look exactly as great as it did in theaters on Aug. 8, 1986. The film is 85 minutes long, but viewers will want to allow an extra 10 minutes or so to look over this list of projects Orson Welles never got to make.
