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The premise was always a vehicle for toys, so it has to be looked at with a grain of salt (this isnt high-minded Arthur C Clark sci-fi, this is bullshit sci-fi slapped together to sell toys 20 years ago).
A big pert of the interest was that in the cartoon, and much more in the marvel ccomic series, the robots had complex personalities and entertaining interactions. they werent just vehicles that turned into robots, there were decently developed characters, all with unique personalities, and they at least attempted to inject some real personality rather than just making them all 2 dimensional stereotypes.
the original animated movie had a great deal of more dramtic parts, and wasnt just a bunch of robots killing each other (but there was actual killing, it was pg rather than G likemost movie spinoffs of afternoon cartoon series)
Plus, the more futuristic episodes, after the movie became much more philosophical and they focused on individual characters much more than just hammeringout as many new characters as possible to fill the toy line.
That being said, it is just a big-budget "Adult" movie to make money off of the nostalgia of 30-somethings. Based on that and the current popularity of the CGI series, i bet it will do decent enough to make at least a small profit.
My theoryu about WHY it is being made: Video games and comics are gold for summer blockbusters, even though 98% of all of them suck, but all the fanboys rush out evbery time for opening weekend HOPING that they are going to get what many of us thought Silent Hill was, a pretty good and fairly faithful big screen version of a familiar story.
The film company is no doubt bankling on nostalgia for this one. And, we can thank M Night Shymalan's earlier movies for taking fantasy and grounding it into something more "real". (Unbreakable, Sixth Sense.... Signs sure tried....)
I'm honestly waiting for the live action GI Joe, based on the old 80s cartoons... Probably with Cobra Commander in his helmet costume.
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