Film Review: Transformers One

Transformers One
Director: Josh Cooley
Hasbro Entertainment, New Republic Pictures, and Di Bonaventura Pictures
In Theaters 09.20

Despite being based on an iconic children’s toy, the Transformers film series has been surprisingly disinterested in drawing in kids as their target audience. Blockbuster director Michael Bay aimed his five movies squarely at men who are almost as immature as he is, with the focus on flat human characters, big explosions, and lots of leering glances at women. While 2007’s Bumblebee took a big step in a more family-friendly direction, there hasn’t been big screen Autobot adventure made directly for kids in 37 years. Transformers One, the first fully animated feature since 1986, is a long overdue course correction for the flailing franchise.

The prequel is set three billion years before the events of the live-action films on the planet Cybertron, focusing on the friendship between two robots: Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth, Thor, Furiosa: A Mad Max Story)  and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry, If Beale Street Could Talk, Godzilla vs. Kong). Since both are  “no-cogs” –bots who cannot transform–they are confined to working mining Energon, the precious fuel that powers their homeworld. Cybertron long ago lost its true leaders, known as the Primes, who sacrificed themself to fend off the invading Quintessons, leaving only one, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm, Mad Men, Top Gun: Maverick) to lead them. When Orion and D-16 crash a major sporting event, the Lacon 5000 Race–and accidentally win–they become celebrities, and gain the attention of Sentinel Prime. Along with two other bots, Elita (Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow, Marriage Story) and B-127 (Keegan Michael-Key, The Bubble, Shmigadoon!), they are sent to travel to the surface to find the fabled Matrix of Leadership, which could restore the flow of Energon on the planet. Along the way, they discover a conspiracy that affects the identities of almost all Cybertronians.

Transformers One gives a fresh and interesting take on long-established characters: Orion Pax will go to become Optimus Prime, D-16 will become Megatron, and we already know from the previous film that B-127 is Bumblebee–and gives die-hard fans what they’ve been clamoring for since 2007: a film devoted solely to the robots rather than outsider human characters. The plot is a bit unwieldy, and it takes a bit of time to get a firm grasp on things, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the mythology, yet the movie is a colorful and exciting adventure, filled with creativity and light-hearted sense of fun, and is a significantly better film than we’ve come to expect from this brand. Director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) gives us a movie that hearkens back to afternoon and Saturday morning cartoons of the 80s in some respects, acknowledging its roots and original fans while delivering top-notch animation and a sense of humor that stays appropriate for kids while being more sophisticated than we’ve come to expect from these films. There are several clever in-jokes, from a hilarious 80s toy reference to a shout-out to one of Key’s signature characters from the Key & Peele sketch comedy series, that air aimed at older audience members, but the banter and B-127’s antics are easily followed by kids without talking down to them or becoming insufferable to parents. 

The voice cast delivers, both in terms of comic timing and characterization, with Hemsworth finding a take on Orion and his evolution into the Autobot leader that we’ve come to know that should play to even the most intense fanboy of the original cartoon voice actor, Peter Cullen, who has been playing Optimus Prime since the beginning. Henry’s D-16 is an outstanding character, and the accomplished actor convincingly takes him from affable “best friend of the star” to a disillusioned and angry villain in the making. It feels like such a given that Johansson is terrific that it’s barely worth mentioning, though she brings a lot of energy to the role, and Key is amusingly overenthusiastic without pushing it into overmilked, in-your-face irritating territory. Longtime fans may be puzzled by the choice of Laurence Fishburne as the voice of Alpha Trion, who does the opening exposition about the Matrix of Leadership, as it has never been referenced by name in the films so far due to the M word becoming synonymous with another sci-fi franchise 25 years ago. Cooley has wisely chosen to bring back this important piece of the backstory while having some fun with acknowledging why it went away, and Fishburne’s powerful timbre is always welcome.

While Transformers One isn’t up there with the Spider-Verse films, it’s as good or better than one can reasonably expect from a film based on this property, and even as someone who never played with toys or watched the cartoons growing up, I have enough fun that I can easily see myself going back for another viewing, with or without kids in tow. –Patrick Gibbs

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