Transformers One (2024 | USA | 104 minutes | Josh Cooley)
The animated film Transformers One throws us back to a time when Optimus Prime, going by the name of Orion Pax, is but a mere miner working in the belly of Cybertron: the planet that all ‘bots call home. Primus, the creator of all bot-kind, literally gave his body to create the very planet they walk on and in the beginning Energon, the very essence of life, flowed freely offering peace and prosperity to all Transformers. All that changed with the disappearance of the great Matrix of Leadership which coincided with the death of the Primes who had been protecting Cybertron from aliens who wanted to steal the precious Energon … the death of all but one: Sentinel Prime. Now Sentinel is on a mission to find the Matrix of Leadership to return the world to its former glory and bring peace to all Cybertronians. Not only is Energon hard to come by, but most ‘bots born to Cybertron no longer have cogs that allow them to transform; only a chosen few are capable of transforming creating a caste system that seems impenetrable.
After causing a ruckus, Orion and his best friend D-16, are demoted from miners to garbage sorters where they meet fellow reject B-127. In a twist of fate, they discover the possible location of the Matrix of Leadership and, hoping to regain their status, they set out to find it. With the help of a former manager, the four bots nervously set out for the surface of the planet, a very dangerous place to be. Successfully discovering not only where the Matrix had been, but also the final resting place of the fallen Primes, the crew learn a terrible truth that will throw everything they know of their planet and its leadership upside down.
As a reviewer, I typically get to watch a movie in a smaller theater with other reviewers and maybe one or two of their friends, so not a big crowd. On occasion, however, the screening is opened up to the public a bit and I was so glad this was one of those times. I was surrounded by families with excited kiddos ready to watch a cartoon with their favorite action figures as the main characters. While much of the Michael Bay live-action version of the franchise is unfamiliar to me, I am definitely of the age where Transformers were my Sunday morning cartoon staple, so I had high hopes for this installment to bring back what I had been missing from so many decades ago.
While Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg both have a production credits in the film, director Josh Cooley (who also helmed Toy Story 4) made it his own and took a step back from the explosions, hyper-reality, and high rate of destruction (not to mention massive deaths of the general public that are casually ignored) indicative of Michael Bay’s installments. Instead he mostly worked on character building of the ‘bots we have all come to know and love over the decades. Granted, it’s a bit easier to do that with origin stories; viewers tend to know the gist of the Transformers narrative when they enter the theater and finding out where these mythical beings came from is mainly a fun reveal with a few surprises along the way. That was definitely the case with Transformers One, and while there were some scary moments (well, scary as far as children are concerned), for the most part we got to know the richer backstory of our beloved Autobots.
I especially felt that D-16’s character (who, yes, becomes Megatron in the end), voiced by comedian Brian Tyree Henry, had a distinct arc not only in story but in nuance of personality. We can give most of the credit for this to Tyree Henry, but it was also the writing and treatment of these characters as more complex than the two-dimensional narratives we grew up with. Along with the rich backstories of these well-known characters, the familiar positive attitude and selfless reflection of the Autobots was threaded throughout the film, and even more so during the tense ending. We were even left with the line that is seared into every ’80s baby’s heart and mind: “We are more than meets the eye”.
I hope I haven’t given too much away but there is a lot to enjoy about this film, especially if you have young ones in your household eager to go out to the movies. As for the adults? If you’re a connoisseur of Transformer lore or just feel like seeing a family-friendly film, you could do a lot worse than going to Transformers One.
Transformers One arrives in theaters on September 20th.