Director: Josh Cooley
Writers: Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, with Laurence Fishburne and Jon Hamm
Rated: PG for sci-fi violence and animated action throughout, and language.
Synopsis: The untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever.
Review: I never went into a Transformers movie to see Sam Witwicky or Mikaela Banes. I didn’t even go into Bumblebee to see Charlie Watson. I showed up to see Optimus Prime lead the Autobots against Megatron and the Decepticons. Michael Bay, the various screenwriters, and Steven Spielberg by proxy just didn’t seem to completely understand the intellectual property they were working with.
Transformers One finally gets it right, mostly, as it presents a human-free prequel that explores the inciting incident that turns friends Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), the bots who would become Optimus Prime and Megatron, into enemies.
Set on the Transformers’ home world of Cybertron, Transformers One take audiences back to an unexplored era where not all bots are treated equally. The privileged class can transform. Those without the ability are sent to work as indentured servants in the energon mines. Energon, the fuel that runs Cybertron, once flowed freely.
Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), war hero and savior of Cyberton, searches the surface of the planet for the Matrix of Leadership, a lost relic believed to be the solution to the planet’s energy crisis. Determined to help, Orion Pax, despite his lowly status as a miner, repeatedly breaks into Cybertron’s archives intent on discovering the location of the Matrix of Leadership. Instead, he constantly finds a gap in the historical record.
The narrative isn’t incredibly inventive, and the twists aren’t entirely unexpected, but it isn’t remotely as mind numbing as most of the live action films have been. Transformers One is the closest we’ve come to what I always wanted from a Transformers movie. I would have loved to have the animation be more photorealistic film like 2019’s The Lion King, but the computer-generated animation isn’t unattractive by any stretch of imagination. It looks good.
It was strange to not have Peter Cullen involved, but the idea being that Orion Pax hasn’t grown into his Optimus Prime voice just yet does make enough sense to justify his absence.
Transformers One doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it is true to the original animated series and for many, including myself, that is more than enjoy to make the movie worthwhile.
