‘Transformers One’ Toys With Greatness

Sometime in the late ‘80s I saw ‘Transformers: The Movie’ for the first time. I was a child barely able to comprehend much of anything, but it shaped my impressionable understanding of conflict, death, and heroics. ‘Transformers One,’ an animated prequel film from ‘Toy Story 4’ writer-director Josh Cooley aims to do something similar for the next generation.

If you’re familiar with the Transformers franchise at all, or have kids who are, you probably know that the main characters are the perpetually warring Optimus Prime and Megatron of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively. ‘Transformers One’ takes us back to before they were opposed leaders—to when they were close friends and had different personas entirely.

TRANSFORMERS ONE  ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Josh Cooley
Written by:Andrew Barrer, Steve Desmond, Gabriel Ferrari
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key
Running time: 104 mins

Optimus used to be Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth), a lowly energon miner in Iacon City on the Transformer home planet of Cybertron. Orion often drags his work buddy D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) ointo his harebrained schemes to try and break out of the monotony of the daily grind, seeking notice the leader of the city, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm).

There’s a massive exposition drop in the first ten minutes explaining that in ancient times, there was Primus, essentially the first Transformer, and he had a council called the Primes. Primus was keeper of the Matrix of Leadership which allowed energon, the Transformers’ lifeblood, to flow freely on the planet. Primus and the Primes died mysteriously, losing the matrix in the the process and necessitating the dangerous mining of energon in the caves of Cyberton by the lower-class robots who do not have cogs, meaning they cannot transform.

After a few mishaps like getting their boss Elita (Scarlett Johansson) fired and an exile down to the lower forgotten levels of the mines with an overly talkative and needy proto-Bumblebee named B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), Orion and D-16 stumble upon a map that promises to lead them to the location of the Matrix of Leadership. They set out with B-127 to find it, eventually also meeting up with Elita and uncovering a vast conspiracy that threatens Orion and D-16’s friendship.

‘Transformers One’ does not quite knock it out of the park like ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ and other recent film odes to iconic toys like Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie,’ but there’s something here. The first half of the film is full of desperate wisecracking energy, which will play well for kids, but falls flat for an adult audience. You get some sly references to the 1986 animated movie and even a pointed meta reference to GoBots that helps, but not enough to make this one feel consistent. The last act of the film, however, approaches the operatic tenor of the stories in film and comics that made the Transformers brand endure all these years.

The writers deploy the brothers turned enemies narrative effectively. It’s not nearly as affecting or nuanced as, say, Caesar and Koba in ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,’ but it’s a similar depiction of acrimony born from familiarity and fundamental philosophical differences when faced with a changing world. Brian Tyree Henry, who also does incredible voice work in the Spider-Verse series as Miles’ dad Jeff, would be a revelation in Transformers One if he hadn’t been so consistently great in all he does. Even Hemsworth organically earns the mantle left behind by legendary voice actor Peter Cullen when voicing Optimus.

As far as entertainment based on selling toys goes you could do a lot worse than this film. The run on Gen X and Millennial nostalgia is super competitive as of late, and I don’t think anyone was expecting to put this one in the same conversation as ‘Mutant Mayhem.’ But what ‘One’ does well is world-building and staying true to its characters well enough to lay a foundation for continuing the story. I hope we get to see future installments from this setup, if only so the younger generation can experience what I and so many other fans have. Until that day, ‘til all are one.