Certificate: PG
Running Time: 104 mins
UK Distributor: Paramount Pictures
UK Release Date: 11 October 2024
Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Hamm, Isaac C. Singleton Jr., Vanessa Liguori, Jason Konopisos-Alvarez, Jon Bailey, Evan Michael Lee, James Remar, Jinny Chung, Josh Cooley, Dillion Bryan, Steve Blum
Josh Cooley (director), Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari and Eric Pearson (writers), Michael Bay, Aaron Dem, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Don Murphy and Mark Vahradian (producers), Brian Tyler (composer), Christopher Batty (cinematographer), Lynn Hobson (editor)
On the planet Cybertron, a young Optimus Prime (Hemsworth) and Megatron (Henry) begin their journey together…
As cool as it can be to watch beloved cartoon characters be interjected into more realistic live-action settings, some things are just meant for the realm of animation. In the case of Transformers, the lucrative toy line that eventually became an even more lucrative media franchise, its recent run of Michael Bay-backed movies haven’t even come close to topping the 1986 animated feature, itself an adaptation of the successful cartoon TV series. The closest, until now, was probably the live-action spin-off Bumblebee, but even that film has firm roots in animation, given that its director Travis Knight also happens to be the co-founder and CEO of stop-motion studio Laika.
Now comes Transformers One, from Oscar-winning Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley, to prove once more that the robots in disguise are best remembered as cartoons for a reason. Their world, in addition to just about every other aspect of their abilities, thrives in the world of animation, as the possibilities are endless when it comes to the types of vehicles they can transform into, while the larger-than-life (in some cases, quite literally) personalities are allowed to feel more at free within environments where their antics make more sense.
It goes without saying, then, that the fully-animated Transformers One is among the better movies in this franchise – though given the nature of Bay’s previous films, it’s a low bar to leap over. That said, there’s enough about this movie that works pretty well, and not quite as much that doesn’t, which gives it the edge in a lot of aspects.
Set entirely on the world of Cybertron – with no humans anywhere, not even a mention of them, and thank goodness for that – we follow the exploits of a young Optimus Prime and Megatron, though here they’re known as Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) respectively. They’re a couple of miners working within the planet’s underground city, and most crucially they’re the best of friends, looking out for each other whilst trying to figure out a way to escape their dead-end lives and set out to find the fabled Matrix of Leadership, thought to be lost in battle among the fabled Prime warriors. They soon get a chance to head toward the surface, along with fellow miners B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) – soon to be known as Bumblebee – and Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), but ultimately discover a dark secret that begins to drive both Pax and D-16 further apart, until they become the enemies they’re unfortunately destined to be.
Stylistically, the film owes a great deal to the aesthetic and writing of not just the original cartoon series (and the subsequent movie spin-off), but also the comics which go into further detail and backstory regarding a number of the franchise’s core characters. There is a keen effort by director Cooley and the various animators to translate many of the blocky and vaguely anime-inspired character designs into a CG-rendered environment, and while on occasion the results look a bit like something you’d find in a direct-to-video animated film from the early 2000s, especially the ways in which some of the characters’ faces are stiffly presented, the majority of it can be striking in its appearance. You definitely feel the size and scope of Cybertron in this film, from the heavily detailed city that parallels one of the prominent planets in the Star Wars prequels, to the expansive surface where nearly everything has been ravaged by war and totalitarian rule.
There is also great care that has gone into crafting slightly different versions of these characters many of us know and love. It’s interesting seeing a more rebellious and even reckless version of Optimus Prime before he becomes the wise and noble leader he’s recognised as, and Chris Hemsworth does a fairly decent job of replicating the vocals of the character’s original voice actor Peter Cullen while also making the role his own. Meanwhile, Brian Tyree Henry lends his future Megatron an underlying anger that comes more and more to the surface, but until that point the character becomes a fun straight-man/bot opposite Hemsworth’s more fallible hero. Their dynamic is believable enough, to where it does start to become a bit sad when they begin heading down their eventual paths, though one’s ultimate motivation for becoming the figure they will become known as is a little weak, not to mention a bit extreme given not just the obviousness of the main enemy, but also how it isn’t exactly as personal as they’re making it out to be.
As in most Transformers movies, even the better ones, the humour can also be hit-or-miss. While the film is thankfully free of all the juvenile and offensive material from past films, the gags that are left over don’t always land as well as they’d like, with the majority of them coming from Keegan-Michael Key’s soon-to-be Bumblebee who isn’t an entirely annoying character but is one that feels like they’re only there to make the younger audience members laugh and nothing else. The film is also pretty heavy on exposition, though again all Transformers movies carry that problem, so I suppose it’s in keeping with the spirit of its predecessors, for better or worse.
Though it may seem like I’m constantly dragging it down, I don’t think Transformers One is a bad movie. It’s definitely got its priorities straight, here being to tell a decent story of two friends becoming enemies over a shared cause, and to give a fairly action-packed spectacle that takes full advantage of its entirely-animated environment. Its problems, if any, lie within a fairly standard script that doesn’t completely branch out its intriguing ideas as much as it perhaps could have – but even with that being said, it’s still far beyond what has come before in this movie series.
Transformers One is a nobly intended prequel that takes as much advantage as it can of its fully-animated scope and stronger focus on its central characters, and though a number of flimsy storytelling decisions prevent it from being great, it’s still well above some of the previous films in this franchise.
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