Over the last 40 years, the most transformative toy line became one of the biggest entertainment franchises of all time. Taking toy cars and having them transform into big, fighting robots, the Transformers have been a revolutionary toy brand that has mesmerized kids’ playtime throughout generations. However, they have a weird history in media. What began as a simple toy line before branching off into a multimedia franchise with comic books, animated television series, video games and live action movies. Most were infamously directed by Michael Bay. Each piece tells the age-old story of Autobots (good Transformers) and their war against the Decepticons (bad Transformers) on the planet Cybertron. However, not much is known about how that initial conflict started. With the release of Transformers One, fans finally get to see the long-awaited origin story of the war for Cybertron and the beginning of the intense rivalry between the Autobots’ and Decepticons’ respective leaders, Optimus Prime and Megatron, at the center of it all.
With this movie being a prequel set before any substantial events in the Transformers canon, fans get to see a younger, more naive version of Optimus Prime, or Orion Pax as he would be called. That also meant that legendary Optimus Prime voice actor, Peter Cullen, would not reprise the role. Naturally, Hollywood found a replacement in Chris Hemsworth. Thor himself was going to be Optimus Prime, though it was not a very exciting prospect. Adding to that, the marketing made the film look like a generic kid’s movie with the kind of humor and adventure story that you would expect. However, just like the Transformers themselves, this movie proves to be more than meets the eye.
The movie starts pretty slow. Granted, it establishes the beautifully animated world of Cybertron as well as the politics of Cybertron with their leader, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), and introduces Orion Pax (Hemsworth) and his best friend D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), who are robots mining Cybertron’s key resource, Energon. This doesn’t come off as interesting as we see Orion constantly disobey protocol and get himself into questionable situations. Along the way, we meet Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and B-127, otherwise known as Bumblebee (Keegan Michael Key), who joins Orion and D-16 on their adventure. Throughout the movie, the voice actors do a great job in their roles, and each of them gets a moment to shine. Hemsworth manages to make the role of Optimus Prime his own. However, B-127 served as the comic relief in the film and his jokes were either all in the trailers or were not funny. This is unfortunate because once the movie reaches its halfway point, it becomes really good!
Without spoilers, there is a twist that changes everything about the storyline and places Orion and D-16 on different trajectories. When their newly transformed paths collide in the third act, it gets real and intense, more so than earlier in the movie. There is genuine emotion when the ending happens, and it lays the groundwork for Optimus Prime and Megatron’s war in the mainline Transformers franchise. The only real issue is that the first half of the movie was nowhere near on par with the second half in terms of stakes, tension, character moments, and dramatic storytelling.
Transformers One is not a perfect movie by any means, but it is a dramatically satisfying story about the Transformers and how their differing views of Cybertron’s future changed their history forever. While it may not seem like much at first, the movie reveals its rich and dramatic storytelling that elevates it to be so much more than meets the eye. If you are a Transformers fan, gather all your “Autobots” and prepare to roll out for this movie.
PHOTO COURTESY OF UNSPLASH
