Have to say: this surprised me
“Transformers One” isn’t just good, but surprisingly good. I was convinced this franchise was running on fumes before this, that this animated movie was being made as just another cash grab to try to squeeze whatever life was left. But, and i’m surprised i’m gonna say this, but this is the best Transformers movie i’ve ever seen.
It takes place entirely on Cybertron, which gives us a better understanding of how the homeworld of the Autobots and Decepticons works and how the war was started in the first place. At its center is a look at the friendship between two young bots named Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), low rung miners on Cybertron who don’t even have the ability to transform. Society is lorded over by Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), who like most primes is out to restore energy to Cybertron by finding the Matrix of Leadership.
And there are a lot of technical terms and past events which define how Cybertron is now which don’t really make a lot of sense until midway through when both Orion and D-16 discover a huge plot twist, one that speaks to an ultimate betrayal that director Josh Cooley and his writers do an excellent job in exploiting for a lot of smashing, commotion, and chaos but also for some really compelling drama. As the film wears on, both Pax and D-16 begin to take two dissecting paths, one fueled by anger and the other by righteousness and (this was said in the the production notes for the movie so not a spoiler) but we begin to see the beginning stages for both Optimus Prime and Megatron. This carries us right on through to a smashing ending which also has a fantastically operatic final showdown akin to the finale of something like “Revenge of the Sith”.
Of the two voices, Henry’s is by far the juicier part; the intensity and pathos he brings to it gets all the more palpable as things roll along. And Hemsworth eventually grows into Peter Cullen’s authoritative Optimus voice nicely. Keegan Michael Key is a comic relief scene stealer though as B-127, a robot gone a little batty after being assigned to the dregs of sublevel garbage detail for too long. That he’s such a lovable character is no surprise, considering it’s pretty obvious who he’ll become. Scarlett Johansson is also on hand as a dutiful, no-nonsense worker named Elita who provides strong support and Hamm also does a nice job in a juicy role of his own.
Making the film animated is also a terrific way to go as it highlights the broader details of Cybertron- from its levels and sub levels, its city streets and an exciting raceway scene which kicks the movie off, to its forbidding surface level. Really, “Transformers One” is the Cybertron refresher course I never knew I needed or felt I would feel as invested in as much as I was. It’s very well made and follows “Spider-Verse” in that some of the best franchises can still be pretty fantastic in animated form. It’s not just for kids- fans are gonna go crazy over it, too.