Transformers One was refreshingly good

One of Hasbro’s crown jewel properties, The Transformers, turned 40 years old this year. With a rebirth in the 2000s through the Paramount Pictures live-action film franchise starting in 2007, the Robots in Disguise has never really left us. Between all the many different animated shows constantly on the air and a continual stream of new toys each and every month, the one place Transformers might be cooling down is in the movies. The last film, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, did not do as well as people expected, and with the live-action movies in an undecided state, Transformers One might be coming out at the perfect time. Transformers One has Chris Hemsworth voicing Orion Pax/Optimus Prime and Brian Tyree Henry voicing D-16/Megatron in their early days as friends, showing their eventual divide and becoming the leaders of two differing sides of the Cybertonian civil war that lasts millions of years. The two main characters are joined by Scarlett Johansson’s Elita and Keegan-Michael Key as the fan favorite B-127 / Bumblebee. This core four has to deal with a shady Sentinel Prime, voiced by Jon Hamm, as they learn the secrets of Cybertron hidden from the many residents of their underground city as they hide from a threat Sentinel Prime is protecting them from.

Josh Cooley is the director, and the screenplay is by Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari. Mostly, I think they did a good job here pulling at nostalgia for the older adult fans and making something interesting for new kids who this could be their first Transformers movie. This movie is supposed to be the origin of the live-action film versions of the characters versus some of the other variations of the early days that have been told before by many different media. With that, there’s a lot of talk of the Primes and such that, as a person who knows most of this from the Gen 1 cartoon, just leaves me like shrugging in my seat. Most of what makes this film entertaining are the characters and the arc between our two leads. The most dynamic is D-16 into Megatron, where you see him start as this nice bot who wants to do his work and hang out with his friend, completely change into this monstrous warlord, and it’s completely believable. Much like every interpretation, Orion is good and naïve and becomes the perfect wise hero. Elita and Bumblebee hardly have any type of change. For me, Elita is a character who needs it the most as she’s historically been pretty much a blank slate and is Prime’s girlfriend/wife/partner. I don’t really know how to talk about transformer romantic relations. None of that is in this, as she’s a tough Johansson woman character who’s mostly annoyed with her not-as-smart male teammates. As I said before, I wish there was a little more.

ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) did the animation for this film, and it’s the second film they’ve done this year outside of Ultraman Rising for Netflix. While primarily known for being the bar for VFX in films, seeing them expand into doing animated features this year has been a welcome sight. They chose to have the look of the characters be very reminiscent of the Gen 1 looks of Transformers, that nice early Japanese anime Super Robot visual aesthetic. With clear, smooth faces that are animated to emote very well to the vocal performances, it’s Orion and D-16 that kept me the most interested in paying attention. The overall design of Cybertron was good; while not as imaginative as a machine world could be, it also never has been shown in its potential, in my opinion. Jon Hamm is having a ton of fun with his voice work here, and I don’t want to say too much about it more than that. Lawrence Fishburn is a pleasant surprise, and keep an ear out for Steve Buscemi as a pretty good piece of casting.

With Transformers One, it was nice to see the Transformers back in an animated form and made more for a general audience than what the live-action movies have been for almost 20 years. While it’s using nostalgia to get people into this movie, it might not make every diehard fan happy. It feels like a fresh new start and a good movie; while it’s not something everyone needs to see in the theater, it is worth watching if you like property.