Transformers One is no more, and no less, than meets the eye

In the early ‘80s, a handful of science fiction writers were tasked with writing a marketable mythology for the Japanese toy line that would become known as Transformers. It has been 40 years since those efforts launched a worldwide franchise, initially solidified with a cartoon series and the generationally traumatic 1986 animated film, but principally perpetuated through live-action reinterpretations that targeted edgy adult nostalgia. As those latter iterations have struggled to establish their own identity as a property worthy of a cinematic universe, Hasbro and Paramount have returned to the well of theatrical animation with Transformers One, giving director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) and three screenwriters (Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari) a similar directive to that original narrative team: start the Transformers yet again, with a new origin story. It’s hard to argue that they haven’t achieved that goal, with the caveat that it’s going through motions that will feel familiar to anyone who has seen another movie or two.

Set on the alien world of Cybertron, Transformers One follows Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), a pair of mining robots and best friends who dream of one day elevating themselves out of the mines by finding the mythical Matrix of Leadership on behalf of their benevolent leader Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) and earning cogs that will grant them the ability to transform. However, when a stunt to prove their worth lands them in an even lower level of the mines with the motor-mouthed B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), Pax and D-16 realize that their only path to redemption is to find the Matrix of Leadership themselves on the planet’s surface, with B-127 and mining supervisor Elita (Scarlett Johansson) pulled along for the ride as they discover the hidden truths of their stratified society.

There is tension to Transformers One if you have even a passing knowledge of the Transformers characters or mythos, a conflicting recognition that the film’s story is well-told even as it treads the familiar territory of other friends-to-enemies plotlines. The film’s marketing will clue in the most oblivious casual observer that Pax and D-16 will respectively come to be known as Optimus Prime and Megatron, so the central character arcs of betrayed friendships carry a weight of inevitability that precludes any narrative invention or surprise. And after one immediately recognizes that Sentinel Prime’s benevolent leadership is an obvious veneer for ulterior motives, the plot becomes as rote and predictable as a straight road leading from title to credits.

This isn’t to say that the artists working on Transformers One haven’t given their all to realizing the relatively modest aspirations of their story. The writing team does a superb job of weaving established Transformers mythos into the shape of a character-driven narrative where it’s easy to like and care about our underdog protagonists. The voice cast is uniformly committed in their performances, Henry in particular selling D-16’s societal disillusionment with unexpectedly tragic gravitas. The animators at Industrial Light & Magic took on the unenviable challenge of bridging the gap between the quasi-realistic renderings of the live-action films’ Transformers and the emotively cartoonish models of more recent animated offerings, a creative choice that threatens to read as painfully generic in the gray metallic environments of Cybertron. However, they add enough colorful touches and retro-futuristic flourish to allow the action beats to read as excitingly coherent rather than cluttered, even if the attempts at slapstick would have benefited from a more exaggerated style.

With so much that Transformers One gets right, there’s still that nagging feeling that we’ve been there, done that. A rushed first act plows through its world-building with such efficiency that it sets a precedent for a tight pace that doesn’t allow much space to breathe between exciting action beats. Inversely, this leaves comedic moments feeling like forced token gestures, leaning hard into kinetic hyperactivity instead of telling jokes that aren’t already stale before the punchline lands. Both issues feed that pervasive sense of familiarity—that the pursuit of feeding the franchise machine has overshadowed the genuine joys that this movie has to offer. While we haven’t seen these characters acting out this specific story on the big screen before, we have seen versions of these characters and a version of this kind of cinematic universe building enough times that it lands, at least to adult eyes, with a sense of mathematical calculation instead of emotional engagement.

But this is the first time in a while that adult eyes don’t feel so important to a Transformers film. Since Michael Bay brought them to live action in 2007, Transformers movies have been defined by a sense of Gen-X and Millennial nostalgia, harkening back to cartoons made to sell toys to us as kids by selling theoretically mature spectacle for adults. Transformers One, however, feels specifically geared towards a crowd too young for a PG-13 rating, an audience that doesn’t have a relationship with these characters and are discovering these tropes and stories for the first time. Recognizing this demographic shift doesn’t automatically elevate the material beyond being a serviceable programmer, yet it does cast a more respectable light on Transformers One as the product of filmmakers working within a franchise space to tell stories that will thrill and engage kids more than their parents. If anything, the rarity of a franchise film that seems principally concerned with appealing to a new generation is more in line with the legacy of the original series than any film that has come since.

Director: Josh Cooley
Writer: Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, Eric Pearson
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Hamm
Release Date: September 20, 2024