Despite being a kid in the ‘80s, I was never really a Transformers fan. I knew of them and I had friends who liked them, but it was never my thing. I don’t really know why. I enjoyed all the other staples of my peers – particularly Thundercats, Silver Hawks and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But I never really took to Optimus Prime.
But with Josh Cooley’s new animated film Transformers One, I think I finally get the appeal. A feature-length Saturday morning cartoon in all the right ways, it’s an exciting, funny and surprisingly emotional adventure that should thrill kids and satisfy old fans aching to see this franchise treated seriously.
After what seemed like an endless march of live-action dreck from Michael Bay and others, Transformers One returns to the franchise’s animated roots and takes the action completely off Earth, situating the entire story on Cybertron – the planet formed when a giant transforming robot named Primus sacrificed himself to turn his body into a planet full of other transforming robots. There’s reference to an ancient war when robot warriors named The Primes all fell pursuing alien invaders, and a substance called Energon that used to flow freely through the planet and is now depleted. There’s a lot more mythology than I initially assumed for a movie about robot trucks.
But while Transformers lore is integrated into the story, Transformers One is most successful as the story of the friendship between Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Bryan Tyree Henry), who even the most fairweather Transformers fans will recognize as young versions of heroic Optimus Prime and his arch-nemesis, Megatron. As the film begins, they’re just workbots mining Energon from beneath the planet’s surface. Both were born without cogs that allow them to transform; D-16 has accepted his place in Cyberton’s class system, but Orion dreams of something more. When the duo interfere with a giant citywide race, they gain the notice of Cybertron’s fearless leader, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), and end up on adventure that changes their understanding of their world and eventually pits them against each other.
Unlike, say, The Real Ghostbusters, Transformers and its cohorts were ‘80s cartoons that had their share of laughs but were also known for their action sequences, semi-serialized storytelling and fantasy worlds. The live-action movies from Michael Bay nodded toward that mythology in the first three — maybe they delved deeper in later films, but I gave up – but really used the concept as an excuse to cause mass mayhem via convoluted CGI, punctuated by juvenile humor and military fetishism.
With animation, Cooley can create Cybertron at a lower cost that Bay could, and he uses the mythology to reboot the Transformers universe and give it real stakes and emotion. Hemsworth and Henry have strong chemistry and create a friendship that feels warm and believable. I like the way the camera lingers on shots of one putting a reassuring hand on the other’s shoulder, or captures the way the two glance at each other in humor or for support. Our knowledge of where they will ultimately end up creates strong tension and an undercurrent of tragedy (words I never thought I’d write about a Transformers movie). Hemsworth brings a little of the overly confident bonehead that he showed in the most recent Thor films, but it’s toned down; Orion’s hopeful, a bit of a boy scout, and gets in his own ways, but he’s not an idiot. Henry is fantastic as D-16, who’s resigned to a life of toil for the greater good but reveals buried fury when he realizes the reality he’s been shown is a lie. The film brings D-16 and Orion to their traditional positions in a way that makes sense, and I was surprised how much of an emotional punch their inevitable split packed.
Transformers One gets a lot of mileage out of a solid voice cast. The highlight for many will likely be Keegan-Michael Key as the robot who will one day be called Bumblebee, but here just goes B. Having been forced to work in solitary, he’s elated to meet new friends, and his exuberance is often the film’s comic relief. I also like Hamm as the smug Sentinel Prime, the leader of Cybertron who has his own secrets; Hamm can be heroic, funny or intimidating, and gets a chance to do it all here. Scarlett Johansson, Laurence Fishburne and Steve Buscemi round out the cast, and they’re fine, if immemorable. The trailers made me think this would be a silly Lego Movie-esque romp; I was surprised to find that it’s actually a bit darker. There’s comic relief, but the film takes its story seriously, and it’s the rare kids film to deal with issues of betrayal, classism and fascism. Not in a way that’s heady enough to keep it from being fun and exciting, but it adds a texture lacking in most kids’ movies.
And it should be said the animation is gorgeous. Cybertron is a fantastically rendered setting, with cities that fold in over themselves and “wildlife” that exists on its ever-shifting surface. The Transformers shift and change with much more clarity than the Bay movies ever managed, and the film even finds ways to make robots with bland gray faces emote. The action sequences are engaging and suspenseful, and it all ends on a note that, for the first time, made me curious about what might happen next in the Transformers universe.
Transformers One lacks the unbridled imagination and depth of something like the Spider-verse movies or even the willingness to buck expectations like the Lego films. But I think the animation team at Paramount is proving itself one of the more adept studios at celebrating and reinventing beloved IP. They did that with last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which freshened up characters and mythology that had grown a bit stale. While I don’t think Transformers One is quite as successful – but that might be entirely due to me being a Turtle fan from way back – I think it does much of the same, honoring what people loved about the property as kids while finding a way to introduce it to a new generation. My kids, who had never seen a Transformers movie, loved it; the audience at our screening seemed engaged. And it even won over this Transformers agnostic. Don’t pass this one over; it actually really is more than meets the eye (sorry).
Transformers One opens in theaters on Sept. 20.