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| Images courtesy of Paramount |
Although the Transformers franchise has existed for forty years, its popularity has waxed and waned over the decades. After its heyday in the '80s and early '90s, it was on the back burner of pop culture until 2007, when Michael Bay unleashed a live-action take on the material complete with a total redesign of the aesthetic of the Transformers. Bay directed five films that were all box office successes, but each subsequent film strayed further from the original lore and focused more on the plight of the human characters than the interplay between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Fans were hungry to see a story that took place on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers, that focused solely on the titular "robots in disguise." For Transformers One (2024), Paramount tapped the talents of Toy Story 4 (2019) director Josh Cooley and took the narrative back to its animated roots.
The setting is Cybertron, a gleaming metallic planet full of biomechanical flora and fauna. Deep under the surface lie endless caverns full of Energon, the life source for all beings on Cybertron. Due to a bitter war, a vast amount of the Energon stores were depleted, and the remaining sources are located deep underground. The only way to retrieve this energy is back-breaking mining, which has been thrust upon a lower class of Transformers who don't have transformation cores, leaving them trapped in their humanoid forms. Best friends Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) have spent their entire lives toiling away in the mines as second-class citizens, but they accidentally discover a secret that will unravel everything they have believed about the politics of Cybertron and their place in society at large.
Even if one isn't knowledgeable about Transformers lore, it will be evident that Orion Pax and D-16 are actually Optimus Prime and Megatron, and so this film is an origin story for their eventual contentious relationship. Their friendship is deep and full of brotherly love, and they have bonded over their shared situation and thirst for self-actualization. Slave labor is a dark topic for a kid's movie, but Transformers One treats it with care and dignity while not shying away from the weighty nature of the concept. Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) is the de facto leader of the Transformers, and his gregarious nature hides a malevolent core. Something is rotten in the state of Cybertron, and it's up to the mining bots to figure out what it is.
The evolution of Orion Pax and D-16's relationship is the most compelling aspect of the narrative, and it echoes other famous friends-to-enemy-type stories such as Xavier and Magneto from X-Men. It feels rushed in Transformers One, partly because they need to have bombastic action scenes every twenty minutes, which is expected in a film like this (you must keep the kids' attention, after all). The animation is smooth and eye-catching, if a bit frenetic, with a riveting racing sequence in the first act with shades of the classic SNES game F-Zero. While the overall tone is serious for the most part, there is some comic relief provided by B-127, AKA Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key), but the humor never undercuts the emotional impact of the crucial scenes.
Transformers One proves that you don't need an overly complex and convoluted screenplay to tell a captivating tale set in the Transformers universe. With gorgeous animation, excellent voice-acting, and a return to the iconic G1 designs, this film is the best addition to the franchise since the 1986 classic The Transformers: The Movie.
—Michelle Kisner