Movie Review - Transformers One

Every franchise must have an origin.

Some, like Transformers, have multiple. With the most recent TV series, Earthspark, nearing the end of its run and the live-action films seeing more and more diminishing returns, the folks at Paramount and Hasbro were insistent that there was still more to say about these Robots in Disguise. Given the popularity among the fandom of the first 5 minutes of Bumblebee, depicting the war on Cybertron with ZERO humans, Paramount soon announced that there would be an animated film focusing strictly on the Transformers homeworld. No humans. Instead, they’d be trying to do something that we in the fandom knew would work…because it’s worked since the very beginning of G1 in the mid 80s…the Transformers themselves would carry the film, with a focus on their character and their story.

That announcement came in 2017. Seven years later, Transformers One has hit the big screen…and it’s got its work cut out for it. Can this one animated film satisfy the hardcore fans, bring in younger, new fans and perhaps even weave a nostalgic spell on a few parents here and there…all the while being…good?

Let’s take a look at the synopsis first…

Before Autobots. Before Decepticons. The planet Cybertron has emerged from a brutal war for freedom against the Quintessons, but at what cost? The Primes are dead. The world’s energy is becoming increasingly limited. Here we find best friends Orion Pax and D-16, miners toiling away in the energon mines: Orion dreaming of a better future where he can choose his own path outside of Cybertron’s constricting caste system while D-16 believes that if he works hard enough, that effort will lift him through the ranks. But as Orion’s freewheeling antics place the pair in deepening peril, an unexpected discovery will lift both miners up…before driving them apart. Witness the origins of the Great War and the conspiracy that would give rise to Cybertron’s greatest rivals…Optimus Prime and Megatron!

You know, looking that over, there’s probably a way to shorten that up…but I’m not going to. Instead, I feel that this is a good way to illustrate that even though Transformers One has a 1-hour 40-minute running time, there’s a lot going on here…but also a lot of it, you’ve probably already seen before in other stories.

Let’s talk about these cliches before anything else…because if you’re going to dislike the film, these might be the reason. First of all, yes, it is the classic Hero’s Journey or, at least it is for Orion…soon to be Optimus. It has all the familiar beats: the call to adventure, the crossing of the threshold, the denial, the sacrifice…so on and so forth. On the flip side, we have the tragedy that is D-16 descending into Megatron: betrayal followed by anger, hatred and the need for revenge until everything is lost. I would argue however that what makes this classic narrative stand on its own is that we see these character moments in parallel,  in a way creating the double-helix that is the DNA of the Transformers franchise.

Then there’s the other thing…and I can’t believe I have to address this. You see, I’ve never bought into this whole ‘woke’ bullshit that many online commentators have been bitching about. While I will agree that many recent films have tried to be overly preachy…it’s mainly shitty writing that’s the triggering point. Movies and cinema are an art form and as such anything that we go to see that DOESN’T have something to say really isn’t worth our time or effort. Yes, even if that message is as banal as BUY MORE TRANSFORMERS. For example, apparently nowadays strong female characters is ‘woke’. No…we’ve always had strong female characters, Ellen Ripley in the Alien franchise, Princess Leia in Star Wars and Sarah Connor in Terminator. And sadly, this BS has landed at the feet of one of the supporting characters here: Elita-1. Here, she’s portrayed as a by-the-book bot who, like D-16, is trying to rise through the ranks through hard work and ambition. But since she actually starts off a rung ahead of Orion and D-16 as a mining supervisor…this makes her a “girl boss”? There’s one thing in the lore that these critics are either forgetting or not bothering to do the homework on: Elita-1 has always been a literal girl boss. She led the resistance on Cybertron while Optimus Prime and the majority of Autobots were fighting Megatron on earth. That was the case in G1 and in a more modern iteration, that was the case in the War for Cybertron trilogy. Throughout the reinterpretations of G1 lore, even more recently in the Skybound comics, Optimus and Elita have either always been equals or Prime just slightly higher than Elita due to the whole Matrix of Leadership thing. And the Elita-1 we’re presented with here is cut from that same cloth: she’s confident, she’s driven and she’s a leader. All of that is evidenced in the derided “I’m better than you” speech. But if all you’re focusing in on is that opening sentence, then you’re completely missing the point: throughout the film, it’s very plain that she IS in fact better than him in all the metrics that Cybertronians gauge themselves by…but what she sees and what she needs Orion to see is that he has it within himself to change that metric, to turn the status quo on it’s ear so that the old metrics don’t matter anymore. That, above anything else, might just take this screw-up miner bot and make him a Prime.

I haven’t really done a standard ‘what’s good’ paragraph, but I’m sure you can see my opinion seeping through the cracks here. Still, it’s worth noting that I really dug the way that the writers here crafted a world and backstory that combines the lore from different continuities, leaning most heavily on the Aligned/Transformers Prime continuity, the IDW comics and of course various strands of G1, into something fresh and new. These older references do not make this world predictable but instead offer enough insight for long-time fans like myself to consider the newer points that arise from this: Who were the Primes and how did Cybertronian Civilization arise around them? What triggered the Quintesson War? So on and so forth. Something else from our ‘something borrowed’ pile is the film’s musical score by Brian Tyler. If you come away from the film thinking that it sounds awfully familiar, you’re definitely right as Tyler’s symphonic language hasn’t changed much since he served as the composer for the Transformers Prime series. The world that’s being built here really leans into that style of score though as both the scenes and the themes oscillate from happy one moment, prophetic the next, then dark after that. It just works. Speaking of prophetic, I do have to give the writers props for more than I already have. You see, already using the Hero’s Journey for Orion/Optimus, it would have been just as easy to take this down the “Chosen One” variation of this theme…and they manage not to do that. I mean, in some ways they really didn’t need to…given that this is a prequel and we know how things are going to end up, but given that this film is geared toward younger audiences, there’s the temptation to get heavy-handed which thankfully they’ve avoided here. That dovetails into my next point in that even though this is very much a family film, Transformers One is not afraid to go dark. Let’s face it, if some of what happens in this film were being done to humans, PG-13 or R ratings wouldn’t be out of the question because as the plot unfolds, some of the things we learn are…well…atrocities.

A day after writing the bulk of this review, it occurred to me that I haven’t talked about the voice acting. When this project was initially announced, it came out pretty quickly that Chris Hemsworth would be voicing Orion Pax/Optimus Prime. While I will never get tired of Peter Cullen’s voice or take on the role, I’m certainly open to new voices and new takes. Well, I mean, as long as they’re good. [Let’s make a quick aside for a second, because as much as I want to bash Jake Foushee’s performance as Optimus in Netflix’s War for Cybertron trilogy...his performance in the same role was good in Cyberverse! So…there you go kids, the difference between good voice direction (Lauren Gold) and bad (Phillip Bache). – Ed.] Remember, since Cullen initially left the role back in the late 80s, we’ve had a number of voice actors tackle the role with varying degrees of success: Neil Kaplan, Gary Chalk, David Kaye, Jon Bailey (although he was almost doing a straight Peter Cullen impression) and Alan Tudyk. However, anytime there’s a known star put into an animated film, the question of “stunt casting” always arises…and it should. While some actors have presence on screen, many times that does not translate to their voice…and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for Aussie-mus Prime. Once news leaked out that Hemsworth had made it a point to talk about the role with its elder custodian though, I suspected everything was going to be alright. And indeed it was. Hemsworth manages to bring youth and energy to Orion, but once the change to Optimus Prime occurs, he manages to slow his pace and add some gravitas to his lines. While very Cullen-influenced, it’s very much his own take on the Autobot leader…and I feel a good one. Brian Tyree Henry’s D-16/Megatron is also very well done, but then again, longtime Transformers fans are more used to the Megatron role being a rotating door, with takes ranging wildly. Sure, expectations for his performance were high, but he also has the additional weight of showing the fall of a by-the-book worker into the vengeance-driven tyrant of the 40-year-old lore. Fortunately, it’s very easy to agree with all the other reviewers in that this is likely the best performance in the film. Let’s face it, had it been average, the final rift between him and Orion wouldn’t have been as painful as it was in the film. Moving on from the big two, Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1in concept is great casting…and for the most part, she is. I just wish she had a little more to do. That said, part of the success of the “I’m better than you,” speech isn’t only from the performance of that part of the script, but everything leading up to it. Johansson did an excellent job of imbuing Elita with not only a by-the-book nature akin to D-16’s, but the drive and perhaps even a slight arrogance needed by someone that is looking to actively climb the ladder that is the Cybertronian caste system. Yes, there’s another main character, but we’ll get to him later. The supporting cast also puts in some great performances. Jon Hamm’s Sentinel Prime runs the gamut, supportive, heroic leader in one moment…smarmy, self-serving SPOILER-WARNING the next, entirely believable as both. Laurence Fishburne as Alpha Trion really is no-brainer casting…of course he performs the role well, even though it is a very exposition-heavy one. That said, c’mon, Fishburne has one of those voices, like Morgan Freeman, Werner Herzog or Sir Richard Attenborough, where he could read you the goddamn phone book and you’d listen with rapt attention. Lastly, while some reviewers have mentioned him, I don’t think anything truly prepares you for Steve Buscemi’s turn as Starscream. Seriously, you are not ready. Starscream voices up to this point have all been attempts to channel or outright mimic Chris Latta’s iconic G1 performance…and really, you can’t bash any voice actor’s attempt to do that, it really is just as iconic as Cullen and Welker in their respective G1 roles. Buscemi’s performance, albeit limited, feels like it almost comes to that iconic interpretation by accident which, mind-bogglingly, makes it that much better than past performers and right on the level with Latta himself. Honestly, I was that blown away by it. Look, I know the guy’s a star and in-demand, but…oh, if only he could be the official voice of ‘Screamer from here on out? Bliss.

Unfortunately, there is one bad part of the film. Of course, all reviews are subjective so this is just me. In fact, I’ve read some reviews where it’s been said that Keegan-Michael Key’s Bumblebee (or B-127 here) steals the show. I couldn’t disagree more. If you’ve read anything I have to say about Transformers in the past few years…hell, maybe even a decade…you know that I’m sick of Bumblebee. How he’s portrayed in Transformers One, a comedic relief sidekick character that JUST…WON’T…SHUT…UP…isn’t helping that disposition. It also hasn’t helped my opinion of Key himself. Yes, while The Predator (2018) had plenty of flaws, the fact that Key played almost the same type of character there and here just…ugh. You can be funny without bombarding your audience with loud, rapid-fire word salad. And I swear to Primus…I knew “Badassatron” was going to be annoying, but the fact that they chose to make it a running “joke” made me long for the tired mechanic from the Bay films of forcing him to talk through the radio.

Transformers One manages to do everything that I’d hoped it would: it effectively hits the reset button on a franchise that kind of needed it and forges a new story that will help to foster newer, younger members to the fandom all the while keeping old-timers like me along for the ride with plenty of nods to the past and a gazillion easter eggs. No, it’s no perfect, but as many reviews have said and I will certainly echo, this IS the best Transformers movie we’ve ever gotten. It is worth noting though that the film is underperforming and even though there are 2 follow-up films planned, of course making a trilogy, we may never see them. And I WANT TO SEE THEM. So please, if you have any inclination toward these Robots in Disguise, get your shiny metal butt to the theater! Even though not being perfect would land this film a high-end Happy Cat rating, the old fanboy in me is willing to overlook Key’s Bumblebee and bump this up to our top score: the ever-coveted Hypno-Cat. Transformers One pulls off the near-impossible feat of keeping old Transformers fans happy all the while reeling in a new generation of kids that, hopefully, will keep the franchise rolling out for years to come!