From the left: D-16/Megatron, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, Elita-1, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, Orion Pax/Optimus Prime, voiced by Chris Hemsworth, and B-127, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, in Transformers One.Courtesy of Paramount Pictures/Supplied
Transformers One
Directed by Josh Cooley
Written by Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer and Gabriele Ferrari
Featuring the voices of Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Scarlett Johansson
Classification PG; 104 minutes
Opens in theatres Sept. 20
The Transformers movies have enjoyed enough resurrections to make Optimus Prime the Cybertron version of Jesus. No matter how many directors do their best (ie., worst) to destroy the franchise, it keeps coming back into something ever more indestructible. Yet as great as the Transformers marketing machine can be – was Travis Knight’s 2018 prequel Bumblebee a return-to-early-Spielberg-era form, or Steven Caple Jr.’s 2023 spinoff Rise of the Beasts a more character-driven romp? – the mechanical half-life of these films is startling.
Which means that heralding Transformers One, an animated prequel to the entire saga, as the best Transformers movie to come along in a decade is not exactly the highest compliment one can pay. Sure, director Josh Cooley nails down much of what Transformers audiences want to see – robots beating each other to nuts-and-bolts pulp – while also attempting to put his own humorous spin on the property, albeit by aping the wink-nudge approach of reigning intellectual-property animation kings Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse).
Yet Cooley and his team don’t go much further than what is required of the series, and along the way too often indulge in what has doomed many Transformers-auteur predecessors: mind-numbing set-pieces, and a mythology so needlessly dense that not even Megatron himself could break it into digestible chunks.
Exploring the early relationship of future foes Optimus Prime and Megatron, Transformers One is essentially a buddy-cop film that feels more comfortable with action than it does comedy. When the movie opens, Optimus has yet to achieve his Autobot-leader moniker, and is instead called Orion Pax. The lowly bot (voiced by an Australian accent-free Chris Hemsworth) toils away in the mines underneath the planet Cybertron, but yearns for something greater. Enter Megatron/D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), who similarly feels underappreciated, but possesses a slightly more envious streak.
After accidentally stumbling onto the thread of a grand conspiracy orchestrated by the duplicitous Cyberton leader Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), Orion and D-16 – along with their reluctant pals Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) – embark on a life-changing mission to save their home.
If the film was a tight 90 minutes, it might all be harmless fly-by-matinee fun. Indeed, Cooley’s first big action sequence, a race through Cybertron that cribs the best beats from Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, is spry and zippy. But ultimately the film struggles to balance its various commitments, with a screenplay that never seems sure of whether it wants to be a pure comedy, a lore-packed adventure or a peppy children’s film that shuffles kids straight to the toy aisle.
More strikingly, the animation never really clicks, uneasily straddling the line between cheap CGI Netflix cartoon and something more ambitious and fully realized. The result delivers the same kind of messy, prolonged sense of forced fun that has doomed many of the post-Michael Bay Transformers films (and a few of his entries, too).
Will children like it? Of course. My two sons, aged 10 and 4, went nuts, and still quote the movie several weeks later (including one unfortunate line of dialogue that involves a word that I can’t even print in this newspaper, earning me a rather dubious parental award). But my boys would also happily rot away their teeth on gummy bears and Fruitopia were it up to them. Sometimes, children need to be taught that there is more to kids’ movies than meets the eye. Or less, as the case might be.