After seeing THE WILD ROBOT I decided to bite the bullet and watch 2024’s other automaton-related animated feature, TRANSFORMERS ONE, the first theatrical Transformers cartoon since 1986’s seminal-ish THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE.

It may seem odd that I didn’t want to see this in the theater, because here are the Transformers movies I did bother to see on the big screen, often in 3D and/or IMAX: TRANSFORMERS, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT, BUMBLEBEE and TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS. That’s right, all seven of the live action ones, even though only the next to last one I consider to be Actually A Good Movie. The rest I mostly just find fascinatingly crazy, but I’ve learned to enjoy watching them. I started as their enemy, but later joined them, like Skyfire. Like so many others of my generation I had the Transformers cartoon and toys imprinted on my brain as a child, and there is some residual lure to the concept in there, even if I don’t hold it sacred.

My period of anticipation for TRANSFORMERS ONE spanned from when I first read that Industrial Light and Magic were working on on animated Transformers prequel to a few moments into the first trailer. ILM are not a part of the animated feature establishment, the one time they did one it was the visually innovative Gore Verbinski movie RANGO, so I pictured a very serious, chrome-plated fantasy epic that would really stand out among American animated features. It hadn’t occurred to me that they would just smoosh it into the same mold as every other computer animated feature they do now. Yeah, they’re a prequel version of those characters you remember, but they’re cute now, they wave their arms around frantically with every word out of their mouths, of which there are many, because they’re funny now, you see! They don’t talk all serious, they’re just like you and me, they’re nervous and awkward and they say the funny stuff back and forth. They make finger guns, even. More than once! All the popular types of humor you love and recognize, we got it for you in TRANSFORMERS ONE!

There was a time in the history of American animated features, when most of them were by Disney or somebody trying to be Disney, where I dreaded that they always had to have the comic relief character. The wisecracking dragon, buffoonish bat or farting gargoyle who comes in and does funny-coded stuff for a while. Now that’s every character. In this one even the villain talks in hacky sitcom jokery for most of his scenes. That’s how they do it now: it’s jokes for a while but then they get serious. Then more jokes then serious. It’s the style these days.

I believe my kneejerk reaction to the trailer was correct, this is a cowardly way to do it and what I pictured would’ve been better. But I’m here to review the movie they actually made, which is fairly entertaining for what it is and seems to be more appreciated by others than by me.

A catch-all defense of and attack on Transformers movies is that they’re just based on toys, so what did you expect? It’s true, we are dealing with a situation where two different Japanese toy lines were imported to the U.S., characters and mythology were reverse-engineered to make a comic book and cartoon to promote them, and those grew into an ongoing franchise with so far almost 30 separate series totaling over 1200 episodes across the last 40 years. And now they make movies drawing from the concepts in those works and trying to reinterpret them into something new or exciting or movie-worthy. Personally I don’t think that’s too different from riffing on a fairy tale or a comic book or a classic novel or a tried and true genre formula. It’s storytelling. I believe these filmatists are doing it in good faith, not just dumping some bullshit out there cynically, so we owe them the respect of recognizing where they do and do not transcend just being a toy ad. (Also, director Josh Cooley did TOY STORY 4, so he’s not anti-toy.)

This is the story of Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth, RED DAWN remake) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry, CHILD’S PLAY remake), who will one day be heroic Autobot leader Optimus Prime and evil Decepticon leader Megatron. At this time they’re best friends and regular schmoes working shitty jobs in the Energon mines of Iacon. Their boss Darkwing (Isaac Singleton, Jr., FIST OF THE WARRIOR) hates them, as does their supervisor Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson, NORTH), who gets demoted because of them. D is always having to cover for Orion’s various shenanigans, some of them having to do with his pipe dream of discovering a solution to the Energon crisis.

See, Energon used to flow freely on Cybertron until the god-like Primes were killed and the Matrix of Leadership disappeared. Now the underclass have to dedicate their lives to mining it. Cybertron’s leader Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm, SUCKER PUNCH) returns empty-handed from an expedition to the surface to find the Matrix, but the people still love him and he announces a big race. The miners aren’t allowed to compete because they lack the cogs that give them the power to transform into vehicles, but Orion tricks D into joining him in in the race wearing jetpacks. It ends in humiliation, but only after inspiring their fellow miners by getting real close. It’s such a big Cybertronian cultural moment that Sentinel Prime himself comes and praises them, but Darkwing still transfers them to the garbage incineration level to work with a goofball named B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key, THE PREDATOR), who we recognize as Bumblebee.

Digging through garbage only fuels Orion’s obsession; he finds a clue that leads him, D, B and Elita to ride a train to the surface, discover the remains of the Primes and uncover a secret that changes everything, mercifully moves this into the movie you expect with melodrama and robot battles and what not. Scary combatants include the crustacean-like Quintessons, who Cybertron is at war with, and Sentinel’s spider-like henchwoman Airachnid (Vanessa Liguori).

It’s a pretty cool setting. The parts of Cybertron where everyone lives reminded me of Coruscant in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, while the surface reminded me of CARS, because along with the moving rocks and plants there are robotic antelopes. I like that. To these living machines it must be the most beautiful or most horrible thing they’ve ever seen.

The screenplay is credited to Eric Pearson (THOR: RAGNAROK, GODZILLA VS. KONG) and Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari (ANT-MAN AND THE WASP, DIE IN A GUNFIGHT), story by Barrer & Ferrari. Yes, I looked it up and Gabriel Ferrari is an actual Ferrari automobile who became sentient and turned to screenwriting. Good for him. It’s the least surprising thing in the world that all of them worked on Marvel movies, and I don’t mean that as a quality judgment. It’s just that it’s the same approach, for good and/or bad.

I’m sorry to keep hammering on this, but I really do hate this modern assumption that you can’t just have a character that’s cool in a movie, you have to make them awkward and wacky like a dude you know. They have to stumble over their words and embarrass themselves and, worst of all by far, they always gotta be a superfan of something. Orion and D idolize the Primes and have posters of them. Megatron’s first Decepticon logo is in fact a limited edition decal of the logo for his hero, so he wears it as some fanboy shit.

In my opinion there was no need for the nerd community to feel more represented by Megatron. There are times when it’s good to make your characters down to earth and relatable, but a story about the evil robotic gun-man from the machine planet is not one of those times. I am calling for a minimum 22 year moratorium on this “movie heroes are over-excitable fanboys just like you fuckin dorks” cliche.

I would also ask for a temporary shut down of this idea that you can’t make a movie where the hero just does a bunch of awesome shit because it’s cool and we want to see them do cool stuff. It is unconscionable that in this day and age we still feel shackled to the Whedon Protocols, in which moments of awesomeness must first be earned through a series of corny fake outs where it seems like something cool is gonna happen but then – record scratch, armpit fart, wacky trombone – it’s actually set up for a corny joke. For example the first time Optimus says his catch phrase “Roll out” he says it too quiet and nobody hears him. The first time they’re going to transform they run right off a cliff. The second time they try, Optimus gets all excited, yells “It’s working!” but then his head gets stuck flipped inside his body so he runs around headless saying “My head! My head!”

I mean I like jokes too but you start to miss sincerity after two or three decades of everybody being too afraid to do anything with a straight face ever. You’re afraid somebody will think it’s stupid? Stop worrying what those assholes think. Dare to be stupid, as a troubadour once sang.

Keegan-Michael Key did make me laugh with his jokes about “knife hands.” I think they should’ve just let him be the funny one and make a more serious movie around him. Maybe Disney was right all along. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you back then, Disney.

I’m sure I’m being too much of a purist, but I swear I come to this not as a zealot for Transformers but as one for animation. I get impatient with what I see as hacky animation traditions – poses and expressions based more on cliches from previous cartoons than observable human behavior. I hate the instinct to oversell every single gesture instead of give a real acting performance. I mourn this movie’s inability to see less human character designs as an interesting challenge for the animators, instead choosing to give everybody big eyes and mouths like pre-school versions of the toys (which were already for little kids!). I think this production was a rare opportunity to use “i.p.” as an excuse to make a movie totally different from what Pixar, DreamWorks, etc. are doing. Instead they conformed to the formula, and what did that get them? I doubt a weirder version would’ve lost more money.

But let me switch gears (do you get it?) and focus on what I liked. First of all, there’s a good score by Brian Tyler (SIX STRING SAMURAI, BUBBA HO-TEP) that does treat it like a serious, epic adventure, and unlike the trailer the actual movie does not use wacky needle drops. The only song is a horrendous one by Quavo, Ty Dolla $ign & Are We Dreaming, but it’s on the end credits, and maybe grown up versions of the kids who watch it now will one day think it’s funny like we do “You Got the Touch.”

One choice that adds some much needed weight to the movie is casting Laurence Fishburne (CHERRY 2000) as a Prime named Alpha Trion, who provides the mythological narration at the opening and appears later as the very serious character who transitions this mild-chucklefest into drama mode. He sounds like Morpheus and he kind of is Morpheus because he both reveals to them that their whole reality is a lie and inspires them to believe they have potential and rise up. Call it corny but I did love the idea that the lower classes have had the cogs that allow them to transform removed at birth, but “What defines a Transformer isn’t the cog in his chest but the spark that resides in their core. A spark that gives you the will to make your world better.” He calls the power to transform “The ability to change your world.” Cool toy gimmick becoming an inspirational metaphor for life.

Late in the movie we meet a group called the High Guard, a few of them original Transformers characters, already with their familiar names and shapes. They are led by Starscream, the jet plane who we know as the jealous second-in-command to Megatron. It was a funny idea to cast Steve Buscemi (FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN) as his voice – he does a more subtle version of the trademark Starscream whininess. Also it’s a GHOST WORLD reunion with Johansson.

I don’t really see why Optimus and Megatron need an Obi Wan and Anakin backstory, and for the most part I don’t really buy that disillusionment over his hero being a liar is enough to switch D from likable best buddy to murderous paramilitary leader. He suddenly starts talking about bloody vengeance and Orion gives him concerned looks and says “Hey buddy, you’ve been a little quiet. Are you all right?” But I do think the scene where D gets into a fight with Starscream and ends up taking over his faction is pretty cool. And on paper I do like the idea that he goes from uptight rule follower to villain. I think it makes sense. He’s all about blindly following the system and then when he realizes the system sucks he wants to take it over rather than fix it. There are definitely guys like that, they just don’t usually start out as likable as Brian Tyree Henry.

I give credit to the thought put into this script. I like the idea of Cybertron as an unfair world where the workers are forcibly denied their potential in life, treated horribly (including being punched on the job), punished by being transferred to ever deeper levels (they believed there were only 40 until they were transferred to level 50). And they all revere their leader Sentinel Prime, having no idea that he’s a phony who sold out their planet’s resources (that they’ve spent their lives mining) in exchange for power. But Orion, whose new name Optimus is said to come from his optimism, breaks protocols to search for the “Matrix of Leadership” that would change the whole world (and, incidentally, erase the need for his miserable job). It frames him as a legendary hero for more reasons than his rallying cries, laser shooting and cool design.

What the movie doesn’t quite seem aware of, though, is how much following the tagline’s instruction to “witness the origin” turns the whole saga into a depressing tragedy, and not just because two friends turned against each other. This worker drone troublemaker Orion broke the rules, defied oppression and through his unique vision and perseverance changed the course of history for all of Cybertron, but his reward is that he will spend the rest of his life joylessly leading an endless guerrilla war. In ONE I was happy as he started to turn into the Optimus we know, getting more serious and stoic, but now I kinda feel guilty for it. At least when he was a miner he found time to goof around and pursue outside interests. Never again. Life is nothing but war and speeches to inspire more war. I admit I would’ve watched TRANSFORMERS TWO, but maybe it’s a good thing ONE flopped. It’s the only way they’ll ever find peace.