With the exception of Travis Knight’s Bumblebee (2018), I have found all of the other movies in the multi-billion-dollar Transformers franchise somewhat if not fully execrable, which is why it was such a pleasant surprise to find that Transformers One, the first fully animated theatrical film in the series since the widely derided Reagan-era Transformers: The Movie (1986), to be quite enjoyable. As with Bumblebee, this is undoubtedly related to the absence of Michael Bay in the director’s chair (he remains a producer), but it is also clearly a result of a smarter script, better characterization, and more coherent action (although it does stray over the top from time to time). Bay’s fascinations in the series remained largely mired in military hardware, shallow themes about youth empowerment, and the objectification of women, and his films suffered as a result. Transformers One digs deeper in laying out the backstory of the Transformers franchise and how the Autobot leader Optimus Prime and the Decepticon leader Megatron came to be.

The film it set entirely on the alien planet of Cybertron, which is home to the shape-shifting robot species of the title. Most of the story unfolds in Iacon City, which is situated deep under the surface of the planet. Few ever venture to the surface because it is understood to be a poisoned wasteland due to an earlier war between their forebearers, the Primes, and an invading species known as Quintessons. The social world in Iacon is fundamentally divided by class, with laboring robots who are unable to transform working under grueling conditions in mines to collect a power source known as Energon, while the other robots enjoy more power and prestige (and, of course, the ability to transform into vehicles courtesy of the cogs in their chests that the labor robots lack). The world is overseen by Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), a much-beloved politician-leader with a Trumpian grasp of the power of alternate facts and a Slick Willy public persona. Our heroes are Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth), a miner who aspires to be more, and his best friend D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), who often gets roped into Orion Pax’s schemes, including participating in a massive race from which non-transforming robots are banned.

Orion Pax and D-16 eventually partner with two additional robots: the Type-A manager Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), who gets fired from her job and demoted due to Orion Pax’s refusal to follow directions when saving one of his friends during a mine cave-in, and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), who has become slightly loopy due to the long period of time he has worked alone deep in the recesses of the mine burning garbage. They form a classic quartet of competing personalities that somehow meld together into a force that threatens to upend the established order and reveal all the ugly truths that Sentinel Prime and his many supporters and followers have been hiding. As with so many established orders, the one on Cybertron is purposefully designed to keep some in power while disempowering others, which means that the film’s basic theme is a progressive call to equality and truth, even if that is messy and dangerous (some have called it a a “pro-labor allegory,” and they’re not wrong). One of Orion Pax’s key attributes is his optimism, and it is to the film’s credit that he doesn’t not turn into a chipper, one-note cypher, but rather a fully realized character who simply refuses to accept his lot in life and is willing to do anything—including self-sacrifice—to achieve it.

Director Josh Cooley previous helmed Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 4 (2019) and co-wrote Inside Out (2016), so it is not surprising that this Transformers would have more heart and soul than Bay’s overlong smash-fests. This is, of course, not to say that there isn’t a lot of smashing—because there is. There are delirious sequences of robot battles, chases, and fights, most of which maintain a decent sense of spatial coherence despite the inherently clogged nature of the visuals (after watching so much hardware and machinery on screen, you might find yourself longing for images of grass and trees). It takes a bit of time to adjust to all the characters being enormous, sentient robots with smooth human faces and glowing eyes, but the voice actors do a fine job of rendering the characters with humanity and empathy so that we have something genuine to hold onto even during all those metal-slamming fight scenes.

Copyright © 2024 James Kendrick

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