It's forgivable to be a little cynical about Transformers in the year 2024. The franchise is seven films deep — eight if we include 1986's The Transformers: The Movie — and most them aren't great. Sure, they've made a lot of money, but at least one of the films in the series holds the dubious distinction of being one of the highest-grossing, worst-reviewed films of all time (Transformers: Age of Extinction from 2014).
Things looked up in 2018 with the release of Bumblebee, but then the franchise stumbled again with last year's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The bar for these movies, as they say, is resting on the floor.
There are plenty of reasons for this: the movies look cool because Michael Bay knows how to make things look cool. Criticisms about Bay be damned, he knows how to light and block a scene and point a camera at things exploding pretty effectively. Where they fall down is in the writing and character building. It might seem a little much to expect from a franchise initially designed solely to sell toys to kids, but the original 1980s cartoon series had characters that, while perhaps basic archetypes, were also well-defined and consistent. To date, the recent films are mostly not that, and they occasionally get things entirely wrong.
So when a new Transformers movie was announced, it was difficult not to be wary. Returning to the franchise's roots with an animated feature sounds great, but pitching a new origin story of the Transformers sounds like the franchise out of ideas. A lacklustre trailer, released in a marketing stunt where it was projected in space, did not help. Imagine my surprise, then, when Transformers One turned out to be a total blast. Yes, that's correct: Transformers One is an excellent time at the movies.
The story is, as expected, pretty basic. As the film opens, Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry) are best friends working the mines of Cybertron, the Transformers' home planet. They, along with an entire underclass of robots, do not have transformation cogs and, as a result, have no alternate form. As the hopeful one who longs for something greater, Orion spends his free time looking for clues to the location of the Primes, the fabled original leaders of the Transformers who have been missing for 50 years. In contrast, D-16 finds comfort in routine and never wants to rock the boat for fear of falling out.
Soon, Orion has them running in an annual race to prove they are more than mere miners. Following their crowd-pleasing exploits, they end up inside a planet with an underground city alongside their former boss in the mines, Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), whom they pick up in the deepest, darkest sub-levels of the planet.
From here, the story becomes predictable: Orion and D-17 become Optimus Prime and Megatron, the leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively. Best friends have their worldviews shattered and react in opposite ways — the former toward hope, the latter toward anger. It turns out, though, that telling a basic story well, casting great performers to help sell the emotional beats, and keeping up the pace for the entire runtime creates a very compelling film that's easy to get invested in.
Hemsworth and Henry are both well cast. Hemsworth draws on his experience as Thor to give Orion a similar lovable, optimistic energy. Orion is the kind of character that leaps before he looks, and Hemsworth nails the tone required to make that endearing. Henry does the same with D-16. He has perhaps more heavy lifting to do, as D-16's arc takes him through several stages of anger and resentment. In lesser hands those could feel rote, but even at the end of the film when that arc is complete, it's hard not to empathize with him at least a little bit, and that's the mark of an outstanding performance.
Johansson has one key scene in which she delivers the best monologue in the film, and her calm, confident voice sells it well. Key, whose B-127 will eventually become Bumblebee, gets to put on his biggest persona for most of the film. B is a non-stop talker (ironic given his previous film appearances!), and his reckless enthusiasm for simply being included is infectious.
The supporting parts in the film are also well cast, with Jon Hamm turning in a performance that reminds us how good he can be in a sort of sleazy car salesman kind of role, Laurence Fishburne showing up as the wise sage who guides the heroes toward their destiny that contains echoes of Fischburne's role as Morpheus, and Steve Buscemi showing up as Starscream serves as one of the most inspired casting choices of the year.
The character designs are excellent, drawing on the original 1980s cartoon designs for style and shape but updating them to allow for more fluid transformations. Each character even has distinct body language, which is an impressive level of attention to detail. Where the animation really shines, however, is in the environments. Each location has depth and detail to a degree unexpected in a film like this. One character spends most of his on-screen time covered in moss and dust, and you can practically see the individual specks.
If this wasn't already enough, the film is also incredibly funny, with jokes coming fast and furious and all of them landing. Some of them are deep cuts, and some of them aren't (be on the lookout for "knife hands!"), but the script and editing nail the timing required for all of them to work.
More importantly, while it will appeal to all fans of the franchise — and perhaps fans of the Transformers: Generation 1 line of toys most of all — the film never ventures into adult territory needlessly, or even at all. Josh Cooley and Paramount have clearly remembered that the franchise centred on talking robots that turn into cars is meant for kids. Despite one fairly dark moment toward the end, it never exceeds its PG rating and could easily be the film that brings this franchise to a whole new generation, which is very exciting.
Transformers One is one of the biggest and best surprises of the year. It's bright, funny, well-acted and most of all, fun. It begs the question: why weren't these films animated this whole time?