TRANSFORMERS ONE Review: Workers Rights, Class Struggle, Robot Revolution

After five mayhem-filled, live-action films, all helmed by Michael “Master of Disaster” Bay (Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys), tens of millions in production costs, billions in revenue, and, as expected for a long-running series, diminishing box-office returns, the Transformers series went the way of a soft reboot in 2018.

The underseen, underappreciated Bumblebee, and last year’s rushed, underwhelming semi-sequel, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, flatlined audience interest. Change wasn’t just needed, it was inevitable, essential to the franchise’s future viability as a profit center.

That change took the form of an all-CGI, no-humans-allowed prequel doubling as a reboot for an entirely new series. Transformers One takes not just ideas, concepts, or inspiration from the 1980s animated series based on the Hasbro toy line beloved by Gen Xers and Millennials alike, but also its tone, mood, and feel too. That’s just the start, though, for the impressively realized, Josh Cooley-directed, Andrew Barrer- and Gabriel Ferrari-scripted animated film.

Like the previous entries in the series, Transformers One centers on Optimus Prime (voiced by Chris Hemsworth, replacing fan-favorite Peter Cullen) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry), lifelong foes, inflexible ideologues, and, among other factors, the warring leaders who led their factions, the Autobots and the Decepticons, into the all-out war that turned their home planet, Cybertron, into a desolate, ravaged, uninhabitable world.

When we meet Optimus Prime and Megatron, however, they aren’t antagonists. They’re friends known by different names, Orion Pax (Optimus Prime) and D-16 (Megatron), members of their society’s lowest caste (and class), miners.

Orion Pax and D-16 spend their days risking their mechanical lives to obtain Energon (the equivalent of coal or oil in our world), the energy source needed to power their underground home, Iacon City, a city-state ruled semi-benevolently by Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). A preening, self-centered, egotistical leader, Sentinel Prime talks the talk, but rarely delivers on his promises of a better world for the inhabitants of Iacon City, one where Energon flowed freely and didn’t need to be mined.

As the last of the city-state's surviving leaders, he’s treated like an infallible, godlike figure, believed by all, especially D-16, who takes Sentinel Prime’s words as gospel, and practically all of Iacon City.

It’s Orion Pax, intensely curious about Iacon City’s past, obsessed with improving his station above that of a lowly miner, who eventually convinces a doubtful, hesitant D-16, a younger, overly verbose hanger-on, B-127 / Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key), and Elita -1 (Scarlett Johansson), a stern striver like Orion Pax demoted due to Pax’s rebellious behavior, who join forces to search for the so-called Matrix of Leadership, a totemic object/deus ex machina mysteriously connected to Cybertron’s life-force, on the war-scarred surface.

Working closely with ILM’s animation team, Cooley’s (Toy Story 4) iteration of Cybertron, the Autobots, and the Decepticons, the surface world’s bio-cybernetic life-forms, and Iacon City itself, a gleaming, brightly colored upside-down world influenced by Metropolis, Blade Runner, and everything in between, deftly straddles the thin line between nostalgia and novelty. Taking their cues from the original animated series (affectionately referred as “G-1” among fans), Cooley and his animators give the future Optimus Prime and future Megatron a level of expressiveness to rival, even exceed, their live-action counterparts.

Likewise, the obligatory set pieces dropped into Transformers One at predictable intervals: they’re cleanly directed, coherently choreographed, and expertly edited to keep audiences on the other side of the screen, young and old, maximally engaged with the onscreen action. The early set pieces emphasize Pax’s taste for risk and improvisation and D-16’s natural resistance to rule-breaking or causing friction within Iacon City’s stratified class system. It’s that difference, in personalities and in worldviews, between Pax and D-16 that ultimately dooms their friendship and sets them on the path toward never-ending conflict.  

Thematically, the conflict between Pax and D-16 leads into an unexpectedly emotionally heavy, psychologically complex third act. It’s unexpected because Transformers One clearly aims to engage younger audience members with its dazzlingly colorful displays of transforming robots in action.

It's emotionally heavy, given the centrality of Pax and D-16’s irrevocable split. It is psychologically complex because it explores the dangers inherent in uncritical hero worship, cults of personality, and how one or both lead to authoritarian movements and the inevitable revolution.

Transformers One opens Friday, September 20, only in movie theaters, via Paramount Pictures. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.