I have to confess that last year’s Transformer movie really burned me out on giant robots for a while.
However, I decided to give “Transformers One” a chance because it’s animated and features several snappy one-liners in the trailer.
Plus, I don’t foresee many child-friendly movies on the horizon, so, I headed into Schulman’s to catch it before it left.
Overall, it’s entertaining, and the animation is smooth and fluid, plus I like the portrayal of robots Orion Pax and D-16 before they became Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively.
Transformers One is a 2024 American animated science fiction action film based on Hasbro’s Transformers toy line.
It was directed by Josh Cooley from a screenplay by Eric Pearson and the writing duo of Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, based on a story by Barrer and Ferrari.
The ensemble voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, Evan Lee, Isaac Singleton, Jr., and Jon Hamm.
It is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers, and depicts the origins and early relationship of Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Coming in at 104 minutes long, the film is rated PG for sci-fi violence, animated action throughout, and language.
Cybertron is a planet inhabited by sentient robots fueled by a substance called Energon and fitted with transformation cogs, devices that allow them to transform into vehicles.
In the city of Iacon, Orion Pax (Hemsworth), a mining robot without a cog, sneaks into an archive and watches a documentary on the Primes, the first Cybertronians made directly by their creator Primus.
Security guards catch Orion, but his best friend and fellow miner D-16 (Henry) bails him out.
Later, a cave-in occurs in the Energon mine where the two work, trapping fellow miner Jazz (Lee).
While Orion and D-16 save him, their overseer, Darkwing (Singleton) blames the incident on their superior Elita-1 (Johansson) and has her demoted.
Cybertron’s leader, Sentinel Prime (Hamm) returns from an expedition to the planet’s surface, claiming to have fought off invading Quintesson aliens, and organizes a race in celebration.
To prove themselves as more than miners, Orion and D-16 enter illegally, using jet packs and quick thinking, but end up losing.
While Sentinel promises to reward them for inadvertently boosting mining morale, Darkwing reassigns the two to garbage incineration, where they meet the eccentric B-127 (Key).
After discovering a chip among the junk containing a distress message from Alpha Trion (Fishburne), one of the Primes, Orion convinces D-16 and B-127 to travel with him to his coordinates on the surface.
Later they also end up persuading Elita to join after she catches them hitchhiking on a cargo train.
The four eventually find a deactivated Trion in a cave alongside the corpses of the other Primes.
Upon reactivation, Trion reveals that Sentinel betrayed the Primes and has secretly been working for the Quintessons.
Sentinel had been giving the Quintessons regular Energon supplies in exchange for letting him rule Cybertron while removing the miners’ cogs to keep them subservient.
Trion provides the group with cogs from the fallen Primes that allows them to transform, and a chip carrying evidence of Sentinel’s treason.
After the group flees the cave for Iacon, things only get harder for Pax and his friends.
Overall, I think the film is more than suitable for all ages and it helps attendees get a grasp of how Megatron and Optimus Prime’s friendship deteriorated.
If you’re even just a little bit curious, I’d say catch this before it leaves theaters for the full experience on the big screen.
