Transformers One Sells Sketchy Credibility First, Toys Second

The Transformers film series has come full circle, and in doing so, it has engaged with a level of rebranding befitting a toy line, especially one predicated explicitly on changing shape. It began – so far as the movies are concerned, anyway – as a 1986 cash-in, a feature-length cartoon sequelizing the Saturday morning cartoon series, with explicit mission to merchandise. Later, it became a neo-Spielbergian boy-and-his-car action blockbuster, produced by the man himself but directed and directed and directed by Michael Bay until the five-film series more closely resembled Bay’s hateful, hostile id. (In truth, it only took about half a movie for this to happen, but it took four or five for viewers to get kinda sick of it.) Then came a couple of gentler non-Bay prequels, Bumblebee and last summer’s Rise of the Beasts; now, finally, in what is being pitched and in some cases received as a purer, more back-to-basics version of those characters… another prequel, but this time, animated.

Technically, Transformers One is a more sophisticated animated production than The Transformers: The Movie from 1986. The computer animation has been provided by Industrial Light & Magic, the cast features many recognizable names and one global superstar (but third-billed, because she plays the girl one), and Paramount clearly has their eye on the recent success of movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which imbue potentially Saturday-morning premises with graphic artistry and laugh-out-loud comedy. What a neat trick, to keep this material cartoony while simultaneously doing something more sophisticated than most live-action incarnations.

Alas, the visual invention and writerly affection that powered those animated spinoffs does not flow through Transformers One like so much Energon. That’s the substance that powers the robotic citizens and general goings-on of the planet Cybertron, where this prequel takes place, and it’s in fittingly short supply as the movie begins. While ruling-class robot Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) continues his supposedly heroic quest for the Matrix of Leadership, a device that will unleash a stronger supply of Energon, many non-transforming robots are forced to toil in mines, extracting Energon the hard way. (Yes, harder than mysteriously sourced robot magic.) Two of those miners are Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), best friends who worship their robo-superiors while yearning for something better themselves. Orion feels especially determined to escape his lowly station, and he eventually embarks on a mission to find the Matrix himself, along with D-16, their former supervisor Elita (Scarlett Johansson), and their goofy new pal B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key).

Fans will know that three-quarters of this team are fated to become more familiar robots: Orion is an early incarnation of Optimus Prime, B-127 is the future Bumblebee, and D-16, well, younger kids may be dismayed to learn that he may not be so chummy with the others by the end of this busy yet fairly rote quest. Despite this betrayal in waiting, the sophistication of Transformers One has been overstated: This is a big-budget kiddie cartoon with A-list (or maybe B+) production values.

Foremost among these is the design of Cybertron, from its weird surface populated by robot animals to its underground cityscapes with roads that form weightlessly and endlessly in front of vehicles at the last minute, down to the depths of its Energon mines. The nominally live-action Transformers movies have become known for their building-toppling, earth-shattering mayhem, while One, at times, resembles the covers of an old pulp sci-fi magazine. A pointless city-wide race, like something out of Alita or Ready Player One, becomes a series highlight on the sheer volume of futuristic production design alone. At very least, kids who see this movie may walk away with an appreciation of the kind of world-building that other, better movies extend into actual characters and ideas.

But no matter how much various filmmakers attempt to strip it back down from Bay-level bombast, Transformers can’t escape itself. It still traffics in pronouncement-heavy speechifying from various gasbots blathering on about the Matrix of Leadership, which sounds, as ever, like an executive training program. Transformers One does delay the pompousness slightly so it can make its leads seem like humble champions of the robo-proletariat; compared to the free-flowing playfulness of Spider-Verse, this is the equivalent of a paltry little holiday bonus issued by a massive corporation. There are traces of buddy-comedy chemistry between the disembodied voices of Hemsworth and Henry, but only just; director Josh Cooley has not imported much of the comic grace he helped bring to various inanimate-seeming objects in Toy Story 4. There’s more character in the googly-eyed minimalism of that movie’s Forky than any of these sleek, empty creations – though Key’s Bumblebee gets some actual sight gags and funny lines.

Some adults will probably more admire the movie’s moments of seriousness, but the lip service paid to freedom and regime change (the matrices of leadership, if you will) still mouths the language of actual drama haltingly and listlessly. And look, as far as toy ads go, Transformers One is tolerable. It’s a little more fully imagined and rounded out than the jankier weirdness of its 1986 spiritual predecessor. The difference is that in 2024, a Transformers cartoon isn’t just selling toys to kids; it’s selling its own sketchy credibility to fans of all ages.

Director: Josh Cooley
Writers: Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Bryan Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jon Hamm, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne
Release Date: September 20, 2024

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on Twitter under the handle @rockmarooned.