Though Respectable, Transformers One Could Stand To Be a Little More Fun
It's not your daddy's Transformers movie!
Steven Spielberg executive produced all the Transformers movies and their spin-offs, but only 2018’s Bumblebee felt like an actual Steven Spielberg movie. It was the Transformers most overtly modeled on Spielberg’s beloved kiddie science fiction of the 1980s. It alone was blessed with a Spielbergian sense of wonder and awe instead of a Michael Bay sense of empty excess.
Bumblebee, not coincidentally, was also the only Transformers movie not directed by Michael Bay, a film whose bombastic aesthetic I do not care for, except outliers The Rock and Ambulance.
Transformers One was produced but not directed by Bay. It’s better than all of the Bay-directed Transformers movies but not as good as Bumblebee, even as it is similarly blessed with a director with a take on the material beyond bigger, louder, and more.
Director Josh Cooley is a Pixar veteran who co-wrote Inside Out and directed Toy Story 4. He set out to make a movie about shape-shifting space aliens based on a line of popular children’s toys with real psychological depth. Cooley aspires to tragedy.
Transformers One has echoes of foundational mythologies throughout the ages. It’s the story about how God and Lucifer went from being BFFs to straight-up hating each other, but with giant robots from outer space. It’s Judas betraying Jesus, but with giant robots from outer space. It’s 2Pac and Biggie going from being the very best of friends to dangerous, deadly enemies, but with robots from outer space. It’s Li ’l Anakin Skywalker going from being a hero to a menace.
It’s a tale oft told, sometimes, but not always, with giant robots from outer space.
The messianic and evil figures in Transformers One are Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth, a large, handsome human being) and D-16, or as they are better known, Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Before they were the leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively, the robots that would become known as Optimus Prime and Megatron were humble miners with a dream. Humble origins are only acceptable in movies like these if they’re accompanied by ambitions to social mobility. The American cult of success says that it’s only okay to be a nobody if you’re actively working toward being a somebody.
In their original form Orion Pax and D-16 can’t even transform. They lack the cog that allows them to become something greater and different than themselves, to become more than meets the eye.
But they have dreams! Oh, but they have dreams. They’re humble, non-transforming giant robots from space who long for more.
Orion Pax has an insatiable curiosity and unerring moral compass that will lead to him becoming the ramrod-straight leader of the Autobots and tedious exemplar of everything noble and good.
FUCK Optimus Prime. He may be THE Transformer but I’ve always found him to be a crashing boor. Transformers One gives us a more psyhologically complex version of the character. That’s not too difficult considering how one-note he’s been in animated and live-action form.
The same is true of Megatron. He’s generally just an evil robot from outer space. Transformers One tries to make us feel for Megatron. It asks us to identify with him, to relate his plight.
Transformers One wisely casts Brian Tyree Henry in the crucial role of D-16/Megatron. He delivers a performance of depth and substance playing an idealist whose path to villainy is paved with good intentions and bitter, murderous resentment.
Our heroes learn that the world as they understand it is a lie and that Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), the wildly popular populist hero and savior, is in fact a traitor who has robbed the masses of their ability to transform and has sold out the entire planet to their enemies.
Despite being a giant robot from outer space he nevertheless cuts a Trumpian figure in his oily pragmatism and sinister cult of personality.
Orion and D-16 get red-pilled. They become instantly and uncomfortably cognizant of the universe’s most profound truths, like Sentinel Prime’s malevolent true nature and the evils of feminism.
Speaking of feminism, Scarlett Johansson voices the lady Transformer, Elita-A, and hand-delivers an easter egg when she tells Orion Pax that he does not have the touch or the power.
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This is, of course, a reference to “The Touch”, a single from the soundtrack to the 1980s Transformers cartoon that figures prominently in Boogie Nights as the song that Mark Wahlberg and John C. Riley’s coked-up rockers delusionally think is their ticket to the big time.
The double A-side to “The Touch” is “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Dare To Be Stupid,” so this particular bit of pandering really worked for me. That’s also true of a winking line later on when the heroes are dismissively referred to as “go-bots,” the name of a cartoon and toy line that competed with Transformers, not successfully.
Our heroes are joined in their adventures by Bumblebee, motormouth comic relief voiced by Keegan Michael Key. In his current form Bumblebee is the most autistic Transformers, in that he’s constantly scripting; literally everything that he says is something that he heard on the radio or watched in a movie or television show.
In embryonic form, however, he’s the most ADHD Transformer. He’s manic, scattered, unfocussed and overflowing with incoherent energy. Bumblebee is my favorite Transformers because he was the focus of the best Transformers movie and because he’s one of the most neurodivergent robots in pop culture.
Orion Pax and D-16 go on a journey of discovery that leads them in sharply different directions. To put things in Star Wars terms, D-16 follows his incandescent rage to the dark side while Orion Pax dies and then is resurrected as a sort of robot truck Jesus from outer space.
Optimus Prime isn’t just an unusually powerful transforming robot; he’s a fucking GOD. A boring, boring God who died so that the good Transformers can live.
Transformers is heavy on a metaphorical level. It deals forthrightly with issues like death, redemption, betrayal, rebirth and loyalty but it’s also devoted to the mindless but pleasing spectacle of shiny shit flying at the screen in all three dimensions.
Whenever I can I see the 3-D option of the kid’s films I see with my son. It’s just more fun that way and Transformers One makes fine use of the format with any number of kinetic chase scenes.
Transformers One thankfully lacks many of the weird faults of Bay’s Transformers movies. There are no human beings in it, so it cannot objectify women. African-Americans have major voice roles but it’s thankfully devoid of offensive stereotypes. The humor is not of a scatological variety.
This animated spin-off does a lot of things right without ever quite justifying its existence. It’s a smarter, more grounded Transformers, but it could use a little vulgar energy. Transformers One could stand to have a little more Transformers fun.
Transformers One is a different kind of Transformers movie. It sets out to do something less egregiously awful and succeeds, even if it’s not quite good enough to recommend.
Three Stars out of Five