Transformers One (2024) Review: An Excellent, All-Ages Romp on Cybertron

Transformers One marks a change for the franchise away from the big budget, live action, CGI explosion fests that were the Michael Bay films. Now, the series has reverted back to animation and explores the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron. And, as someone who never really got into the original animated series or the live action films, this movie was an incredibly pleasant surprise.

In Transformers One, director Josh Cooley takes the iconic robots in disguise back to their roots. Instead of opting to tell a story in the midst of the famed conflict between Autobots and Decepticons, Cooley instead goes all the way back to the beginning. Optimus Prime and Megatron, known at the start of the film as Orion Pax and D-16, are simple miners on the planet Cybertron. They spend their days mining for Energon, a highly valuable resource that has become scarce since the Matrix of Leadership, a key cog in the machine that makes Cybertron work, was lost.

Both Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Bryan Tyree Henry) are without cogs, like all the other miners, meaning they are unable to transform. But after a series of mishaps the two, along with the strange loner bot B-127 (Keegan Michael-Key) and Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), set out to find the Matrix of Leadership and restore balance to Cybertron forever.

I admit that Transformers as an IP has never really interested me. As a child there was never really anything that appealed to me about it other than the action figures were fun to play with. But I appreciate the approach the filmmakers took to make this film as accessible as possible for people unfamiliar with the franchise. With a standard franchise entry (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts) having arrived just last year, I like that this film gives a chance for a reset and for a newer, younger audience to once again invest themselves in the robots in disguise.

It helps too that Transformers One is incredibly well voice acted. Chris Hemsworth once again is proving his skills in such a diverse range of roles. From Furiosa earlier this year to now, Hemsworth is excelling in roles outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in ways that some of his counterparts (Chris Evans) are not. Same goes to Scarlett Johansson, who really steps into her role as an uptight, well intentioned robot manager.

I was most impressed by Bryan Tyree Henry, though. Playing a famous villain like Megatron was always going to be challenging. But also making that same character a sympathetic hero whose tragic downfall feels incredibly significant. A lot of that comes from Tyree Henry’s strong performance, which feels unsurprising with him coming off an oscar-nominated performance in 2022’s Causeway.

Even when you open the hood of the film and look underneath, the technical aspects left me impressed. The script is tight and doesn’t waste any time while developing a believable friendship between Pax and D-16 while establishing some of the characters we recognize from the eventual rivalry between the two. On top of that, the animation is very good, which feels important given the suedo-renaissance that animation styles have gotten in recent years.

Final Thoughts

Transformers One is an excellent entry in the famous franchise. It works well as a reset to for returning audiences and also allows for younger audiences to have a solid, family friendly way to get introduced. It’s well voice acted, looks great, and tells a fun story that works on a lot of levels. This will certainly make for a good family movie that anyone can watch and enjoy.

4/5

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Aaryn Souza
Aaryn Souza
I have been watching movies my whole life and fell in love at an early age. I was entranced by the ability for a film to whisk me away to a different universe, and that really started with the Star Wars Franchise. I'm by no means an expert and can roll with opinions that might be controversial, but that's the beauty of a film; we can all see the same thing on screen, but each of us may come away with a different interpretation of what we saw. When I'm not watching movies, I work in Marketing with my degree from Western New England University. See my Letterboxd: ‎asouza16’s profile • Letterboxd MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Star Wars: A New Hope (or the whole saga), La La Land, Before Sunrise, Ocean's 11, and so many more...
Transformers One marks a change for the franchise away from the big budget, live action, CGI explosion fests that were the Michael Bay films. Now, the series has reverted back to animation and explores the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron. And, as someone who never...Transformers One (2024) Review: An Excellent, All-Ages Romp on Cybertron