I grew up on Transformers. As a kid, I thought they were the coolest possible thing. As I got older, well, not so much. I think one of the key moments of disappointment a person can have is when they revisit the entertainment of their childhood and sometimes learn how awful it is. Sure, not everything is, but I think it is safe to say the various 80s cartoons designed to sell toys probably don’t hold up very well, and I’ve avoided many of them on purpose as a result. But there’s always this idea that these characters can come back for new generations, and sometimes these new versions are even fun stories in their own right, like last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Well, it looks like it’s the Transformers turn for a new animated movie for a new generation. Would this Transformers One be just as entertaining to a middle-aged me as it might be for a kid?
In the beginning, the movie gives the audience a creation story, but then it cuts to a point after a war when all of the Primes–the great leaders of Cybertron–are all dead and gone save one survivor, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). Cybertronians live under ground in Iacon City as the surface is deemed too dangerous, and there’s a distinct cast system between Transformers, who have transformation cogs and can change into vehicles, and a labor class that has to mine energon all day. These bots lack cogs, and the focus of the movie is on two miner friends Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry). Pax is a hopeful guy who will bend the rules to get what he wants, but mostly he seems to want to do right by people. D is a guy who believes in the rules, under the impression that he is right where he should be, but he’s always there to help bail out his buddy when Pax gets into trouble, especially when Pax drags D along for the ride.
However, there is, as the saying goes, more than meets the eye, something that Pax and D learn the hard way then they manage to get to the surface alongside motormouthed goofball B (Keegan-Michael Key) and their former supervisor Elita-1(Scarlett Johansson), particularly when they discover that one of the old Primes is still alive, the old warrior Alpha Trion (Laurence Fishburne). Pax wanted to find the Matrix of Leadership, long since lost for reasons unknown, and discovering what happened there will have a serious effect on the two friends. For Pax, it strengthens his resolve to get the truth out to everyone and bring prosperity back to the planet. For D, he finds his whole reason for being whipped out from underneath him as he realized he’s been deceived for his whole life. Can these two friends hold things together long enough to bring freedom back to Cybertron?
I probably don’t need to say much to longtime fans that Pax is going to be Optimus Prime and D will be Megatron. Any Transformer fan probably knows all that stuff, and the characters even look like the robots they will eventually become when they first appear onscreen. But honestly, this was a fun movie, and a lot of that goes to the story being told. To be fair, this is still basically a kids movie, and it doesn’t exactly have the sort of complex or deep characters one might expect for a more adult-oriented story. But the animation here really works, particularly as D’s eyes seem to gradually shift colors as the movie goes on and his anger increases. Yeah, it wasn’t until I was driving home that I realized the “B won’t stop talking” bit is a reference to how Bumblebee in the live action movies can’t talk, but I really dug the movie for what it was. Besides, whoever thought to cast Steve Buscemi as Starscream, a casting that seemed to be so perfect the moment I heard Buscemi’s voice coming out of Starscream’s mouth that I was wondering why I never thought of it myself since it seems so obvious, probably deserves a raise.
As it is, the D character makes the movie as he gradually changes into Megatron, going from the sort of guy who will always have his pal’s back to one who just wants to see the world burn. The animators give him a perpetual sneer after he learns the truth, and his defiance and growing rage make for a nice contrast to Pax’s more generic hero character. I knew D was going to go bad from the beginning, and watching the character evolve (devolve?) to that character made for a great character arc. Yeah, this is still a kids movie, and his version of evil in the end is very much the sort of generic sort of evil, but the character’s journey very much makes the movie. Yeah, this is maybe supposed to be more Optimus Prime’s origin story, but it works much better as Megatron’s.
Grade: A-
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