Few intellectual properties have had the unwavering legacy of Transformers, a 1984 Japanese toy line turned cartoon series and now a $5 billion grossing film franchise. Transformers One, the eighth film under Paramount and Hasbro's partnership, the third attempt to reboot the series after Bumblebee and last year's Rise of the Beasts, offers a new spin on the robots in disguise: an origin story that harkens back to the franchise's animated roots.
Despite Bumblebee's fun injection into the live-action Transformers formula, the franchise never quite found its footing after Michael Bay's bombastic summer blockbusters. On the surface, Transformers One looks like a prequel for the sake of it: another attempt at keeping this property relevant in the cultural zeitgeist after a couple of commercially lukewarm reboots. But Josh Cooley's origin is a return to the zippy, gleeful chaos of the original series – an unabashed Sunday morning cartoon in every sense of the phrase.
Before they were Megatron and Optimus, D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) and Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) were best friends who worked the mines together in the early days of Cybertron. The latter has dreams of more while D-16 wants to remain anonymous and work his way up the ranks. But when the pair unwittingly end up with information leading them to the highly sought-after Matrix of Leadership – the key to Cybertron's energy supply – they head out after it, with the help of bots B-127 (Keegan Michael-Key) and Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), in the hopes of restoring their society. The operatic tragedy of the ‘friends to enemies' narrative is nothing new and while the plot does feel formulaic as it builds to the inevitable ‘betrayal', it does so with love for its characters and the deeper lore of this universe.
The mythology is impressively woven into the script which deftly carves out the central relationship between D-16 and Orion; the idealist and the sceptic, and when they stumble into the powers that let them transform into vehicles — a power not given to everyone — each robot's opposing views of what to do with their newfound abilities makes their inevitable disparity all the more tragic. Henry brings gravitas and rage to the role while Hemsworth has a more rugged playfulness to his turn, each putting their own spin on these characters, but Keegan Michael-Key is the highlight as the voice of the bumbling Bumblebee.
The visual style won't be to everyone's liking, a strange hybrid between the photorealism of Bay's movies and the more hyper-stylised renderings of the cartoon. It leaves Cybertron looking bland and the bots without much to distinguish them until the story goes off planet where the style comes into its own. However, the more stripped-back animation allows for punchy, coherent action and the film's brilliant third act is thoroughly thrilling as it swings for (and nails!) those epic moments audiences have come to expect. It's a satisfying payoff to everything the script sets up in the film's first two acts. The jokes also fly thick and fast and One even has some surprising sociopolitical threads too as it's revealed that Cybertron is under an oppressive rule. So, despite its more traditional narrative, Transformers One goes deeper with its ideas, its world, its characters and the result is a delightful return to form for the robots in disguise.
Transformers One will be released in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on October 11.
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