‘Transformers One’ had ONE job—and nailed it

You’ll see a lot of people asking if we really needed the origin story of Megatron and Optimus Prime’s friends-to-enemies arc. And having watched Transformers One, I will say … absolutely yes, why not? Because the film had ONE job, and it does it perfectly!

The animated film is directed by Josh Cooley, with a screenplay by Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari, based on a story by Barrer and Ferrari. The film boasts of a cool voice cast led by Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry, alongside Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Laurence Fishburne, Steve Buscemi, and Jon Hamm.

What’s Transformers One about?

Transformers One is an animated prequel set entirely on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers, and tells the story of the planets origins and the events that changed its fate forever. The film begins with some well-done exposition about the creation of the first ever Primes, their enemies the Quintessons, and how fighting against them resulted in the deaths of all the Primes, save one. It also covers how the Matrix of Leadership was lost, causing the Energon rivers of Cybertron to dry up. 

Now, Cybertron is headed by the Prime that survived, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), who leads expeditions to the surface in search for the Matrix of Leadership. Meanwhile, Energon needs to be mined, which is how we meet Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), two miners who work in Iacon City, which is full of sentient bots like them that do not have cogs that allow them to transform. These two best friends stumble upon a secret so explosive that it will change the fate of Cybertron, and their own, forever.

Spoilers ahead for Transformers One!

Transformers One works because it plays to its strengths

As an Indian, I have grown up on Bollywood movies that were obsessed with friendship as a theme—the unbreakable bond between two best friends, one a rebel and a rule breaker who always gets into trouble and rarely acts his age, and the other, the more mature, disciplined, earnest guy who always has to be the voice of reason.

And this friendship undergoes many tests, especially when there’s a bad guy involved, that pits the two friends against each other, causing irreparable damage to the friendship. Sometimes, it recovers; other times, we get nemeses like Charles Xavier and Magneto, or Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Transformers One is essentially a story about two friends who are severely impacted by a betrayal, and they emerge from it as different people—quite literally, because they gain cogs that allow them to transform. While Orion Pax, with his newfound power, wants to return agency to other autobots like him, D-16 wants to use his power to exact revenge for years of being lied to, and overthrow the existing powers to establish his own reign. This causes a rift between the two friends, as it gives our two well-known factions: the Autobots led by Optimus Prime, and the rival Decepticons, led by Megatron.

Friendships ending because of opposite political leanings? That’s a very 2024 story, isn’t it? On a more serious note, Transformers One needed to get one thing right to make this an effective outing. It had to play to its emotional strengths and get us invested in the friendship that is the spark at the heart of this film, so that when the friends turn to enemies, it hits you hard. And in this one job, Transformers One succeeds.

How Transformers One gets the friendship dynamic right 

Do you recall the light-hearted banter and warm emotional moments that made us fall in love with the Guardians of the Galaxy? Transformers One channels some of that charm in its writing, which is funny, and full of goofy gags that would be commonplace in any friendship. It instantly humanizes these robots and gets you cackling along with them. The film has a singular focus from start to finish—to get you invested in the camaraderie between these underdogs—and it accomplishes that well.

It’s fun to watch Orion Pax and D-16 squabble and D-16 lose his mind every time his best friend gets into trouble or breaks a rule, like getting them to participate in the Iacon 5000 race with the other transformers. The supporting characters add to this dynamic. The bad guy, Sentinel Prime, is sufficiently smug, even as a robot, that you’d want to punch his face. There’s sharp-tongued Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), the female autobot who is their boss and loses her job because of these two goofs, but eventually becomes their ally.

B-127 (a.k.a. Bumblebee, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), the bumbling bot with the energy of an excited nerd who cannot stop talking offers the comic relief in the film. The fact that we know who these bots are eventually going to become in the future, and to get to see them before all of that transpired, is a fun, easy-breezy adventure. 

The film’s voice cast does a great job in further humanizing these bots, with some great comic timing and poignant moments in the climax, and Keegan-Michael Key as B-127 is hilarious! The tone of Transformers One—with its slapstick humor and simple, pure-hearted moments—is bound to remind you of the cartoons that you watched as a kid. But rest assured, the animation is fantastic!

All in all, Transformers One may not be some incredibly transformative or franchise-altering film, but it is an important chapter in the story of these sentient bots that is told effectively, in a way that’s rather entertaining and a fun time at the movies, irrespective of your age. If you love stories about friendship, this one nails it!