Transformers have been around for forty years. At first, they were toys, and then there was the long-running animated series that aired shortly afterward. This IP is one of the most popular things that have come out during the last couple of generations. It only made sense that it would be turned into a major motion picture franchise. After the success of the first film directed by Michael Bay, the rest of the franchise was met with mixed reviews from fans and critics alike. As a fan of this IP, I haven’t been able to see the true origin of the Transformers until now. Transformers One is an animated film in the vein of Transformers: The Movie that tells this tale tremendously. 

Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) are minors who were drilling for raw Energon on Cybertron before the fall of the Cybertron. With the help of B-127 (Keegan Michael Key) and Elita-1 (Scarlet Johansson), they find a way to enter a race to get their freedom and get to the surface. There they hope to find the matrix of leadership to help them defeat Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). This causes a rift between Orion Pax and D-16 who later would eventually become bitter enemies known as Optimus Prime and Megatron the leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons respectively. 

Besides the characters I’ve mentioned this movie has an exceptional supporting cast of characters and voice talent that plays them. Laurence Fishbourne voices Alpha Tron one of the Prime before the fall and they were all thought to have perished. Steve Buscemi voices Starscream, the leader of the Elite Guard. A group of Transformers had their transforming cog where some of the others didn’t have theirs. Jon Bailey as Soundwave and Jason Konopisos-Alvarez as Shockwave are just a couple of the many cast who play characters in this fantastic animated Orion story. 

There was a detail in the storytelling from the screenwriters Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, and Eric Person that veered off from the comic book Origin Story of the Transformers by Simon Furman. He had gladiatorial battles while this movie had a race instead. I think that was because Paramount already had Gladiator 2 in the works and they didn’t want to have multiple properties with gladiatorial battles in them.  

The 1986 movie was traditional 2d animation,  but this new film is computer-generated animation. There is a fantastic detail and artistry involved in the animation. The planet and background animation had terrific layers. The facial features were quite simple, but the characters all had a different look about them that set them all apart from one another. Overall there is plenty of depth and realism to this animation that go hand in hand with this story.

With the political climate that is going on today, this movie fits into our world presently. There is an undertone of the lower class overcoming the odds to fight against the powerful elite. There are crooked leaders who need to be put in their place by the masses.  Good overcoming evil has always been a theme of movies going back decades and that proves to be the case here. The director Josh Cooley, not a stranger to quality animated films, takes a popular IP and does something from and knee with it.

Transformers One is a nice addition to this popular franchise. Even though it’s an animated movie doesn’t change that fact. The voice cast is all fantastic with Hemsworth and Tyree Henry as the two standouts. The computer-generated animation is terrific and helps add a new flavor to this tired franchise. The director Cooley and the writers give fans of this long-running IP something new to whet their appetites with. This is clearly one of the best-animated films of the year up to this point.  

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen