Overview
The untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever.
Going into this, with all my history with Transformer through the years, loving the early years cartoons, toys and comics, hating Bay’s incarnation, loving Bumblebee, whatever, I knew that one thing might cause a bit of friction for me with this new origin tale. The voice cast. Peter Cullen, for me, is the definitive voice for Optimus Prime, and anyone taking on that part had an uphill struggle to win me over. However, within the first ten minutes of Transformers One starting, Chris Hemsworth’s take on this younger character won me over.
A brief history of Cybertron is provided at the start of this new entry into the franchise, allowing newcomers to get up to speed before the prequel tale plays out. Orion Pax and D-16 are miners in the energon mines supplying the city of Iacon on the mechanical world of Cybertron. Unable to transform due to not having ‘cogs’, Pax feels that he is destined for something more than menial work. After gaining attention after illegally entering a race, Pax and D get reassigned to garbage duty, where they uncover a distress message from one of the lost Primes, Alpha Trion, setting off a chain of events that see the pair, and others they encounter along the way, uncover a dark truth to their existence in Iacon City. The group’s journey will mold them into the leaders that we know, whilst also breaking their alliances along the way.
I have to admit that at first I was a tad uncertain with this film, as the early acts have an abundance of humour in them, feeling more like a buddy cop movie at times with wisecracks and japes forced in. Worried that this might get a little tired pretty swiftly, my concerns were eased as the main story kicks in, and whilst there are still moments of humour (especially revolving around Keegan Michael Key’s B-127, aka Bumblebee character), the story moves to a more serious approach through the middle act, and becoming quite an epic scale event in the final act. The end result is a Transformers tale with a solid sense of fun balanced with a level of depth and sophistication that stands head and shoulders above the recent era of output for the franchise (except Bumblebee which was just perfect).
The animation is slick and detailed, and when combined with a strong voice cast (Tyree Henry as D-16/Megatron delivers a standout performance), everything combines for a solid slice of animated adventure for all ages to enjoy. With enough nods and cameos for the long-time fans, whilst being an accessible entry point for newcomers, this is hopefully the start of a wave of new entries in the franchise that can really do the property justice. We’ve now seen their origin, let us see the war for cybertron play out.