Transformers One: The Best Offering from the Franchise Yet

MURRIETA, CA--This piece will be a spoiler-heavy review of the newest entry into the Transformers franchise: Transformers One. Before I even get into the nitty-gritty details of the film, though, I want to preface this article by saying that One is arguably the best movie offering that the franchise has put forth yet. It is filled with charisma, drama, and charm, and manages to keep even the most dedicated of Transformers fans on their toes, despite retelling the (admittedly, oft-overdone) origin story of Optimus Prime (Orion Pax) and Megatron (D-16). As someone who has been a passionate follower of the franchise for as long as I can remember, I was in awe of how gripped I was by the film, despite knowing how it was bound to end. With all of this being said, immense spoilers will now ensue in the paragraphs below.

Transformers One tells the story of two Cybertronian miners: D-16, and Orion Pax. The two live on a Cybertron where transforming–the defining characteristic of their race–is a commodity reserved only for the most elite of their society, and neither they, nor any other miners, are members of that class. Orion is frustrated by this, and wants to prove to the government of Cybertron–led by the charismatic Sentinel Prime–that miners are “more than meets the eye”. D-16 is wary of Orion’s adventurous personality, preferring to stick to protocol and strictly adhere to the norms of Sentinel’s Cybertron. One thing leads to another, though, and Orion and D-16 (along with Elita-1 and B-127, two friends that joined them along the way) soon become acutely aware of the horrors behind Cybertron’s classist hierarchy, with Sentinel being exposed as a murderous tyrant in the process.

Orion and D-16 differ on how they want to handle these new revelations, subtly revealing major differences in the two characters. Although Orion and D have been presented as close friends throughout the entirety of the film up to this point–despite the fact that D-16 does seem to have little patience for Orion’s antics–fractures form in their bond once Sentinel’s true nature is revealed. Orion wants to handle the situation peacefully, and makes plans to expose the truth of Sentinel to the masses of Cybertron, hoping that his peers in the mines, and even the elite, would peacefully phase the corrupt Prime out of power after having become aware of the reality of their society. D-16 cares not for this idea, instead proclaiming that he would prefer to brutalize Sentinel, forcing him to suffer before ultimately killing him. In comparing and contrasting Orion and D-16’s proposed methods of resolving their woes, it’s fascinating to see the seeds of their future selves (Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively) being sowed. Optimus historically has striven to avoid violence if he can–ignoring the Bay movies–and Megatron prefers to exclusively solve his problems through it. Though he is still D-16 at this moment, it’s incredibly in character for Megatron to default to brutality rather than diplomacy, foreshadowing D’s gradual descent into darkness.

It’s writing like this that separates One from the rest, and indeed it is the greater focus on the characters of the Transformers in this film that makes it so unique. The Bay movies, and to a lesser extent Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts, were content to treat the Transformers as if they were props. The character development, if it can be charitably called that, went to the humans instead of the Transformers–the titular characters of the franchise. Sam Witwicky in Transformers (2007) through Dark of the Moon had his arcs, but Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were static; Prime would repeat his “freedom is the right of all sentient beings” spiel in the last five minutes of every Bay film, and Bumblebee would garble out some unintelligible cacophony of radio sounds whenever he was allowed by the script to speak. The bottom line? The Transformers weren’t characters, they were props–personified advertisements, even–not meant to think or feel like living beings.

One does not do this. One makes a deliberate choice to place heavy emphasis on the development of its Transformers, necessitated by the setting of the film: Cybertron. With no humans to take the spotlight away from our transforming aliens, the audience instead sympathizes with D-16 and Orion Pax on their quest to take down the corrupt government of Sentinel Prime. We laugh at their jokes, we celebrate their victories, and we cry (man, we cry) at their losses, because we see them as independent characters. For example, the audience is meant to feel devastated for D-16 when it is revealed that Sentinel Prime is a monstrous despot; earlier in the film, we hear D-16 repeatedly discuss his idolization of Sentinel, and parrot back the Prime’s words like gospel. It’s heart-wrenching to learn of his betrayal, and ultimately his contempt for ‘bots like D, and seeing the latter’s reaction to all of this just yanks at your heartstrings. Reactions like this–at least anecdotally, for me–were never elicited when Leadfoot was revealed to have died in Age of Extinction, for example, because characters in the Bay movies never had that degree of character–of humanity.

This review might have come off like a series of unrelated ramblings, but even despite that I hope that you, the reader, have come to understand at least one thing about Transformers One: that it’s exceptional. If you have come away from this piece with that understanding, then I implore you to go and watch the film if at all possible. The damage that the last Bay movie–The Last Knight–did to the franchise is incalculable, and since then interest in Transformers movies has seemed to fade on an exponential scale. One, though, directly addresses several of the problems that marred The Last Knight–and even more generally the Bay films as a whole–and if successful could lead the franchise into a new future. That is the qualifier, however: “if successful”. Currently, One is underperforming at the box office, and its amply stocked merchandise is barely leaving store shelves–it paints a grim future for the universe that One so deliberately crafted. To this end, if you’d like to see more Transformers films that focus on the title characters of the franchise, and in an even more general sense if you’re at all interested in well-done animated films, Transformers One is a must-see.