Transformers One Review: The Best Transformers Movie Ever (Which Isn't Saying Much)

Does any franchise primarily aimed at children have more complicated lore than that which underpins the "Transformers" universe? The Michael Bay-directed live-action efforts were criticized for being overly vulgar for their intended young audiences, somehow managing to intellectually dumb down a saga based on a range of Hasbro toys, but when it came to the unnecessarily convoluted mythology, it could often feel like you'd need to leaf through several instruction manuals prior to viewing. The promise of this franchise is the robot-on-robot fights; watching the movies often feels like spending hours rooting through every cupboard in your house to find the batteries for the toys and finally have the fun you hoped for.

Set 3 billion years — no, that's not a typo — before the live-action franchise, "Transformers One" rids us of the uninteresting human drama on Earth to remain rooted in Cybertron, and the friends-to-enemies trajectory of the two bots who came to be known as Optimus Prime and Megatron. The movie is unapologetically aimed at the children who have become an odd afterthought for this cinematic series so far and succeeds the most when not burdening itself with attempts to simultaneously satisfy the older fans; the more this origin story refrains from winking and nodding at the future direction of this characters, the better it is. That it can't entirely keep itself away from this impulse is why it isn't the smooth introduction for a new generation of potential fans it could have been.

What works best about "Transformers One" is the way it tackles the early friendship between Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), letting it gradually deteriorate over the course of the adventure rather than dramatically reverse course in a single scene. Before becoming sworn enemies, they were workerbots, the lowest bots on the food chain, dreaming of escaping the tightly packed industrial cities to head to the surface world. But their ticket out of there relies on disrupting the social order, and so D-16 — alongside B-127, the bot who comes to be known as Bumblebee (Keegan Michael-Key) and Orion's underwritten love interest Elita (Scarlett Johansson) — reluctantly agrees to follow his friend. The early stages of their plan involves very publicly crashing the Iacon 5000 race, which is easier said than done considering they haven't yet developed transforming abilities, and brings them to the attention of Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), who wants to ensure these bumbling bots remember their place in the pecking order.

I saw an almost-completed cut of director Josh Cooley's film — a version where the few tweaks needed were regarded as so imperceptible by Paramount that critics could review from the screening — but in the diverse vistas of Cybertron, you wouldn't be able to tell improvements were necessary. Less assured were the character designs themselves, which despite being brought to life by expensive CG animation, looked distractingly like children's TV animations that are made to appear almost uncanny when surrounded by more effectively rendered scenery. I was able to gradually overlook this entirely through the talents of the well-cast voice ensemble, in a rare example of across-the-board typecasting working in the favor of these characters.

This pre-hero iteration of Optimus Prime is a well-meaning but ultimately bumbling hero in the vein of Thor's transformation in the Taika Waititi helmed movies; Key manages to take a familiar comic sidekick archetype and make him endearing despite working with jokes the other characters find irritating; and Hamm once again proves nobody is better right now at playing vaguely sinister rich guys. But it's Henry who fares best, reminding audiences that the previous animated big-screen incarnation of this franchise boasted the Shakespearean gravitas of Orson Welles, in what would be his final performance.

You never get the sense that anyone in the ensemble is slumming it in a kid's movie for a quick paycheck, and it's Brian Tyree Henry's deeply earnest performance that shines brightest among the cast, approaching the origin story of a Hasbro toy as if it were an epic tragedy of friendship and betrayal. As we approach the third act, both Optimus Prime and Megatron develop their familiar, thundering voices, sounding less like their newly cast voice actors; Chris Hemsworth's approximation of the lead Autobot is an effective impersonation of Peter Cullen, whereas Henry effectively makes the character his own. It's a familiar origin story to millions, but the reveal of his villainous self doesn't become straightforward fan service in his capable hands.

Admittedly, judging a "Transformers" movie on the strength of its performances can't help but seem ridiculous. Michael Bay may have recruited several Oscar-winning actors — Frances McDormand! Anthony Hopkins! — into his world, but he utilized them in a knowingly silly way that almost felt like a deliberate subversion of their gravitas. It's perhaps Josh Cooley's greatest strength that he doesn't look down upon this material, or acknowledge its inherent ridiculousness in anything approaching the same manner, and has encouraged his actors to follow suit. After making a much better than expected fourth entry in the "Toy Story" franchise, succeeding despite the widespread worries than it should have been left as a trilogy, Cooley seems to have quietly taken up the space in the culture where Phil Lord and Chris Miller were a decade ago; signing on to projects that seem doomed for failure and easily overcoming low expectations. His films don't have the same level of invention, playing as sincere, straight-down-the-middle blockbusters, but after years of "Transformers" films which practically sneered at their own mythos, that alone feels like a breath of fresh air — and part of the reason why any self-referential, winking-at-the-audience moments bring the whole thing crashing back down to Earth.

Perhaps the greatest credit I can give "Transformers One" is that I've heard a fellow critic, who I will not name to shield their embarrassment, got so caught up in the story, they reacted in shock when it was eventually revealed Megatron was a bad guy. If that's the kind of reaction grown adults who have had to sit through countless movies in this franchise are having, then this might play like gangbusters to young audiences; it would play even better if it offered a clean entry point, with no nods or winks towards what comes next for these bots.

"Transformers One" crashes into theaters on September 20.