Transformers One

Originally written Sep 23, 2024

Well, talk about more than meets the eye. Transformers One is a movie I didn’t expect to love as much as I did, especially since my knowledge of the Transformers franchise is next to nothing. I went in expecting a passable animated film with sleek animation and top-notch fight scenes, but what I got was an incredibly funny, fantastically acted, and tightly written origin story that left me wanting more.

This movie is overflowing with positives. For starters, the world building is captivating; from the first scene, I was instantly taken in by Cybertron and its inhabitants. Additionally, Brian Tyler’s score amplifies every scene to its full potential. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie is how well the celebrity voice cast both fits their respective characters AND works off each other with comedic and emotional ease. In particular, Chris Hemsworth sells Orion Pax’s journey to become Optimus Prime, Keegan-Michael Key is hilarious as B, and Jon Hamm is delightfully despicable as Sentinel Prime. With that said, they all take a back seat to Brian Tyree Henry as D-16, whose fall into darkness as Megatron is both captivating and crushing, even if you already know how it ends. Finally, I knew the fight scenes would be first-rate, yet they STILL found a way to blow me away.

If I had ANY nitpicks to give about the movie, it would have to be the implementation, presence and/or decisions of certain characters (Seriously, would YOU give someone transformation powers RIGHT AFTER they admitted to wanting to kill someone?) Even so, this is easily the best animated film I’ve seen so far in 2024. However, there might be another animated robot movie that’ll swipe that title away soon. Stay tuned…

Rating: 9/10