by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Brian Tyree Henry, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi
Intro:
It takes a bit to really get going, but between the action scenes and the pathos, this is a hot rod with serious power under the hood.
Origin story prequels are a dark temptation. It may be natural to want to see and learn more about our favourite characters. However, completely drawing back the curtain often has the effect of ruining the mystique that gives those characters their staying power, or even worse, turns them into a retroactive punchline. Not that all attempts turn out badly (Caesar’s character arc in the Planet of The Apes prequels is one of the most compelling in any film trilogy, period), but then there’s the major mishandling (albeit with flashes of inspiration) of Anakin in Star Wars, or the utter incoherence of any character in Joe Wright’s Pan.
The choice to do this for the early days of Optimus Prime and Megatron, a legendary rivalry among Saturday morning cartoon afficionados, starts on an odd note. With no human characters in sight, all of the OTT quirkiness usually found in the fleshy distractions from the Michael Bay films is now in the transforming robots, especially Michael Keegan-Key’s Bumblebee. After the decades of the titular characters playing backup, there’s an initial adjustment period seeing them on-call for all of the emotional displays involved. That shows through somewhat in the animation as well. The graphic fidelity courtesy of ILM, while still delivering on big-screen spectacle, has the sheen of something found on streaming services. The facial movements, in particular, look like an HD remaster of ReBoot.
Before this all sounds too negative, note that it only starts out like this. Once Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley finds his groove with this set of cinematic toys, it makes a decent argument for best theatrical Transformers film to date. The detailing of the equally-transformative Cybertron, its culture and the role of the Primes within it, is quite compelling, as are the dynamics between Orion Pax, D-16, Elita, and B-127. ScarJo as Elita gets to flex her underappreciated voice acting chops, Key plays out this louder version of Maggie in any given future vision from The Simpsons with the right levels to keep it entertaining rather than grating, and Chris Hemsworth handles the gradual shift from aloof dreamer to genuine leader superbly.
But ultimately, the main star here is the bot who would be Megatron: Brian Tyree Henry as D-16. He gets the hero’s journey, he’s the one who goes through the most drastic changes, and as a character, he shows a level of complexity that perfectly encapsulates the kind of character work that made those classic cartoon staples into more than just animated toy commercials. It’s as if all the best progressions from the Star Wars prequels were condensed into a single outing, managing to make the character not only more three-dimensional, but potentially the new icon of the franchise. Word is bond. Henry and Hemsworth are an ideal bromance on top of that, with their friendship and later rivalry balanced nicely against their shared disdain for the powers holding Cybertron, and its citizens, back from their true potential.
Transformers One proffers a new era for the franchise, and an extremely intriguing one at that. While Rise of The Beasts worked well as an aesthetics plaster between two eras of live-action films, this succeeds by being pure, all-out Transformers. It takes a bit to really get going, but between the action scenes and the pathos, this is a hot rod with serious power under the hood. That it goes against modern ‘film it for the box set’ attitudes and actually tells its own complete story, rather than teasing it for whatever productions are lined up next, just puts that extra bit of shine on the chrome.
