by Liam Ridolfi

We speak with the Transformers One director about more than meets the eye, ie. helming the origin story, which is also the first fully CG-animated Transformers movie!

Fresh off his Academy-Award winning directorial effort for his feature debut Toy Story 4, director Josh Cooley dives into another beloved franchise with the upcoming Transformers One, the new fully animated CGI prequel that stars Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry as a young Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively.

Being such an accomplished figure in animation cinema, and with your long experience with Pixar – in what ways do you believe your love of animation attracted you to the world of Transformers? 

“When I was really young, I was just drawing constantly. And part of that love just went into watching Saturday morning cartoons. I’d watch all the Warner Bros cartoons, and then just half the morning of Saturday was with sugar cereal and ‘80s cartoons, and Transformers was right in the middle of all of that. So, it just naturally became part of everything I loved. I remember when the 1986 film came out, and then the first live action film – I was obsessed with that as well. And so, in my mind, Transformers has always been an animated property just because of my experience with it and how it was brought into my world.”

I have to say, as an avid Transformers fan – while I love what Michael Bay did with his franchise, I always yearned for a story set on Cybertron to really see where these beloved characters come from. Was that a particular creative goal for you in the beginning to dive into the true genesis of these characters and explore what made them who they’ve become? 

“Absolutely. From the very get go, the very first version of the script that I read, it was on Cybertron. There were no humans. It was an origin story from the very beginning. And all three of those things got me on board immediately. I had the same feeling, which is like – they’ve done so many, there’s the ‘86 film and there’s so many live action films that I kind of was thinking, ‘well, what’s new about this?’ And those things made it completely fresh. And seeing that it was a new way into telling stories in this world with these characters that we know and love, and specifically Megatron and Optimus and just how we know them as good and evil, but why is that? I was very, very, very excited to dive into that.”

I want to talk a bit about Toy Story for a quick second just because as I said, I’m a huge fan and one of the biggest things that I appreciate with that film is yes, it is the third sequel of an appreciated franchise, but it still felt so different and so original. I’m wondering, as a filmmaker, how do you tackle such popular franchises like a Toy Story or a Transformers and still really make it your own?

“It’s a great question, and that is one of the biggest challenges, taking something that people are familiar with and showing it to them in another light or another shade of it so that the story is deeper. The characters are a little deeper but still familiar. So, there is a DNA to Toy Story the same way there’s a DNA to Transformers. You kind of have to dissect it first and go, ‘what defines Transformers as a franchise or as characters?’ And then make sure not to stray from that. That’s where I feel like you can get in trouble; if you get too far away from it or if you try and just copy it. That was always my goal on everything I do. The great thing about that is that people come in with a love already and they’re already connected to these characters, and so I never forget that. And also, you can actually use that to your benefit as a storyteller. So for example, on Toy Story, it was like, there’s been three movies, we all know the rules of Toy Story, so introduce Forky, who doesn’t know the rules, and now you’ve got a whole new element.

“So, for Transformers, without getting into the specifics of it, we know the good versus evil, we know the Autobots versus Decepticons, but it’s like, ‘okay, what created those two factions and how are they friends at the beginning?’ And then, why did they become mortal enemies? There is some fun in just thinking about the storytelling as an audience member and going, ‘if I’m just coming into this movie completely fresh, what do I know already and what do I expect to see?’ And then how can you have fun with that?”

We have to talk about your cast for a second because it’s such an incredible A-List cast, and it’s always such an exciting thing for us as an audience when such iconic characters are being played by new, equally iconic actors and we get a new interpretation. Can you talk a bit about collaborating with your cast in trying to craft that new interpretation?

“That was one of the things that when I first started I was thinking about, which is, ‘we’re doing a younger version of these characters’, and by younger, I don’t mean teenagers, it’s just a less mature version of these characters. And so, I was thinking ‘how are we going to come close to Peter Cullen?’ His portrayal is so iconic. We were lucky to be able to work with Chris Hemsworth. The first time we recorded together, we were just talking about the arc of the character and how he starts off a little different from the way he is usually by the end, so we wanted to get closer to what we know of Optimus, so you really feel the arc of the character. And he started reading the lines, not in any way to try to imitate Peter, but he had the cadence of the way that Optimus speaks. And with his voice, I got chills. I literally had goosebumps. And I said, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing right now? What are doing?’ And he was like, ‘oh, I’ve been trying to play around.’ And I was like, ‘wow, that works really well! Let’s keep playing with that!’ And he’s like, ‘okay, yeah.’ And we really used that and played with how far to push it in either direction, either really intense or really laid back. And so, we found this balance that I’m just absolutely happy with and thrilled with.

“As for Brian Tyree Henry doing Megatron, my big thing with Megatron was we know him as the bad guy. He’s full of power and bad stuff. But I always think about this thing I read a while back, which always stuck with me, which is that nobody is the villain of their own story. So, I love the idea that they’re friends at the beginning, but that means that you got to like him at the beginning. You got to like that friendship between them. And I talked a lot about that with Brian, and he totally got it, and he’s so charming and charismatic and funny. So we talked through that arc and going from this really likable character to becoming somebody who’s a villain, and how do we do it in a way where you don’t judge that character and you understand them more. And I think that if that’s the case, then it becomes more heartbreaking at the end.

Something that really interests me is your approach to genre as a director. I find it so fascinating when filmmakers are able to jump from subject to subject with ease. Toy Story 4 being a family-oriented fantasy film, and obviously Transformers is clearly science-fiction. I wonder, do you retain the same directing style going through all these genres, or do you need to adapt as a storyteller in your approach? 

“I think there’s a little bit of both. I think definitely I love watching movies and when you’re telling a Transformers story, I did think of it as a sci-fi epic, and this is as big as Ben Hur or ‘10 Commandments in Space’. Take that and 2001 and smash it together. It was actually my cinematographer and I, we’d pull up shots from 2001 or Dune or Lawrence of Arabia, just big epic things and kind of go like, ‘this is the tone of feeling we want for certain parts of the film.’ I think that’s how I approach the genre part of it. I look at films and shots that have that feeling to them and then not copy exactly, but it’s more about the feeling than it is about the exact shot. And then with Toy Story 4 – I love gangster movies and I love film noir. And so, there was a lot of that I pulled from for the villain, Gabby Gabby.”

Transformers One is in cinemas 19 September 2024

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