Okay so after having to sit through Rise of the Beast I was absolutely not looking forward to Transformers One. However I am very happy to say that I was 100% wrong. Transformers One was visually beautiful, emotionally compelling and narratively captivating. It joins the ranks of animated films this year that are personal Oscar contenders. Now I was watching this as a complete laymen, I know nothing of transformers lore. Luckily I went with my husband who does know the history. So this review comes from the viewpoint of a regular movie goer and a fan of the IP.
First, let's start with the voice cast. A large internet complaint for animated films recently is that studios are just casting actors and not voice actors, therefore they all just sound like themselves. However, Transformers One did an incredible job of casting people who actually put the work in. Scarlet Johanson definitely sounds like herself, but she is also good at accepting roles where her voice works for the character. Chris Hemsworth stood out to me as the person I was particularly impressed with. If I hadn’t looked up the cast list I couldn’t even tell you what character he played. Both he and Brian Tyree Henry did an incredible job of evolving their voices as their characters evolved.
Now my husband has talked to me about transformers…a lot…so I have the vaguest idea of the origin stories and lore. However the film does a great job of starting from the beginning of the story. Not just Optimus Prime and Megatron, but Cybertron itself. We have this very brief bit of exposition at the very beginning that explains the planet's origins. And then we have Pax and D16’s friendship. As soon as they had that first bonding moment where Pax gives D the decal I knew something was going to go very bad. The narrative did an incredible job of setting up their friendship and slipping in the fact that they have different ideals and different ways of viewing the world.
The story and its twists were a bit predictable. Sentinel being the problem and betraying the whole of the planet was something that I guessed but nothing that I would label “predictable” was done poorly. Because of how well the film was paced and how emotionally invested I was in the characters, the predictability was actually good. It allowed for a source of comfort amongst all the action. It also helped the pacing of the film because if the audience knows what is going to happen next we don’t need to be on the edge of our seats for plot points and we can be more invested in how the characters are handling the plot.
The humor in this movie was also handled really well. The movie perfectly balanced the complete destruction of a friendship, and a complete regime change of a planet with some very well placed jokes. The jokes weren’t overused and they weren’t necessarily used to break tension; they were simply there to keep the movie fun and it was really well done.
Overall I think the film gets a really solid 8.5/10. It takes a lot to get a perfect score out of me, every element of the film would have needed to be flawless and it would need to be endlessly re-watchable. And though the movie was truly great, I think that it is just a few elements short of perfect. I do think that it is in the running for that animated film Oscar nomination, though we know that major IP’s tend to get overlooked come awards season.
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Alexandrea Callaghan
Certified nerd, super geek and very proud fangirl.
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