Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
I love going to the movies for a lot of reasons. The smell of fresh popcorn, the people all feeling the same levels of excitement, the giant screen enveloped by darkness so you can’t focus on anything else. Hell, I even love the ticket stubs (I’ve collected them since I was a teen). There’s a lot you can get out of seeing a movie in cinema that you can’t get at home but the main thing is those moments when a movie hits all the right notes so perfectly you just know it will stick with you forever.
One of those moments was seeing Michael Bay’s Transformers back in 2007. All of us growing up with the Hasbro cartoon were excited to see it brought to life. I remember the energy was so intense you could barely hear the dialogue, (usually an annoying thing, this was one of the few times I didn’t mind). Then the great Peter Cullen says that iconic line “I am Optimus Prime”. It was the first and only time I’ve ever seen people actually rise out of their seats in a cinema to clap and cheer. One guy actually did a lap running around the seats and we all cheered even louder for it! Sadly, that energy didn’t last past the second sequel and the Transformers movies have been struggling since then.
The reason I tell that story is to show how hard it can be to find that kind of “movie magic”. And when I went to see Transformers One, I was hopeful but cautious having somewhat enjoyed only the last two films (Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts). Thankfully, this movie not only made me feel that way again, but it also made the kid in me excited like I was plopped down in front of the television, watching the cartoon and wishing I could own every Transformer toy in existence.
The story is a prequel that not only explores Cybertron, the planet the robot aliens come from, but also reimagines the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron. Then known as Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) they are best of friends and work as miners like all the others who cannot transform. Orion wants to find an object known as the Matrix because he believes it can make their lives better while D-16 reluctantly joins along. The duo meets the talkative B-127 (Keegan Michael-Key) and Elita (Scarlett Johansson) and as the team of four explore their home world, they uncover secrets that puts them in the path of the head of Cybertron, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), secrets that will transform (pun intended) them, their world and their friendships forever.
The world-building, voice acting, soundtrack and story are all so good, I’m finding it near impossible to find fault with any of it! Transformers One was exactly what this franchise needed. A shot in the arm that took these characters off the hamster wheel of their previous plot lines and made them not just entertaining to watch, but ironically humanises them in a way I personally never felt prior. Hemsworth and Henry’s voice casting may not have seemed like the right choices until you hear them in action. Their take on Orion Pax/Optimus Prime and D-16/Megatron made these characters funny, sweet and, most importantly, relatable. There are the friends you lose no matter how hard you fight for that friendship and the friends you make along the way and this story perfectly epitomises this. With robot aliens no less!
From the imaginative action sequences to the top notch storytelling that not only lays the groundwork for a fresh take on this universe but also somehow still fits into all the movies we’ve already seen, I truly hope Transformers One does well at the box office. Like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, animation allows this type of story to be told in a way live action movies simply can’t. Fun, fast paced and full of heart, this is the kind of movie best experienced on the big screen so when you hear those iconic words “I am Optimus Prime”, you’ll have a movie moment (hopefully) you’ll never forget.
Sommer’s Score: 10 out of 10
Have you seen Transformers One? What did you think of it? And you can transform and roll out with more Transformers content below:
Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge-Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes. Double Tap Baby! Read More