Transformers One
December 25, 2024
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY REVIEW:
Paramount;
Animated;
Box Office $59.05 million;
$25.99 DVD, $37.99 UHD/BD, $44.99 UHD/BD Steelbook;
Rated ‘PG’ for sci-fi violence and animated action throughout, and language.
Voices of Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Hamm.
Someone tuning into a “Transformers” cartoon probably isn’t expecting a class-warfare allegory, but here we are.
Transformers One, the first theatrically released animated “Transformers” movie since 1986, and the first to use CG animation, depicts an origin story for some of the franchise’s main characters, particularly rival leaders Optimus Prime of the good guy Autobots and Megatron of the bad guy Decepticons.
In this story, they begin as a pair of lowly mining drones named Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), respectively, who are also best friends. Their home planet of Cybertron has been depleted of a vital power source called energon, so they are among the countless bots who mine for energon beneath the surface.
Cybertronian society is divided into two castes: a class of elite warriors who have the ability to transform into vehicles, and the workers, including Orion and D-16, who do not. The leader of this civilization is Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), who often journeys to the surface in search of the legendary Matrix of Leadership, an artifact of the ancient Primes that is said can replenish the planet’s energon — though Sentinel continually reports no success in locating it.
To prove their value, Orion and D-16 compete in a major race against the transforming bots, for which they are punished with duty deeper within the mines. There they meet the very talkative B-127 (the future Bumblebee, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key doing his usual comedy shtick) and uncover a recording of a distress call by Alpha Trion (Laurence Fishburne), long-lost leader of the Primes. Orion is convinced the message points to the location of the Matrix, so the trio set off to find it, roping in the mining supervisor Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson).
On the surface, however, they uncover a vast conspiracy that redefines everything they’ve ever known about Cybertronian society, including the fact that every bot was created with the ability to transform, and that the workers’ abilities were being suppressed in order for them to serve and empower the elites.
Needless to say, these revelations eventually lead Orion and D-16 along divergent philosophical paths that result in the warring Autobot and Decepticon factions that have been at the center of the franchise since it debuted in the United States in 1984 after Hasbro repurposed a number of Japanese toy lines.
The film’s plot is a riff on the Transformers backstory that has been depicted in multiple media, including comic books and the original 1980s cartoon. Thus, longtime Transformers fans will recognize and appreciate many of the basic elements of the story re-interpreted here, while for newbies the easily watchable quest plot can be viewed like any other top-notch modern animated movie (director Josh Cooley is an Academy Award winning veteran of Pixar). In fact, the plot detailing the rise of Optimus Prime to become leader of the Autobots parallels the story of Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime in the 1986 movies.
The film looks great, with character designs that seem to borrow from a number of iterations of the franchise over the years.
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The disc and digital editions of the film include about 47 minutes of good behind-the-scenes material spread across five featurettes.
The 10-minute “In the Beginning” offers the filmmakers’ vision for the film, while the 11-minute “Together as One” focuses on the cast. The nine-and-a-half-minute “World Building on Cybertron” looks at the film’s production design and animation style, while the six-and-a-half-minute “The Iacon 5000” breaks down the making of the race scene, and the nine-minute “The Battle for Cybertron” delves into the making of the film’s climax.
The regular Blu-ray version of the film is available only as part of the standard or Steelbook 4K combo packs, aside from an exclusive Blu-ray only edition available through Zavvi. Both the 4K and Blu-ray discs in the combo pack include all the extras.