Just as you are ready to throw away the scrolls and quit on another, endless parade of derivative cinematic templates, josh Cooley comes along with “Transformers One.” As its somewhat cool headed title suggests, the film looks as if a Transformers film has never been made before at all. It’s so naïve, in a good way, that brings such unnecessary freshness and innocence that the plot in the prequel pays no attention to them, where it definitely should have.
Cooley was able to do the impossible, tell some new angles of well known and even loved franchise characters in a rather passive form ‘Toy Story 4’. He does that again, this time creating a complex backstory for characters who had amazing popularity, but were created around the amalgam of interests and psychological complexity. It’s amusing to think of a parallel world where nobody knows anything about these characters, not even the fact that there’s going to be an intergalactic warfare between the Deception’s and the Autoboots. This way people would be surprised and also moved to see the main characters become fighting brothers who are both robots across a battlefield of a civil war.
The impact would probably be comparable to viewing the “Star Wars” prequels without understanding that best friends Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker have a falling out and end up as opponents in The Force.
Optimus Prime and Megatron is whom the characters in the preceding context have been hinted on. We are introduced to them as two pathetic and unknown losers, Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry). Orion Pax and D-16 serve as coal miners on the planet Cybertron which is composed of sentient robots divided in two factions, the t-cogs (those with transformation cogs) and the unt-cogs (the enslaved class).
The unt-cogs are more of slaves who extract Energon, which is the main source of power for the robots. This mining activities are a result of the planet losing the legendary Matrix of Leadership. Orion Pax however is steadfast in the belief that if he and when D-16 restores the Matrix of Leadership, the need for slaves to work will cease, and the enslaved class of people will be able to overthrow their masters and become something other than second-class citizens.
What the heck? asks the reader. Are the Transformers series movies in its essence a parable crafted by Josh Cooley that contains elements of both a slavers defeat story and a story to depict you through the ideals of labor versus management? Actually, yeah.
Naturally, you cannot just take a story that far without inviting the monolithic fury of the entity that funds everything (in this case, Paramount, which as of this writing is on its way to becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the wealthy bulwark Skydance Media owned by David Ellison). And there ends up being a suggestion of a certain monarchial fetishism in the mix by the end, only because the boys are looking for a magic sword that will make them all powerful instead of drawing up a constitution and forming a parliament.
Not that anyone would actually want to go watch such a film. So what if a plot revolves around looking for an artifact and fulfilling your cosmic destiny. For years and years, fans of the Transformers cartoon and then movies have been fanatical about the story of finding the artifact and they’re fanatics about watching cool robots smashing other robots and transforming into cars and planes and all sorts of other things. And yes, after a brisk but dense setup, the film does arrive at that point as well, rounding out with a climactic sequence that can be reminiscent of ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ films.
It is also impressive to see the material constructed with something resembling care and love. Other robots, including two garbage collection bots, join Orion Pax and D-16 on their quest. One is B-127 (portrayed by Keegan Michael Key), a weird but lovable loser who wishes to change his name to “Badassatron,” and the second is Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) who’s best known for her astonishing competence (Johansson and Key have been typecast like this before and will most likely be typecast like this in the future as well).
Despite the major set pieces, they all have an execution and a rhythm and a comedy that one does not get bored of the film or get accustomed to predictable fan service. There are also villains, but they are not particularly useful. It’s a relationship film at the end of the day.
Two other elements first, their new role within the power structure of the Transformers canon, and second, Orion Pax’s rivalry with D-16 are good enough reasons for watching the movie, even if they do not quite reach the level of development that I would like. And since it is always best to end with a positive note, let us go back to what we started this review with: the portrayal of the core relationship in the film.
Certainly, there is something grim within this storyline. Cooley has overcome his notorious fixation on the Old Testament the most unpleasant part of this story is that neither of the two extreme political Palestinian sides cares to flinch. So Henry’s character has joint and several liabilities, and frankly, so does the performance of T-Cog. The stance of the authors was clearly to disregard morality in this relationship because so much is dirty already.
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