Faced with steadily declining box office returns for their last few live-action Transformers movies, Hasbro and Paramount felt that the best course of action would be to return the franchise to its roots with an animated prequel. Sadly, despite mostly positive reviews from critics and word-of-mouth from those who bothered to go see it, the marketing for Transformers One failed to sell the film particularly well, leading to yet another financial disappointment for an aging series that may need to take a break for a while before trying again.

One of my sons is a huge Transformers fan and insisted that I take him to see the new movie opening weekend. The film was playing on only one screen at the multiplex at that time, in a smallish auditorium not quite even half-full at a prime viewing hour. My son enjoyed it a lot, and we heard some smattering of applause from what sounded like other kids as the end credits came up. Nevertheless, the movie was a flop. Perhaps it was always destined to find its true audience gradually, over time, on streaming and home video?

Title:	Transformers One
Year of Release:	2024
Director:	Josh Cooley
Watched On:	4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Also Available On:	Blu-ray Paramount+ Various VOD rental and purchase platforms

To reboot the story, Transformers One has no direct ties to the Michael Bay live-action films or their spin-offs (Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts), nor even to the original “Generation 1” cartoon and movie. It’s also the first-ever Transformers theatrical film to not feature the vocal talents of Peter Cullen playing Autobot leader Optimus Prime. However, as a prequel that takes place in the distant past, it doesn’t necessarily contradict either continuity, and could in theory play into whichever branch of canon you prefer.

Set during the heyday of planet Cybertron before it was torn apart by war, the film tells the origin story of Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), the two characters fans already know will later be renamed Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively. In this stage of its history, Cybertron has neither Autobots nor Decepticons, just one united society under the benevolent leadership of the heroic Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm). Even that being the case, the planet is divided into a hierarchical class structure, with robots that can transform into alt-modes at the top, and lower working classes at the bottom populated by bots that lack special transformation cogs.

Orion and D-16 are worker bots, assigned the task of mining the planet’s depths for its depleting supply of energon, the fuel source that powers all robotic life. They’re also inseparable best friends, even though Orion is a frequently distracted daydreamer who pines to better their social standings, while D-16 is content to do what he’s told and “stay on protocol.”

When Orion ropes his buddy into what he believes will be a harmless misadventure, the two find themselves cast out to the planet’s supposedly barren and toxic surface, where they discover shocking secrets about Cybertronian history, its current leadership, and the true cause of their own inability to transform. How each reacts to these revelations will cause a stark rift between them.

Other recognizable celebrity voices in the cast include Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1, Keegan-Michael Key as B-127 (the future Bumblebee), Laurence Fishburne as former leader Alpha Trion, and Steve Buscemi as renegade troublemaker Starscream.

As a longtime “G1” Transformers fan, I had mixed feelings about Transformers One from the outset. The majority of trailers depicted the movie as a very kiddie-oriented, goofball comedy, filled with tons of slapstick pratfalls and joking around. I suspect that perception of its tone likewise turned off the majority of teen and adult fans, enough to cripple the film’s box office performance.

I was also never sold on the casting of either Hemsworth or Henry, neither of whom (but especially not Hemsworth) resemble classic portrayals of their characters. That said, I suppose it is the point of the story that they do eventually evolve and grow (transform, you might say) into the characters we know by the film’s end. I also must give enormous credit to the inspired casting of Buscemi as Starscream. When you need somebody to play a self-aggrandizing, nasal-voiced weasel, he’s definitely your guy.

As I sat to watch it in the theater, I was slowly won over by Transformers One. That comedy-heavy tone is mostly prevalent in the early scenes, but wears off as the story goes along and becomes progressively more serious and action-oriented. The climax is even quite surprisingly dark for a kids’ movie. No, it’s perhaps not “traumatically kill off your beloved main character in the first half-hour” dark like the 1986 animated film, but certainly more weighty and complex than I expected. This may not be some super-“edgy” and “gritty” revisionist take on Transformers, but nor is it BotBots. On balance, the progression from comedy to drama flows smoothly enough to play well for both younger and older viewers.

Directed by Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4), Transformers One has a terrific visual design with gorgeous animation by Industrial Light and Magic. The only knock against it I have on that mark is the way characters are drawn with soft, human-looking faces. That was an intentional decision designed to evoke a sympathetic reaction from children, but personally, I prefer robots that look like robots. The movie also has a number of illogical moments with characters doing things that robots would never need to do – like breathing.

Other than that, the film looks great and has several well-orchestrated action sequences. It’s also chock-full of fun easter egg references to all iterations of the franchise and cameos from half-recognizable characters in the background of scenes, which my son was quite vocal about pointing out, both in the theater and rewatching at home. It’s not my favorite Transformers movie, but it’s a respectable entry that deserved a better reception than it received.

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

After its theatrical box office failure in September 2024, Transformers One quickly rolled out to home video before year-end, first to Paramount+ streaming in November and then to physical media formats in December. The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray edition was released in both a standard keepcase and a SteelBook with fairly nice-looking artwork. I naturally chose the latter for consistency with my collection of other Transformers SteelBooks.

Although a 3D version played theatrically, the movie is not currently scheduled for release in that format on home video to my knowledge. However, very belated Blu-ray 3D releases of Bumblebee and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts only just recently hit the market in Germany, which may perhaps offer those remaining 3D enthusiasts some measure of hope for an international release of Transformers One in the future as well.

As far as the 2D version goes, I can find no fault with the quality of the 4K video master. The 2.39:1 animated image is exceptionally sharp, with tremendous clarity of granular textural details and a nice sense of depth. The HDR grading also has extremely rich and vibrant colors, as well as plenty of shiny highlights in things like flashing lights, laser blasts, and flying sparks.

Unfortunately, I’m not as impressed with the Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which may have a lot of immersive surround and overhead activity, but sounds like a dynamic range compression filter was applied to all the action scenes. The track has a number of scenes that seem like they ought to hit a lot harder than they actually do. Select moments have reasonable bass, especially the hip-hop song that plays over the end credits, but the majority of the track doesn’t dig particularly deep, and the high-end often sounds rolled off as well, as if some sort of “Night Mode” filter were active. (Yes, I checked and double-checked all my equipment settings to make sure that wasn’t accidentally the case on my end.)

Both the Blu-ray and 4K disc in the set contain identical bonus features, but they only amount to five short featurettes of little substance. None is longer than eleven minutes, and the only one I found interesting was the “World Building” piece about the setting and character designs on Cybertron.

Related

• TV
  • The Transformers (1984) Series Premiere
  • Beast Wars: Transformers (1996) Series Premiere
• Movies
  • The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
  • Transformers (2007)
  • Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
  • Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
  • Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
  • Bumblebee (2018)
  • Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)
• Reading
  • The Transformers: Issue 1 (1984) Marvel Comic Book
  • Void Rivals: Issue #01 (2023) Skybound Comic Book
  • Transformers: Issue #01 (2023) Skybound Comic Book

Note: All screenshots on this page were taken from the standard Blu-ray edition of the film and are used for illustration purposes only.