Transformers One
You have to go back to 1986 to find the last (some would consider definitive) great Transformers animation, and I’m old enough to remember repeat visits to the local video shop to rent Nelson Shin’s The Transformers: The Movie.
Aging fans like myself may then approach Transformers One with a certain amount of dubious suspicion, but fear ye not.
Directed by Toy Story 4’s Josh Cooley, Transformers One is a reboot of sorts, but feels so much more than a bog standard rehash.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the recent spate of Michael Bay live action Transformers flicks. I can take them or leave them. While I enjoyed his first reboot from 2007, I felt the subsequent sequels gradually got longer, poorer and bafflingly convoluted.
Whether directing or producing, Michael Bay is a force unto himself. You either love him, or simply tolerate him.
Josh Cooley, however, has outdone Michael Bay in one fell swoop and recaptured the original essence of Transformers with a slick, entertaining and colourfully animated adventure that will no doubt provoke the same feelings of 80s sci-fi wonderment and shape-shifting nostalgia as the 1986 classic.
Plotwise, Transformers One is an origins tale that recounts the doomed friendship between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and reimagines these famed foes in their younger, adolescent years back on their home planet of Cybertron.
Chris Hemsworth plays Orion Pax, the young version of Optimus Prime, while Brian Tyree Henry voices his buddy D-16, the younger and more innocent Megatron.
The pair work in the planet’s mines and form a close friendship that sees them through many scrapes together. However, it’s when the friends break loose and make their way to the planet’s surface that they sneak backstage at the Iacon 5000 races and show their true potential, giving the battered and experienced racing veterans a run for their money.
Life on the surface proves to be an attractive alternative to working underground, but their lives will take very different paths now they have tasted freedom, and trouble brews when ego and power enter the mix.
With a solid enough story and suitability retro-inspired animation that will transport you right back to the 1980s, Transformers One will be a delight for old school fans as well as a new generation, with an animated adventure bursting with colour, wicked in its sense of humour and boasting grade A Saturday morning cartoon action.
Fans young and old are sure to get a kick out of this!
