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Transformers One proves that someone at Paramount really does have money to burn, since their last successful movie about the ever-changing robots was 2014’s Transformers: Age Of Extinction. The 2017 sequel, Transformers: The Last Knight underperformed, we’re told, but it still took just over $600m, a figure that the likes of Madame Web and Joker 2 would kill for!
Bumblebee didn’t exactly set the box-office alight, and some moron decided that even though young kids can quite happily attend a 12-cert with their parents, they still cut it down to a PG (although last time I checked, the edits are still in the Netflix version), and that’s a mistake that’s even prevalent in the 4K Blu-ray and the £120 4K six-movie boxset, covering up until that film.
Then last year, we had Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, a poor film which also fared about the same, financially. Given the declining interest in the franchise, I can only imagine that Transformers One had already been greenlit and that there was no turning back, even in the light of Warner Bros ditching the completed Batgirl – a film I’d love to see, if only to find out why it’s apparently so bad.
For a plot, we’re told that Primus is the original Transformers creator, and Onion Max… sorry, Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth – Furiosa: A Mad Max Story), is going through the archives, trying to find any information about the Matrix of Leadership which, in reality terms, is what makes Optimus Prime ‘Optimus Prime’, i.e. a bit like putting the ‘heart’ in Iron Man.
However, as this information is classified, some guards turn up and it leads to a chase scene… one of a few, and they do show that the 3D is very effective in this film, especially when it comes to depth, but somehow, and even only two weeks after I was last in there, Odeon’s screen 5 has gone slightly out of focus again, so the effect was sadly muted.
I’ve tried bringing this up in the cinema before at the time – and during a 2D film where it will be noticeable – but it’s only ever resulted in being changed once at the time. At other times, like with The Garfield Movie and The Book of Clarence, they just pretended no-one had even raised the issue! Ultimate, these situations were only resolved by mentioning it whilst completing the surveys that come via occasional emails, so I will be doing that again, especially as Screen 1 has done it as well, which was showing the re-release of Gladiator.
But back to the plot, and Cybertron’s flow of Energon has been stolen by the Quintessons, so our heroes who are not yet ‘robots in disguise’, have to mine this from underground. As the film begins, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm – Mean Girls 2024) is the leader of Cybertron, but we know ultimately this will change and it just need a switcheroo to make this happen, but I’ll avoid spoilers.
However, it’s safe to say that in order to sort things out, it’ll also require the input from Elita-1 (Hemsworth’s Marvel colleague Scarlett Johansson – Fly Me To The Moon) and B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key – if the name doesn’t ring a bell, he seems to get hired just because he shouts a lot. He has no real talent) – who will later become known as Bumblebee.
Add in the IACON 5000 Race (another excuse for a chase scene), some lame attempts at comedy such as when Bumblebee makes some iffy robots that don’t really work, the catchphrases: “You’ve got the touch, you’ve got the power” and “More than meets the eye” thrown in for fan service, and an AI-inspired one from Sentinel Prime, “I love a bot that can think for itself”.
I also noticed that the shot of Bumblebee running away in the initial trailer is used for a different situation than in the film, although how it came about when I watched it in full, quickly left my mind, it was that impactful.
In Transformers One, these individuals mostly don’t actually transform because they’re not yet in position of their transforming cogs. Hence, they don’t do what it says on the tin for quite some time, although as Optimus Prime is quick to bore us with in one of his patronising speeches, “What defines a Transformer is not the cog in its chest, but the spark in its core”.
However, while there’s somehow been a lot of hype for this film – and which I couldn’t grasp from the apparently unrepresentative trailer, I did have higher expectations of what I was about to witness, which ended up being one of the most tedious films I’ve sat through this year.
It’s a bog-standard piece of CGI that, while well-crafted in visuals, has a script that feels like it was farted out by AI.
As I mentioned with the stalling franchise, even before release, I didn’t see where the hype was for this, but despite a lot of people having a lot of good things to say about it, the box office figures aren’t bearing this out. It’s only scored $114m so far, and that’s after it had its main run in the US last month, and then was beaten by The Wild Robot, which came out the week after in the US, and is happening here, too. Plus, next week, that one also has the IMAX for the majority of the day, bar a late screening of Joker 2.
NOTE: There are BOTH mid- and post-credits scenes. Info in the video below!
Transformers One is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray Steelbook, Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release date of December 9th.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 99 minutes
Release date: September 27th 2024
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 1/10
Director: Josh Cooley
Producers: Michael Bay, Aaron Dem, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Don Murphy, Mark Vahradian
Screenplay: Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari
Music: Brian Tyler
Voice Cast:
Orion Pax / Optimus Prime: Chris Hemsworth
D-16 / Megatron: Brian Tyree Henry
Elita-1: Scarlett Johansson
B-127 / Bumblebee: Keegan-Michael Key
Starscream: Steve Buscemi
Alpha Trion: Laurence Fishburne
Sentinel Prime: Jon Hamm
Airachnid: Vanessa Liguori
Soundwave: Jon Bailey
Shockwave / Guard 2: Jason Konopisos-Alvarez
Jazz: Evan Michael Lee
Zeta Prime: James Remar
Darkwing: Isaac Singleton Jr
Announcer Bot / Guard 1: Steve Blum
Chromia / Arcee: Jinny Chung
Control Room Guys / PA System / Skywarp: Josh Cooley
Injured Racer: Dillon Bryan
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.