Transformers One: One "Failure" Triumphant

It was the year 2017. Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth Transformers film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, had failed miserably both financially and critically. For any other franchise, this would be the kiss of death.

But like many of its super robot lifeform leads, the franchise found a way to change into something new. What was meant to be a prequel to Bay’s initial five films was reworked into a quasi-reboot that better resembled the original 80s toyline/cartoon/comic combo, and the result was 2018’s Bumblebee doing surprisingly well with critics, audiences and turbofans alike. Logically, you’d assume that Paramount and Hasbro’s next priority would be to build off of Bumblebee.

There was just one problem- Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Lorenzo is a man of two minds on the franchise. On one hand, he rightly acknowledges when the films need to change; on the other hand, he will not stop running his mouth about how everything Transformers he produced is connected even when there are creative choices made in the films that actively disprove that. Either he hasn’t watched the films closely enough to notice the contradictions, he thinks the hoi polloi who make these films a success are too stupid to notice continuity errors, or he himself is too daft or apathetic to notice them. It’s probably a combination of all three, honestly.

Notable side effects of Lorenzo’s refusal to declare Bumblebee and its 2023 follow-up Rise of the Beasts a reboot distinct from the Bay films include:

• A notable lack of Megatron (due to not wanting to contradict him being contained in Hoover Dam in the 2007 film), resulting in the films having to use C-tier baddies in his place; Rise of the Beasts is especially bad about this, jumping from Bumblebee’s two cunning Decepticon warriors to an apocalyptic world-eating space monster and his minions

• Inconsistent designs and personalities for characters (there are somehow three characters meant to be Wheeljack and only one of them looks like the crackpot Lancia Stratos Autobot inventor from G1)

• Plot points that have to happen to ensure “continuity” with the Bay films (ex: Bumblebee losing his voice in Bumblebee)

• Audiences being confused about whether or not BB and ROTB are canon to the Bay films and therefore rejecting them despite the films’ best efforts to escape the worst excesses of the Bayverse

That last point is particularly pertinent, as it’s what condemned Rise of the Beasts to middling critical reception and only barely breaking even at the box office. In sharp contrast to the calmer John Hughes-influenced Bumblebee, ROTB sought to bring back the “Bayhem” Lorenzo thought made the first four Bay films a success. Throw in the film being based on separate ideas for a real Bumblebee sequel and a Beast Wars-influenced movie as well as being handed to a director who wanted to make a tribute to the 1986 movie, and you have what sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Note that I said what sounds like a recipe for disaster. I actually quite like ROTB for its character work with both Optimii (Prime and Primal), Mirage, Noah, and Scourge, its heart, and its action. Sure, I wish that select characters had more done with them (read: Battletrap and Arcee), the VFX has a bit of that post-pandemic jank, and jumping from a cozy coming of age story like Bumblebee to an apocalyptic world-trotting blockbuster is certainly a choice, but for each of its faults, there’s about twice as many things about the film I like.

It’s what I would argue was the most Transformers movie because it felt like a story straight out of one of the shows or the comics. Mirage and Noah’s friendship is perhaps the most genuine Autobot/human relationship this side of Animated’s Bumblebee and Sari Sumdac or IDW’s Springer and Verity Carlo, Scourge and his goons are incredibly fun baddies, Optimus Prime is a good mix of his 80s and Bayverse characterization and has an arc that leads to him becoming more like himself, and every member of the Autobot, Maximal, Terrorcon, and human casts get some moment to shine. It’s probably the best film for the Transformers themselves since the 1986 movie and the human cast is played pretty solidly.

In addition, ROTB had a surprisingly heavy merch push thanks to both the film’s own dedicated toyline and the collector-oriented Studio Series figures releasing at the same time (blame the film being delayed by half a year from December 2022 to June 2023), and most of the merch sold pretty great. Considering how central of a pillar merchandising is to the Transformers franchise, I’m certain those merch sales helped to offset the film’s underperformance. Not only that, but they helped to give Paramount confidence in what was coming next.

See, in the same writers’ room which birthed the ideas for The Last Knight, Bumblebee and ROTB way back in 2015, an animated film was pitched. This film, tentatively titled Transformers One, was to follow the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron in accordance with the backstory Hasbro had set in place through internal documents written around 2010. After many years in development, Transformers One (or TFOne for simplicity’s sake) was set for release in 2024.

Unfortunately, the film’s first trailer… did it no favors. Between a heavily edited version of the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” as the trailer’s backing track, sloppy dialogue editing, and an over-emphasis on the shallow, “erm, that just happened” kind of humor audiences have come to loathe, TFOne made a poor first impression with audiences. While it looked gorgeous and teased an interesting story, the trailer made it look like nothing more than Transformers by way of a mediocre early 2000s DreamWorks Animation film.

I was unenthused by One’s first trailer too, but for different reasons. First and foremost, DreamWorks’s The Wild Robot had a much better first trailer released just a few weeks prior. Where TFOne tried to use juvenile gags like Bumblebee-to-be wanting to be called “Badassatron” to draw the audience in, TWR sought to attract them through sheer wonder at what the world looked like and what this sterile little helper robot was doing among nature. It was remarkably subdued for DreamWorks in comparison to their oft-jokey trailers.

Second, for a Transformers fan of ten years, the film’s concept had been done to death. Ever since the Megatron Origin comic miniseries, the “Chaos Theory” two-parter from Mike Costa’s 2009-2011 The Transformers series, and the High Moon Studios War For Cybertron games, Hasbro has sought to make the backstory of “Optimus Prime and Megatron were friends before the war torn apart by their different approaches to bringing about social change” the backstory for why the Autobot/Decepticon war happens. Unfortunately, aside from being repeated over and over again across every piece of Transformers media from 2010 onwards, it often ends up bungled from a moral standpoint.

It requires Megatron to be reworked as a victim of a corrupt Autobot caste system- one that Optimus is complicit in supporting, albeit reluctantly. I understand that the point is that Megatron goes too far in his protestation against the pre-war government and that Optimus eventually becomes a better Autobot than those ruling over the Transformers’ home of Cybertron, but I really don’t like the idea of the franchise’s goodest of good guys having began as a bunch of fascists that needed to be overthrown. It’s the kind of postmodern nonsense that, in the wrong hands, could very easily lead to a revisionist take where Megatron was recast as a hero and Optimus as a doddering tool of tyrants.

Furthermore, the film needed to make Optimus and Megatron falling out understandable for general audiences and fresh for us long-timers. A common fault of post-2010 Transformers media using the whole “Optimus and Megatron were friends once” plot point is that they don’t really build up their relationship enough to make it believable that they were friends pre-war or that their falling out happens for good reasons. Not only did One need to make that moment when their friendship fractures work, but they needed to make it hurt because you’d've seen how good of friends they once were and you wouldn't want to see their relationship torn apart.

Lastly, there was the matter of the film’s director Josh Cooley. For those not in the know, Cooley directed Toy Story 4- arguably the most divisive of the four mainline Toy Story films. It betrayed many of what the first three films established about a toy’s purpose, it made several characters act out of character, it introduced new characters and concepts that were out of line with the ethos of the original trilogy, and most damningly, the film undid the near-perfect ending of Toy Story 3. For me and many others, that put Cooley on thin ice. If he did to Transformers what he did to Pixar’s golden franchise, then he’d be absolutely ravaged by those animation enthusiasts online.

It would seem like Transformers One was a doomed film. And yet, despite everything I had against it… there was still some chance the film would be good. In the months leading up to the film’s September 2024 release, more and more information about the film came out. Interviews with Cooley showed real, genuine passion from him about the franchise, and the second trailer painted a far better picture of the film than what the first trailer did. Instead of the faux-Joss Whedon quips and gags that dominated the first trailer, this trailer suggested there would be more pathos than initially expected- and it confirmed that it was going to do Megatron’s fall justice.

The film finally released on September 20th, 2024, and it was met with high critical acclaim- the absolute best for any Transformers film. Critics praised it for what they perceived as a surprising amount of depth and heart (in all fairness, everything prior to Bumblebee and ROTB gave them pretty low expectations of what the franchise was capable of), audiences were raving about how good it was, and Transformers fans were screaming up and down about it being the best Transformers film ever made. I was frankly shocked. The film is THAT good?!

Unfortunately, One did not end up as a financial success, ending up barely breaking $100 million at the box office against a budget somewhere between $75 million and $145 million. Between other options for families dominating the fall box office (Warner Bros Discovery’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and DreamWorks Animation's The Wild Robot) and the Transformers franchise being perceived as overdone by audiences (ignoring the fact One was meant to be a new start, it was the eighth Transformers film in 17 years coming only seven years after what many considered the worst film), it’s easy to see why things didn’t quite work out for the film despite rave reviews. It’s honestly tragic that what was being called the best Transformers film was subject to such a poor theatrical performance.

However, the film developed a very loyal following, a following determined to make sure that the film got seen by the widest audience possible. Seriously, there was a guy on Twitter who went around reposting tweets with comments redirecting the original audiences of those posts to see the film! Eventually, the film made its way to streaming, and that was where I watched it.

What did I think, though? How did Transformers One turn out? Was it as good as the critics said, or had Cooley learned nothing from Toy Story 4?

I loved it.

Like, really loved it.

Like, really REALLY loved it.

Like, “loved it more than The Wild Robot” loved it. And I loved TWR quite a bit!

Put simply, Transformers One is nothing short of a triumph. It’s the best Transformers film period (even overthrowing Bumblebee, the 2007 film, and the 1986 movie), it’s a genuinely solid film if you put the Transformers of it all aside, and it’s one heck of a redemption for Josh Cooley himself after the mess that was Toy Story 4. I’d even go as far to argue that it had a shot at Best Animated Picture provided the Academy hadn't snubbed it- that is how good it is.

In this article, I aim to unpack what makes Transformers One so excellent. This includes gorgeous visuals, good character design and stellar voice acting, the strength of the film’s main quartet, the depths of its main villain’s evil, what the film is like from a Transformers fan’s perspective, and what this film meant to Josh Cooley. So join me, will you?

DISCLAIMER: There will be heavy, heavy SPOILERS for Transformers One throughout this article.

SYNOPSIS

Despite him and his buddy D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) living deep beneath their planet’s surface, Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) has his mind set on things above.

Where D is content with simply mining Energon crystals like the rest of the “cogless” miners (that is, those who cannot transform) and following protocol in order to stay out of trouble, Orion’s different. He wants to find a digital map that will lead to the legendary Matrix of Leadership, the relic that once caused their metal homeworld of Cybertron to flow with liquid Energon. The planet’s revered ruler Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) has been searching for the Matrix for years, and Orion wants to aid in that search for the good of all Cybertron.

His selflessness and pursuit of knowledge often gets him into trouble, but D’s always got his back, even if his cynical attitude and sharp tongue suggest otherwise. One day, Orion surprises his best friend with a trip to the Iacon 5000, a race overseen by Sentinel himself. The catch is that they’re not there to watch the race… they’re taking part in it to show the potential of miners to be more than what they are.

While they ultimately lose the race, what Sentinel sees of Orion and D-16 impresses him. Sure, he sees the two primarily as an opportunity to boost miner morale and increase productivity (ignoring Orion’s attempts to explain why he and D entered the race), but he seems genuine in his praise of them. He invites them to his personal chamber…

… only for them to be thrown down to the deepest, dankest level of Cybertron by a cruel overseer of the miners who’s tired of Orion and D being a thorn in his side. There, they meet enthusiastic waste watcher B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) and his “friends” made from gathered detritus. To Orion’s surprise, the head of Bee’s “friend” “Steve” contains an ancient data file revealing the location of the Matrix on the surface.

Despite D-16’s grumblings about how much trouble they’ve gotten into already, he decides to go with Orion and Bee so that he can be praised by Sentinel Prime (whom he holds in high regard). However, they run afoul of Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson), Orion and D’s former captain who was demoted because of a cave-in that happened under her supervision and Orion going back to save a fellow miner. While she’s initially hostile towards them for getting her fired, she realizes that she’s got no choice but to work with them once they end up stranded on Cybertron’s surface.

The surface is host to many strange things- Cybertronian stags and does, actual organic life, an enemy warship (remember that now), and a spiky cavern that’s the proverbial X that marks the spot on the map. Within the cavern are the remains of the Primes, the thirteen original Transformers who helped found Cybertron as a planet. All of them seem to have fallen… save for one.

The last of the Primes, Alpha Trion (Lawrence Fishburne, seemingly typecast as the guy who shatters the lead characters’ perception of reality c. The Matrix), reveals a series of uncomfortable truths to these miners. Not only should they have transformation cogs, the organ that allows a Transformer to transform, but Sentinel is far from the paragon he paints himself as. In fact, Sentinel condemned all of Cybertron save for himself and those he deems worthy of cogs to endlessly mine Energon for the Quintessons, those who the Primes fought against and seemingly defeated.

In light of this news, our heroes are devastated- D in particular. Hope is not lost, though. Trion provides Orion, D-16, Elita, and Bee with the cogs of some of the fallen Primes, granting them new forms. However, that’s not the only change they’ve experienced. While Orion aims to merely expose Sentinel for the fraud he is and defeat his regime… D wants to do something far worse. Far, far worse. And it’s starting to form cracks in what seemed like an unbreakable bond between the two.

Will Orion, D, Elita and Bee deliver Cybertron from Sentinel’s oppression? What is D becoming, and can Orion appeal to his better angels before his friend does something truly monstrous? What obstacles await our heroes, both from Sentinel’s inner circle and from the darker depths of Cybertron? And what exactly became of the Matrix of Leadership?

PART 1: Presentation That’s More than Meets the Eye (OBVIOUS REFERENCE ACHIEVED)

Interestingly, Transformers One’s animation staff has both history with theatrical animated films and Paramount’s own Transformers films. Back in 2011, Industrial Light and Magic (yes, THAT Industrial Light and Magic) aided Paramount and Nickelodeon Movies in making a weird little Western Johnny Depp vehicle called Rango. It was unlike anything that was on the market, both in regards to its semi-macabre, existential narrative and the extremely realistic animation. It notably won Best Animated Picture, the first non-Disney, non-Pixar win since 2006’s Happy Feet and the last until 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

On the Transformers side of things, ILM put their best work into the main five Bay films and Bumblebee. Say what you will about the character designs (a sharp divergence away from the chunkier designs of all TF media that came beforehand), but they were animated in such a way that made you believe they were really there. They had weight, presence, and whirred and steamed with every movement. Even when the films hit the bottom of the barrel from a narrative standpoint (Revenge of the Fallen, Age of Extinction and The Last Knight), they still gave their all.

Combining their experience on Rango with their experience from the six live-action Transformers films they worked on, ILM made an absolute visual feast with Transformers One. Let’s begin with the overall aesthetic. The best way I could describe Transformers One from an aesthetic standpoint is as if you took the original “Generation 1” cartoon (The Transformers) and smashed it together with TRON Legacy, the High Moon Studios Transformers video games, and Blue Sky Studios’s 2005 cult classic Robots. It’s a simpler, sleeker take on the titular robots in disguise with some cyberpunk flair and mechanical cities bursting with life.

Cybertron feels like a very lived-in place, no matter what level of it you’re looking at. The Iacon cityscape where most of the action happens in particular is a delight, with skyscrapers sprouting from the “sky” above, segmented bridges that form floating raceways, train bridges or roads for those with ground-based forms, and oddly warm lighting for a city beneath the planet’s surface. This is perhaps the most Robots-y element of the film, bringing to mind that film’s Rivet City (itself a metal city buzzing and whirring with activity and creative means of travel).

The Energon mines are given a cool magenta hue from the Energon crystals embedded in the cave walls, contrasting well with the planet’s dank depths. The waste management level is fittingly a grimy industrial slag pit that’s barely lit save for the fire and flames coming from the incinerator B-127 was assigned to watch. And then we have the surface, which is entirely unlike what our heroes and the audience would expect.

Aside from the ruins of ancient structures and Alpha Trion’s inert form, the surface of Cybertron is only inhabited by some elk-like creatures, perpetually shifting mountains, and organic flora and fauna. It’s a lovely contrast to what lies below since it’s so unkempt and natural in comparison to the tightly managed Iacon and the mechanical precision of the mining operation and waste facilities. The alien-ness of Cybertron’s surface is felt by both us and our core four- not only is it far from the dangerous hellscape Sentinel’s propaganda machine warned them of, but its barrenness and organic bits is news to us because we were expecting it to be wholly mechanical.

The actual animation itself is extremely nice and shows that ILM hasn’t lost their touch when it comes to animating Transformers. There’s a lot of little nuances in each character’s “acting” and expressions (which are far easier to read on these designs because their faces aren’t made up of greebly shards of shrapnel like the live-action movie designs), no two characters move the same, and there aren’t any egregious slip-ups aside from some scenes where a character’s mouth looks weird for a few frames. A highlight of the film is its action sequences, which just scream that the storyboarders for this film not only loved the franchise, but were very clever in finding ways to make each fight unique.

Really, the creativity of this film’s action just makes every piece of Transformers media look worse by comparison. Even before Orion, D, Bee, and Elita gain their cogs, they’re using themselves in ways that even the most action-packed shows or comics from the franchise’s 40-year history could only dream of. A major highlight early on is the Iacon 5000, a blitz of energy in which Orion and D-16 cleverly utilize their miner’s jetpacks, the other racers, and their environment in order to get ahead.

Once our leads are cogged, then the film’s action really starts shining, allowing the characters to use transformation itself as a weapon. The only time in the franchise’s history this was done before was in the 2015 video game (desperately in need of a rerelease or remake) Transformers: Devastation, which mixed vehicular (or animalistic, in Dinobot Grimlock’s case) attacks into a flurry of punches, kicks, melee weapon swings, and blaster shots. Considering the thing that makes Transformers unique is the fact these robot people can change into non-people things, it’s honestly baffling how little that ability has been used in fight scenes up until One.

Standout sequences for transformation being used in combat include the attack on the High Guard’s hideout, our heroes’ attack on Sentinel’s tower, and Optimus and Megatron’s final fight. Things like Orion half-transforming to rip a drone apart using his truck mode wheels or Elita in bike mode using a collapsing building to build up enough speed to knock an airborne opponent apart feel friggin’ inspired. Doesn’t hurt that the fight scenes are very well-choreographed, avoiding the visual overload of the Bay films even when the penultimate battle sequence has hundreds of bots involved.

The character design is interesting because it’ll require me to put on my Transformers turbo nerd hat; up until this point, I’ve been trying to analyze TFOne as if it wasn’t a Transformers film so this wouldn’t devolve into me geeking out over cameos from characters like Lancer or Red Wing. On its own, the character design of Transformers One is very nice. But from a Transformers standpoint, it's some of the very best the movies have to offer.

The miners- not just our leads, but the slew of minor and background characters- are incredibly straightforward yet rich with symbolism. They’re rounded off, scrawny, and share the same general proportions. Given that Sentinel probably only sees them as living tools for mining the Energon he needs to keep up his end of a dark deal, that was very intentional.

The gaping voids in the miners’ chests is a surprisingly powerful visual. They showcase how incomplete a Transformer is without the ability to transform, something only heightened when Orion, D-16, Elita and Bee gain their cogs, and grants the miners a degree of uncanniness. You know there’s something missing, but they don’t, blissfully unaware that their reason for being has been stolen to keep them enslaved since their birth.

I view the miners’ lack of cogs as a perfect metaphor for what philosopher Blaise Pascal called the “God-shaped void" (itself presumably derived from Solomon's observation that God has placed eternity in our hearts from Ecclesiastes) His idea was that God created man with a hole in his heart that only He could satisfy; in our sin, we tried to fill that void with everything but Him. While it’s not a perfect analogy since the miners were stripped of their cogs by an evil force, it is fascinating how well this one design detail works with Christian philosophy.

Of course, with the introduction of the cogs, TFOne is able to do that character design thing I love and have the characters’ internal change be reflected by an external change. All four of our leads gain matured, slicker forms that fill out gaps in their prior forms with the vehicle mode bits (we TF fans call those “kibble”), and each of them manifest those changes differently. Orion becomes a humble cyberpunk cabover, D becomes a surprisingly zippy but beefy H-tank, Bee becomes a squat, aerodynamic space car, and Elita becomes a svelte, speedy space bike.

In the film’s third act, Orion becomes Optimus Prime and D-16 becomes Megatron, resulting in both gaining final forms that further refine them into who they’re meant to be. Gone are their rounded-off armor and helmets from their previous forms, and in their place are more angular, hardier ones. Their faces are fully “adult”, with sharp jawlines and more defined cheeks and brows. That, and their armaments are enhanced significantly.

D-16/Megatron in particular has a very neat design shift as the film goes on, and it’s his eyes. In his cogless form, he has yellow eyes and a black helmet (referencing his appearance in the earliest commercials for the original toys). However, as tensions rise between him and Orion, as his hatred for Sentinel burns more and more, and after his initial upgrade, D’s eyes slowly shift in a more vermillion direction. 

Then, when his turn to darkness is complete, his eyes fully shift over to piercing red as he throws a damaged Orion to what seems like his death (“I’m done saving you.”) before he has an encounter with the divine and becomes Optimus Prime. If D’s eyes just turned red then and there with no buildup, it would’ve come off as corny. But that’s fortunately not what happened, and once you notice his eyes starting to slowly shift from yellow to red as he becomes angrier and angrier throughout the film, you’ll smile at how high the animators’ attention to detail is.

Orion, Elita and Bee aren’t slouches from a design standpoint, either. Bee is endearingly round (especially after getting his cog), Elita is effortlessly agile both before and after getting cogged, and Orion/Optimus has his namesake’s traditional heroic build across all three forms while still putting a film-specific spin on the G1 toon Orion Pax and Optimus Prime designs. 

Sentinel Prime is an especially excellent design, combining a chiseled physique and head with subversively angelic elements. It perfectly embodies his ego and self-reverence; he sees himself as the peak of all Cybertronians and as the only one worthy of ruling over the planet despite his true character screaming otherwise. There’s also a versatility to Sentinel’s design: it works for both him as Cybertron’s charismatic leader and as the iron-fisted coward tyrant hiding behind big talk, something that I admire in a twist villain. If the design works both before and after the twist, then it’s a good design.

Airachnid, Sentinel’s femme fatale number two, was a very pleasant surprise for me. Her lone toy and what few glimpses of her were available in the trailer didn’t suggest much to write home about, but seeing her in the film proper is genuinely breathtaking. She’s easily the most visually interesting character in the film because of how alien she is compared to everyone else.

Her prong-like legs can disassemble into more spidery limbs to allow her to scuttle around, she’s scary spindly, her drone vehicle mode is well-integrated into her person, and she is coated in eyes (not just the six she has from a head-on view). Compared to her rather basic design from her series of origin (Transformers Prime), One Airachnid is just oozing with creativity and creepy vibes. I’m willing to bet she’ll have a Studio Series figure in the next two years- she’s the exact kind of design the designers would have a blast engineering into a physical toy.

Alpha Trion is a very inspired reinterpretation of the character; while the idea of him having a horned lion form is nothing new (see his Titans Return toy), the depiction of his age is something new. Instead of relying solely on his beard (yes, he's got a beard; he's had one since his debut in 1985) to communicate his age, the film slathers him in moss, rust, broken bits, and exposed innards- fitting, given where he is when our leads find him. Furthering his oddity when compared to everyone else is his oddly round form- the miners are rounded off, yes, but this guy might as well be all spheres from a construction standpoint. 

It shows a real understanding of the shapes necessary to give him a believable beast mode. Putting on my Transformers design turbonerd hat for a moment, Transformers with organic-ish animal modes need to have svelte, more rounded robot modes to better create the contours of their bestial forms. It’s why the Maximals and Predacons of Beast Wars made for good animal toys on top of being good puzzles and robot action figures while the animal bots of the original G1 toyline often struggled with making realistic animal forms (unless you were the Dinobots, whose designs did a better job than most at replicating the beasts they were meant to be).

While the rest of the Primes ARE ALL DEAD (if you know why those words are capitalized, you’re older than I am and/or know where that’s from), a lot of them have stellar designs. The designers honestly didn’t have to go that hard with them since the story really only needs Alpha Trion and Megatronus Prime, but no- all of them have very well fleshed-out designs that honor their past looks (which for some of them, were their only designs prior to One). Standouts among the dead Primes include Amalgamous Prime (the weird four-armed one with no face), Solus Prime (looking like the Amazonian blacksmith goddess she was meant to be in past fiction), Onyx Prime (far more subdued than his original design, but still recognizable as the first beast-former), and Quintus Prime (legitimately freaky fella with many limbs).

The greatest accomplishment of TFOne from a design standpoint is how well these designs capture the design language of pre-Michael Bay Transformers media. Prior to the live-action films, the designs were focused on making robots out of whatever the alternate mode they were working with for that specific character. You couldn’t just design a cool robot and then slap car or jet bits on it; you had to build the character from what they chose to hide themselves as.

Want an easy chest? Try a big cat head, a jet cockpit, or a car hood or bumper. Want some nice legs? Try jet thrusters, motorcycle innards, or car rears. Then the Michael Bay movies came, and there was a massive spike in design complexity. What could be done with simple flips and shifts during the first 22 years of the franchise’s history now had to be done with hundreds of intricate little bits shifting to form bigger bits.

Frankly, the first three Michael Bay films were actually pretty good about respecting Transformers’s design language. Sure, these designs were VERY different from what came before (especially if you were a Decepticon), but they were still made out of alternate mode bits and those bits were placed in spots that made sense. The thing that I think sets people off about the Bay designs is that the alt-mode parts are extremely segmented and angled in ways that are difficult to replicate in toy form… also, the faces. The faces are especially divisive since they bore so little resemblance to the characters' namesakes unless they were Optimus Prime, Jazz, or Brawl.

However, when Age of Extinction rolled around, Hasbro was in the midst of a time of transition. Aaron Archer, brand manager of the franchise since 2003, stepped down in 2013 and was replaced by John Warden (who I think did a lot of good for the brand). Warden was allegedly not as hands-on with Paramount and ILM as Archer was, and this resulted in designs that were done robot mode first and vehicle mode second… the absolute worst way to design ANY Transformer. Archer is said to have stepped in and said “no, we can’t make that as a toy” to ILM when they got too crazy with the designs, but Warden didn’t.

This resulted in AOE and The Last Knight having incredibly human designs for the Transformers that often bullcrapped their way from robot to alternate mode and back because the vehicle mode bits just… came out of nowhere. Heck, the Decepticons from AOE didn’t transform so much as they just disassembled into particles and reassembled as vehicles- the arguable peak of Transformers design laziness. Despite my very weird nostalgia for AOE, a film I’ve never seen but have intimate knowledge of thanks to it being the film that came out RIGHT when I became a TF fan, I can acknowledge that a lot of its Transformer designs fail as good Transformers designs.

They’re good character designs, sure, but the lack of visible alternate mode bits or alternate mode bits placed in spots that made sense really hurts them as Transformers designs. If you were to directly compare “original Bay trilogy” Optimus to AOE/TLK Optimus and ask yourself which one of them looks like they can transform, chances are your money would be on original trilogy Optimus because he actually integrates all his truck bits into his person. I don’t know where the latter two films’ Optimus is keeping his truck bits, but it’s certainly not where the toys based on those films had them placed.

Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts would attempt to dial back things by reverting to a more Generation 1-influenced aesthetic, but like many things in those films, they were held back by Paramount wanting them to still have some vague connection to the Michael Bay films from a visual standpoint. This resulted in designs that were truer to the design ethos of the rest of the franchise (like Bumblebee’s Volkswagen Bumblebee design and the Decepticon jet body type or ROTB’s Arcee, Battletrap and Nightbird) being placed alongside overly humanoid, alternate mode parts-free designs that wouldn’t be all that out of place in the later two Bay films (read: ROTB Mirage and Scourge). It felt as if the character designers on those films were constantly waffling between two different aesthetics.

Fortunately, One was free from such waffling. Since the film was very much its own thing by the time it entered production, it was free to establish its own aesthetic and adhere more closely to the “traditional” Transformers aesthetic pre-Michael Bay-directed films. And the result were some very clean designs that made it clear which characters turned into what, making the film far easier on the eyes and also far easier on the toy designers over at Hasbro and Takara. 

Unfortunately, I think this aesthetic choice, while good for Transformers fans and those tired of the visual noise of the live-action films, ultimately hurt TFOne more than it helped. For better or for worse, the Michael Bay movies’ designs are what comes to mind when you bring up Transformers nowadays. When comparing the complexity and realism of the live-action movie designs to the efficient simplicity of the One designs, the One designs have the potential to come off as cheap kiddie versions of these characters to those who only know the Bay films. Given the marketing, they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in that assessment.

Lastly, I want to talk about the film’s voice acting. Chris Hemsworth really went above and beyond as Orion Pax/Optimus Prime- like, really above and beyond. He masks his natural Aussie accent well (bet you didn’t know he was Australian, eh) and he does a good job of making Optimus-to-be sound rugged yet also gentle, which is exactly the voice he ought to have. He’s got great chemistry with everyone on the main cast (especially with Henry’s D-16, which the film needs in order to make D’s fall believable), he’s got solid range, and by the film’s end, he sounds like Peter Cullen enough to make you believe he is Optimus Prime, but also different enough to sell his portrayal as his own character.

Brian Tyree Henry’s portrayal of D-16/Megatron is one that’s grown on me. During my first viewing, I thought he did a serviceable job- quite well as D-16 but decidedly less so as he becomes Megatron. His Megatron just sounded lackluster compared to many of the great performances who came before him; when he yelled, he sounded like a bad impersonator of the Underminer.

I was initially going to argue he was the weakest performer of the main four, but during a rewatch, I came to appreciate the nuances of his performance because I saw in what ways he was integrating where D/Megs was at various points in the story. He’s rather glib in the film’s first third, but once he learns of the truth behind his very being, he is utterly PISSED and becomes more and more zealous in his crusade against Sentinel. Some of his lines are genuinely chilling thanks to the sheer emotion Henry puts into his lines.

Really, Henry as D-16/Megatron is the film’s beating heart and I’d be shocked if he DOESN’T win at least one award. He has incredible emotional range, being able to go from sarcastic comments to mild frustration to enthusiasm to disillusionment to “NO I WANT TO KILL HIM” to bloodthirsty to defiant to devastated and heartbroken to utter fury. Furthermore, I think he did one thing that Hemsworth didn’t- he made Megatron truly his own.

Where Hemsworth evokes Peter Cullen once he’s fully Optimus Prime, Henry doesn’t do an impression of any prior depiction of Megatron. He starts off with a chill working class voice that slowly becomes angrier, seething at the very thought of those who’ve lied to him and obstructed him all his life and increasingly frustrated by his best friend’s desires to solve the problem of Sentinel Prime peacefully. By the end of the film, you can just hear the hate dripping off his voice. 

B-127 is voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and… he’s actually not that bad. Despite only using his natural voice (which is annoying when you cast celebrities instead of actual voice actors because it suggests they only did it for the money), Key gives Bee a warmth and energy that fits him surprisingly well. He sounds like he had a great time riffing in the recording booth, and I hope that if One ever gets a sequel, they bring in Key’s longtime comedic collaborator/budding horror director Jordan Peele as someone for Bee to bounce off of. Maybe Prowl or Cliffjumper. 

Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of Elita-1 is ultimately just serviceable. While I think Johansson does much better voice work than actual acting, I was disappointed by her performance as Elita because it was just her natural voice- and her natural voice can be GRATING. Admittedly, that works for Elita early in the film since she’s very arrogant and self-aggrandizing, but as it goes on it becomes dissonant with the gentler character she’s meant to become.

Jon Hamm is absolutely stellar as Sentinel Prime, making him charismatic and charming before the truth about him is revealed and utterly hateable and slimy once the truth is out there. Lawrence Fishburne, as noted in the summary of the film, brings a rather Morpheus-esque energy to Alpha Trion without compromising the sagacity and grit that characterize this film’s take on him. Steve Buscemi’s Starscream, despite only having one scene in which he gets to speak, is yet another casting choice that I’d say was a pleasant surprise; Buscemi’s natural voice gives the High Guard leader and future Decepticon second-in-command the venom and hissing he needed to be recognizable as Starscream.

Beyond these major players of the film are various bit parts, yet even then I have many things to say about them. Evan Michael Lee and Jason Konopisos-Alvarez do good jobs with Jazz and Shockwave, respectively; neither of them really push that far away from their G1 voices, but what tweaks they do make help to show Jazz hasn’t really become the fan-riffic music enthusiast he will be in future and that Shockwave is a bit more emotional than his past iterations. Script coordinator Jinny Chung gets a few lines as Arcee, and while she’d probably get recast if Arcee gets a bigger role in TFOne 2, I like the energy she brought to what few lines Arcee got. 

Jon Bailey (the Honest Trailers guy) reprises his role of Soundwave from Bumblebee, albeit with different vocal modulation, Vanessa Liguori gives Airachnid a cold, sneering tone to her voice, and Isaac C. Singleton Jr. voices goon Darkwing with appropriate thuggishness (a sharp shift away from his role as Shockwave in the WFC and FOC games). All in all, most of the voice cast gave their all, no matter how small their parts- fitting, given how stellar the voice acting for most of the franchise has been. 

Overall, Transformers One is incredibly strong from a presentation standpoint. It’s got stellar animation, a striking cyberpunk aesthetic, great character designs that work both from a general character design standpoint and a Transformers design standpoint, and a very solid voice cast. It’s the strongest TF movie looks and sound-wise since the 2007 movie and already one of the best-looking animated films this decade next to its twin film The Wild Robot and 2022’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

PART 2: Three Rise, One Falls: Why the Main Cast Works

Like my Puss in Boots: The Last Wish article from 2023 (link here), I’m devoting a section of the article to the main cast because I feel like there’s much to say about all four of them and not just the antagonist that everyone loves gushing about. I get why the TFOne fandom adores this version of Megatron, but his story really only works if you’ve got the other three knuckleheads he spends most of the film with. 

Let’s begin with the first bot we see in the film: Orion Pax, the humble miner who will eventually become Optimus Prime. I honestly didn't expect Orion to be a semi-static protagonist going into the film, but it works very well. Sometimes a character doesn't need to undergo a grand transformation (tee hee) for you to best understand and enjoy them; all they need to do is reveal their true character as they're exposed to new situations, and that fits TFOne Orion very well.

He's compassionate, steadfast, service-oriented, and courageous from the beginning of the film, and these traits work together to make him an incredibly winsome leading man. His first concern in every situation is the good of others, even when it puts him into conflict with his closest friend and others. He knows to stand up for the little guy because he and his fellow cogless bots are the lowest of the low within Cybertronian society. And he's cordial and humble in every situation, even when his patience is tested by his opponents.

He's a beacon of hope and joy in a dark world- an optimist in a sea of cynicism. When I compared Optimus to Jimmy Stewart's characters in Frank Capra films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life in my article celebrating the franchise's history and Optimus as a character, I wasn't expecting TFOne to actually turn him into a Capra protagonist. Of course, that's not to say he's so positive it becomes a negative to the audience because they can't believe the hope he has, but still- Orion has a more idealistic view of the world than his comrades, and that rubs off on those around him.

The closest thing Orion has to development is within his relationship with D-16. To my surprise, these two have a very real, genuine friendship with both virtues and vices. On one hand, Orion and D always have each other's back and know each other inside and out (Orion convinces D to join him and Bee in their search for the Matrix by appealing to D's desire to look good in front of Sentinel); on the other hand, there are very real cracks in their relationship that become more and more visible as the film goes on and the two find themselves at odds with one another on how to address the problem of Sentinel's lies.

It does a masterful job of showing the ways in which these two contrast one another. Where Orion is positive and selfless, D-16 is significantly more cynical and more self-focused. Where Orion is willing to take risks for the sake of others' good, D is only concerned with following protocol and staying out of trouble. Where Orion's first concern after learning the true character of Sentinel is to expose his lies and liberate his fellow miners, D desires to outright KILL Sentinel and make him pay for all that the Prime took from them. Where Orion tries to lead with diplomacy and tact during their encounter with Starscream and the High Guard, D beats Starscream senseless, growing more and more bloodthirsty- something that disturbs Orion.

Things come to a head during the penultimate battle, in which Orion tries to stop D from killing an incapacitated Sentinel. When words fail (those words being ones encouraging D to not start this post-Sentinel era with an execution), he puts himself between his friend and Cybertron's former leader, taking a laser blast to the chest. In a mirror of a scene from the Iacon 5000 in which Orion saved D, D-16 saves Orion from falling into the seemingly-infinite abyss beneath them... and he is devastated. Why did he stop me from avenging the Primes who Sentinel slayed? Why did he stop me from killing the liar who's held us back for all these years? "Why did you do that?!"

After a moment of emotions swarming through his head and contemplation of what he's going to do next, D-16 makes his decision. Staring at Orion with pure hate, he tells him "I'm done saving you," and throws him into the void below. Elita and Bee watch in horror, D turns to finish off Sentinel (in a move reminiscent of what his Bayverse counterpart did to Jazz in the 2007 movie), and Orion's remains tumble down the innards of Cybertron.

What follows is the greatest scene in the film, in which Orion and D become Optimus Prime and Megatron at the same time. Where D forcefully declares a bold new era for Cybertron and uses a cog stolen from Sentinel's cold dead chest (which was plucked from the Prime who Megatron idolized most) to supercharge himself, Orion is commended for his selflessness by the Primes, and the Transformers' creator god Primus himself bestows upon him the Matrix of Leadership. One arrogantly does what he believes will make him great while ironically becoming the monster he swore to destroy; one's humility and faith is rewarded by the divine and he is lifted up to become a true successor to the fallen Primes who once stood as guardians over Cybertron.

"I! AM! MEGATRON!"

"Arise, Optimus Prime."

It's absolutely beautiful and excellent visual storytelling. It's extremely Christian, too, what with Orion's humility and service-oriented worldview being rewarded while D-16's selfishness and anger leads him to destroying his relationship with Orion and being cast out from the world he's known for his entire existence. All I can see in these two is Abel and Cain: one who humbly and faithfully served and was lifted up by the divine because of it while his brother chose to be bitter, give into sin and kill, and was cast out for his wickedness.

The moment in which Optimus casts Megatron and the Decepticons-to-be from Iacon genuinely hurts because both he and the audience know it didn't have to be this way. The film successfully convinced us of their friendship's sincerity, and now Megatron has crossed the point of no return between his execution of Sentinel, mass property destruction, and attempted murder of Orion/Optimus. Alas, "some transformations are permanent", as Optimus puts it in his penultimate monologue, and so the two find themselves on opposite sides.

TFOne Orion/Optimus was something that genuinely surprised me going into the film. While D-16/Megatron rightly gets praise for how well he's written, I don't think enough credit's given to how Orion was handled. He's a stellar mostly-static protagonist whose selflessness and optimism are incredibly endearing and an excellent role model. If it wasn't for Daniel Warren Johnson's characterization for Optimus in the most recent comics from Skybound Entertainment (which are incredible and I highly recommend picking up the first volume containing the first six issues since they were inspired by an idea from Peter Cullen himself), I'd argue this version of Optimus is the best version of the character from the last decade.

.. alright, I've kept you waiting long enough. Time to gush about D-16/Megatron!

Make no mistake: while the film is called Transformers One, it could also be entitled Transformers: Megatron Origin or Megatron Rising. Why I say that is because I'd argue D-16's descent into darkness and rebirth as Megatron is the very best character work that TFOne did. This is his movie, and the writers did him justice in ways the Michael Bay films never did.

Initially, D-16's a cynical but ultimately easy-going guy who just wants to lay low and do his job without getting into trouble... unfortunately, being friends with Orion does not make that easy for him. He's often annoyed by Orion's focus on seemingly unattainable goals and talk of being anything more than just miners, but he's dealt with it for long enough to be used to it. Not entirely okay with it- most of his grumbling throughout the film's first third suggests otherwise- but used to it.

Something key to D's characterization is his idolization of Megatronus Prime (the "biggest and baddest" of the Primes) and Sentinel Prime. He wants nothing more than for his hard work to be recognized by Sentinel and to follow in the footsteps of his favorite of the Primes, and he sees Orion's attempts at doing good for their fellow miners as obstructing that... despite their attempt at competing in the Iacon 5000 being what gives D a chance to meet his idol ("Still mad at me?" "I am slightly less mad at you.") While this is primarily there to be yanked out from under him and turned into fuel for his descent into villainy, I think it subtly lays the foundation for D being power-hungry: his only concern is how powerful and respected Megatronus and Sentinel are, not who they are behind the mask or what made Megatronus so respected.

The central theme of the film is summarized within a proverb spoken by Alpha Trion to our core four after they learn the terrible truth behind their existence and Sentinel's true character and then repeated by Orion to his fellow miners prior to the penultimate battle: "A Transformer is not defined by the cog in their chest, but the spark at their core." It's a Transformers-ized version of 1 Samuel 16:7, encouraging one to look upon the condition of an individual's heart rather than their external attributes. Where the film makes it very clear where Orion's heart is from the film's start, both Sentinel and D-16's hearts are revealed to us as the film goes on... and they're far from ideal.

Upon learning of Sentinel's betrayal of the Primes (including Megatronus, who Sentinel decapitated) and his alliance with the Quintessons as well as the disappearance of the Matrix of Leadership (it vanished when Sentinel tried to claim it as his own because he was unworthy of bearing it), D is downright furious. Everything he had worked for, the one he had admired all his life... it was all a lie. No wonder he out of everyone takes the revelation of the betrayer's true character so badly.

When Orion attempts to comfort him, D snaps at his friend and all these years of pent-up frustration with his friend he repressed comes out in one ugly outburst. He blames him for everything that's happened up to this point, even going as far as to accuse Orion of "only thinking of himself" (which he never does). Ironically, the one only thinking of himself in this moment is D-16.

Orion's concerned with stopping Sentinel and exposing his lies, but all D is fixated on in this moment is how Sentinel's evil affected him and him alone. In the crucible of this dark hour, his true character is revealed: arrogant, angry, emotion-driven, violent, and victim-minded. He's always been like this, and I have to commend the writers for making this feel like such a natural character shift.

Admittedly, a lot of this came out of my rewatch, but you can see a lot of little red flags early on that show D isn't ideal friend material. Sure, he's loyal to Orion, but there are things he says ("If we survive this, I'm gonna kill you!", "I'd turn into a shovel and beat you", and expressing reluctance to help Orion rescue Jazz from a cave-in) and does (decking Orion to get him out of the way of an angry Darkwing) that point to who he truly is deep down. All it took was the destruction of the pedestal he put Sentinel on and the reveal of the futility of his daily work to bring out his darkest depths.

"You just HAD to do it, didn't you?!" "Me? What did I do?" "You just had to go to the surface, you just had to go to the Iacon 5000... you just HAD to break protocol!" "Who cares about protocol?" 'I do! I care! Because nothing bad happens when you stay on protocol!" "Sentinel Prime's been forcing us to work in the mines until our gears strip- and all the while he's been giving the Energon away to our greatest enemy." "And what do you think he's going to do to us when he finds out that we know?" "I'm not thinking about what he's going to do; I'm thinking about what we're going to do." "Well, that's the whole thing! You're never thinking about anything else, just yourself! Fantastic! Another Orion Pax 'master plan'! I just can't wait to hear this..." "Don't you want to stop him?" "NO, I WANT TO KILL HIM! I want to put Sentinel in chains, and march him through the mines so everyone can see him for the false Prime that he is! I want him to suffer, and then to die in darkness. But we both know it doesn't matter what I want, right, Pax?!"

D cannot accept the idea that he is wrong, only the idea that he and he alone has been wronged, and so he takes it out on Orion because his plan to benefit all Cybertron inconvenienced him and shattered his entire world. It's the exact opposite of what I feared would happen with Megatron-to-be in TFOne: instead of demanding that you sympathize with him because he was a victim of a corrupt system despite his actions being decidedly difficult to sympathize with, the film explains why he out of everyone is so incensed by the injustices of pre-war Cybertron but doesn't condone his aggression towards Sentinel and condemnation of Orion for DaRiNg to take risks so that others would benefit.

After he and the others gain their cogs and realize that Sentinel's forces are on their tail, D's more aggressive side begins to show itself more and more. He wants to fight against Sentinel's troopers who've tracked them to Alpha Trion's cave while Orion, Elita and Bee are concerned more with making their way down to Iacon and he uses his newfound tank mode's cannon to blow up one of Sentinel's goons. The latter is something he's downright giddy about, something which draws Orion's concern.

Immediately after this, D takes the information disc showing Sentinel's betrayal of the Primes given to the core four by Alpha Trion from Orion, and both times when confronted about it by Orion, he insists that he can lead them just fine on his own. In addition, right before the foursome get knocked out by High Guard members, D tells Orion that "the only one I trust is-" before getting cut off mid-sentence. Even without the line being complete, it's obvious D was going to say "me".

Not only has D-16's trust in Sentinel shattered, but his trust in anyone who claims to know better than him has vanished- even his trust in Orion. Furthermore, after awakening in the High Guard's captivity, he immediately challenges Starscream's leadership and critiques their lack of action against Sentinel for casting them aside. And let's be honest, the last thing D needed in this moment was to be surrounded by a bunch of revenge-crazed loons who believed that might made right.

As he brutalizes Starscream, D realizes that not only has he earned the adoration of the High Guardsmen for his might, but that he has access to a powerful arm cannon. Orion intervenes before he can blow Starscream's brain module out, fortunately, but D declares that this will be the last time he shows mercy to anyone. It's also the last time he ever listens to Orion within the film- a dark sign for what is to come.

During the core four and the High Guard's battle against Airachnid and several of Sentinel's goons, both D and Bee are captured. Upon arrival in Sentinel's tower, D makes his contempt for the deceitful Prime known by standing while his other prisoners are made to kneel. Not taking kindly to this, Sentinel decides to kick D to the ground and reveal something- after he killed Megatronus Prime, he took the "biggest and baddest" Prime's cog for himself. And then he burns D's Megatronus sticker into his chest with a branding iron.

While I'll discuss this more in the next big section (which is all about the ways in which Sentinel works as a villain), I think having Sentinel pushing D's buttons is a smart writing move since they're really not all that different. Both of them admired Megatronus, both of them are arrogant and violent, and both of them are growing tired of the roles they play in relation to others. In doing so, though, Sentinel is signing his own death warrant.

After being freed by Orion, D's focus turns to taking down Sentinel. Unfortunately, due to Orion being concerned with broadcasting Sentinel's true character to all of Cybertron, he's left alone with the self-proclaimed Prime... a very, VERY bad decision given his newfound anger towards him. It doesn't help that Sentinel keeps goading him on, mockingly telling him to "rise up!" when knocked to his knees.

And then comes the moment that forever separates him from Orion. He manages to cripple Sentinel by tackling him off a high building, breaking his wings off. D prepares to finish the job, only to be interrupted by Orion. Orion doesn't want to start this new era of Cybertron with an execution (therefore continuing the cycle of violence that Sentinel started); D wants to make Sentinel pay and he doesn't care what happens after that.

In all fairness... Sentinel had already lost everything. The people of Cybertron were disgusted upon learning of the injustices he had dealt them, he was badly damaged from his battle against D-16, and those loyal to him are presumably far outnumbered by the now-very-much-incensed miners and Transformers. Killing him would do nothing- nothing save for satiating D and the High Guard's desire for revenge.

Determined to get his shot in, D opens fire at Sentinel's weakened form... only for Orion to jump between the two of them and take the blow. His head's full of a terrifying mix of anger, horror, and confusion. The oppressor who's made their lives hell all this time could have died then and there, but NO. Orion just HAD to get in the way and take his personal happiness away one last time. Because of Orion, Sentinel lived.

Because of Orion, he kept getting himself involved in life-endangering situations.

Because of Orion, everything he trusted and took solace in was ripped away from him.

Because of Orion, he was denied of everything he wanted.

Perhaps that's what lead D to drop Orion off the cliff. He decided then and there that the person he called his best friend had interfered with his wants enough. Dare I say it, he might have even decided that Sentinel and Orion were one and the same- both of them held him back from what he wanted to do, and he would tolerate that no longer. Why save someone who will only drag you down with them? he reasoned.

D tears Sentinel in two, tears Megatronus's cog from his corpse's chest, and rechristens himself after the "biggest and baddest" of the Primes*- Megatron. In addition, he makes a bold promise to the High Guard and all who hear his voice- they will never be deceived again and that he and he alone will lead them into the future. Ironically, despite his promises to be unlike Sentinel... Megatron has become the same murderous, envious, arrogant soul that Sentinel was, down to claiming the cog of Megatronus as his own.

*I saw a theory that D-16/Megatron was inspired to rename himself to "Megatron" by B-127's self-given "Badassatron" nickname. This hasn't been confirmed by anyone working on the film, but given how many times Bee repeats it and how much D venerates Megatronus, it's not out of the realm of possibility for that to have been an inspiration for his more familiar name.

We don't know the general character of Megatronus Prime within TFOne, but compared to other iterations of the character (where he's usually a Luciferian figure known as "The Fallen" who went evil and betrayed the rest of the Primes), he doesn't seem like a bad guy. Nothing in the film suggests he was anything other than a benevolent fellow, and he's there among the deceased Primes when they commend Orion for his selflessness. It honestly makes his cog being stolen by two monstrous bots and his face being turned into the basis for the Decepticon insignia sting a lot more than it normally would; we don't even know what he's like and yet I can't help but feel he'd disapprove of his likeness being used for evil purposes.

Upon declaring himself Megatron, he and the High Guard start destroying things in their immediate vicinity, mainly statues bearing Sentinel's image. Despite Bee and Elita's efforts to get him to stop, Megs insists he won't stop until "every follower of Sentinel's is destroyed". It's possible he could've just been referring to Sentinel's goons, but given how he'd been acting, Megatron could've meant anyone who doesn't immediately kowtow to him and the High Guard. As far as he's concerned, anyone not with him is getting a fusion cannon shot to the head.

Cue Orion, now Optimus Prime, rocketing out of Cybertron's core and knocking Megatron and his newfound followers back. Upon seeing the Matrix within Optimus's chest, Megatron is further infuriated. "Of course..." he snarls, "Primus gave you the Matrix." Whatever respect or care he had for his former friend is gone- all that remains is a primal fury bent on tearing him to bits, and seeing him rewarded for the selflessness he cannot comprehend once more only heightens that fury.

The two have their final battle, Optimus casts him and the High Guard from Iacon, and Megatron and the Guardsmen set out for parts unknown... unknown until the post-credits scene. There, Megatron declares that Sentinel has given way to a new, personal enemy. With his men now bearing an insignia based on Megatronus's face, he rallies the newly christened Decepticons for the first time, his spark burning with hatred against Optimus Prime.

D-16/Megatron is an absolute triumph from a writing standpoint. Nothing he does feels inconsistent, his descent from cynical but loyal miner to arrogant, murderous zealot feels gradual enough to be believable and has a very solid motivation behind it, and he feels like he's absolutely earned being Megatron by the film's end. That's a real danger for villain origin story films, I've noticed. You either make the villain-to-be too mellow (so the moment when they become their more recognizable selves rings hollow because it seems like too sharp of a character shift away from who they'd been for most of the film) or you don't bother trying to make them a good person whatsoever and you ask the audience to celebrate and accept the actions of a budding monster as they do worse and worse things.

The Transformers One writers rejected both options, and I left the film genuinely impressed at what they'd accomplished. You get why he's frustrated at Sentinel and Orion, but you know his perspective is warped by his own emotions and pride. You want to believe he'll turn himself around before it's too late and he's a murderous tyrant, but you know he's too stubborn to do anything else. He's the most interesting Megatron we've had in years, and it's a shame that we probably won't see more of him given TFOne's financial underperformance.

B-127/Bee (no, I'm not calling him "Badassatron") was an unexpected delight. Going into the film, I was annoyed by the fact that Hasbro couldn't go one film without shoving their golden boy into it. Didn't help that in a post-Puss in Boots: The Last Wish world, he seemed like a very basic comic relief who didn't seem like he'd have any substance other than attempting to make the audience laugh.

Fortunately, Bee was not limited to a basic comic relief. Instead, he's a roly-poly bundle of joy and exuberance who has some genuinely funny moments and a big heart. Even in the film's first third, where he's often argued to be his most grating (depending on whether you consider the core four's arrival on the surface or their entrance into the cave where the Primes died the cutoff point between act 1 and act 2), I'd argue that he was quite nice.

From what he says about his past, we learn B-127 was demoted down to the absolute lowest level of Cybertron, entrusted with watching trash burn. Some life. Despite the miserable situation he's found himself in, he hasn't let it get him down or drive him mad. It shows an unspoken resilience to him that's not immediately obvious thanks to his fast talk and attempts at small talk with Orion and D.

Furthermore, Bee is plot-relevant, genuinely funny, and is allowed to be an actual character with more than just one emotion- all of which makes him a good, well-rounded comic relief. He's plot-relevant in that he's how Orion and D discover the map to the Matrix's alleged location and how they learn of a way to get to the surface, he's funny because the writers just let Key let loose (and he's good at doing so at a PG level), and his reactions to certain things aren't just blind comic relief naivete. That moment when he's left speechless by the revelation of the evils which Sentinel has committed was the moment I realized the writers had the standards to not just rest on Key's comic laurels.

I know that sounds like good writing basics, but given that the film had the potential to just make the "Badassatron" nickname Bee's only joke (and I feared that would be the case given how often they put it in the trailers and how he repeated it multiple times in the film's first act), it was a welcome respite to see him act like an actual character and not like a walking gag. A good comic relief is determined not by their ability to make the audience laugh, but by what they do when met with a decidedly unfunny situation. You make the audience laugh at them first so that when they choose to be there for their new friends or when they're hurt or they're met with an uncomfortable truth, you feel for them. While he's by no means Perrito (The Last Wish) tier, B-127 is a solid supporting man and one of the best depictions of Bumblebee in recent Transformers media.

Lastly, we have Elita-1. Out of everyone, I was scared most of what would be done with Elita in TFOne- yes, even more than what could have been done with Megatron or B-127. With how Toy Story 4 recharacterized Bo Peep to someone antithetical to her characterization in the first two Toy Story films as well as the general demeaning of men and aggrandizement of women within TS4, I feared that Elita would be slotted into the dreaded "girl boss" archetype and be "the bestest ever" at everything while the boys were slower on the uptake for no reason other than because the writer had an agenda-scented axe to grind.

However, despite my grievances with Scarlett Johansson's performance, TFOne Elita ain't half bad. The film starts her off as a no-nonsense, strict manager of a small squad of miners (of which Orion and D-16 are part) who makes her group praise her before they start work and has little tolerance for slip-ups. When Orion's efforts to go back for Jazz cost her her position, she lashes out at him for ruining her life- and once she discovers him, Bee and D trying to sneak aboard the waste management train she was demoted to stocking, she makes it her mission to ruin Orion's life in return.

Elita is a foil to D-16 in that both are incredibly committed to following protocol and are frustrated when their efforts to be loyal to Sentinel's system are obstructed... however, Elita isn't nearly as consumed by it as D is, despite how she may act. The sight of Cybertron's surface and learning what Orion and company are looking for are enough for her to take her mind off of revenge against Orion for getting her demoted. Her world is not one defined by following protocol, but by being the best at what she does.

How I would describe Elita's arc is as one of humbling. While being demoted to waste management didn't dampen her pride in herself, her time with Orion does. She initially writes him off as nothing more than just a miner (outright telling him "you don't have the touch or the power" when he suggests the idea that he might have the power to change the world for the better) and insists that she's leading the mission to the location of the Matrix of Leadership because she doesn't trust him or Bee or D-16. Transformation proves difficult for her and the boys, and she comes to appreciate Orion's hope in the face of a world of despair.

The moment which confirms she's changed is when she attempts to encourage him. While she phrases it badly ("I am better than you in every way except for the fact you have hope"; Orion asks if it's her first time giving a pep talk), it's clear that she recognizes the virtue of his sincere, driven optimism and knows that's what Cybertron as a whole needs rather than Sentinel's hollow promises. It's a far cry from where she was at the start of the film, and it sets her up as one of Orion/Optimus's greatest allies quite well.

It feels like something straight out of a Capra film- a sincere, honest, selfless guy wins over an arrogant, cynical woman and brings her down to common sense and humility. While One Orion/Optimus and Elita's relationship is by no means romantic, there's enough chemistry and banter between them in the film to make me believe they'd work as a couple. Considering how often Optimus and Elita have romantic tension in media featuring the both of them (going all the way back to Elita's debut in the G1 toon), I wouldn't be surprised if this film was intended to lay the groundwork for their inevitable romance.

When I look at the TFOne "core four" as I've been calling them, I see four very well-written characters who just so happen to segue perfectly into who they'll later become once the Autobots and Decepticons are going at it. Orion/Optimus is a Capraesque leading man, D-16/Megatron is a cautionary tale of what happens when one lets their emotions override their morals and places their faith in a system that would ultimately disappoint them, Bee is a charming bundle of joy, and Elita goes from arrogant micromanager to someone humbler and kinder. As I keep saying, if you were to take the Transformers of it all away, you'd still have a good main cast, and that's an accomplishment I praise the writers of the film for.

PART 3: “Truth is What I Make It”: Why Sentinel Prime is Such a Perfect Antagonist (also some talk about other scum and villainy)

"You don't really need to find out what's goin' on/You don't really wanna know just how far it's gone/Just leave well enough alone/Eat your dirty laundry/Kick 'em when they're up/Kick 'em when they're down/Kick 'em when they're up/Kick 'em when they're down" Don Henley, "Dirty Laundry" (a song that is not in TFOne, but fits Sentinel to a T)

Ah, the twist villain. Nemesis of 2018 YouTube animation critics far and wide!

... in all seriousness, back in 2018, I noticed a swath of criticism directed towards Disney and Pixar (but mostly Disney) for their failings with "twist villains" in films like Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia. The chief critic among these was James "Schaffrillas Productions" Phyrillas, known for his love of 2010 DreamWorks cult classic Megamind, Shrek 2, and Moana's giant crab villain Tamatoa. His video entitled "Why Disney's Twist Villains Don't Work" ripped Prince Hans (Frozen), Professor Callahan (Big Hero 6) and Bellwether (Zootopia) apart for sudden, illogical shifts in their characterization and praised older "twist villains" from Pixar's glory days and Disney's pre-Frozen films.

While I agree with Phyrillas that Hans fails as a villain because Frozen's production was an absolute nightmare that could've been prevented if the writers didn't like "Let it Go" so much they refused to let Elsa be a villain, I disagree with him on his cases against Callahan and Bellwether. Callahan is what Hiro (the protagonist of BH6) could have become had he let his grief lead him down a darker path; Bellwether supports Zootopia's central theme of not judging a book by its cover by being a cute little sheep secretary who's also the mastermind of a plot to perpetuate prejudice between predators and prey. Phyrillas's central argument was that there was a greater buildup to the reveal of the true character of characters like Stinky Pete (Toy Story 2), Waternoose (Monsters, Inc), and others than those found in Frozen or films like it, and that buildup wasn't there in more recent Disney films, resulting in twist villains that felt incredibly underbaked.

Rather serendipitously, in the aftermath of Phyrillas and other critics' case against those three twist villains, there were a slew of Disney-produced animated films in which there wasn't a twist villain. In fact, there wasn't a villain whatsoever in any Disney-produced animated films between 2019-2021 (Pixar's Luca broke the streak with entertaining jerk Ercole and his two goons). There were exceptions, sure, but for a very brief period of time, Disney and Pixar chose to make the villains of their films generational trauma; with the exception of 2021's Encanto, none of them accomplished that well.

In addition, I've noticed that the majority of villain origin story films struggle to find a good counter to their villain protagonist. Sometimes they create a new character wholesale whose sole purpose is to endear us to our villain protagonist because they're so cartoonishly evil by comparison (2021's Cruella), sometimes they pervert a preexisting character from the source material (the king from 2014's Maleficent, who was forcibly rewritten into a colonizing brute who cripples Maleficent by cutting off her wings), and sometimes they just pit them against another villain who has far less time to develop and only exists for the sake of some action (see the villain-focused entries of Sony's Spider-Man-less cinematic universe like Venom or Morbius). There are exceptions, of course (2019's Joker works with the character's estrangement from society at large rather than against it), but it's rare for these "villain origin" films to succeed in crafting a worthy antagonist for our not-yet-an-antagonist hero.

Why do I bring these things up, dear reader? Well, it's because Sentinel Prime is both a twist villain and a villain origin story antagonist done right. Extremely right, really. Not only is his character consistent pre-reveal and post-reveal, but he's a perfect villain for D-16 since he's a dark mirror to D's worst vices- the very vices which D gives into as he becomes Megatron.

When we're first introduced to Sentinel, we see the version of him that he wants the public to see: this mighty champion of the common bot who's incredibly honest about his missteps and offers opportunities for those under his rule to take a break and participate in the Iacon 5000 (the miners by watching; actual Transformers by racing). Yet even before we learn his true character, there are already some cracks in his facade. Between the brutish behavior of those Transformer guards under his command (especially Darkwing), the dangerous nature of mining Energon, the uncanniness of his majordomo Arachnid, and the way he perceives Orion and D's efforts to enter the race, one can sense his priorities and character are far from what he professes them to be.

Immediately after praising Orion and D for their bold entrance and surprisingly good performance in the race, he tells them that they'll be taken to his personal quarters for further conversations. However, their escort is none other than Darkwing (who already has beef with the two), and he drags them down to Cybertron's lowest level. Whether or not this was just Darkwing acting out or something Sentinel ordered him to do is something I don't know, but if it was the latter, it would suggest he may have thought of them as a threat far before they saw him bending the knee to Cybertron's oppressors. I may be looking too deeply into this, but it'd be consistent with how paranoid and vigilant Sentinel is later in the film.

Even before his greatest deception is revealed, the core four learn of many lies they had been fed by Sentinel. D notes that they'd been told Cybertron only went down 40 levels when Bee tells them that they're on the 50th sublevel of the planet, and the planet's surface is far from the nightmare they'd been warned it was. It's smart writing, planting the seeds for the truth of who he is for those who are paying attention.

Once Orion, D, Elita and Bee arrive at the cave where the remains of the Primes lay, they learn a series of terrible truths from Alpha Trion, the first of which being revealing Sentinel to be a fraud. At first, our heroes refuse to believe this, but Trion shows them the truth using his control over sand to recreate that dreadful night when the Thirteen were led astray by their advisor. The war against the Quintessons was nearly over, and they'd been called to a meeting place with said advisor.

The meeting place turned out to be the site of a trap, and though the Thirteen fought valiantly, they were unprepared for their advisor Sentinel's betrayal. His double-bladed sword in hand, Sentinel slaughtered every Prime except for Trion "for all the power on Cybertron." He then attempted to claim the Matrix as his own... only for it to disintegrate in his hands, a divine rejection of the arrogant bot's desire to claim what he had not earned.

Truth is, Sentinel had struck a deal with the Quintessons to give them the lion's share of Energon in return for them letting him rule over Cybertron. In order to get that Energon, he stole an entire generation's worth of transformation cogs and set the cogless bots to work endlessly in order to keep up his end of the deal. He crippled and starved an entire generation and killed their heroes just so he could stay on top of his empire of rust, all while lying to that generation's faces about what he was doing for years.

What a monster.

The thing that I think makes Sentinel work as a twist villain is how consistent he is before and after the twist. I've already mentioned little condescending moments and the little lies that preceded his big lies, but after the twist, we start seeing his arrogance and dishonest spirit on full display when previously he'd kept them hidden beneath his charismatic mask. He was always an arrogant liar and murderer; it's just that he (and the writers) did such a good job convincing us of the charismatic mask he wore in the film's first act that his true colors stung.

That's the mark of a great twist villain. Not only is their character consistent pre-twist and post-twist, but they are improved by a rewatch rather than tainted. Remember Hans from Frozen? The twist regarding his true colors takes place so late in the film that he barely has any time to be a villain, and as a result the charismatic, caring Hans from the film's first two thirds is replaced with a murderous backstabber and the film's rewatch potential is ruined because pre-twist Hans and post-twist Hans are so antipodal to one another.

Conversely, TFOne Sentinel is enhanced by rewatches because it allows you to reevaluate his "fearless leader" persona he projects to all of Cybertron in light of who he truly is. The biggest difference between pre-twist Sentinel and post-twist Sentinel is that we get to see the side of him he doesn't want the Cybertronian public to see. That's all that's done, and as a result Sentinel doesn't feel like he's flipped on a dime so much as we now get to see more of the dime we were zoomed in on originally.

Then we've got Sentinel as a villain origin story villain. Admittedly, this is following Transformers tradition in which Megatron-to-be leads a revolt against the Prime prior to Optimus (who is only sometimes Sentinel, but that's not important right now), but One might've done it best. Let's explain why.

Not only is Sentinel a more personal villain for D-16/Megatron since D's fanboying over Megatronus and Sentinel himself gives way to burning hatred for Sentinel once he learns what became of Megatronus (and the other Primes, but all D cares about is his big purple idol) and all else that Sentinel has lied about, but Sentinel and him are... frighteningly similar when you look at them more in-depth. Put simply, Sentinel is everything D-16 could and would become if he gave into his vices. It's just that D is only starting his descent and Sentinel is already at the bottom.

Both are aggressive, arrogant sorts who threw away their relationships with others and endangered everyone around them because they wanted to feed their ego and assume power. Violence became their preferred method of solving problems, and if the truth got in the way of what they wanted, they would do something to change it so it matches up with the reality of what they want to see. After all, in Sentinel's own words, "truth is what I make it."

The tragedy of it all is that despite how much he comes to hate Sentinel for his deceit and arrogance, D-16 fails- or more likely, refuses- to recognize his vices and becomes the same monster that he claimed to hate. It's as if Sentinel was a blindingly vibrant neon sign reading "don't go down this path" flashing in D's face and despite every opportunity to check his countenance, he chose to soldier on until Sentinel got snapped in half and he destroyed his relationship with his closest friend. For that, Sentinel Prime's a cut above many villain origin story villains because he so influences D-16/Megatron even without meaning to.

By that, I don't just mean being the motivation for D becoming a monster; I mean all the ways in which Sentinel's society shaped him. Sentinel organized everything in such a way that staying on protocol would reward the miners with promotions, and D was very intent on following orders and not doing anything that would disrupt the status quo. Had things gone differently, chances are Sentinel would be propping D-16 up as the "ideal miner", and D would've been okay with it.

His ideas of what makes a leader are shaped by what Sentinel has said to all of Cybertron. His ideas of Cybertron's history and his knowledge of his physical form have been tampered with thanks to Sentinel's lies. Everything, EVERYTHING D-16 knows and does is shaped by Sentinel's system, and when he comes across the dark truths at the foundation of that system, he resolves to stop at nothing until the liar who obscured the truth is destroyed, even if it means the destruction of Cybertronian society and the death of everyone loyal to him.

And then comes their final confrontation, which occurs after D, Bee and a good deal of the High Guard are captured by Sentinel's forces. As he lectures them, Sentinel says that their deaths will be framed as him executing a bunch of insurrectionists. When called out on this blatant untruth, he says the line that inspired me to name this section.

"Truth is what I make it."

That is Sentinel summarized in one line. The lies which he perpetuates have gone unquestioned for years, and in that he has become proud enough to believe he could do anything as long as he had an excuse to hide behind. His charisma will make you believe everything he says even as his actions behind the curtain say otherwise.

While everyone else is defeated, on their knees, D-16 defiantly stands up. Amused by D, Sentinel kicks him to the ground and decides to do something rather cruel. Not only does he reveal he took Megatronus Prime's cog for himself, but he decides to brand D's Megatronus sticker into his chest. In this moment, not only does Sentinel further show his cruelty, but he unknowingly signs his own death warrant.

Cue a hijacked train crashing into Sentinel's palace and allowing for the captive D, Bee, and High Guardsmen to be set free. For a brief moment, it seems like our heroes have the edge over him, with Orion saying that Sentinel can't escape the truth. The false Prime mocks this idea, saying that no one will believe them because... well, you know the line. "Truth is what I make it!", this time uttered as he transforms into his armored final form.

This final form makes him look his most angelic, which is bitterly ironic given how devilish he's been revealed to be. Yet there's something missing from this final form, and it's the one thing aside from ScarJo's sub-optimal performance I genuinely take issue with- the absence of Sentinel's sword. With how much damage Sentinel's sword did to the Primes, you'd think he'd bring it out in a battle against those who've seen his most heinous crimes to make sure there were no witnesses left.

But he doesn't, and I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, it further shows Sentinel's arrogance by him trusting in his beefed-up "super mode' more than the weapon that would more efficiently solve the problem of those who know what he's done; on the other hand, there's some real missed potential in the sword not being involved in D-16 and Sentinel's last fight. Imagine how the final battle between the monster-to-be and the false Prime would've gone suppose D got his hands on Sentinel's sword mid-fight and started using it against him, screaming bloody murder against him for what he did to the Primes- especially Megatronus.

Imagine if he killed Sentinel the same way Sentinel killed Megatronus, severing his head from his shoulders with his blade.

Not only would this have been a darkly poetic end for Sentinel (repaying his violence against those he was once servant to with the same violence he perpetuated against them), but it would've solidified D-16's downfall by having him kill just as Sentinel did. It'd have been bitterly ironic, but alas, Sentinel's sword is nowhere to be seen after he beheads a captive Alpha Trion for talking too much. That, and it'd probably have yanked the film's rating up quite a bit. Back to the film as it was!

D and Sentinel have a long, brutal smackdown throughout most of Iacon, with Sentinel initially gaining the upper hand and mocking a weakened D-16 by telling him "Rise up!"... which eventually becomes Megatron's rallying cry for the Decepticons-to-be. Then comes Orion's broadcast of Sentinel's lies. For a moment, Sentinel is distracted by this, gobsmacked that despite everything, these.... these MINERS managed to get SOMETHING against him.

It exposes how fragile his control over Cybertron and its people really was. Although it took a lot of work to get to that point, if only one broadcast exposing everything he lied about was enough to turn his people against him, then he was never all that powerful. He could not handle the truth because a simple showing of who he truly is would unmake his empire in a matter of seconds.

While he's distracted, Sentinel fails to notice D-16 preparing to tackle him, and the fight quickly turns in D's favor. At this point, you know what happens. D goes in for the kill, Orion tries to stop him because he doesn't want to start this post-Sentinel era with an execution (which is what Sentinel used to establish his reign over Cybertron), D blows Orion's chest out and drops him off a cliff, and then D tears Sentinel in half.

I'm honestly conflicted on how Sentinel's death was handled. On one hand, getting torn in half by D-16 is plenty brutal as is. However, on the other hand, I feel like there was a missed payoff to D nearly blowing Starscream's brains out. Since D almost shot Starscream in the head with his newly-discovered arm cannon back at the High Guard's little hideout, why not have him actually do it to Sentinel since Orion's not there to stop him?

Yet I get what the writers were going for in Sentinel's death being what it was. He dies a painful, humiliating death in the sight of all those who'd been wronged by him. For as high and mighty as he propped himself up as, Sentinel dies the lowest possible death he could've died. His wings are clipped, he's torn in twain, and the cog that he prided himself on having stolen from Megatronus's corpse is taken by Megatron-to-be as a sign that he, the false Prime, is no more.

And it's amazing.

He is amazing.

Sentinel Prime, on paper, is nothing new, and yet he's done so well that you forget that. He's a power-hungry, arrogant monster, and every vile deed he's done is buried under lie after lie after lie. The simplicity of his villainy is honestly refreshing and a trend I'm noticing in mostly non-Disney animated films. Sometimes all a story needs is to call evil what it is rather than making endless justifications for evil. Furthermore, sometimes the twist of a twist villain just needs to be the level of depravity they're willing to stoop to.

...

Since we're talking about villainy so much in this section, I feel like I should talk about two of the film's other lesser villains- Airachnid and Starscream. One is Sentinel's deadly femme fatale number 2 who ultimately proves to be his undoing; the other is the High Guard's leader and yet another force that pushes D-16 further down his path to villainy. It's really quite impressive how every secondary character in One has some sort of relevance to the story, and these two are no exceptions.

Unlike Sentinel, there's no twist with Airachnid. Even before the truth is exposed about Sentinel, there's just something... uncanny about her. She feels utterly alien next to other Transformers, most of which is communicated by her design, leaving the rest to be sold by her tinny voice and inability to really deviate from her basic tone of voice. It makes me wonder if this version of her was a Quintesson plant to ensure Sentinel stayed on task in producing Energon for them.

It's quite obvious given how many of them she has, but Airachnid acts as Sentinel's second pair of eyes, recording everything he does and everything in his general vicinity- she is the personification of his vigilance to ensure his lies appear as truths to the unsuspecting people of Cybertron. It's thanks to her that Sentinel knows about Orion, D, Bee, and Elita watching their meeting with the Quints, and it's thanks to her that Alpha Trion and later D and Bee are captured.

Yet the thing that makes her most useful to Sentinel- her camera-like eyes- ultimately proves to be Sentinel's undoing, with Orion hooking her up to a comms table and broadcasting footage of all that the supposed Prime has lied about. It's a good payoff to her being by his side in almost every one of her scenes and an excellent way to hoist Sentinel up by his own petard. Notably, Airachnid vanishes from the film after this; while she's admittedly damaged, it leaves her open to either 1) becoming one of the future Decepticons (making her match up with her Transformers Prime namesake) or 2) if my "Airachnid is a Quintesson plant" theory is correct, returning as one of the Quints' goons.

When she's on the battlefield, she's an utter savage, hacking and slashing away at her opponents with her extra "legs". It contrasts well with her otherwise calm self, and it makes me wish that she'd gotten more scenes to wreck shop. Heck, I just wish we'd gotten more of her period. She's got a lovely design and what little we see of her personality is intriguing. Hopefully TFOne does well enough in streaming revenue to give us more of her in a potential sequel.

Lastly, we have Starscream. I love this version of Starscream for a lot of reasons, and one of them is his relationship with D-16/Megatron. For those of you who don't know the usual Megatron/Starscream dynamic, Starscream constantly schemes to take control of the Decepticon faction, Megatron keeps him in line with fear and violence, Starscream continues plotting against Megs, and the two have general animosity between one another until one of them dies.

One remixes this by making Starscream the elder of the two, a disgraced, embittered veteran cast aside by Sentinel bent on revenge against the so-called Prime but too cowardly to really do anything. Sure, he talks a big game about how "might makes right" within the Guard's ranks and how long he's been planning revenge against his betrayer, but he's never actually going to do any of that. And this just sets D-16 off. With what he's learned about Sentinel, he has to do something about it as soon as possible, and he's not going to let anyone stand in his way.

This results in the two having a fight that amounts to D punching and choking Starscream (damaging his voice box in the process), and the fight only escalates because of the High Guard's cheers (since they're firm believers in the whole might makes right thing) and Starscream's strained taunts. I find this incredibly interesting because it makes Starscream and the rest of the Guard a corruptive force in D's journey, an influence he would've been better off without. Plus, with their might-makes-right worldview, choking out Starscream gives D/Megatron-to-be a whole squad of well-trained soldiers as followers.

There's animosity between D and Starscream, but it manifests differently because of D's disgust with Starscream's cowardice and inaction against Sentinel. The feeling isn't necessarily mutual (because the most Starscream feels towards D-16 is just mild disdain), but you can see the seeds of their more familiar dynamic being planted. Unfortunately, aside from the big scene in the High Guard's hideout, Starscream really doesn't do all that much.

Sure, he attempts to yell at Sentinel only to be held back by his warbling voice box when he, Bee, D, and the rest of the captured Guardsmen get captured by the false Prime, takes part in the mass destruction following D becoming Megatron, and attempts to aid Megatron in fighting Optimus, but there's nothing that really contributes to his character in these moments. Maybe he could've fought with B-127 (which would've allowed for a sequence in which the franchise's golden boy fights against one of the most recognizable villains) at some point, but that'd probably have messed up the pacing of the film's last 10 minutes. It's frustrating because what's done with him in his big scene with D is stellar character work.

However, I understand why Starscream's biggest role is limited to said scene. He exists within Transformers One as another step on D-16's downward spiral, another force pushing him towards becoming a monster and a kindred spirit in regards to feeling wronged by Sentinel. Do anything more with him, and he'd have the potential to distract from D's arc's completion or from Optimus and Megatron's final battle.

And that's where I'll cut off this discussion of the villains in Transformers One. While Airachnid and Starscream do their parts well, Sentinel Prime feels like where the writers went above and beyond in writing depravity. It's like the writers looked at D-16/Megatron and Sentinel, realized how much they needed to get those two right for the film's narrative to work (failure to do so would result in D's descent coming off as unbelievable and Sentinel having the potential to be a shallow twist villain who doesn't really get to be all that evil), and then concentrated everything they could on making both characters the best they could be.

PART 4: Is it a Good Transformers Story, Though?

Originally, this section was titled "Is it a Good Transformers Movie, Though?" (as a reference to what my Puss in Boots: The Last Wish article's section discussing that film's success as a Shrek film in addition to its success as a standalone film), but I then realized that, outside of TFOne, it's difficult to define what a good Transformers movie is. Sure, The Transformers: The Movie (the 1986 movie), the 2007 movie, Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts are good movies, but they're not consistent in what makes them good movies. Some of those are good Transformers movies (1986 and ROTB), and others are good movies that struggle to do the Transformers side of things all that well (2007 and BBM).

Ergo, I opted to instead analyze Transformers One from the standpoint of it being a good Transformers story. By that, I mean how well it handles familiar narrative beats offered up by past media and how respectful it is of the characters. So how successful is it on those fronts?

Very. Very, VERY much so.

Remember my complaint that many pre-war plot points felt overdone? Transformers One revealed the problem wasn't necessarily the plot points themselves, but their repetition without variation. For some, that's a benefit, but when you're seeing Megatron do the whole "well-intentioned revolutionary becomes an embittered terrorist no better than the monsters he once set out to fight and destroys his relationship with the guy who would become his greatest rival" thing for what feels like the umpteenth time with zero changes from the last five times it was done, it gets old and makes you yearn for something new.

Transformers One revisits many pre-war plot points established by media from the franchise's forty-year history, but it makes changes to them that help make them both more digestible for general audiences and puts some fun spins on them for us long-timers. Let's take the caste system instituted by Sentinel Prime as an example. In the 2005-2018 IDW comics and the Transformers Exodus novel (a loose adaptation of the War For Cybertron video game), the caste system was based on what a Transformer turned into, with their usefulness determining their place in society. You could have a crazy elegant space jet alternate mode and be part of high society, but you could also turn into a USB stick and only exist to store other people's data.

The IDW and Exodus caste systems were very complex- far too complex to work on film without grinding the film to a halt to explain why a tank was lower than a fancy car. Ergo, TFOne simplifies it down to those with transformation cogs (Transformers proper) and those without cogs ("MINERS!", in Darkwing's words). This is not only easily understood by general audiences since the class system is split between the haves and the have nots, but it's funny for long-time Transformers fans because non-transforming Transformers toys have almost universally failed (case in point, the "Action Masters" that killed the original The Transformers toyline).

This reinterpretation and streamlining is also seen in how Optimus and Megatron's origins are handled. Admittedly, Megatron Origin itself wasn't a bad origin story for IDW 2005-2018 Megatron. It's just that writers kept going back and adding to the pre-war time period, resulting in his descent into evil stagnating until there's like fifty events before his actual origin story as recorded in Megatron Origin. Then they turned a simplified version of all that into Megatron's backstory for every piece of Transformers media going forward (minus Transformers Animated Megs; ironic that the one Megatron post-2005 without the "miner turned revolutionary turned tyrant" backstory ends up being one of the very best Megatrons out there)

Also, Orion Pax/Optimus Prime was notably absent from Megatron's rise to power, something that later media attempted to correct by adding in the wrinkle of him and Megatron having been friends once and hailing from different castes. However, this added friendship often felt incredibly underbaked due to a lack of development within their friendship, resulting in their inevitable falling out falling flat. It's why, up until seeing One, I still preferred the origin story for Optimus proposed in the original cartoon episode "War Dawn" over everything that came after it- sure, Megatron's already fully formed when he and Orion meet and Orion only becomes Optimus because of time travel shenanigans, but it shows Orion/Optimus learning the lesson of power being nothing without the wisdom to wield it rightly the hard way.

With all that in mind, one would assume that Transformers One's writers would have a lot on their plate- and they did. But they somehow managed to take all the contradictory origins for the franchise's goodest of good guys and baddest of bad guys and weave them together into something elegant, straightforward, and tragic. All they really had to do was make Orion and D-16's friendship believable so their falling out hurt, and they did that and so much more.

Their worldviews contrast one another- Orion being optimistic and service-oriented and D being cynical and self-oriented- and yet the film also gives them reasons to be friends. They're on equal footing, with both of them being miners so that it makes it all the more clear that D chose to play the victim card in light of all the evil Sentinel perpetuated against all of Cybertron. And it HURTS when their relationship is torn apart by D/Megatron's selfishness and rage because D could've turned around at any moment but chose not to.

Most importantly, it's concise. It undoes the tangled tedium created by James Roberts and John Barber's continued retroactive additions to the IDW 2005-2018 pre-war time period, keeps the focus square on Optimus-to-be and Megatron-to-be rather than getting lost in other events, and doesn't have any moral waffling on D-16/Megatron's end once his descent gets going. It's just a well-told tragedy of two friends falling out over philosophical differences with one becoming his people's champion and the other becoming no better than the monster who he claimed to stand against.

Furthermore, it maintains the themes of "War Dawn" while remixing them into something new. See, in "War Dawn", Orion looked up to Megatron and the Decepticons because of their firepower and their ability to fly- a perception that was shattered fairly quickly after Megatron tricked him and left him for dead. "I was wrong, friends," he says after becoming Optimus Prime, "I admired Megatron merely because he was powerful. I failed to see how he used that power."

TFOne takes that basic lesson and teaches it to both Orion/Optimus and D-16/Megatron through the reveal of Sentinel's true character, with the catch being how the two apply it. Orion learns the lesson and seeks to apply what new power he's been given by his cog for the good of all Cybertron; D-16 refuses to learn the lesson and pursues power so that he would never be oppressed by anyone again, ironically becoming just as power-hungry as the one he came to hate. It turns what was a cautionary tale for just Orion into a cautionary tale for the both of them. Brilliant stuff.

Elita-1's presence in Orion/Optimus's origins is an element from "War Dawn" I was very pleased to see carried over into One. Within that episode, she was known as Erial and primarily existed as just Orion's girlfriend who, alongside Orion and his best friend Dion, get misled by Megatron and led into a trap that leaves all three left in critical condition. Erial was initially planned to stay dead, but then David Wise (writer of "War Dawn" and several other G1 toon episodes) was informed of Elita's existence and decided to fold Erial and Elita into one character.

Of course, a lot has changed since then for both Elita as a character and in regard to writing female characters, and having Elita be Orion's gal pal and his gal pal only just wouldn't do in the year 2024. Modern Transformers media has often depicted her as the more pragmatic, strategic half of her and Orion/Optimus's relationship (see her depiction in the current Skybound comics or her depiction in the 2005-2018 IDW run), and that carries into her depiction in One. And as stated in the section covering her and the rest of the core four, there's just enough tension and chemistry between the two of them that a romantic relationship COULD happen suppose it's pursued in a sequel.

B-127/Bumblebee is where things get a bit dicey because, for as much as he ended up being pretty fun, I get the feeling he was only included in the film because Hasbro and Paramount had a feeling the movie wouldn't put butts in seats without him. This isn't helped by the fact that Bumblebee has almost no pre-war backstory in any past Transformers media minus a stint as a courier in IDW 2005-2018 and as a fan of space rugby in the Cyberverse cartoon. Ergo, the One writers had to make up something for him, and what it established wasn't all that bad.

What's funny about Bee's inclusion is that between him and D-16, the film technically has an analogue for Dion from "War Dawn". D inherited the role of being Orion's best friend; Bee inherited the mellow, amenable nature of Dion from that original episode. I don't know if that was intentional, but if it was (which is very likely knowing the age of and reverence for the source material held by most of the film's staff), I think it was a brilliant move, turning what was probably a corporate mandate into yet another nod to the original origin story.

One last bit from "War Dawn" that was carried over into One was the presence of Alpha Trion. Being one of the few G1 toon-original characters and really heckin' old granted Trion an unusual longevity, from being revealed to be the leader of a rebellion against the Quintessons (The Transformers Season 3's "Forever is a Long Time Coming") to being revealed to be the "creator" of Optimus Prime and Elita-1 in "War Dawn" to sacrificing himself to stabilize supercomputer Vector Sigma in the "Key to Vector Sigma" two-parter. TFOne keeps him pretty close to his role in the original toon, down to having a hand in Orion Pax's transformation into Optimus Prime.

The mere existence of the Thirteen in TFOne is something I was dreading after seeing their remains in the first trailer. Personally, I loathe the concept of the Thirteen because half of them are not characters but rather personified versions of iconic Transformers concepts (female Transformers, small Transformers, combiners, multichangers, Transformers with animal modes) and the other half are more interesting characters who are flattened by the weight of the lore surrounding the Thirteen (Prima, Alpha Trion, Liege Maximo, Megatronus/The Fallen, Vector Prime). There was very little you could do with them other than playing out the mythological drama that entails their existence, usually involving Megatronus becoming the Fallen. Most infamously, the 2014 Covenant of Primus lore book insinuated that Optimus Prime himself was one of the Thirteen who cast his cyber-divinity aside in favor of becoming normal bot Orion Pax.

Way to throw away your humble, everyman hero's relatability, guys.

The idea of Optimus being one of the Thirteen Primes is one I believe Hasbro recognized was foolish rather quickly, and writers for post-Covenant media explored new angles on Optimus's relationship to the Thirteen. John Barber's IDW run explored the idea of Optimus's Messiah complex being cranked up to eleven after the idea of him being one of the Thirteen gets put in his head (in a universe where every Prime other than him is an utter scumbag); Brian Ruckley's rebooted 2019-2022 IDW run proposed the idea that the Matrix of Leadership was simply waiting for its final holder- the Thirteenth Prime. While Ruckley's run was cut short due to declining sales, I believe that he was building up to having Hot Rod become Rodimus Prime a la the 86 movie.

One's depiction of the Thirteen is interesting in that it works to address many of my criticisms of the Thirteen. It avoids repeating tired beats of the Thirteen's backstory such as Megatronus's downfall and them being torn apart (Trion makes it clear that "they were one... all are one!"), it recasts them as Cybertron's ancient heroes slayed by their treacherous advisor rather than impossibly old figures, and it changes the Thirteenth Prime from Optimus to C-lister Zeta Prime. Interestingly, Zeta is the member of the Thirteen with the Matrix in his chest, and once Orion/Optimus is given the Matrix, he inherits Zeta's hard-light axe.

Changing the role of the Thirteenth Prime to simply being the guy with the Matrix of Leadership in their chest is a bold, brilliant reinterpretation of the concept of the Thirteenth. Not only does this allow Orion/Optimus to keep his humble origins and earn the title of Prime rather than regaining his lost cyber-divinity, but it transforms the Thirteenth Prime into a mantle shared by all Matrix-bearers. If this carries over into future Transformers media*, then I'd be all for it.

*Amusingly, while it's not the intent of the current Generations toyline design team, the at-the-time-of-writing forthcoming Age of the Primes "Star Optimus Prime" toy (based on Optimus's supercharged final form Star Convoy from Japanese G1 media) comes with both Optimus and Hot Rod, allowing for both G1 Matrix-bearers to share the title of the Thirteenth.

Sentinel Prime mirrors many of his depictions in most modern media, where he's a morally murky robber baron in charge of Cybertron. Three pieces of media contributed to the modern characterization of Sentinel; Megatron Origin established the idea of Sentinel as a villain, Transformers Animated played up his ego, and Dark of the Moon (the third Michael Bay movie) cranked up his brutality while also adding in the angle of him being compromised thanks to an alliance with a greater evil. Combine those three, and you'd have a decent facsimile of One Sentinel.

The origins of the Transformers as a species has been a hotly debated topic across different pieces of media. Sometimes they were the creations of the Quintessons, who made them as slave labor; other times they were created by the "Lord of Light" Primus, who transformed into Cybertron. Modern media has struggled to reconcile the two ideas, sometimes with the awkward result of one of the Primes (Quintus Prime) creating the Quints, who then go on to conquer Cybertron. Whoops.

Like the Thirteen's role and Orion/Optimus and D-16/Megatron's origins, this was simplified and reworked for TFOne. The film sides with the Primus origin established in the original Marvel The Transformers comics (complete with Primus going dormant after turning into Cybertron) while recharacterizing the Quintessons as invaders who took over via Sentinel as their proxy, technically making them their slaves as they were in the G1 toon. Again, it's baffling how these writers successfully amalgamated ideas that should not work together and made them work oddly well.

Cybertron itself is a love letter to the metal planet's many iterations. The city of Iacon is a goldenrod landscape bustling with activity like the G1 toon's flashbacks to pre-war Cybertron, the flora and fauna on its surface evokes the more lively Cybertron from the Cyberverse cartoon, and its segmented layers seem to pay homage to, of all things, Beast Machines (although unlike BM, the more lively layers are up top rather than down low). That's not even getting into the innovations this film introduced like the hover-trains, the roads, and the upside-down skyscrapers!

One last thing from Transformers One I have to commend it for as a good Transformers story is how it handled the origin of the Autobot and Decepticon factions. The G1 toon proposed the idea of the factions being two product lines produced by the Quintessons (servant robots/the Autobots-to-be and military robots/the Decepticons-to-be) who turned against their makers and then against each other because the Decepticons-to-be were power-hungry. It's a strangely meta origin (since the original The Transformers toyline was cobbled together from Takara's Diaclone and Micro Change ranges) and one with ripe for narrative potential if explored a bit more deeply. Could the Decepticons have started the war against the Autobots because they see themselves as only good for war and can't imagine what they'd do during peacetime, ignoring the ways in which their counterparts evolved past their initial roles as servant units into warriors?

Unfortunately, Megatron Origin and all that followed it in the IDW 2005-2018 run changed things for the worse. Drawing from the Marvel UK story "State Games" and its depiction of the Decepticons as a bunch of gladiators who came together to form something of a ragtag independent militia, Megatron Origin recast the Decepticons as a band of misfits split between gladiators, disgruntled miners, and general miscreants who wanted to overthrow the corrupt Autobot oligarchy overseen by Sentinel Prime and expose his deception (hence their name of the Decepticons). On its own, this would have been fine, but like Megatron's descent into darkness, it was dragged out significantly by later comics being retrofitted in.

This resulted in MORE bad Autobot leaders who are very unsubtle in their crappiness and more of the morally bankrupt Autobot society's misdeeds, with several of them being ones in which our future heroes are complicit in supporting save for good boy good cop Orion Pax. Believe me, the IDW 2005-2018 Autobots did and supported some truly horrific things. Orion/Optimus turns things around, the Autobots become moderately more decent, and they eventually become heroic, if only in comparison to how nasty the Decepticons have become.

The problem with the IDW 2005-2018 Autobot/Decepticon origin is that it creates a scenario where the Autobots are unequivocally in the wrong and stay in the wrong until the Autobots get Optimus in charge, resulting in the Decepticons having to do some truly horrific things in order to make us care about whatever Autobots are opposed to them. Both sides suffer- the Autobots get perverted into fascists; the Decepticons start off as well-intentioned revolutionaries but have to become even worse than the regime they once stood against very quickly in order to get things "on track" towards what they should be. It's emblematic of the postmodern amoral tripe that plagued the initial IDW run, and unfortunately, it ended up bleeding into every piece of Transformers media after it.

It bled into Exodus and Transformers Prime. It bled into Cyberverse. It bled into EarthSpark. You could not escape the whole "Decepticons are oppressed revolutionaries who took things too far and the Autobots are a bunch of monsters until Orion/Optimus comes along" thing, even in media that didn't explicitly touch on it. I was so ready for a break, and I could not tell you how happy I was when Transformers One broke away from the IDW origins for the faction.

As it did with Optimus and Megatron's origins, the film streamlines things down to a matter of worldview and goes back to basics. Our Autobots-to-be are all miners ("UGH, MINERS!" -Darkwing, 2024)* while most of the Decepticons-to-be are the High Guard, Cybertron's former military defenders, a detail I'm convinced was a direct call-back to the G1 toon's origins for the two factions. One group is composed of servant units; the other is composed of military hardware.

*No, seriously! The majority of the background miners (minor miners?) are members of the 1984 Autobot crew with some 1985 repaints (Red Alert, Smokescreen) and the gals from "The Search for Alpha Trion" (Firestar, Moonracer, Chromia, Greenlight and Lancer). There's some awkwardness created by dialogue not exactly matching up with character design (there's a miner who looks like Ratchet but there is also a "Doctor Ratchet" mentioned in the aftermath of the Iacon 5000 and rather jarringly, the winner of the Iacon 5000 is named Chromia and looks nothing like her while a miner who DOES look like her cameos in the background; TFWiki has humorously elected to call miner Chromia "Not Chromia"), but for the most part it's pretty sweet that the Autobots-to-be are all from year 1 of the franchise for the most part.

While both the factions' members have been spurned by Sentinel and wounded by his lies, what sets them apart is their response- just like the divide between Orion and D-16. The miners want to help Orion in his quest to expose Sentinel's lies and later defend the planet from the Quintessons, dangers facing them be damned; the High Guard just wants a shot at revenge at Sentinel for casting them aside and once he's dead, immediately join Megatron in destroying all that they perceive as emblematic of the false Prime's reign. Furthermore, both sides are galvanized by their leaders-to-be. Orion emboldens the miners with the same message given to him by Sentinel about a bot being defined by their spark, not by their cog; D-16 embraces the High Guard's might-makes-right mentality and promises them the revenge which Starscream's cowardice and continued plotting has denied them.

In his closing monologue, Optimus states declares himself, Bee, Elita, and the miners who've gained cogs to be "Autobots" because "freedom and autonomy are the rights of all sentient beings." This is a fun combination of Optimus's original motto of "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" and the Bayverse overmythologicalized* expansion of the word "Autobot" into "Autonomous Robotic Organism" (a name that makes no sense if you know the origins of the word "robot" and the Autobots' history in G1). It's a stellar origin for the faction's name and one that I hope carries over into future media.

*Overmythologicalization (noun; coined by me): when an ongoing franchise feels the need to add reasons for things to exist even when those reasons only end up cluttering the narrative of the franchise. This has the potential to make the world feel smaller than it should be and the characters' relationships feel like a never-ending game of Mouse Trap that never ends until the audience loses all interest in the franchise because they can't make heads or tails of it. A non-Transformers example is the Marvel Cinematic Universe c. 2021: pretty much everything is so tightly linked together that you have to watch everything to understand the latest movie and/or Disney+ show even if it means you subject yourself to a slew of awful shows and films.

This is mirrored by Megatron's closing monologue from the post-credits scene, in which he states that he and the rest of the High Guard will never be deceived- as they were by Sentinel- again, hence why they now go by the Decepticons. While the idea of the Decepticons being anti-deception is nothing new (remember, IDW 2005-2018 had one of Megatron's rallying cries be "you are being deceived"), I'd argue this film does it most effectively since it's grounded in everything D-16/Megatron has been through. His turn to extremism was motivated by how personally he took learning of Sentinel's lies, so it's only right that he named his newfound militia after their shared hatred of liars in authority.

The only real problem I have with the factions' origins in TFOne is we don't really have an origin for the Autobot insignia the same way the film makes Megatronus's face into the template for the Decepticon badge. It's especially odd with how much emphasis the film places on D-16's Megatronus sticker- shouldn't the Autobot insignia be given the same gravity? If the Decepticons were going to get their logo from one of the Thirteen, why not do the same for the Autobots?

If any of the Thirteen's faces were to be used as reference for the Autobrand, it would be Zeta Prime's visage. Just flatten the points on the helmet down and shrink his chin and you've got a decent facsimile for the Autobot insignia. Doesn't hurt that Orion/Optimus inherits Zeta's axe; maybe there could've be a scene near the end of the film in which he has a vision of what is to be the Autobrand and does a rough sketch of it. I dunno, anything to justify where the Autobot insignia came from.

Overall, I can proudly say that in addition to being a good movie, Transformers One succeeds in being a good Transformers movie. It remixes tired plot beats from past media in ways that make it accessible to newcomers and refreshing to long-timers, it honors what makes the characters themselves, and it lays the groundwork for pretty much everything that will follow it chronologically. It just radiates passion for the franchise's 40-year-history, and it pains me that it will never get followed up upon. Then again, I'm not sure you could out-Transformers this film in terms of being a TF movie.

CONCLUSION

There's a Peanuts strip in which Charlie Brown tells his friend Linus van Pelt about several historical books he's been reading. These books covered the fall of several civilizations, and with Charles Schulz's inimitable wit, the strip ends with ol' Chuck telling Linus "I'm fascinated by failure!" I'd have to agree with young Mr. Brown there- failure is inherently fascinating because it can vary so greatly.

Sometimes, it's something as simple and small as a portrait that doesn't quite resemble the person it was based on; other times, it can be as large-scale catastrophic as a film that flopped so hard it either killed a franchise or it killed an entire genre for years on end. Then we have curious cases like Transformers One where despite the film failing commercially, critics and audiences near-universally loved it and the film has been finding an audience despite everything the initial marketing campaign unknowingly did to hurt the film.

This, friends, is what I like to call a "failure triumphant". Not a triumphant failure (where a poor project does exceptionally well for... reasons), but a failure triumphant. Originally, I named this article "Transformers One: One Failure Triumphant" because I liked the idea of its title's initials being a palindrome (TFOne: OFT), but as I wrote this article, the idea of a failure triumphant gained more and more meaning.

Sure, Transformers One was hurt a lot by its marketing, competition from other films aimed at the same general audience (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and The Wild Robot), franchise fatigue, a radical aesthetic change away from what people expected out of Transformers on film by this point, and a very search engine optimization-unfriendly title, but that didn't take away from how much love and care went into the film. Those who saw it recognized that love and care, and they shared the good news of it being both a good film and a good Transformers film with those in their inner circle. While this fandom didn't save the film from being the lowest-grossing Transformers film since the 1986 movie, it did help give the film something of a second life. Didn't hurt that once the film hit Paramount+, it gained a massive second wind and stayed in its top 10 films for two months straight.

It's found its niche, and in 20 years, I'm willing to bet TFOne will routinely make the top five of whatever "Top 20 Animated Films of the 2020s" lists get written over the next five years. From a financial standpoint, the film is an unmitigated failure and I doubt we'll see anything more from it other than whatever Studio Series toys based on the film's designs are in Hasbro's pipeline at the moment (looking forward to figures of Airachnid, post-cog Jazz, and Darkwing the most) because Hasbro is no longer funding films based on their IPs. But from a critical response and audience standpoint, it was a triumph- hence why I call the film a failure triumphant.

Criteria for being a failure triumphant include 1) financial underperformance in its era of release, 2) overwhelming audience praise, and 3) how passionate the audience for the work is. With that in mind, some films we love to death like The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, Fantasia, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, and The Iron Giant could technically be considered failures triumphant. In more common parlance, these are called cult classics, but "failures triumphant" also works well as a descriptor for them.

And that is Transformers One to a T, an F, and a One- a failure triumphant. It's my favorite film from 2024 and an easy candidate for second-best animated film of the decade behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (my top five of the 2020s thus far are The Last Wish, TFOne, The Wild Robot, Encanto, and Luca). Bravo, Josh Cooley and company- you've made a marvelous movie and the best Transformers film in over fifteen years.

Thanks for reading, everyone. God bless!