Transformers One (2024)
There's a particular kind of frustration that comes with watching a film that looks absolutely stunning and does almost nothing worthwhile with it. That's Transformers One in a nutshell. Directed by Josh Cooley, it is, without question, a visual feast. The animation is gorgeous, bringing the metallic world of Cybertron to life with a vibrant, glossy sheen that genuinely pops off the screen. It's impressive work, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't dazzled for stretches of it. But dazzle wears off quickly when there's nothing underneath it.
Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry do perfectly serviceable jobs voicing the younger, pre-fame versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. Hemsworth in particular has always had decent comic timing (I enjoyed him in Thor: Ragnarok, which knew exactly how to use that energy), and he brings a likeable brightness to the role here. Henry is reliably solid, as he tends to be in just about everything. The voice cast isn't the problem. The problem is what they've been given to work with.
Because when you look past the visuals and the performances, the story itself is genuinely ludicrous, and not in a fun way. Now, look, I'm not going in expecting Tolstoy. This is Transformers. It grew out of Saturday morning cartoons and toy commercials, and I'm not so precious about pedigree that I'd hold that against it. But there's a floor, isn't there? A basic level of internal logic and world-building that a film should meet, especially when it's positioning itself as an origin story with something meaningful to say about how two friends became bitter enemies.
Transformers One does not meet that floor. The mythology is bafflingly thin. We're essentially told that in the beginning there was a bipedal, Gundam-style robot god who created the first planet, a robot planet, and we're just expected to nod along and move on. It feels like a premise scribbled on the back of a cereal box. The whole lore has that hollow, unearned quality, where the film gestures at grand cosmic significance without doing any of the actual work to make you feel it.
As a loose prelude to the more familiar live-action films, even accepting that it isn't operating in the same canonical universe, it functions well enough. It gives you some backstory to chew on, a sense of who these two characters were before the war, before the hatred. Fine. I can work with that. But as a standalone piece of animated filmmaking, it asks you to stay captivated for a full runtime on the strength of a script this flimsy, and that's a big ask. I found my attention drifting repeatedly, not because the screen wasn't giving me something pretty to look at, but because nothing happening on it actually mattered.
The best animated films earn their spectacle. The emotional weight and the visual imagination feed each other. You feel it. I didn't feel anything here, and that's the real issue. All that craft, all that obvious effort in the animation department, and it's in service of a story that doesn't give you a single moment to genuinely invest in.
Transformers One is a shiny, noisy distraction. It looks brilliant. It sounds fine. It leaves you completely empty.
Two stars.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-06-15
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · fuboTV · MGM+ Amazon Channel · Paramount Plus Premium
Rent: JustWatch TV · Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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