Transformers One (2024)
There are franchises that have earned their place in the cultural furniture, and then there are franchises that have simply refused to leave the room. Transformers belongs firmly in the second category. What began as a Hasbro toy line in 1984, quickly spun into a Saturday morning cartoon series that became the defining background noise of a generation of childhoods on both sides of the Atlantic. The robots-in-disguise concept moved through comics, video games, and a string of live-action blockbusters directed by Michael Bay, films that were polished but unremarkable in the story department, to put it diplomatically. Transformers One takes a different tack entirely, stepping away from the Bay-verse carnage and going back to the very beginning: the homeworld of Cybertron, the shared history of Orion Pax and D-16, the two figures the world would come to know as Optimus Prime and Megatron. It is, on paper at least, the origin story the franchise has been quietly owing its audience for forty years.
At the helm is Josh Cooley, a Pixar veteran who co-wrote Inside Out and directed Toy Story 4, a film that managed the considerable trick of justifying its own existence within a beloved and seemingly complete series. Cooley brings that same Pixar-inflected visual sensibility to Cybertron, and the production, a collaboration between Paramount Animation, di Bonaventura Pictures, and several other production houses, has clearly not skimped on the animation budget. The result is a film that sits closer in look and ambition to a major studio animated feature than to the scrappier, toyetic cartoons that inspired it. Whether that visual investment carries the whole project is another matter, and one Macca gets into below.
The voice cast is, on the surface, a rather impressive assembly. Chris Hemsworth, no stranger to playing heroic archetypes with a certain easy charm (see Macca's thoughts on his MCU work in Thor and Thor: Ragnarok), takes on the young Optimus Prime, lending the character a warmth and boyish optimism that fits the pre-war framing. Brian Tyree Henry, an actor who has made a habit of being the most interesting person in any given room, voices the future Megatron at a point before the ideology and the grievances have calcified into villainy. Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, and a nicely cast Jon Hamm round out the ensemble, each bringing a recognisable screen presence to what are, by design, fairly archetypal roles. It is a cast that could, in theory, elevate thin material. Whether they manage it is a fair question to bring to the film.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first of all. Directed by Josh Cooley, Transformers One (2024) is undeniably a visual treat. The animation is beautiful, and it’s very impressive indeed, bringing the metallic world of Cybertron to life with a vibrant, glossy sheen that really pops on the screen. The voice acting is also perfectly fine, with Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry doing a highly serviceable job as the younger, pre-fame versions of Optimus Prime and Megatron. But honestly, that’s about where the praise ends.
When you actually look at the narrative, the story itself is just ludicrous, and the lore is completely brainless. Now, I know it’s supposed to be a staple of Saturday morning cartoons, so you can’t exactly expect the narrative depth and world-building of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. But the mythology here is bafflingly thin. We are essentially told that "in the beginning there was a bipedal Gundam-style robot god and he created the first planet, a robot planet," and the film expects you to just nod along. It’s a premise that feels like it was scribbled on the back of a cereal box, leaving the entire plot feeling incredibly hollow and unearned.
As a prelude to the more familiar live-action films (even if it’s not even in the same canonical universe) it’s fine. It gives you a bit of backstory to chew on before the explosions start. But as a standalone piece of cinema, it is incredibly hard to remain captivated for the full runtime when the script is this flimsy.
Transformers One is a gorgeous-looking animated film that completely squanders its visual potential on a brainless, nonsensical script. It’s a shiny, noisy distraction that looks brilliant but ultimately leaves you completely empty.
Transformers One arrives as a curious kind of object: a film that has clearly been made with genuine craft and real care at the level of image-making, but which struggles to convince you that the story underneath the images was given the same attention. It sits alongside other franchise prequels and origin pieces that prioritise spectacle over substance, and fans of the broader mythology may find more to enjoy here than general audiences will. For anyone curious about what Cooley can do visually, there are glimpses worth seeing. But if you are after animated storytelling that earns its emotional moments and builds a world you actually want to inhabit, you might be better served revisiting something with a bit more going on beneath the surface. Sometimes the shinier the box, the less there is inside it.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-06-15
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Transformers One (2024) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Sky Go · Now TV Cinema · Paramount+ Amazon Channel
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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