Honestly? I didn’t think it was possible to enjoy a Transformers movie. No, man, I’ve been through too much. They haven’t just been bad; they’ve been unwatchable. It takes me generally between five to seven minutes of screentime to stop caring about any Transformers character. And then the film always ends in a big dumb robot fight where I have to guess what’s going on. Which is harder because I’m often asleep at that point. It didn’t even occur to me that a Transformers film might present a story or characters worth watching.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not recommending Transformers One, either, but this time around, I actually cared who won the big dumb robot fight; I even knew who the players were and why they were fighting. This is a first. Really.
So for the Transformers-impaired, the heavy hitters in the Transformers world are Optimus Prime on the side of good and Megatron on the side of bad. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong about anything Transformer-related, just know that I don’t care; I’m simply saying what I have to so the review won’t be a collection of endless non-sequiturs. Turns out these guys were once small dumb robots. Small dumb menial robots; they worked in mines; they didn’t transform, and they were friends. Awwwwww.
This film opens with Orion Pax (voice of Chris Hemsworth) sneaking into a library. -I’m sure it was called an “information center” or some shit in the film, but it was a library, and he had to sneak in cuz the place was closed and the information restricted. Now, if you’re me, you all kinds of questions such as: Why does a robot need a library? How did robots design a non-robot-proof forbidden facility? Why is a mining robot not mining? Do robots get down time for research … and why?
I’m asking the wrong questions. The right questions are “What did Orion want to know?” and “Who covered his shiny robot ass when he got caught?” And the answers are: “What happened to the ‘Matrix of Leadership’ (whatever the Hell that is)?” and his silver buddy D-16 (Bryan Tyree Henry). They work in the mines, which have an explosion within five minutes of Orion showing up for work. Coincidence? I think not.
After Orion gets his boss fired, he comes up with a fantastic idea of competing in a Transformers race. So if you’re not paying attention, the first half-hour has had three completely unnecessary extended action sequences, everyone a masterpiece of contrivance. However, unlike every other Transformers movie, I knew what was going on in each case. I can’t emphasize enough what an improvement, franchise-wise, this is. The plain bots nearly win the race and are summarily punished, which turns out to be a boon, because it gets Orion closer to solving his mystery after another three or four action scenes, with some exposition in between.
In case you missed the theme, this is an origin story, and we’ve somehow gotta transform Orion and D-16 from human-sized, non-transforming, menial robots into the building sized morons
who show up to ruin the big screen every two years or so. I suppose it all makes sense … to somebody. Keep in mind that before this film is through, you’ll get several history lessons and Transformer maxim: “What defines a Transformer is not the cog in their chest, but the spark in their spirit!”
Actually, no, what defines a Transformer is “a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits.”
But I don’t think the film was actually talking about transformers when it said that … twice.
So here’s the deal: while I can’t recommend Transformers One, I heartily recognize the effort here to make a real film, with characters I might care about and action sequences that don’t confuse or bore me entirely. Hence, this is probably the least sleep-inducing Transformers film I’ve ever seen. Does that matter? I suppose only if you have to see it twice, which in my case, is never going to happen again.
There once was a robot, Orion
If I told you he’s important, I’d be lyin’
But he searched for the past
And was often harassed
In a quest to become a great scion
Rated PG, 104 Minutes
Director: Josh Cooley
Writer: Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari
Genre: Big dumb robots
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: If you could stomach anything “Transformers” in the past, this film is a non-stop party
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “This is still just big dumb robots”
