Transformers One

Rated PG • Theaters

For 40 years, series of toys, comics, TV shows, and movies have created an intricate lore for the Transformers that comprises multiple story arcs and reboots taking place across time from one end of the galaxy to the other.

Transformers One, the first theatrical animated Transformer film since 1986, takes the franchise back to the beginning to explore the origins of its most iconic characters.

The story revolves around best friends Orion Pax and D-16. The two robots are humble Cybertronian workers who mine the planet for increasingly scarce energy. Neither of them, nor the thousands of other worker drones, has the ability to transform into cool vehicles. That’s a privilege reserved for the upper classes. But Orion Pax isn’t content to remain the low robot on the totem pole, and he drags his friend into an adventure that will culminate with their transformations into the heroic Optimus Prime and the villainous Megatron.

Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic handles the film’s animation, which will appeal to Gen X fans of the franchise. The design owes much to the television cartoons from the 1980s, but everything is on a larger scale and coated with a ­digital metallic sheen. The film also boasts an all-star voice cast, including Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax and Brian Tyree Henry as D-16, along with Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, and Laurence Fishburne.

The story adds some nice twists to the Transformers’ mythos, and it will doubtlessly appeal to both longtime fans and their children. But while the film contains action and humor, it fails to seamlessly integrate its themes into the narrative.

Cybertron is a world of haves and have-nots—Orion Pax and D-16 are definitely in the latter group. These little guys want to change the world, and to do that they’ll need to stand up to oppression. It’s hard not to think there’s an intended message about American politics in the movie’s critique of tyranny.

We see a bad guy who relies on misinformation and lies to oppress others. He says the truth is whatever he wants it to be. It seems the filmmakers were casting some stones at a certain former president.

On the other hand, freedom and personal autonomy, that’s the cry of the good guys. Everyone should be able to transform into the person he wants to be. There’s a clunkiness in the presentation of these themes, as if the filmmakers didn’t trust the audience to catch a more subtle subtext.

Moreover, the characters’ transformation toward the end of the movie feels unearned. Orion Pax longs for personal freedom, but he doesn’t exhibit any particular aptitude for leadership nor does he demonstrate the kind of concern for the community that would justify his becoming the heroic Optimus Prime.

The film never satisfactorily squares its emphasis on personal autonomy with the individual’s duty to his fellow citizen.

Likewise, D-16’s fall into villainy and his animosity toward Orion Pax seems rushed and ill-conceived. The breaking of their friendship occurs because that’s what must happen to set up the war between Autobots and Decepticons, but neither their personalities nor their actions up to that point give the moment a feeling of authenticity.