The moment the first trailer for Josh Cooley’s animated Transformers One started, something caught me off guard. Even though the film is being advertised as an origin story for the robots in disguise, I wasn’t quite prepared to see the buddy cop vibe shared between noted antagonists Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) – known, in this movie’s story, as Orion Pax and D-16. As the trailer explains, we will follow the most famous Transformers on a sprawling mission that, in turn, will better explain what drives Megatron and Optimus apart. But at the onset, they’re very much friends. Almost brothers.
Here, watch and see:
Josh Cooley spoke with CinemaBlend around the time of the trailer launch, and got him to open up about how this animated feature will differ from the previous Transformers movies that came before it. Naturally, the live-action stories were a little more adult, while this animated approach makes the story more accessible to kids and families. But as Cooley was quick to point out regarding Transformers One:
The trailer definitely leads into the comedy of it and shows the fun of these characters together. Which was actually very easy to do. It wasn't like we set out to make a comedy, but it was setting out to make a film for everyone. And it was easy to do with the characters because they were so clearly defined. But also with our actors, there's a lot of improv that came into this. … The beginning of the film definitely has that. But there's real stakes that we're not showing yet in the trailer that has the epic scale and adventure and action that we know about Transformers films. There's a lot of danger. There's some real danger in this film. Yeah. And there's always that, like we talked about earlier, that ticking time bomb of when's this relationship going to fall apart between Orion and D-16.
I blatantly asked Josh Cooley if Transformers One was going to make us care about Megatron. This has been one of the most relentless, brutal, and evil Transformers seen to date. But Brian Tyree Henry seems to be approaching the character with heart, sympathy and pathos. If this movie strikes the right chords, it could end up ranking alongside the best Transformers movies ever made.
I can tell you that in the footage we saw during Paramount’s presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, the action is very fluid, and the worlds that Josh Cooley and his team are creating are vast in scope and beautifully, visually. There’s an immense palette to explore in Transformers One, and I think the animation genre is a clever and playful mode to attack new Transformers stories… without abandoning the future of the brand in live-action.
Look for Transformers One in theaters beginning on September 20, and use our guide to upcoming 2024 movies to plan your next trip to the cineplex.
