Commentary: ‘Transformers One’ Reveals The Real Transformation Is Inside
by Frank Martin
The longevity of the Transformers franchise has come from its versatility in stretching the variety of its transformations. What started as cars and other everyday objects like tape recorders has expanded into animals, dinosaurs, and more. But Transformers is more than just a science fiction blockbuster of shapeshifting robots. It’s also a story with an incredibly strong heart. There are real character moments of good and evil throughout decades of storytelling, and Transformers One continues this tradition by taking the concept of transformation and turning it inward to the characters themselves.
The film serves as a prequel to the larger Transformers franchise. Instead of starting the story on Earth, the plot begins on Cybertron, where miners are tasked with discovering Energon to fuel the planet’s energy needs. The leader of the planet, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), actually betrayed all of Cybertron to its enemies. He was giving Energon away to an alien army in order to stay in power. Although they idolize Sentinel in the beginning, two miners named Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) discover the secret and vow to fight him and expose the truth.
As miners, D-16 and Orion Pax can’t transform at the start of the film. They are missing the cores that make transformation possible. Eventually, they acquire some and use their transformation abilities to fight back. But physically transforming is just the surface of the story. The characters also undergo internal transformations. D-16 becomes Megatron and Orion Pax turns into Optimus Prime. In doing so, their identities change along with their names. Over the course of the film, their characters are weathered and tested in ways they never thought possible. In the end, it turned them into completely different people, and it’s this personal transformation that makes the film so compelling.
Transformers One is now streaming on Paramount+.
