Maybe ten minutes after Transformers Onethe computer-animated prequel to the entire existing saga of Hasbro’s cloaked robots, Scarlett Johansson’s focused mining manager Elita says to Chris Hemsworth’s idealistic worker Orion Pax: “You don’t have the feeling or the power.” It is a clumsy, forced reference to a kitschy power ballad from the original animated film from 1986 Transformers Film, and it seemed to be a bad sign that Transformers One was supposed to be the kind of film that was more concerned with tongue-in-cheek fan service elements than with telling its own compelling story. Fortunately, while the film isn’t entirely balanced and lacks the inventiveness or visual splendor it would have needed to be truly great, T1 manages to be more intelligent and deeper than it first appears. It could serve as the basis for better movies now that the whole “origin story” is out of the way.

And make no mistake, this is an origin story from top to bottom, and we know how it’s going to end before it even begins. Chris Hemsworth’s character may be called Orion Pax by everyone around him, but we know from the moment we first see him, already in that iconic blue and red, that he’s going to be Optimus Prime before it’s all said and done. This is a film that, you could say, exists in the context of everything that came before it, so your own investment in Transformers will inevitably affect your experience. I, for one, was already of cinema age when this cartoon came out in 1986, and if of the late, great James Earl Jones’ While his incredible performance as Darth Vader was the epitome of malice and evil to me as a child, Peter Cullen’s role as Optimus Prime was also the epitome of goodness and virtue. He conveyed so much in his performance: warmth, compassion, decency, consideration, concern for the common good, a reluctant willingness to make sacrifices when necessary to do the right thing.

When we first meet Orion Pax, as he recklessly sneaks into a facility that stores secret archives in the hopes of learning something that will help him end the shortage of precious Energon plaguing the robots of Cybertron, it’s hard to imagine him developing into the level-headed, thoughtful leader we see him as. He wants to make the world a better place, sure, but he’s also a bit of a goofball, a bit impulsive. To his credit, though, Hemsworth finds a way with his voice performance that reflects how the experiences Orion goes through over the course of the film change him. And the script deftly takes him through such stirring, radicalizing experiences that we think he’ll be changed forever.

The origin story ultimately works because it feels deeply personal to Orion, and it feels personal because of the relationship at its center. Orion’s best friend is his mining robot colleague D-16, voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, one of the most exciting actors working today. And as surely as we know that Orion will be Optimus before the credits roll, we also know that D-16, initially his close friend, will become his eternal nemesis Megatron. Together, the two — along with Elita and Keegan-Michael Key’s B-127 (who will one day be Bumblebee but prefers to call himself Badassatron for now) — go on a journey and discover truths that will shake Cybertronian society to its core. It helps that some of those truths come from the wonderful voice of Laurence Fishburne, a welcome presence as a robot named Alpha Trion. In a moment when he’s illuminating long-forgotten realities from Cybertron’s past, he suggests that the true meaning of “Transformer” might have less to do with the ability to change one’s shape and more to do with the ability to change the world. It’s a pretty cool idea.

But how do we try to bring about that change? How do we react when we learn difficult truths, when we learn that the things we believed were a lie? It is natural, sometimes even good, to be angry. Anger can strengthen our desire to fight for something better. But it can also consume us. The most fascinating thing about the plot of Transformers One are not the deep, dark secrets that Orion and his friends discover. It’s the way Orion learns what kind of leader he wants to be by watching what D-16’s anger over these discoveries does to him and decides what kind of leader he wants to be. not wants to be.

It’s heartbreaking and a little terrifying to see D-16 changed by the truths he learns and the injustices he discovers. He’s all the more compelling as a villain because we understand why he’s so outraged, and we feel the pain Orion feels as he watches his friend go astray. Towards the end of the film, his simmering anger leads him to commit a shocking act of public brutality against another robot, and it’s tragic to see him become a demagogue, using the rhetoric of dominance and violence to appeal to the basest impulses of those who eventually follow him – those who become the Decepticons. While Optimus becomes something of a union organizer, using solidarity to encourage oppressed robots to throw off their chains, arguing that “freedom and autonomy are the rights of all sentient beings,” Steve Buscemi’s Starscream expresses the opposite ideology this way: “The idea of ​​a united Cybertron is a myth. The only thing that matters is the strength of one bot to rule everything.” This idea is seductive to many at times, but it offers nothing but nonsense. (I have a feeling this children’s cartoon has something to do with current events, but I can’t put my finger on what.)

Whatever the case, the film’s climax is strong, a showdown that crystallizes the identities of these two friends-turned-enemies and makes me curious to see more of them now that they are the Optimus Prime and Megatron we’ve known for so long. (To my delight, there’s even a nod to Optimus’ long history as a sort of Christ figure.) But it’s not quite enough to Transformers One a great film in its own right. Most of the time it is reasonably entertaining, but it sorely lacks the kind of ingenuity that a film like this needs to establish itself as more than just another piece of corporate entertainment. There are no sequences here that can compare to the impressive action of the Spider-Vers Films, for example, nor images as memorable as the unforgettable planet-sized robot Unicron from 1986 Transformers Film.

I saw the film in 3D, which greatly improves the look of the film and gives the central setting of Iacon City a wonderfully layered depth, but Transformers One never figures out how to make the most of the vistas in the action scenes, which often feel like arbitrary distractions from the story rather than involving sequences that contribute to the film or our understanding of the characters in any meaningful way. An early racing scene, for example, just happens and offers a lot of sensory variety with lots of robots racing really fast, but it’s hard to get into it because it’s not particularly excitingly filmed and Orion and D-16 just kind of feel their way through. It’s not until the final showdown, when the characters are fighting desperately for what they believe in and the stakes seem really high, that the action really starts to take hold. In this emotionally heightened context, a callback (or, I guess, a call-forward, since this is a prequel) to a famous line from another Transformers film doesn’t feel like the clunky reference dropping that Transformers One indulges in it a little too often, but it’s like a real, defining moment in the relationship between these two, and man, it hurts.

Like a series of origin stories, Transformers One has the problem that it ends just when it feels like things are really getting going. Now that the dynamic is established and we understand that Optimus Prime and Megatron are two leaders with fundamentally different ideologies and approaches to the idea of ​​making things better for those who have been wronged, I imagine there will be stronger films in that wake, direct sequels that continue the story on Cybertron long before the robots make their way to Earth. And if and when those films come out, Transformers One may feel more important and necessary in hindsight, the setup we had to go through to allow these films to delve deeper into the versions of these characters that are being established here. But at least for now Transformers One is good, but not great, a film with an involving relationship arc at its core that spends too much time poking fun at Rival toys GoBots and explain why Starscream’s voice has always been so annoyingrather than giving us great action sequences or truly inventive visual effects. But then again, that’s just the beginning.

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