Transformers: One
thing i'm writing atm
Please note that I'm not done writing it yet! And there will undoubtedly be many revisions before I deem it "finished".
Transformers One is the most recent movie to be made in the Transformers franchise. It was released in October 2024, and only made a disappointing amount of money (for Hasbro).
It’s an computer animated movie that follows Orion Pax and D-16’s journey, as they learn the truth about their leader, and how they react to that information. It’s hard to explain any of it without spoiling the movie, so from now on, I give no promises about spoilers.
I’d like to start off with some of the moments in the film that I really loved: Sentinel Prime’s introduction at the Iacon 5000, the fight between Megatron & StarWaveWave and Optimus Prime, and Orion Pax’s death. A common theme between all three scenes is the incredible cinematography.
Sentinel Prime’s introduction is a pan up shot from the bottom of a gold building, shone upon by spotlights. The music is exciting and raucous, and you can hear the crowd's wild cheers. As you reach the top of the building, Sentinel comes into view. The spotlight focuses on him, and at the same moment, he shrugs his shoulders as he lifts up the wings that adorn his back. Seconds later, he jumps from the building and flies down towards the crowd.
Those moments, though very short, have the ability to convey so much about the Prime, and I thoroughly enjoy watching the scene every time I reach it.
ADD DETAIL
Though I mentioned the fight between Megatron and Optimus Prime, I will talk about Orion Pax's death first, as it happens earlier in the movie.
Orion Pax gets shot by D-16, who was aiming to kill Sentinel. He had tried to convince D–16 that their fight was over, and that Sentinel would be brought to justice, but the other bot did not want justice, he wanted revenge. In a last ditch effort to kill Sentinel once and for all, D-16 ends up shooting Orion, who tried to stop D-16 by placing himself between the two. Orion’s barely alive body is propelled backwards, to the edge of a precipice. His left arm has been blown off, but he manages to slow his descent enough for D-16 to run over and catch his right arm. Orion hangs in limbo as D-16 vents his frustration and anguish.
But not even his guilt and shock and despair are strong enough to prevent what happens next. D-16 lets go of Orion. Orion plummets towards the center of Cybertron, and D-16 attacks Sentinel’s guards. He quickly decimates them, and turns his attention to Sentinel. Orion Pax is still falling. His frame turns grey, and Cybertron’s core reaches out with a filament of blue energy, and pulls him near. D-16 picks Sentinel up and holds him suspended above, in the air. He rips the false Prime in half. D-16 strips Sentinel of Megatronus’s transformation cog, and gives his speech about deception. The high guard erupts into cheers. The Primes appear in energon blue and tell Orion that he has been deemed worthy. Orion receives the Matrix of Leadership, and his body gets an upgrade. It is now bigger, better, stronger.
That’s the scene, roughly written out by me. It’s a scene that always gets to me, no matter what I do. With every rewatch, I shed more tears. It’s a very powerful and moving scene, and it’s extremely rewarding to watch. I can’t simply eliminate certain aspects of it to say what really makes it special, because it takes the whole thing to be as amazing as it is. It’s done to perfection. The way that you can’t hear the crowds cheering for D-16. The way that Cybertron is dead quiet, as it transforms a path for Orion to fall down. The trails of red from D-16s optics as he kills the guards. The swell of the music. The juxtaposition of D-16’s rampage with the softer, more emotional death and rebirth of Orion is quite simply exquisite.
D-16 officially changing his name and giving his grief and rage filled speech is a great way of transitioning back into more action from this great moment of.. realization, perhaps. I really love that scene. I always feel the urge to watch it over and over again, looping it forever..
The next scene I want to mention is the scene pretty much right after the one I just talked about. The scene where Megatron and Optimus fight.
I love that scene quite greatly too, but for different reasons than the death scene.
While the cinematography and soundtrack play invaluable roles in establishing the proper emotional turmoil, I find myself always drawn in by the fact that Megatron and Optimus incorporate their alt modes into their fight. It might feel like a simple thing to love so much, but it just adds so much to the worldbuilding! It’s something that I consistently notice when I watch the movie, and it’s something that I’m extremely grateful that it made its way into the final product. I feel like we never really get to see much of that kind of fighting in official Transformers media, and it does just go to reinforce that transforming is such a normal thing in their society.
ADD TRANSITION
There are definitely some aspects and moments from the film that I do not like, but ultimately they are so small in comparison that they play almost no part in me liking the film or not.
In the interest of writing more however, I shall discuss them here briefly.
The first one I will bring up is the scene where we first reach Cybertron’s surface. This is probably a fairly petty point to make, but I find it such an undeniably awkward scene. There is a gap in the action, where Elita-One doesn't punch Orion immediately, and it’s so hard to watch. I understand the value of having slow scenes, of course I do, it just doesn’t seem to fit in here. There’s an unbalanced, stilted pause before the four bots reach the surface and I simply don’t think it should have been kept that way. A pause, a slowing of the pace is a great way to bring something to the forefront of the viewer's attention. But you have to be able to integrate it and use it well. It falls flat, to me, because instead of highlighting that they are about to reach the surface, it highlights.. nothing.
WORKSHOP ^
The next point I have to make is in fact not in the least about the film itself, but more the story that it presents. I always find it strange that all the high guard end up being Decepticons. I like that the high guard exists, don’t get me wrong, but I find it remarkably simple that they are solely represented by Decepticons. It feels very.. black and white, very.. reductionist.
It makes sense from an outsider, a storyteller's point of view, but I find it strange from an in-universe point of view. While in my defense of this scene, I undeniably repeat the point of how it is still very much reasonable, that such a group would remain loyal to itself, I still wonder how likely it would be. More often than not, the truth of matters is hardly as clear cut as it seems to be, and I would have loved it if we had been shown more of a switch and focus on who is in the High Guard initially, and who ends up staying in the High Guard, and the nuances within. It would have been interesting to see who would stick around, and which bots would have seen Cybertron before Sentinel’s reign. I think it would have also really aided in cementing the fact that Orion and D-16 came from the same social rung, because as it is right now, it still feels like they only cared to change D-16’s social status, but not the rest of the Decepticons. It feels comparatively shallow with the rest of the film, and I mourn what could have been.
In a similar vein, I wonder why the High Guard stays under Megatron’s leadership. Obviously, in the set up for the conflict between Decepticons and Autobots, arguably one of the largest parameters in identifying transformers, it makes sense that the seekers should remain Decepticons, but I wonder what made them stay with Megatron. It is established, by Starscream himself in fact, that The idea of a unified Cybertron is a myth. All that counts is the strength of one bot over another!
. Yet it means nothing when Optimus Prime defeats not only Megatron, but Starscream, Shockwave, and Soundwave singlehandedly?
Where do we miss what leads to the High Guard and the future Decepticon commanders staying under Megatron? In fanon, we see multiple theories, from the absurd to the rational, but there is nothing concrete presented to us in the movie.
ADD MORE
CONCLUSION