I’m not a big Transformers person, grew up on some of the cartoons because of two of my brothers mostly. So I wouldn't choose to watch Transformers One 2024 on my own, but Jordan, my youngest brother, is big on Transformers and he wanted to see it so Hannah and I said what the heck. Plus mere days before we watched Princess Diaries 2 and he sat through it so we figured in pursuit of fairness, sisters can change viewing material for their brothers. We watched it. This movie’s budget was between 75-147 million dollars and it made (somehow) $129.4 million dollars…. I’m assuming all of that was the total from around the world on it’s opening weekend—I’m fairly certain no one saw it twice. 

The Good: I’m not gonna bother with explaining the Transformers world because if you’re looking at this article you probably know something about it. If you don’t, and you just were giving this film a try as a fun cartoon with robots fighting…you still won’t enjoy this movie. If you are a Transformers fan, you really won’t enjoy this movie. I was somewhere in a healthy middle ground and I didn’t enjoy the movie. I enjoyed Jordan’s, Hannah’s and my commentary of it. However, I digress–this section was titled the good. So let’s talk about what it did well.

• The animation wasn’t bad. I wasn’t crazy about the character facial expressions and designs but it wasn’t terrible.

• The plot upon first pitch wasn’t a terrible idea. It had potential. The basic idea is they take a young Optimus Prime and Megatron (now mortal enemies), and show them young as best friends. The film was supposed to be something of a sad story of how these two friends fall apart, and one becomes a hero and the other a villain. That was interesting. 

Now, onto the bad. 

This film was too stinking Long: It was 104 minutes but it felt like a lifetime.The movie felt like that number with the dwarves in the newest Snow White. I felt like Snow White: waiting on the wish that the film would pick up and get to the point for the love of all that is good in the world.

•  The film spent the first twenty minutes introducing the two main characters and retelling us the same facts about them. Not by plot mind you–but just by talking. The characters go on and on how Optimus is fast and loose, irresponsible and D 16 follows the rules. They don’t show us in a meaningful way, they just keep having zany antics where the characters talk about it forever. 

• Every scene’s dialogue felt like the characters just going on and on about whatever the subject matter was and inserting a joke every two seconds so the emotional tone of every scene was the same. 

• There was an extended scene of the future bumble bee (who’s delusional and talks to dead robots ) joking with Optimus and D 16 because he has no friends. It’s not hard to imagine why, when he spends all his time talking to dead robots. We’re not really clear on if he’s insane and thinks they’re alive or just stupid but this scene took too long. 

• There was a lengthy scene of a race that Optimus forces them into which had no purpose because we had no personal stakes as to why they needed to enter it. All we know about the main characters is they work in the mines, and they like a snobby Politician Sentinel (who I knew was evil as soon as we met him). They want out of the mines and that’s pretty much all we know. So for that we have to spend the whole movie watching Mr. Fast and loose (what I’m calling Optimus now) drag his responsible friend around and get him into trouble. 

  Scenes are supposed to serve a purpose in moving the plot forward and establishing something about the characters. Ideally, they’re supposed to have several elements like subtext, an emotional tone, a power dynamic etc. And the interesting thing to watch in scenes that have those elements is to see power dynamics shift, emotional tones go from romantic to vengeful, or a moment of rage to catharsis. I understand this is a cartoon and people have different expectations for the quality of scene writing, but I grew up on cartoons that did much of those things better and maintained a child freindly atmosphere. At the very least, if a cartoon doesn’t have great screenwriting in regard to emotional tones and subtext, it can move the plot quickly in an entertaining manner while telling us everything we need to know. Cartoon movies that chose to go darker like Batman Mask of the Phantasm (made 1993), and ones as silly as Buzz Lightyear the Adventure Begins (made in 2000) both did a better job of moving their plot and introducing characters. In this movie it felt like we spent forever with two people re-establishing the same things.

There was literally no reason for Optimus to become the leader/hero in this movie:

Optimus was the most annoying, irresponsible, selfish character in the film but because he’s the main character in all other Transformers fiction, he has some magical ability of untapped potential and greatness. All he does is drag his friend into things by the skin of his teeth, survive it, and then people listen to him. Alita who was a competent and more intelligent character doesn’t become the leader but he does because…. reasons–I guess. Somewhere along the line I guess the character got responsible and grew but we missed it. He had no humbling experience to make him more mature, it just felt like he was getting his way till the very end and then suddenly Alita tells him how great he is and that he has potential or faith or something. The speech was so unmerited I forgot most of it. She was more level headed and less selfish than him but heaven forbid anyone make her leader.

The villains’s change was weak at best: 

Hollywood doesn’t understand the various ways  to make a character shift from hero to villain anymore. Depending on the creator, director or writer this can shift. However with this movie they missed the foundational point when they were attempting to turn D-16 into Megatron–the transformers’ primary villain. I should say first what they were trying to do, because if i go directly into what they actually did it will most likely confuse people. 

• The film was trying to present D-16 as the rule follower, who had a lot of faith in the system, and in Sentinel so he didn’t want to go outside the lines or push boundaries. When his faith in the system is crushed and he’s convinced it’s a lie he decides he wants to kill Sentinel and take power for himself, exposing the hidden corruption.

None of this was conveyed successfully. First of all, I only knew D-16 as a rule follower because Fast and Loose kept saying it. For some reason this strict well behaved bot is friends with this casual trouble maker–would’ve been nice to delve into that and see how it happened but the movie needed more time for Bumble bees horrible jokes I guess. D-16 is basically a milk toast character with no red flags, and all of a sudden when he sees Sentinel is corrupt he becomes an angry vengeful person. We also never saw him doing anything meaningful in regards to this character he looked up to, or any personal connection. Why was he so loyal to Sentinel? Why did he think so highly of him? Because were told the whole city does I suppose but that doesn’t make the audience care that much. Sentinel was obviously an obnoxious and self-righteous politician which makes us not care about the betrayal. 

My primary issue with this, is once again it mistakes the reasons character shift from good to evil. Among the fundamental things, there need to be seeds sprinkled by virtue of internal character conflict. Or plot points in the backstory that show the character is capable of the evil they’re going to commit. 

• We need to be able to believe it from their personality that they’d be capable of it. Again, for this I can go to an example from Once Upon a time: Cora–the evil Queen’s mother was a poor millers’ daughter mistreated by royalty. This made an imprint on her that money = respect and worth. If she didn’t have money, she’d be treated like dirt all her life. This belief led to desperate acts to marry up and compromise herself for the sake of material progress. Because she was willing to do seemingly smaller immoral things for the sake of survival, it’s believable she goes even further. All to the point of being a power hungry villain capable of murder. Classic snowball effect. 

• We need to be shown if the character really isn’t capable of it, that they’re pushed enough times to take the first small step into villainy. If they’re a seemingly “good” or a "virtuous" person we need to see them lose enough they become a villain. For reference think about Dark Knight and the character of Harvey Dent. 

• A third way to show a character transition into villain is the classic “serial killer without an axe” trope. Meaning, show me they are in fact a spiteful, selfish or immoral person who simply lacks the capacity to be as depraved as they would like. A decent but simple example of this (from still a better movie) is Megamind. When the seemingly “nerdy nice” character Hal is introduced to us we’re supposed to have sympathy for him because he’s a nerd, but when he’s given power we see immediately the only reason he wasn’t a worse person was because he had no means to be. The second he gets power he becomes oppressive towards the woman he likes, violent, a thief, and all around dangerous. So you could introduce a character who’s seemingly harmless but leave clues they have no real integrity. Then see their shift to malevolence.

This movie did none of these things. We saw no red flags for D-16 to become Megatron, we only saw him suffering because of how annoying Optimus a.k.a fast and loose was. Suddenly when Sentinel is corrupt D-16 resorts to wanting him dead and taking revenge–things we’d never seen or heard signs of in him. 

What they could/should have done: 

I’m not a big Transformers person as I said, however–I did see a good amount of the cartoon growing up because of my brothers and believe even I could have improved upon this. This is not so much a compliment to me as it is a denigration of the film if a novice in Transformers like me thought they could have done a better job with these characters. 

• They could have shown D-16 as a by the book character who lacked actual integrity, and followed the rules simply because it was what he was accustomed to doing. Or because he held Sentinel in some place of esteem (and give us a reason why he does that’s more personal than what the film did). In this case they should have given us red flags like him lacking human compassion or consideration for other people, despite him being the more "responsible" of the two main characters. Adherence to rules becomes legalism if not rooted in the right things. They could have shown he was never that moral so him resorting to killing Sentinel when pushed, wouldn’t come out of nowhere. Though he should have done a smaller act leading up to it showing us he was capable of it. 

• The second thing, if you were going to do the person in many capacities who was virtuous but became evil, would be to have the character continuously undergo tragic events that lead him to snap. And to show us it happening in smaller degrees. Because in the film, D-16 killing Sentinel isn’t even really a crime. Sentinel is tortuing him and killing other bots so it’s kind of self defense, this should have been done in a way to make D-16 more villainous. Have him resort to violence due to previous trauma in the film, and take everyone by surprise including Sentinel. 

  
  Closing remarks: There was a lot wrong with this movie, and to cover it all would take too much time but it suffices to say the plot, the writing, the direction of characters, the transitions from hero to villain were all poorly executed as if the pieces in the film existed to service the plot of getting the transformers to where they are in the shows with Optimus as the protagonist and Megatron as the villain.

Article By Jubilee