First Transformers One Trailer Rolls Out

(l to r: Windblade, Bumblebee, and Rubble)

Whenever a new Transformers universe is created I try to give it a chance to give me a good first impression. Transformers is my favorite fiction because the very concept allows for change while still having a core idea…at least under good writers who convince me they care. I have had disappointments. The Michael Bay films went down in quality as time went on rather than up. IDW had the same problem but actually started rather good in the 1.0 version. The Skybound stuff seems to be just for adults and screw the kids, which is a running theme in kids nostalgia as of late. EarthSpark just kind of bored me and I saw many of the ideas in the early episodes before I dropped out done better in other series.

So like a lot of my childhood loves now in the hands of the unloving, Transformers has had more disappointments in recent fiction than making me happy. It’s like the good stuff died with Cyberverse, and that’s a show that had to grow on me. Still, I was willing to give Transformers One a good chance. It’s made for kids. It’s not tied to EarthSpark as far as I can tell, or the Bay style Transformers. It could be good.

The trailer dropped earlier this week, putting my plans for discussing those other “Aliens” to next week because I have the urge to discuss this trailer…and why I don’t like it.

Hey, G1 fans. Did you ever want to see Optimus Prime and Megatron being quirky bros on a corrupt Cybertron with a spazmatic Bumblebee and Elita-One as the token girl? Me, neither. And yet, here we are.

Okay, let’s go over the positives lest you think my opinion is totally negative. What little chemistry between characters the trailer is allowed to show us is fine. The voice acting is solid for what the movie is going for, something that doesn’t happen often with this kind of celebrity gimmick voice casting. If a “normal” celebrity treats the voice acting role as acting and not “this is something I wanted to do for my kids because I don’t make movies they can watch normally”, you can get a good performance. There is a decent list of regular actors who do well as voice actors, some even doing both as part of their career. This seems okay.

The animation is good. They aren’t going for the Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem or Spider-Verse approaches where it looks like a few frames are missing to look all “stylized”. It bugs me when a Transformer’s design doesn’t actually look like it transforms into anything when they don’t have a toy to work with. You’re a Transformer; show me that you can transform. Use the alt mode bits in robot mode. In fact, I want you to hide the robot in the alt mode, but don’t hide the alt mode in the robot. It just looks like another robot and that doesn’t set a Transformer apart from any other robot character. Otherwise the models look nice.

It’s also for kids. Transformers wasn’t created for 80s kids, it was created for kids in the 1980s. That’s why every Transformer property until Bay came along was at least trying to be for kids…questionable when it comes to the Furman Marvel Comics/Generation Two, or the first DreamWave miniseries, mind you. Then again, there are hiccups there. Bee wanting to call himself “Badassatron”, or the “we are so screwed” like from pre-Megatron (admittedly, D-16 is a nice nod to his original Japanese release number) being replaced in the shorter trailer on the Transformers official YouTube being very noticeably replaced by “I can’t believe I let you drag me into this” or some other line either appearing in a later moment or redone for the kids trailer.

Wildlife! We rarely see that in Transformers. There have been references dating back to the “turbofoxes” Mirage used to hunt according to his toy’s tech spec bio. We’ve had petrorabbits (which might not be Cybertronian), antdroids, scraplets, scrapmetals, and the like, but outside of those last two, created to be threats in their respective series, we’ve never actually seen them. Now we have some kind of Cybertronian wildlife. It’s very long overdue.

And animation instead of live-action with so much CG you might as well have made a cartoon. Also, pre-war Cybertron culture. We don’t get enough of that in this franchise.

Bumblebee can talk! Praise Primus!

Okay, I’m out of positives. What failed here?

It may look like the same trailer, but it’s just the same thumbnail. This is the shorter version without the “screwed” and “Badassatron” lines, stuffed in to break up the text wall. Moving on.

When did we decide kids no longer wanted to see grown-ups acting like grown-ups for our heroes? Being the “origin” for this continuity doesn’t mean we have to watch a bunch of college age goofballs, or their alien robotic counterparts, running around being dumbassatrons. I don’t know when Optimus and Megatron being former friends became multiversal continuity. I think it started with IDW or the aligned “continuity”, but we don’t have to keep seeing it.

This quirky style of humor is already damaging the Marvel Cinematic Universe in movies and streaming shows, and nobody’s learning a lesson on that. One quirky character is fine, but “quirky” isn’t a personality. It can be annoying. Of course the boys are all weirdos while the girl is at least appearing as the girlboss type in the trailer. Maybe Elita-One, who is barely in here when she isn’t being girlboss warrior, will actually have a character arc and not just be the real badassatron in this story. We’ll have to wait and see. History does not favor either of these being the movie’s exception, shoved into the trailer in the belief it will get skid plates in seats, when it may have the opposite effect. They’re about to show the first four episodes of the original cartoon on the big screen in a few May screenings. Wish I could go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more people go to that than this movie unless some better previews come out.

Bumblebee may be able to talk but they ruined him. He’s like the worst aspects of the Transformers Animated namesake but none of his fun qualities. He may be allowed to speak with his own voice again, but he’s still the race car rather than the small compact vehicle that would aid his role as saboteur and scout. We got rid of one Bay influence, but the other is still there. He’s also very annoying and I don’t want an annoying version of my favorite Autobot.

Finally, the backstory. Cybertronians can’t live on the surface because some great evil is keeping them down. Orion Pax and D-16 are laborers under an elitist system, which was one of my issues with the IDW run and that Megatron’s backstory. They have to go to the surface, get their “powers”, and defeat the evil, and this somehow leads to the Optimus Prime and Megatron we’d actually like to see. This just feels like they took an existing script, threw some Transformers paint on it, and declared it Transformers One.

Trailers are supposed to get you excited for the media they’re showing off, but this is already having the opposite effect on me. Every annoying thing about modern movies seems to be on display. Could the final product be good? Sure, but I’m not judging the final product because it isn’t out yet. I’m judging whether or not the trailer is convincing me to see the final product when it does come out. That is not happening here. To paraphrase a different franchise that once did a Transformers crossover, these are not the Transformers I’m looking for. It just doesn’t have the spark.