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Paramount’s live-action Transformers movies have always made its alien robots seem like they were born ready for battle and knowing how to navigate the world, but the first trailer for director Josh Cooley’s Transformers One animated prequel reveals that to be anything but the case.
Set in the distant past on the Cybertronian homeworld, Transformers One tells the story of how Orion Pax / Optimus Prime (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 / Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) went from being best friends to mortal enemies soon after discovering their powers to turn into various kinds of vehicles.
Cybertron’s surface seems to be a mysterious, dangerous place where young transformers are forbidden to go in the new trailer, but Orion and D-16 have much more freedom down below the planet’s crust where they and other young bots who can’t yet shift into alt-forms are meant to be working to contribute to their society. Though they’re supposed to keep busy with their assigned tasks, Orion, D-16, and other Cybertronians like Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and B-127 / Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key) find time to sneak off and get into the kinds of trouble you’d expect teens to gravitate towards.
“Trouble” here means venturing up to the forbidden surface where transformers seem shocked to encounter mechanized animals and what seems to be organic plant life. But they’re even more surprised when an encounter with Alpha Trion (Laurence Fishburne) leaves them changed and finally able to refashion their bodies into vehicles that don’t entirely seem alien in design. Goofy jokes have always been part of Paramount’s live-action Transformers movies, but the vibe in One’s trailer makes it abundantly clear that it’s a movie for kids the studio wants to turn into new fans.
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There’s something decidedly Power Rangers-y about the whole thing that makes it feel like the sort of Transformers project that might be divisive among older fans of the franchise. But when the movie hits theaters on September 20th, it kinda feels like everyone’s going to be on the same page about how unsettling the robots’ very human lips, noses, and teeth are.