‘Transformers One’ Review: An Origin Story No One Wants

Movie origin stories finally reach their nadir this week with “Transformers One,” the super-violent toy-selling vehicle that tells the story of how Optimus Prime and Megatron went from best friends to enemies. Did someone ask for this? Did Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner ask for too much money?

The computer-animated “Transformers One” is outdated, a throwback to a few years ago when hollywood popular IP mined for forgotten heroes, built overly complex worlds and ramped up the action so that the audience was numbed by a blur of battles. But “Transformers One” is not good enough to watch on an airplane, even a trans-Pacific flight. The inflight map is better.

A map actually isn’t a bad idea: you might need some sort of guidebook for this one – those unfamiliar with Cybertronian folklore will be helplessly hurled at references to Energon, Alpha Trion, Quintessons, and something called the Matrix of Leadership. You’ll be mid-conversation.

Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari’s story is essentially the Biblical Cain and Abel with a detour into the Roman Empire and the built-up mythology of the Hasbro figurines, which seems to be a series of endless epic battles between good and evil. Some things just seem downright weird, like why these robots need a gym or why they get out of breath after running.

The main heroes here are buddies Orion Pax and D-16 – who will become arch-villains Optimus Prime and Megatron by the end – and we meet them as lowly miners, essentially non-transforming bots digging for reserves of an energy cleverly called Energon. This is a society where the upper class are Transformers who stomp around and dress up, while the lower classes do dirty jobs like rummaging through trash.

They all serve Sentinel Prime, the leader of the underground Iacon City, who is not what he seems. He is apparently the last of the Primes and lives in a marble palace, where he gives the people below a spectacle as a distraction, like an epic road race. It has an ancient Roman Colosseum feel.

Orion Pax (voiced with puppyish sweetness by Chris Hemsworth) is unhappy with this life. “There’s got to be something more I can do,” he says. “Aren’t you tired of being treated like you’re nothing?” Brian Tyree Henry voices D-16 with skepticism and resignation.

The two friends join mine manager Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson, bland) and Keegan-Michael Keys B-127 (which later fan favorite (Bumblebee) to travel to the planet’s surface, retrieve the Matrix of Leadership (a necklace of sorts that could have been sold in the Sharper Image catalog), and receive a hero’s welcome. But they learn some unsavory things about the ruler of the Transformers elder statesman Alpha Trion (the instantly recognizable Laurence Fishburne).

Director Josh Cooley, who co-wrote “Inside Out” and directed “Toy Story 4,” never lets the action stop — and that’s not a compliment. The camera is constantly rolling, and the violence — assault rifle lasers, blazing guns, mild torture, martial arts-style crunching, beating a rival with their own amputated limb, incessant stomping — is sickening. (“Please stop punching me in the face” is a joke here.) If Transformers ever bled, this would be an R-rated movie.

The hyper-violence belies some pretty robotic—sorry!—dialogue. Why do all these movies show the Transformers with cool upgrades like laser blades, but keep them talking in stilted, operatic prose? “I want him to suffer and die in darkness,” “They will be your downfall,” and “The future of Cybertron is in your hands.”

There are good moments, of course. When our band of misfit bots upgrades to Transformer status, they adorably don’t know how to do it seamlessly at first, limbs awkwardly blending with vehicle parts. Anyone who’s played with the toys knows the feeling. And Key never fails to elicit a laugh, proving himself a master comedic voice actor.

The other actors, including Jon Hamm and Steve Buscemi, are barely audible and the film’s main song, “If I fall” by Quavo, Ty Dolla $ign and Brian Tyler’s Are We Dreaming — it feels like AI wrote both the bland rap-rock beat and the lame lyrics (“I’m the alpha, omega, got lights on me, Vegas.” Vegas?)

The saddest thing about “Transformers One” is the waste of yet another dull excursion into a universe geared toward children just learning to transform themselves. The lessons here, unfortunately, are that friends can become enemies overnight, and that you only win if you beat someone hard enough. “We’re better than this,” Orion Pax yells at his sudden rival at one point. No, they’re not.

“Transformers One,” a Paramount release in theaters Friday, is rated PG for “sci-fi violence and animated action, and language.” Running time: 103 minutes. One-half star out of four.