Animated story revisits the origins of robots | Entertainment

Optimus Prime and Megatron leap in the wayback machine on this prequel story.

Adam Graham
| Detroit News Film Critic

There is a mind-numbing thud that greets the arrival of every new entry in the live-action “Transformers” franchise, so it is a reduction to say that “Transformers One” finds the robots again of their optimum, animated type.

As origin tales go, director Josh Cooley's breezy, action-packed genesis story reintroduces Optimus Prime, Megatron and the relaxation of the Transformers gang, with none pesky people hanging round the edges of the body to muck issues up. Kids will dig it, and that is who this movie is for; those that grew up with the toys and cartoons in the Eighties have their very own recollections of the Transformers of their youth.

Chris Hemsworth voices Orion Pax, the bot who turns into Optimus Prime, again on his dwelling planet of Cybertron. Brian Tyree Henry voices his greatest buddy, D-16, who after a darkish flirtation with energy grows into Megatron, the chief of the Decepticons, and there isn't any realm in the identified universe the place this may be thought-about a spoiler.

The film opens as they're each lowly miners, unable to rework, and whereas there isn't any human parallel to the approach these robots age, they're depicted as youngsters. Orion is the extra adventurous spirit of the pair, keen to skirt round the guidelines to get what he desires, and D-16 is his considerably reluctant tagalong pal.

Orion sneaks them right into a marquee race, the Iacon 5000 — assume of it as their planet's Indianapolis 500 — the place they almost win the checkered flag from their rather more completed opponents. But their risk-taking lands them in the dumps, the place they meet B-127 (voiced by Keegan Michael Key), the wise-cracking bot who will turn out to be Bumblebee (though he prefers his self-given nickname “Badassatron”).

Scarlett Johansson, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Hamm and Steve Buscemi voice numerous different bots, and there is loads of discuss of management, teamwork and discovery of one's future. The animation type is crisp and fluent, and the movie's visible language is well-defined.

Director Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) retains issues shifting at a brisk tempo, and screenwriters Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari pack the story with sufficient flip humor, visible gags (Orion encounters a malfunctioning information chip and fixes it by blowing on it like an NES cartridge) and informal jokes to amuse youngsters in addition to the mother and father who introduced them.

“Transformers One” is overly protecting of Transformers mythology, however not less than it earns its funding in the story, in contrast to the reside motion motion pictures, which have but to rework into something attention-grabbing. For a well-recognized franchise, this seems like a brand new starting.

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