Transformers are cartoons. Shocking, I know. Yeah, that's better. WHAT'S THAT? THEY MAY have begun as toys, but these characters were brought to life with animation. Hell, even in the live-action movies, these robots are still animated. Optimus Prime isn't real, I'm sorry to say. Of the nine Transformer movies released to theaters, only two were animated. 1986, the grand finale to Capitalize on a successful TV show. It has a star-studded cast including Orson Welles as a planet, classic moments, and a soundtrack so iconic they've referenced it in movies to this day. It failed miserably. Nobody saw it.
2024, a new movie is made to introduce the franchise to a new generation. It has a star-studded cast including Chris Hemsworth. It has moments so iconic they're referenced on the internet to this day. It failed miserably. Nobody saw it. I have talked about every Transformers movie except for one. This one, Transformers One. I'm going to be honest, I've struggled a bit with this video. I have so many thoughts in my head, but I've struggled to write it down because unlike every other movie I've covered, I can't make fun of it. I have not realized how
much my writing relies on being a sarcastic clown. Even then, who wants to watch something Positive? That's boring. I've seen the views. I know what type of video you people like. I had like 50 subscribers when that stupid boys video came out. I didn't know what I was hitching my wagon to. Spoilers for this video, but Transformers One is good. It's really good. It's so good there isn't a lot to make fun of. This is going to be a video of praise. There's still some problems here and there. Oh, there certainly are. Bad ass. I'm
[snorts] going to need you To talk less. But this is criticism out of love. I love this movie, and the point of this video is that you should love this movie, too. And if you don't, I don't know, I'll show up to your house and leave an angry letter. If you're not up for all that positivity, that's fair. GINGER, NO! SEE you for the Fantastic Four video. But before you leave, let me just say, this isn't a story with a happy ending. This isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Just like the friendship between Orion Pax and
D-16, we all know how this is going to end. But that comes later. As for now, I want to talk about Transformers One on its own. Because we might not see Transformers on the big screen for a while, and let me just say the old cliché, they saved the best for last. I remember when this movie was announced years ago, like 2015. Oh god, time just moves faster. All we Knew was that it was a Cybertron origin movie. That was it. Think about that time. This was still in the era of the Bayverse. Last Knight
wouldn't come out for two more years. By this point, a Cybertron movie was just a vague concept, an unformed gas cloud of ideas that Paramount probably had no solid plans for. But I didn't care. All I heard was Cybertron, which meant no humans. And that put this thing at the Top of my most anticipated movies list alongside Avengers: Endgame and Kangaroo Jack, too. The years ticked on, life went on, and the Bayverse crashed and burned. Yet that Cybertron prequel was always a distant possibility. Only new info we ever got was that Industrial Light & Magic
was going to be animating it, which was honestly pretty insane. ILM animating this. What would a Cybertron prequel [music] animated by ILM even look like? Well, I can tell you What I first thought, War for Cybertron. Like holy [ __ ] this is going to be War for Cybertron: The Movie. And then Bumblebee had that opening. Destroy the launchpad. Let none escape. And it was like holy [ __ ] is this what the Cybertron movie is going to look like? People speculated and wondered. And when I mean people, I especially mean me. There were so
many ways you could take the story, so many ways that Cybertron at its peak could be interpreted. So When that first trailer dropped, my first reaction was mixed. Did I hate this? WOAH! HO! HO! I GOT A BATTLE MASK. I THINK I hate this. First impressions are everything. And that first trailer was bad. It somehow shoves in the worst clips from the movie to promote [music] it. They used Keegan-Michael Key Bumblebee as the biggest selling point. Why did You do that? I think my man-child brain set me up for some [music] disappointment. For those eight
years or so anticipating this movie, it never once crossed my mind that I wasn't the intended demographic for this Hasbro toy franchise. In my defense, though, I think Hasbro forgot for a while, too. So seeing that trailer was quite the bit of tonal whiplash. Really, it was just a terrible trailer in general. If you only saw this, you would think Transformers One was full of quips and jokey jokes. I HAVE NO PANTS. I CAN SEE THAT. Which isn't bad at all. If it's intended for kids, then that's fine. But then they included the badassitron joke
and the funny Bumblebee man decapitating people. So like, parents aren't going to take their toddler to see this now. Then they included a Rolling Stones song that isn't going to appeal to anybody because who the [ __ ] cares about Rolling Stones and Transformers? They only included the song because it's called Start Me Up. You know, the thing cars do. Instead of launching this movie into the public spotlight, marketing kind of just tossed out a [ __ ] banana peel and watched this thing faceplant. I'm someone who loves everything Transformers, even the [ __ ]
parts. And even I was put off by this trailer. Imagine how the general public felt. I mean, hey, we can check. Go into the comments section of the trailer. It's Just filled with people saying how the trailer is nothing like the movie at all. It just makes the film look so much worse. The trailer hid the fact that this was a good movie. How does that even happen? You know what? We're going to make a list. Reason one this movie flopped, the abysmal marketing. It would have been better if they just didn't advertise the movie
at all. It's not like the first trailer was just uniquely bad or anything, they all are for Entirely different reasons. None of them are particularly representative of the film at all. Every good moment in this movie is undermined by these trailers. Was it just that hard to advertise without of context clips? Did they just not know who the audience for this was? I don't know. All I know is nobody now cared about an origin movie set on Cybertron because it was advertised so poorly. An actual achievement. I am in shock. Hype was nonexistent. The only
Hype that existed came from one guy on Twitter, the TF1 hype guy, holding it all up like Atlas. And then the movie actually came out. And people realized it was good. Sometimes word of mouth is the reason a movie can see incredible box office numbers. Well, in this case, word of mouth was the only reason anyone even showed up. But you know what? I'm getting ahead of myself. Transformers One begins 9 million years In the past in a warehouse storing energon. This little runt named Orion Pax is visited by Megatron, the coolest Transformer around. Tragically,
Orion Pax gets in the way of Megatron's bullets because he's just so clumsy. Before he dies, Orion Pax is taken to Alpha Trion, who rebuilds Pax into Optimus Prime using parts from his garage. And so Megatron gets his ass beat by this new Optimus Prime, and the war between the Autobots and Decepticons Begins. Transformers One. What's that? Oh, that wasn't from the movie? That was from the G1 episode Werdon? Yeah, that makes sense. I have to say, sometimes the term origin story kind of scares me. An origin story is such a fantastic way to absolutely
ruin everything. It's a gamble. If it's done wrong, then you only undermine your own story. You might ruin any mystique surrounding the original. Might make Beloved characters seem stupid in hindsight. Or hell, elevate the most mundane story beats to farm that nostalgia. Wow. Dude, pride rock. It's a trap so many fall into. So why do so many still try it? Well, if you make an origin story work, then it really works. Halo Reach and Red Dead 2 both elevated the events that came after. And so too does Transformers One. There have been many origins for
the Autobot-Decepticon war throughout [music] the four decades This series has existed on God's green Earth. So where do you begin the story? How did the Autobots and Decepticons come to hate each other? Well, the reason why has shifted between each iteration. Mainly because nobody wanted to stick to the whole Megatron has always been a dick thing, though that is very funny. Although there are different versions of how the war began, they each keep a similar theme. One constant truth. At one point in the distant past, [music] Orion Pax and Megatron were friends. It's a simple
but fascinating invention that has made this dynamic feel complex with a layered history something slightly above the standard of Saturday morning cartoon [ __ ] Now, how much they were friends varies between versions. Megatron was a gladiator turned revolutionary. Orion Pax was a wagey who looked up to Megatron [music] until he didn't. Orion's Outlook granted Him the Matrix of Leadership by higher powers be it other primes or you know, the planet. While Megatron's psycho rage alienated him from everyone and he turned to violence to get what he wanted. In each of these stories Megatron's fall
always comes with Optimus's rise. Megatron's wrath is what sets Cybertron down the path of destruction. It's a tragedy because at the end of the day these two at some point were still friends. We were Brothers once. And that's what Transformers One is about. This is not simply about the rise of two factions of robots. This is really about the death of a friendship despite neither wanting it to happen. I'm done saving you. The Transformers will return after these messages. It's time to protect your information online with the sponsor of today's video Incogni. Wow, it's Incognibot.
Every day thousands of companies are collecting And trading your data. You have the right to tell data brokers to stop and delete your info, but it takes forever to do. Wasting your time as companies stall to make things right. Luckily, that's where Incogni comes in. Look at him go. Incogni will step up to fight for you. Use the data deletion ray. Not only will Incogni negotiate on your behalf to remove your information online, it'll even protect your info from future exploitation. Incogni has a privacy protecting shield. Wow. New in May 2025 is Incogni's unlimited and
family unlimited plans. You can get an extra level of protection with Incogni's custom removal feature where you can just point to any website where your information is visible and send an agent to scrub it clean of any remnant of you. Ever since I started using Incogni, those pesky scam calls have dropped off the map. And I've never had to deal with someone trying to Impersonate the police ever again. That was a thing that actually happened. So, why not sign up? By using the code pointlesshub at incogni.com/pointlesshub, you get an exclusive 60% off. That's code pointlesshub
at incogni.com/pointlesshub to get 60% off. Disclaimer, Incogni's for data removal is not actually plastic robot toy. We now return to the Transformers. If you haven't watched Transformers One, uh just go do that. It's pretty good. But if you have and just need a little refresher, well, here we go. In the before times Cybertron was an actual planet with living things on it or should I say inside it. Millions of years ago before Bumblebee lubricated the man, all the Transformers lived in an underground city called Iacon city. That's also kind of a lie because not all
of these robots were Transformers. A Lot of robots can't even transform. Well, watch this. [music] The transforming bots are bigger and cooler and pretty much control all of society while the little guys toil away in the mines just kind of accepting how shitty their life is. It's like being born in Cleveland, but one bot believes that there's something greater out there, Orion Pax. And this curiosity gets him into trouble from time to time. If only he could be complacent like his centrist friend D16, a guy who just wants to keep his head down, not cause
trouble, and go home to play Xbox or something. Truly, he is the Emmet of the story. Orion Pax and D16 are minors. They're not minors, they're they're miners in the mines. Whoa, slow down there, Diddy. I mean miners as in they yearn for the mines. A majority of the cogless bots mine for Cybertron's ever dwindling resources of Energon. It's a dangerous job, but someone's got to do it or else they all die. You got to do what you got to do. After another successful day on the job and getting Scarlett Johansson fired, Little one, you're
fired. What? The pair of bestest buddies go and see the arrival of Sentinel Prime. He's so cool. There's no possible way this guy is bad. To distract everyone from their miserable lives in the Amazon fulfillment center, Sentinel announces The Iacon 5000, a city-wide race that only the transforming bots can participate in or anyone with a switch, too. Not like that stops Orion from getting involved dragging his best buddy into a race that will most certainly get them both killed. Imagine if this was how the Transformers saga ended. Neither Optimus or Megatron ever become a thing
because they both fell off the road. Despite getting oh so close and impressing everyone, this little stunt Ends in failure. But it does succeed in getting Sentinel to notice them. He notices them so much that he makes sure nobody ever notices them ever again. I'll make sure of that. You're making a mistake, Sentinel. Orion and D16 get banished to the basement to hang out with uh this guy, B127. Bad assetron. Upon discovering a mysterious beacon in one of B's dead trash friends, the gang decides to Travel to the surface to discover the location of the
lost Matrix of Leadership dragging Alita Battle Angel along with them. What mysteries will they uncover? How will their lives change? Will D16 lose his [ __ ] mind? Yeah, probably. I love how good this movie looks. Look at it. Look at how good that looks. To me this is the best any Transformer has looked in any movie except for perhaps the one with Weird Al. I'm a fanboy over Gritty reimagining of what is essentially a kids cartoon as much as anyone. And yes, these are my preferred designs. Like if they made an actual Cybertron movie
that looked like this, boy howdy. But also that'd be a movie specifically made for like me and any other man children old enough to remember that fateful day in September 2001. We have to think realistically here. This is a franchise that wants to attract new fans, you know, kids. Hey, It worked with Transformers Prime. I like bringing Transformers back to its cartoon roots. And if you're going to do that without just looking like an Xbox 360 game, well, then this is the way to do it. Simple and charming. A modernized translation of the G1 bots
we know and love. Transformers just work best when they're colorful and blocky. When they're right on the edge of being a toy. Shapes that are clearly defined, but not too complex. The best designs Are the ones where you can look at a character and immediately imagine which part transforms where. That's no simple feat. It takes a lot of effort into making a design work in action while also looking like it took little effort at all. Like man, those Bayformer Decepticons sure were complicated. So many gray polygons slapped together. And yeah, you know why? Because you
can just transform them with ease. It all blends together. Nobody's going to notice which Part goes where. Hell, they just gave up doing the whole transforming thing in that fourth movie. Oh, that's cool. This also isn't a 2D cartoon where the bots just morph and change size at whim. Oh, no. These are modeled characters. Those polygons are staying somewhere. These cartoon bots are little puzzles that have to be solved while also looking both aesthetically pleasing and charming. There's so many little challenges with each of these bots and I Can't imagine how much time went into
figuring them out. I really like it for that. You could say when it comes to this art design, I like that there's more to it than meets the eye. Boom. Speaking of eyes, they sure have them. There's an eternal question each man should contemplate once he comes of age. Should Transformers have pupils or not? It's a very important question. A critical fight where one must choose a Side. Thousands die over this question every day. For myself, I am firmly in the camp of no pupils. Sorry. I love my Transformers blank-faced and stupid. There's nothing funnier
than a robot staring blankly into the void. What's going on in that head? I don't know and I don't care. It's a charm that I will forever love and honestly it made season 3 tolerable. But while I prefer this look, I get it. I get why Transformers sometimes have pupils. Makes it a whole Lot easier to show their emotions. They're not just staring into the abyss. Maybe they have LED screens like an animated. Prime does a cool thing where the pupils themselves glow while the general eye shape doesn't. In Bayformers, those pupils are just made
out of metal or maybe they're just real human eyes. What the [ __ ] was going on there? Transformers One does this cool thing where the entire eye is glowing, but the pupils glow more. They're Bright. When you see any character in this movie, those eyes are the first thing you see. For a cartoon, that's what you'll want. Immediate recognition of a character's emotions. I love that their pupils move like shutters, like cameras. Kind of like our own eyes dilating and shrinking, rapidly moving. Just a slight can change so much of a robot's emotion. It
goes a long way. But hey, while I am all for having expressive characters, I Also miss my stupid robots with blank faces. Nothing beats those deadpan bots, utterly disposable beep-boops that only exist to make me laugh. Transformers 1 has those, too. Some bots that just perpetually have a helmet on, some that don't even have a mouth. There's Soundwave and Shockwave. There's this absolute stud. [groaning] I appreciate that the series hasn't forgotten how to make intentionally Dumb-looking robots. It's a lost art. Speaking of lost art, oh my, everyone has a simple gray face. Finally, for the
first time since the animated movie, Transformers on the big screen actually look like Transformers. Good job, everyone. We did it. Gray slates with a nose. It's that simple. And yes, the nose is important. Sorry, Transformers Prime. So much of the style is G1-adjacent. They even took another design choice From G1 in Cybertron. Cybertron cities in the original cartoon were meant to be golden. The golden age of Cybertron wasn't metaphorical at all. It was literal. It only looks gloomy because the power is out. But once the power's back on, whoa boy. Well, that idea was used
for Iacon City, the only city on the planet, like Starfield, and it just has a wonderful aesthetic of warm golds and whites. The entire city feels like a perpetual morning or evening. It's kind Of wild how much effort went into the details [music] of the city's buildings just as a backdrop. All of this was fully rendered and modeled just for it to be seen for like 2 seconds. In fact, in the behind-the-scenes, they even say the most complicated scene in the whole movie was the Iacon 5000. Not just because they had like a thousand racers
or something, but because they had to map out this whole city. I sure wish it wasn't blurry as hell in the theaters. I Don't know if it's because movie theaters just haven't been updated, but it's wild watching something on the big screen and it actually provides less detail than just watching the digital version. I don't know why, but this movie looked better on my regular TV at home than the giant screen at my local movie theater. Small complaint aside, this is a movie that helps with multiple rewatches, mainly because there's just always something new in
the background. Hell, kind of skipping ahead here, but in the final battle, Elita gets thrown into a building, and I never noticed until my third rewatch that this was a generic office. Transformers have offices with computers and cubicles. You see the sidewalk down there? [laughter] Imagine living in this world and you're not one of the cool Transformers. You just spend all day on Excel. Hell, by the end of the movie, the miners don't Have to work anymore. They're free. Energon is everywhere. Yeah, Optimus made everybody free, but for you, well, the only real change to
your life is uh now you can turn yourself into a car to commute to work. I don't know why I just say Transformers 1 as a shorthand for every decision this movie makes. I guess it's easier to write in the script, okay? I'm lazy. Movies, though, don't just spawn out of nowhere. They're made by humans, at Least until AI kills us all. Someone had to write this, and someone had to direct this. While there were three writers credited for the script, [music] Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, and Erik Pearson, there is only one guy credited as
director, and that's Josh Cooley. Normally, I don't like to put so much focus on directors [music] unless it's explicitly funny to do so. A director is only one cog in the filmmaking machine, despite what you Might think. It's a collaborative effort, and lots of visions go into that big old pot that eventually becomes a movie. Like the initial concept art that set the stage for what Cybertron even looks like by production designer Jason Shrier. Yet, when it comes to Josh Cooley, yeah, he did a lot. He had a distinct vision going into this. One that,
without him, this just wouldn't be the same movie. Hell, he apparently even wrote a lot of the script, according to Jason Shrier himself. Quote, [music] "Made a lot of adjustments that he was uncredited for." So, that's cool. Josh Cooley is a relatively new director, but he's had decades of experience [music] in animation at Pixar. In fact, he even directed one Pixar movie. It was uh that one. Now, in his defense, even making that movie in the first place was a mistake. His contribution was just one of many in that whole mess. And if you could
say Anything about Toy Story 4, is that visually it looked pretty good. It was directed well. After that movie, he immediately left Pixar, so take of that as you will. And thank god he did so, because you can just tell in the behind-the-scenes how passionate Cooley is about this whole Transformers thing. So many pointless little details you probably didn't think about, but he did. Like he decided against using motion capture for this Movie because motion capture looks bad. It'd make this silly robot movie look like something straight out of that Donkey Kong cartoon. You know
the one. But he still used motion capture, just in a clever way. He used motion capture only to learn what not to do. Yeah, you know that final battle between Optimus and Megatron could have looked a whole lot different. It could have been two doofuses clobbering each other. But Josh didn't do that. He wanted to make this Fight the most transformy thing you've ever seen. Every action, every way Megatron and Optimus fight [music] was meant to be in a way that only a Transformer could move. Like, let's break this down. So, Megatron gets punched back,
whips his cannon out to shoot, misses. Optimus then, to close the gap, turns into a truck, but only for a second, just enough to gain momentum to slide and grab Megatron's cannon. He rips it off, Hits him with it like a bat, and then Megatron absorbs his cannon back and twists it around to shoot Optimus right in the face. All that happened in like 10 seconds. It happened so fast, you might not have even caught it on your first watch. But that's what's so good about this movie. There's always something new to discover on rewatch.
Even a simple punch is more than just a punch because Josh Cooley and his team wanted the fights to be something only a Transformer could do. Oh, yeah, also, you know Optimus' exhaust pipes, that key part of his design since forever? Well, they're flamethrowers now. This guy came up with that. That's the highest praise I could ever give a director. But I will say, he did make one mistake, and that mistake was Keegan-Michael Key. I did not care for Bumblebee. What? Oh, I'm sorry. B-127. I love this movie. I really do. I recommend it to
everyone I Know, but it is so hard for me to sit down and show people this movie because I know we're going to get to that scene with Keegan-Michael Key as Bumblebee. I'm looking [music] forward to great comedic moments. I get to work for the government. I'm not brave enough to defend this film as he jokes uninterrupted for like 10 minutes straight. I can't do it, man. Bee has some funny moments, don't get me wrong. And he's not even that bad. Like On second rewatch, he isn't as jarring as I first thought. Hell, he's not
even utilized that much after his initial introduction, but so much of his personality here is front-loaded. That first scene is just so dense. It stuck with me, put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. There's plenty of room now that Steve is dead. I usually sleep on the conveyor belt, but you can totally have it. I'll sleep in the corner next to Arcee and Ironhide. Plenty of room for You guys. I don't know why, but I have a paranoid radar for the comic relief character in any movie. Am I a miserable [ __
] Yeah, probably. But there's a reason why I'm so cautious, and it's because a bad comic relief character is pretty much a bomb for a pretty good [music] movie. Like, I love Treasure Planet. It's one of my favorite Disney movies. Until the Martin Short robot shows up. For heaven's sakes, after 100 years Now, I have nothing against Keegan-Michael Key. I liked Key and Peele back in the ancient times. I think he works if used sparingly, but man, is his voice recognizable. Battle mask appeared with this guy TRYING TO KNIFE HANDS? I have knife hands. Way
more than the rest of the celebrity cast. At least in the Mario movie, he had a chipmunk filter, so you couldn't really tell who he was. But you can hear. It's like a great movie is Chugging along, and then every time B-127 speaks, I picture this guy speaking into a microphone. They're not real. What? You think I'm that crazy? I don't know, it's just you've been down here a while. I was talking to Steve. Bumblebee normally never talks. So, wouldn't it be funny if in the past, he just never shut the [ __ ] up?
Isn't that just so funny? Badassitron. [snorts] Badassitron. Bumblebee losing his vocal cords isn't some tragic backstory anymore. It's cathartic. Elita is also here. You don't have the touch or the power. I think it's kind of funny that this hardworking boss got her life completely ruined [music] because her co-workers were idiots. Alita 1, you're What? It is [music] kind of hilarious how she got literally dragged along on this. I was wrong about [music] that. It was going the other Way. [screaming] She didn't care about the Matrix or leaving some basement. Her day just went from horribly
mundane to overthrowing the government because Orion is a dumbass. And oh boy, does she let him know it all the time. Okay, for her character in this movie, Alita works. Scarlett Johansson was well casted. I like when she does the gun flip thing. That's neat. But I'm also a massive Transformers nerd and I know this is Alita 1, Optimus's girlfriend. Like she was Optimus's girlfriend before he was even Optimus. I'm assuming the plan was to have these two build a relationship over the course of a trilogy. So their arc would have been one of annoyance
to mutual respect to eventually But at the same time, if you told someone who just saw this movie that these two are eventually going to have a romantic relationship, they would Probably think, [music] wait, robots can [ __ ] But they'd also not believe you because there is just no hint of chemistry between these two. I'm not saying they should have chemistry even in the first movie. I just don't think their main interaction should be open hostility for most of the movie. Like even when she gives him a pep talk, she's mean. I'm better than
you. Yeah, okay. I'm hearing you. I don't Know, maybe like tone it down 10%? Man, Sentinel Prime always gets the most brutal deaths in these movies. No, Optimus. [groaning] So years ago at some convention, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura commented that Transformers 1 was like a prequel to the Bay former movies. I have no idea why he said this. Why did he say this? There's no connective tissue here at all. And if there was, it literally Got ripped in half. I think he just kind of said it. While that's crazy and all, what's even more nuts
is that Sentinel was used as a twist villain twice. Actually, no, I take that back. He's not really a twist villain here. He genuinely was in Dark of the Moon. Nobody saw that coming. But he's not like the sheep in Zootopia. You know, the one who wanted to start a race war. Does Sentinel in Transformers 1 really Count as a twist villain if the second he's introduced, it's pretty clear he's the bad guy? I celebrate you. Humility and presence. That's leadership. I know this movie's intended audience was like kids, so perhaps the twist was meant
to be genuine. Maybe this was effective if the only movie you ever watched was in a Fortnite match. As an adult though, you're just kind of waiting for the main characters to catch on that he's bad, too. And also probably Your kid. I kind of love Sentinel Prime as a character in any iteration he's in. And surprisingly, in the span of Transformers 40-year history, there's not a lot. It's blank. For most of that time, he was really just a Transformers glup shitto that you wouldn't even know existed unless you read the comics. He was the
vague before Prime. Who cares? But when he did start to get fleshed out later on, there was always one defining characteristic Sentinel had, arrogance. This is regardless of whether he's an outright villain or just a minor [ __ ] Arrogance is Sentinel's defining trait. An example that just because someone is an Autobot, it doesn't make them a good person. They really have to stop putting these things on every corner. I love him in the animated series where he isn't even an outright villain for most of the show. He's just a rival jerk. The final obstacle
Optimus needs To overcome before he truly becomes a prime. His Gary to Optimus's Ash, if you will. Then they canceled the show before its final season, so uh we'll never see the resolution of that. Then after the whole Leonard Nimoy thing, he just became an outright villain. My point here is that years of comics and shows have led to what I see as the definitive version of Sentinel Prime, this version. Primus will surely Yes, Shut up. An arrogant, tyrannical, and eventually treacherous leader of the Autobots who Optimus needs to overcome, but who Megatron, funnily enough,
usually kills. Except for that one time. This version of Sentinel is great. He's at the top of the world, incredibly arrogant, and he's so tyrannical, his own subjects don't even know they're subjects. The weak bots can do more than just mine energy. Outstanding. I love a bot that can think For himself. He's a fake prime, the illusion of a hero. And man, I just can't help but feel like we've seen a character kind of like that recently. Yummers. Sentinel Prime is just robot Homelander. This isn't just because he has the celebrity status and is also
a bad guy. I mean, just so much of Sentinel is imbued with Homelander characteristics. You took it all. I sure did. And it's not because he's played by Jon Hamm. This is not a rendition of Don Draper. Don Draper is far more reserved while also being confident. Sentinel is boastful, craving the crowd. His candor, his mannerisms, his sarcasm, the way he takes everything like a joke even while killing someone. He's Homelander. He was greater than you'll ever be. I don't know, I'm pretty great. That's not a complaint at all. I think it's a very genius
way to evolve the character. This Is something that was already happening naturally with Sentinel for 20 years. A self-obsessed fraud who will do anything for more power, all with a little bit of a smile on his face. It's a natural archetype for Sentinel to blend into. And let's admit, it's entertaining. It's why Homelander is the only reference you see about The Boys anymore, you know, other than this. The way that Sentinel acts here is very crucial because I don't think the movie would work as well If there wasn't a reason for the audience to empathize
with Megatron. The Quintessons aren't the main villains of this movie. They're more like a force of nature. Sentinel is the real villain. How could Sentinel betray the primes? They all looked so cool, like this guy and this guy and that. Speaking of looking cool, Airachnid. Yes, Airachnid, not Arachnid. She's a spider that turns into a drone. She's my brother's favorite bot in the movie. Some real Nightbird vibes. Airachnid is such a good yin to Sentinel's yang. A cold counterbalance to his fake warmth. He's mastered the art of reading emotions by conning everyone and she doesn't
even know how to fake a laugh. [laughter] She is a blatant display of his real intentions whenever they're both in the room. She also cuts guys in half. That's pretty nuts. How fitting is it that this absolute unfeeling sociopath turns into A drone and can see everything, you know, except for the building. The drone aspect plays so well in how she even fights. The giant fan gets used as a shield and then the shield is a blade itself like something out of Doom the Dark Ages. She's light, but also so angular and razor sharp. If
she even brushes up against something, it gets sliced. I like that both of these characters are more recent additions to the franchise compared to the classic Line. Who would have thought that sometimes bringing in fresh faces to a decade-old roster of characters actually reinvigorates a franchise? Crazy, huh? Orion Pax. Why didn't they go with his original design? That one looked great. When I first heard that Chris Hemsworth was voicing Optimus Prime, I was a bit worried. Nothing against Hemsworth. I like him. I like him as Thor, even if those movies became crimes against nature. I
like him in the Mad Max movie Nobody watched. I even liked him in that Red Dawn remake you forgot existed until just now. But at the same time, like come on. This is Optimus Prime. Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime. They're so intrinsically linked, it just feels wrong having someone else take the mantle. And [music] like I get it. Cartoon movies are only made now if they have a celebrity name to slap on the poster. It's just the nature of the beast. And The excuse that he's playing a younger version kind of makes the change a
little less drastic. And speaking of age, let's be honest, Peter Cullen is getting up there. His voice isn't what it used to be. Optimus in Rise of the Beasts sounded rough. I should have known better than to rely on humans. You know, kind of like Marge in The Simpsons. This is one of those creative decisions where you as a fan kind of just have to shrug your shoulders. What Else are they supposed to do? Who cares? Maybe this casting will work out. And it did. Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax {slash} Optimus Prime is good. He's
good. Just really solid. But if we beat just one Transformer, it proves we're just as good as they are. He plays Orion just fine. Now, his Optimus on the other hand, it's a little weird. Like when Orion starts becoming a leader, he starts gaining the mannerisms and even the speech patterns of future Optimus. You know, Peter Cullen. Now is the time for us to stand up for ourselves. And it's an intentional choice by the movie to do this. But like no one else changes their voice. D16's voice just sounds a bit deeper, but he doesn't
sound like the original Megatron. Does anyone else get what I'm talking about? Do I sound crazy here? Sometimes it works and sometimes it sounds like Hemsworth is trying to do an impression Of Cullen's Optimus. The line between [music] friend and enemy is not as clear as I once believed. We know not where he came from, only that he held the power to take franchises and devoid them of life. I don't know. It's just a nitpick. It doesn't matter. Funnily enough, the only reason I'm bringing up the voice acting is because I'm kind of struggling to
say anything else about Orion Pax. Like I forgot to bring up his character in the first draft of the script. He Starts off a little punk and then learns to become a hero. His idealism is the spark that sets all of this off. That's it. He's a decent character, but also he's like a blank slate. He's only as interesting as the characters around him. Ones that he can bounce off of. And that's why it's impossible to talk about Orion Pax without talking about D16. Why'd you bring that up, Pax? Originally I was going to have
one section about Orion Pax and then another about D16. But that's kind of impossible to do. I don't THINK HE'S CHANGED. SURE FEELS LIKE IT. THESE two character arcs are intertwined. Their falling out is the movie. Or you know, to put it another way, this is about how Megatron became a dick. I guess he just was always like that isn't a suitable explanation. D16 is the standout character in this movie. We all agree on that, right? Like nobody thinks Bumblebee is actually the best character. Better. Shut the [ __ ] up. Like whenever you see
this movie mentioned online, his face is the first thing you see. And I think that's because Transformers 1 did something here that was very unique compared to all the other movies. Transformers 1 made you empathize with Megatron. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Transformers 1 is first and foremost about friendship. IF WE SURVIVE THIS, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU. I ACCEPT those terms. The friendship between these two is established in the first few minutes. Immediately we learn that Orion gets himself into trouble [music] and D16 always has to drag him out of it.
Or perhaps Orion drags D16 along. Sure this initial conversation between long-time friends is a bit exposition heavy, lays on the backstory a little too thick. I need a new best friend. But also like this is a movie aimed at a Younger audience. I get why it's telegraphed. These guys will be best friends forever. Nothing will ever tear them apart until something does. Josh Cooley said the intention for Transformers 1 was to be a fresh introduction to a new generation of fans. And you know what? I'm curious how this dynamic might be seen through a kid's
eyes. Like if you had no idea that this guy becomes Megatron. That'd be crazy, right? That'd be a wild Introduction, huh? Makes him a more complex character than those that grew up with this. Washington D.C. is mine. It's kind of like how I grew up with the Star Wars prequels and saw Anakin become Darth Vader, while my parents' generation just saw, you know, Darth Vader. Hell, the generation younger than me knows about Anakin through the Clone Wars TV show, where he's actually A CHARACTER. LIAR. SO this movie's kind of like that, but with Megatron. Because
of That, Megatron needed to have a believable transition from normal guy to tyrant. All of them change in some way, especially in size, but with D16 it's blatant. His design was actually inspired by the original comic book version of Megatron, with the black helmet and yellow eyes. It's a great callback. Pretty unique way to show he's losing his way. And it's really funny looking back on. D16 is the reason this movie works. It's fascinating seeing a Villain we've known for so long be humanized. See him slowly descend into madness through revenge. And watching his journey
wouldn't be nearly as compelling if we, the audience, didn't at least agree with him a little bit. All I can think about is Sentinel's smirking face. And there's no better way to do that than by making the leader of the Decepticons start off as a pretty chill guy, played by Brian Tyree Henry. Brian Tyree Henry is kind of that guy Who gets sprinkled into things. He's like the one tolerable human character in the Godzilla Kong movies. That is really cool. Thanks. D16 starts off carefree and then in one single day he cares too much. As
Yoda says, giving a [ __ ] is a path to the dark side. It's funny how D16 fanboyed so much over Sentinel Prime. Like no alarm bells went off about this guy at all. Even after a conversation with him ends with them being chucked Into a level below the basement. Man, guess that was just a wacky mix-up. The revelation that Sentinel Prime was a fraud and working with the Quintessons hit the gang pretty hard, but it broke something within D16. You could argue the other three had already some bad relationship with the current system. Orion
wished for a greater purpose, Elita was fired from her job because her coworkers were idiots, and B was locked in the dungeon. But D16 was the content And idealized worker, the perfect normie. For him, up until a day ago, life was fine. He worked in the mines, but he was a miner. That's what they do. Sentinel Prime was the hero of Iacon City, the brave leader who risked his life going out onto the surface to find the Matrix. And now D16 realized he's been slaving away for a fraud, a fraud who killed his hero, Megatronus
[music] Prime. Now that he has a cog, well now he has the power to stop Sentinel. Don't You want TO STOP HIM? NO, I WANT TO KILL HIM. I JUST LOVE HOW EVERYONE is shocked by this, and then there's Alpha Trion sitting there like, yeah, I get it. Now I've seen some people wonder why D16 flipped so quickly. And I don't know, it makes sense to me. If you suspect something is wrong and then find out your suspicions were correct, you're not going to be too shocked. It's like dipping your foot in the pool before
Getting in. But if you thought absolutely nothing about your life was wrong until the very moment you're blindsided, well that's like getting your head dunked. That's why D16 flips so quickly, because from now on he won't trust another leader ever again. Rise, the Fallen. He's now clearly self-destructive, doesn't care what happens to himself. And this is where these two characters truly begin to split. D wants revenge, While Orion wants justice. What I like here is that this movie kind of elevates that typical revenge isn't good cliché by making revenge here the logically worst choice imaginable
to do. Like objectively Orion Pax is correct in how to approach this situation, both for reasons he knew and those that he didn't. It's a good example of why the Autobots eventually always win and why the Decepticons don't. You know, other than plot armor. Orion had a plan to Expose Sentinel for his crimes by capturing Arachnid. If Sentinel's image was ruined to the public, then he could be taken down by the people themselves. Orion inspires [music] the miners to join the fight. Without the miners, the train would have been stopped before it hit the tower.
I'm not making the joke. I love that the miners evolved to become the front line of the Autobots. By destroying Sentinel's reputation, it leads to a Smoother transition of power as everyone sees him now as a false Prime. Now did Sentinel deserve it? Sure. But did he really need to start blasting everything immediately after? I No. If I have one complaint about this movie's writing, it's having Megatron and the old guard shoot everywhere, even after Sentinel is dead, in uh anger, I guess. Like sure, you can explain this [music] as they're tearing down the old
Idols or whatever. But really, I think it was just the movie's way of having chaos before Optimus is arrival, literally flying in to save the day to stop the destruction. At the same time though, the Decepticons are violent morons, so this isn't entirely out of character for them. In the end, Orion's plan was simply the best way to bring Sentinel down and maintain peace. D16 would have just brought chaos, especially as the new bots in charge Would just be the High Guard with Megatron at the head. It's best for Iacon City that these guys weren't
in charge of anything. I want him to suffer and then to die in darkness. There's also another factor here. Orion was objectively right, but for a reason nobody else knew. Nobody except for the [ __ ] planet. So by sacrificing himself to protect Sentinel, Orion Pax proved himself worthy to the Transformers god, Primus. Primus then Granted him the Matrix of Leadership, which had been missing since the end of the Quintesson War, making him a true, genuine Prime. Hooray. With the Matrix, all the robots are given back their cogs. And on top of that, Energon now
freely flows throughout the planet. Now, I get the message. Orion Pax proves himself worthy of power and becomes Optimus. This is a staple of his backstory. But, at the same time, I want to be a little jerk about this. Imagine How much this must suck from Megatron's perspective. Your life is a lie. You've been mining for the Quintessons the entire time. And now your best friend is preventing you from getting revenge. He even gets in the way as you shoot. That's just the final straw. Sure, you might be a bit emotional right now, but who
isn't? Plenty are cheering your name, yet suddenly your friend comes back. And not only that, he's been granted the Matrix of Leadership just to Kick your ass. Afterwards, he banishes you. Then magically, after you leave, your ex friend's new pals all get an upgrade. Energon now [ __ ] comes out of the planet itself. It's all rigged. It goes all the way to the top. Or I guess the center of the planet? The movie bombed terribly. Bumblebee made 460 million. Rise of the Beasts 441 million. Transformers 1 130. It only made 130 million at the
box office. Might not have even made back its Budget. Regardless of where you slice it, this movie failed. Truly, truly failed. Audiences just did not show up to this. I remember the absolute shock from the Transformers community when the actual numbers came in. What is that? Just disbelief, astonishment. Word of mouth was great. It finally looked like a true Transformers cartoon. Why did the general public show no interest? By all accounts, it doesn't make sense. There Were many, many theories. Like a game of clue, fingers were pointed and suspects were named. So, that's the question
of the day, isn't it? Who truly killed Transformers 1? Suspect 1, the horrific marketing. Those initial trailers were terrible. Like, it cannot be overstated enough. Killed so much interest, including my own. Suspect 2, the audience. Who was this movie's intended demographic? Like, really? So many films flourish cuz they pick a specific group. Comic book nerds, sci-fi fans, women, Disney adults. Who was Transformers 1 meant to appeal to? Well, at first glance, children, right? Like look, I believe animation is a medium for all ages, but especially in the West, if it's specifically a CGI animated movie,
people are just going to assume it's intended for kids. That's how it is. Unless it's like Sausage Party, and we all remember how that turned out. At the same time, this is also an animated Transformers movie. I'll just put a pin in that for now. Boop. So, the kid demographic. Kids were clearly important here. This was meant to be a clean slate introduction for kids after all. Well, bad news. Another cartoon movie about a robot released at the exact same time, The Wild Robot. While Wild Robot didn't do fantastic numbers, it was critically acclaimed, better
marketed, won awards, and it looked like something families would actually bring their kids to go See. I love Wild Robot. I get why parents chose this instead of this. For one, if a kid was unfamiliar with Transformers, they're not going to be begging their parents to go see this in theaters. Parents are the gatekeepers. They need to be won over, too, and they just weren't. In part, because I think marketing confused people on who the intended audience actually was. The badassitron joke is There's violence and characters die, but It's like robot violence. Hell, it was
apparently intended to be even more violent. A friend on Twitter DM'd me and told me how some scenes were cut down to try to squeeze into that PG rating. This movie was riding such a fine line between meant for kids [music] and meant for adults. Like an age range between eight-ish to 10. Not old enough to watch PG-13, but they still know mild swears. That's already such a small Audience, and today, that's an audience just not [music] interested in watching this in theaters. The problem here was that Transformers 1 was not kitty enough for the
parents, and it was too kitty for the adults. It wasn't turning any heads from the general audience or attracting new eyes. But, it did turn heads for people who already liked Transformers. And that was the biggest problem with Transformers 1. It appealed to only Transformer fans, And there just simply aren't enough of them. Fans are insane. Like, true fans like something no matter what. They will watch or play any installment in a franchise they like, regardless of quality. The only thing that matters is if that logo is slapped on the title. Now, this strategy only
works in the mainstream if there are enough fans. Transformers does not have enough mainstream fans. Sounds kind of insane To say, like this is some niche franchise, but let me talk. Movies are an investment. Money and time is only put into something big, like a theatrical movie, if the studio expects a lot of people to see it. If not, well, it gets banished to TV or streaming. Almost 20 years ago, Transformers spawned some of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Yet now, here we are. Was it because Transformers 4 and 5 were just abysmal pieces
of [ __ ] I Mean, yeah, that's part of it, but it's not the entire story. I don't think these movies made Transformers lose fans. It just made people dislike Bayformers. Okay, so like 1986, the animated movie comes out, right? Height of G1's popularity, and it just bombs. [music] After those four, but really three seasons of Transformers, the biggest thing the franchise did for 20 years was Beast Wars in the '90s. We're all going To die. Outside of the occasional anime and the comics, nothing was really made. Nothing mainstream at least, until Michael Bay. The
Bayformer movies are a beautiful mess. The whole thing might have ended in brutal failure, but these movies did succeed at one thing. Something that Transformers had not done until Michael Bay. They succeeded. For a brief moment in time, Transformers were a household name, a global phenomenon. Or at [music] least a version of Transformers was. This was like the worst representation of the series. [groaning] But, it was still something the audience responded to. Transformers weren't simply toys anymore. Michael Bay puppeted the series and warped it into his own image, forever ruining it, right? Well, no. The
Bayformers didn't ruin Transformers. They were kind of the best advertising it ever had. Real Transformers, the cartoons, stories Focused on the actual robots, are niche. Let's be real here, they're niche. The movies brought in fans who were never interested before, [music] people like me. I don't know if I ever would have been a Transformers fan if that 2007 movie didn't exist. And considering the demographic of people watching these videos, that's probably true for you, too. It's been almost 20 years. The people who were Transformers fans before Michael Bay are like 45 now. The movies pumped
new life into the franchise, allowed for shows like Animated and Prime to be made. At the same time, though, how many people just watched the silly robot action movies and moved on with their life? A lot probably did. These box office numbers are kind of deceptive. The audience that watched these movies around the world didn't become Transformers fans like I did. Hell, they probably didn't watch these movies because they were Transformer fans at all. These movies were huge because people were fans of Michael Bay and robots and explosions. Once Bay himself lost the sauce, the
movie suffered. And when he left, the rest of the audience did, too. Which brings us to Transformers 1 and my ultimate theory about all of this. Why did nobody watch the Transformers 1 movie? To put it bluntly, it's a cartoon. The Transformer cartoons are niche. They just are. Something Relegated to TV and streaming. Like how Sonic is relegated to double-A games. These are just two entirely different audiences. What defines a Transformer [music] is not the cog in its chest, but the spark that resides in their core. [music] Most of the people that came to see
the Transformer movies in theaters just wanted to see a dumb summer movie with explosions. Like 5% probably knew that Soundwave turned into a boom box. People haven't left the franchise because of Michael Bay. They were just never into it. We're now just back to a time before 2007, where the fans of the animated Transformers content are all that's left. And the sad news is, there just aren't enough fans to justify an expensive animated movie by ILM starring Chris Hemsworth. Just like there wouldn't be enough Sonic fans to justify The budget of a Call of Duty
game. It's a bad investment and sadly right now Paramount sees Transformers as a bad investment, at least when it comes to the big screen. No franchise ever truly ends. Many franchises never return to the heights they once did, but they aren't dead. They just go to sleep for a while. We're certainly never getting another animated cartoon like this again, and there's just something tragic about that. Right? They started Something really fascinating with the story and I would have loved to see it continued, but it probably won't be, at least as a proper sequel. Maybe one
day we'll see Transformers 2 as a Paramount Plus exclusive with all the voice actors replaced and cheaper animation. There's such dedication and effort put into this film and it clashed with the cold reality that nobody gave a [ __ ] Well, not nobody. There was certainly one guy who really, really cared. While the Audience failed this movie, while Paramount failed this movie, there was one guy who stuck with this movie till the end. Yeah, so this movie bombed. That's just a fact. But in history, just because something ends in failure, it doesn't mean that the
fight wasn't noble. Some things are just worth fighting for, even if the odds are against you. Just as the 300 Spartans fought at Thermopylae or how Davy Crockett died at the San Antonio Riverwalk getting plastered at the Rainforest Cafe. I'm now going to talk about just as noble of a battle, a battle online. A battle fought by a single Transformer fan who really, really wanted people to know that Transformers 1 was good. This is the tale of TF hype guy, a Transformer fan on Twitter who had been literally counting down the days for this movie
to come out and then it did and he saw it and he needed everyone else to see it, Too. You see, TF hype guy began posting everywhere on Transformers discussions, on movie discussions and soon that just wasn't enough. So he started leaving comments on entirely unrelated posts, things that had nothing to do with Transformers or movies. The man could truly not be stopped. This was a man on a mission, a crusader and soon the internet was going to be converted. Now you might imagine that if someone just invades random comment sections talking About an animated
movie, people might get annoyed and yeah, some were. He wouldn't stop talking. Even when he was unconscious? Especially when he was unconscious. But here's the thing, most people weren't. Eventually the whole thing stopped kind of being about the movie. You just wanted to know where TF hype guy would strike next. He was like a real life Muscle Man. You know who else? A reposting Rick Roll. Would he show up to your tweet and talk About Optimus Prime? Perhaps. The funniest thing here is that he really did his job well. This single guy with a fan
account did better marketing for this movie than Paramount. I've seen people get interested in this cartoon because the funny hype guy wouldn't shut up about it. Like I said, fans are crazy, but being a fan can also be a beautiful thing and being a Transformers fan can be the best thing. After the hype of Transformers 1 truly died down And the dust settled, TF hype guy could sleep well at night knowing that he did literally everything in his power to support the film and one person recognized that support, too. Josh Cooley. Guy online who is
a massive fan and has been uh promoting the film on his own constantly and so As a small thanks for such dedicated posting, Josh Cooley sent this fan on Twitter a genuine, rare Transformers 1 art book. And to me, that's just beautiful. I guess that's the end of all of this, really. There are no more movies planned. The franchise will probably lie dormant for at least a while. So I guess I like the idea of this massive series ending its run with a director saying thank you to a fan for really liking his movie. And
while there won't be a sequel to Transformers 1, if everything ended on this note, I Wouldn't mind. Are you [ __ ] kidding me?
