For years, now—years and years and years—the people have been crying out, not for more origin stories, but for them to stop. We have been origined half to death out here.
And if—if!—for some reason another origin story were necessary, you know what it wouldn’t be necessary for? Robots from the last century. Robots that are more than meets the eye. Robots that are going to say that tagline out loud in the trailer for the animated origin story Transformers One.
Hey, did you know Optimus Prime and Megatron were buds once? (What is this, the X-Men?) Did you know that they didn’t always know how to transform? Did you need to know that they were once lowly worker bots just like everyone else? Well. Someone thinks you ought to find out.
If your humble writer’s frustration with this inane commercial for robot toys seems a touch outsized, please consider this: The makers of this film saw fit to spend some unspecified but obviously quite large amount of money to shoot this movie trailer into space. Remember when space exploration meant something? Remember when we were curious about what was out there? You know what’s out there now? Transformers junk.
The actors providing the voices for this commercial film include Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm. Yes, despite the fact that we’re no longer in the ’80s, there is one token woman. Love that. Love that for all of us. Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) directs.
For some reason, this movie is in theaters on September 20th.
