Transformers One is a 2024 American animated science fiction action film based on Hasbro’s Transformers toy line. It was directed by Josh Cooley from a screenplay by Eric Pearson and the writing duo of Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, based on a story by Barrer and Ferrari. The ensemble voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm. It is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers and depicts the origins and early relationship of Optimus Prime and Megatron.
In March 2015, following the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Paramount Pictures tasked Akiva Goldsman to set up a writers’ room to create ideas for potential future Transformers films. By May 2015, Barrer and Ferrari had signed on as writers, and they came up with the idea of an animated prequel set on Cybertron. The film was announced in August 2017, and by April 2020, Cooley had been hired to direct. Animation services were provided by Industrial Light & Magic, and the design was primarily influenced by Generation 1 and Art Deco. The score was composed by Brian Tyler.
Transformers One premiered in Sydney, Australia on September 11, 2024, and was released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on September 20. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the story, humour, animation, and voice performances, but was a box-office bomb grossing $98 million worldwide against a budget of $75-147 million.
Cybertron is a planet inhabited by sentient robots fueled by a substance called Energon and fitted with transformation cogs, devices that allow them to transform into vehicles. In the city of Iacon, Orion Pax, a mining robot without a cog, sneaks into an archive and watches a documentary on the Primes, the first Cybertronians made directly by their creator Primus. Security guards catch Orion, but his best friend D-16 bails him out. Later, a cave-in occurs in the Energon mine where the two work, trapping fellow miner Jazz. While Orion and D-16 save him, their overseer, Darkwing, blames the incident on their superior, Elita-1, and has her demoted.
Cybertron’s leader, Sentinel Prime, returns from an expedition to the planet’s surface, claiming to have fought off invading Quintesson aliens, and organizes a race in celebration. To prove themselves as more than miners, Orion and D-16 enter illegally using jet packs but lose. While Sentinel promises to reward them for inadvertently boosting mining morale, Darkwing reassigns the two to garbage incineration, where they meet the eccentric B-127. After discovering a chip among the junk containing a distress message from Alpha Trion, one of the Primes, Orion convinces D-16 and B-127 to travel with him to his coordinates on the surface, later also persuading Elita to join after she catches them hitchhiking on a cargo train.
The four eventually find a deactivated Trion in a cave alongside the corpses of the other Primes. Upon reactivation, Trion reveals that Sentinel betrayed the Primes and has secretly been working for the Quintessons, giving them regular Energon supplies in exchange for letting him rule Cybertron while removing the miners’ cogs to keep them subservient. Trion provides the group with cogs, allowing them to transform, and a chip carrying evidence of Sentinel’s treason. Sentinel and his forces then arrive, capturing and killing Trion.
Evading their pursuers, the team travels back to Iacon to expose Sentinel but is captured by the High Guard, warbots rebelling against Sentinel. While D-16 takes command of them by defeating their leader, Starscream, Orion grows concerned by his friend’s increasing aggression since learning the truth. Sentinel’s forces then find them, and in the ensuing battle, the evidence chip is destroyed, while D-16, B-127, and half the High Guard are captured and taken back to Iacon.
Orion, encouraged by Elita, rallies the remaining High Guard members and returns to Iacon to rescue their comrades. Once there, Orion convinces the miners to rebel while Elita exposes Sentinel by subduing his lieutenant, Airachnid, and broadcasting her memory recordings throughout the city. After defeating Sentinel; however, Orion and D-16 argue over whether to execute him, resulting in the latter accidentally shooting the former. While initially horrified, D-16 ultimately lets Orion fall to his death. Now calling himself “Megatron”, he kills Sentinel and commands the High Guard to destroy Iacon.
The spirits of Primus and the Primes bestow Orion with the Matrix of Leadership, reviving him as “Optimus Prime”, who then defeats Megatron before exiling him and the High Guard. After the Matrix restores the miners’ cogs and Cybertron’s dried-up Energon reserves, Optimus christens his followers as Autobots and sends a message warning the Quintessons to stay away. Meanwhile, Megatron renames the High Guard into the Decepticons and declares war on Optimus.