Cinepals - TRANSFORMERS ONE Non Spoiler Review! | Chris Hemsworth | Brian Tyree Henry

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Jaby and Achara watch and review the upcoming animated movie in the Transformers franchise, Transformers One in Imax and 3D! Transformers One is an origin story that explores the early relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron, revealing how their bond as brothers-in-arms devolved into the iconic conflict between Autobots and Decepticons. Transformers One is directed by Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4, Inside Out, Ratatouille). The voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth as Optimus Prime (Thor: Ragnarok, Extraction, Rush), Brian Tyree Henry as Megatron (Atlanta, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Bullet Train), Scarlett Johansson as Elita (Lost in Translation, Marriage Story, Black Widow), Keegan-Michael Key as Bumblebee (Key & Peele, The Prom, Toy Story 4), Jon Hamm as Sentinel Prime (Mad Men, Baby Driver, Top Gun: Maverick), and Laurence Fishburne as Alpha Trion (The Matrix, John Wick: Chapter 2, Man of Steel). SOCIAL MEDIA: ~CINEPALS~ YouTube: @CinePals Insta: https://instagram.com/TheCinePals Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCinePals  

As excited as I was for this movie, I was fully prepared to go in going, Transformers, this franchise has demised. That's terrible. We watched this in IMAX and 3D. 3D IMAX. Some pros and cons I want to mention about that. But first, Achara, please provide us the really quick summary, non-spoiler summary of Transformers 1. We all know who Optimus Prime and Megatron are, but before they were the famous Optimus Prime

and Megatron sworn enemies from Cybertron, they were in fact best friends. This is their origin story. Watching it in IMAX was pretty darn cool, but we did have the best seat in the house. And so what do you get with IMAX? Because it's not in the IMAX format, the tall format. You get really rich, vivid colors, deep blacks. It's like the best picture quality you can get. I don't know if the sound is better than at most,

but the sound sounded pretty awesome to me. 3D made it even better because it was one of those films where afterwards I would have been like, dang, I should have watched that in 3D if I didn't. This is my feeling about 3D. If there is an animation and it's being offered in 3D, I am much more likely to choose the 3D option.

Every single time that I've seen an animated film in 3D, it has been better. And I definitely noticed that while we were watching this film, I was like, I can see the detail. The work that they have done on these characters and the world looks so cool and it's so immersive

without being too extra for 3D. So my one thing about IMAX that I still haven't wrapped my head around and I've only seen them do this for Oppenheimer. When you're watching it in IMAX and it's in the regular 239 aspect ratio, it's like dead center. I feel like it should be brought down a little bit.

Otherwise you're looking up more. Is that a weird thing? Yeah. Am I the only one that feels that? I don't know. So people in the comments jump in if you feel the same, but I don't notice it. I like this movie a lot. I had a lot of fun.

Three or four out of every five jokes didn't land for me. But the heart was there, the story was there, the characters were there, the voice acting was there. Everything else that mattered was there for me. Yeah, I loved this movie. I had a really great time, and I turned to Jabby at the end, and I was like, I really liked that. I was half expecting him to be like, no, I was okay. He was like, no, I like that too. I was like, yes!

I'm not the only one, but I think honestly everyone in that theater enjoyed the crap out of that movie. There were a lot of laughs and I think for me it was so exciting because in the movies and they've been fun, we don't get as much of the robots, right? Because it's like it's too expensive to have them all the time. But this is animation. This is set on Cybertron and we've never seen Cybertron. Like I've never seen it. Because like I didn't watch the cartoons growing up really. I was just like, Oh my god, this is awesome. Getting to spend so much time with the robots and really getting to know them as characters

with their story arcs and everything and like all the drama that's going on in their world was so fascinating and so entertaining. The interesting thing for me was that the action was still a lot of fun. You're coming from live action where you just have explosion behem. In fact, I didn't realize until watching this, film that he owned that name, because that's the name of his production company.

Michael Bayes, yeah. Yeah, Michael Bayes production company. And so I was, you know, going into the film, I was thinking it was just going to be character stuff and it's going to be cartoony fun. And it turned out there was a lot of action and a surprising amount. And it was visually stunning. It was exhilarating. Like, it's one of those things where you're, you know, doing yourself a disservice if you

don't watch this on the big screen because of how exhilarating the action can be at times in this film. And furthermore, for parents who are taking their kids to watch this, just know. Like, it's the Star Wars thing where because they're right. robots you can slice them up you know any way you please but they are ripping them to shreds sometimes it can get like violent sometimes but they're all robots so it's okay but they definitely shied away from showing things that would have made it much too violent you know like headshots and stuff like that were not included i don't know about that it charra i feel like

no i feel like they really tried to i i don't know i did i let's just agree to disagree about that like i feel like they they went you know as violent as they could with robots but their robots so it doesn't matter, right? They're not bleeding, so you can get away with it. I just want parents to know going in, like, just be prepared for that in case you've got kids who are like, you know, faint of heart or whatever. That said, you know, for anyone who's like, I guess, eight years old and up, this is just nothing but fun.

I mean, eight all the way to 80 and beyond. It's really, really fun. We were in a packed house at IMAX headquarters, mind you. So it's not like AMC theaters, which is huge. This is limited seating. It's where the directors go. They watch their films and, like, make it just enough. with IMAC. I wanted to mention though that there were kids in the audience.

Those are the best possible audience members you could have. That's the ideal audience member to have for a film like this because they're the ones who are most likely to get tickled. I didn't hear too many instances of kids laughing. One out of every five jokes worked. About 20 to 30% of the time, which is not a good hit rate for jokes. Also, it was difficult to hear the audience in that theater unless everyone was laughing or it was like a particularly funny joke and had elicited a big round of laughter, But the dude sitting next to me, who I think must have been like a Transformers mega fan, he was tickled the whole way through.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he was loving it. Okay. I mean, I wasn't like without a smile. So if I wasn't laughing, I was smiling. Yeah. It's just that, you know, I had those Avatar last airbender coughs sometimes where like they'd make a joke and you'd hear. How long do you think we'll be here?

I'm not talking to him. You know, there is a big thing with the voices in this. You got Chris Hemsworth taking over from Peter. I heard that the producer's reasoning, because the producer and director did a Q&A afterwards. They explained why they didn't have Peter Cullen come back for this, and they decided to go with Chris Hemsworth. And I think that everyone kind of understands why you would go with a new cast for this. It is a prequel set many, many years before.

But I do think Peter Cullen could have handled the job. Having watched it, I think he's got enough range. I've listened to him talk. I feel like he's got more than enough range to do this. However, Chris Hemsworth still did a bang-up job. He did fantastic, taking that character from start to finish. you know, through his transformation. Exactly, yeah, no, because he starts off as Orion Pax,

and then he becomes Optimus Prime. And so there's like a whole arc there. The story was so good as well. This movie is up there as one of my favorite Transformers movies. I can't say yet whether it is my favorite for sure or whether I think it's the best one. But like my top three are the first Transformers movies. Transformers film because it was like the first one and it was so cool and I was just like oh my god

I'm blown away and so it has a special place in my heart and then bumblebee because I freaking love bumblebee and then this one because it has everything like all of the robots were so cool Orion packs you had D you had B and then you also had Alita you actually felt them as characters yes yes yeah as opposed to like oh that's a cool one it does a cool thing yeah I agree with you. I think that in terms of characters, you really felt like you got to know them. You know, I remember watching the other Transformers films and there was like, I guess, caricatures of certain stereotypes of certain ethnicities that is like kind of cringy when you look back on it. And I think that everybody across the board did a pretty darn good job here in terms

of voice performance, including Brian Tyree Henry, who I typically do not like. I think the only instance in which I enjoyed his performance, there was two, which is the train movie. Bullet train. And the last Kong movie, I think, he actually, won me over in that one, whereas everything else, including Eternals, I did not like him. And then this, he did a great job here. I didn't even realize it was him until the credit said, I'm like, oh, wow, like, I was actually quite convinced at his performance. And I really want to see the behind the scenes now because of the way the director and producer was talking about it afterwards and how intense he got in delivering that performance. And I'm like, I can imagine, because, like,

the character gets really intense. They did a really good job of doing a complete story while leaving a lot of room for sequels. that it was actually quite brilliant in the way that they handled it because they didn't try to do too much in this one movie which would have been a disaster they're like there's a lot of things that they set up and that and that leaves room to explore in follow-up movies but as a standalone like this was still really really strong we already know though from the Q&A afterwards that there are two more films planned but that's not how they went into it supposedly they went into it thinking like we want to make this one really really strong film and

then as they went along they're like oh we could do sequels and this would be the story. Right. But I think what's so cool about this as well is because it is anchored in the relationship between who they were before, right? Orion Pax and D-216 or whatever his name is, who then become Optimus Prime and Megatron. And it's just so fascinating to see what happened that caused two friends who... D-16. D-16, sorry. Two friends who loved each other and who were like brothers, and then they become sworn enemies, which is usually the way. It's like they say that love and hate are two sides of the same coin, right? It's just so fascinating to watch how that all happened.

So when we watched the trailer, I had remarked that it would have been cool if they did installments to get us to that place of watching these two turn against each other. After having watched the movie, I think that the way they handled that transition was, for the most part, pretty good. Overall, it was satisfied. You could have done with this happening, this transition happening in another film or later in this movie at least. But I could see what they wanted to do in the trajectory. Also, it's an animation.

Animation rules work different. Things are more compressed. Sure. So it was satisfying. But I do think that my former opinion still holds weight. You know, it still could have been that this transition happens in another chapter. I mean, I definitely wouldn't have minded to see more of. of Orion Pax and D-16 as besties

before they turn into enemies. Yeah. I didn't miss any humans. A lot of the time when we watch these kind of like monster movies or like kaiju or robots, when it's live action, you know, you've got the people and then it's like, oh no, we got to get into the people story. This one's like, there are no humans, only robots.

We really care about them and like knowing about their plight and what they're up against in their home world, I was just like, oh my God, so much fun. So the one thing that I did kind of miss, and it's like I can't really expect it of this movie, but there was a particular look to the Transformers established in the Michael Bay films that is like the one thing that I always look forward to.

There's like a, I don't know if it's a gloss or just in terms of just sheer volume of detail. I remember the very first time I saw Optimus Prime's face in the movie theater, just how crows. crazy, real and detailed he looked, whereas this is definitely more on the cartoony side. But like, for the purposes of telling the story, I think it does work. It's just that the story does get serious, and I'm like, yo, like, you could have done with the more, like,

Beham-looking Transformer look in this. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't feel that way. I really liked the way they looked and also just like the details that we were able to see in their characters, especially because they start off as just like regular. And you can, when you look at them and you look up close, you can see like they've got scratches and dings or whatever on their faces. And the faces themselves were just so expressive. Yeah, I know. I get that.

And then when they had the transformation, as it were, they did end up looking more glossy and smooth and cool. I guess that's what I'm saying is even in that state, it didn't, for me, come anywhere near what it looked like in the live action. But it's its own thing, though, and I respect that. It doesn't need to look like the live action. It's just, I'm only pointing out that this less sophisticated viewer misses that look. That's all I'm saying.

I'm not saying they did anything wrong because they didn't. It was highly enjoyable. And that's the most important takeaway. It's like you got heart, you got characters, you got action. You got everything else that you need. And so awesome voice casting in this movie as well. Yeah. So anyways, you guys, thanks so much for hanging, hopefully enjoy that.

I'm Jabby Koi. This is... Acharika. Peace out.