I was already quite excited when I saw the trailer to this movie, despite it's an animated as opposed to the live version of these beloved robots that could transform. I was already planning to see this together with my wife on Friday night in the cinema near our home but we cancelled it due to various reasons. So we finally saw it yesterday in another one of our movie marathon. All right, I'll just get to it then.

Brief Story Line

In the planet Cybertron after huge war with their enemy Quintessons, the robots who were unable to transform were tasked as miners to harvest energy source. Among them were two best friends Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth - Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, 12 Strong etc) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry - Class of '09 TV series, The Woman in the Window etc) who had been working in the mines for a long time and were also friends with high ranked officer Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson - Avengers: End Game, Ghost in the Shell etc). 

The leader of Cybertron, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm - Top Gun: Maverick, Keeping Up with the Joneses etc) had been looking for Matrix of Leadership that would allow the planet to produce energy source without the need to mine them, but to no success. When Orion somehow found possible location of the Matrix, he decided to do so together with D-16, Elita-1 and their new friend B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key - The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Playing with Fire etc).

So what would happen to Orion and friends? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Now that was a very entertaining movie. My wife and I had so much fun seeing this film as it brought out a lot of emotions, from the excitement of the adventure, the intensity of the fights, the joy of seeing the friendship, the laughters from many scenes and the awesome ending. It was almost similar to the feeling we had when we both saw the first Transformers movie in 2007 and experienced all those cartoon characters came to live in what seemed to be impossible task years back.

The story was very well told and though we could have guessed what would ultimately happen (this was sort of a prequel where it was set way before the Transformers arrived on earth), the journey was still truly fun to see. We liked the characters interaction especially the friendship between Orion Pax and D-16, and both of us always laughed looking at the behavior of B-127 ever since he was shown for the very first time. It was so great seeing how this would be the basis of what happened in the future installments especially towards the end where my wife and I were quite emotional. 

The animation was absolutely gorgeous and after looking at the closing credits where ILM was mentioned many times, I could understand the reason for such great effects, particularly during the transformations. Oh btw, there was one funny mid end-credit scene and a post end credit scene that should set up interesting future installments. I read that the director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4 and writer of Inside Out) was planning for a new trilogy, and looking at the critics and early audience receptions, I think a sequel would be very likely.

Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were additional cast like Steve Buscemi (Hotel Transylvania: Transformation, Con Air etc) as Starscream, Isaac C. Singleton Jr. as the annoying Darkwing, Laurence Fishburne (John Wick: Chapter 4, The Ice Road etc) as Alpha Trion and few others. The voice acting were mostly great with lips movements and facial expressions spot on with the characterization by the actors, including the hilarious moment whenever B-127 said his self-proclaimed nickname (you would know it when you see this).

Overall, this was an enjoyable movie that I believed would satisfy even people who are not fans of Transformers in general, cause the story was just amazing. Obviously it would be more entertaining for people who are familiar with the story of Autobots and Decepticons as they would appreciate it even better. And I also think that making this into animation was a great idea since the setting was in Cybertron and no humans on earth was involved anyway. So if you are not happy with most Transformers films, I think you would at least enjoy this one. For fans, there is nothing more to say except you would not want to miss this and very sure you would have a wonderful time like me and my wife.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars