Movie Reviews

Transformers One Movie Review – A Origin Story We Didn't Know We Needed

Published

1 year ago

October 12, 2024

Transformers One Movie Review – A Origin Story We Didn't Know We Needed

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.

Overview

The untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but who once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever. 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.

Story

Sworn enemies, once friends. An untold story for Orion Pax and D-16. The story followed the early days on Cybertron where Orion Pax wanted more from life whereas D-16 was just happy following the ideas and rules of Sentinal Prime.

The story showcased the friendship between the two enemies and how they always looked out for each other mainly D-16 saving Orion Pax from the trouble he gets into. The story shows that not everything is what it seems which ultimately ends in a war for Cybertron.

The story delivered the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron. The story showed that Orion wanted to find the spark and become something other than a miner whereas this was also the beginning of D-16 turning into Megatron.

While the story focused on the origins of Orion Pax and D-16, in the background it delivered the origins of the two factions that ultimately go to war for centuries. The story delivers a fresh look into the war, the connections, and the uphill struggle for leadership on Cybertron.

Characters

Obviously, the characters within this movie would not be the same characters we see later in their history, the rugged, war-torn Cybertronians we saw in later movies. The characters within this movie were all light-hearted, friendly, and well-respected in the sense that everyone got along with each other, there were no Autobots vs Decepticons.

Chris Hemsworth as the voice of Orion Pax was such a great choice for the voice acting, Chris has a voice that is friendly but also can be a mean leader when needed. Bryan Tyree Henry as the voice of D-16 was a unique choice but ultimately was able to capture slow turn into evilness.

One of my personal favorites within the movie was B-127 voiced by the incredibly funny Keegan-Michael Key. While we’ve seen some early days of Bumblebee within different Transformers projects, this one gave us a new spin on the character as someone who essentially was forgotten about on Cybertron, left on a floor of Cybertron that no one went to.

For the full cast list, you can visit IMDB by clicking here.

Hype

Now the hype for this movie seemed to be very well. People were generally excited to see it. I continued to see people talk about the movie even after its release in the States. From comments such as “The best Transformers movie” to “It didn’t need to go this hard”.

The hype has been hurt because of the box office performance as of now. The movie had a budget of 75 – 147 million dollars but at the box office has only reached $100 million.

Favorite Moments

1. Seeing just how smart and curious Orion Pax actually was before coming Optimus Prime. He would break into the archives searching for the answer to what happened to the first Primes and the matrix. While he does get caught, he gets away by his best friend, D-16.

2. Seeing how easily Orion gets D-16 into some adventures. Orion manages to get D-16 into the race to prove they are more than just minors but ends up losing the race and gaining the respect of Sentinal Prime.

3. The introduction to B-127. We are seeing how forgotten he was by other Cybertronians and forced to work in the garbage incineration. He’s just full of life and is always at 110% energy to the point where he still speaks when knocked out.

4. Trion provides cogs to the group to allow them to become full transformers and see how gaining a cog and some information revealed changed the group. You saw Orion, B-127, and Elita-1 all become better while D-16 slowly began to turn evil.

5. After a battle. D-16 shoots Orion but catches him before he falls to his death, although, this was the moment Megatron was born as D-16 tells Orion that he’s done catching him and lets him go. Orion falls into the spirit of the Primes where he receives the Matrix of Leadership and revives him as a new prime, Optimus Prime.

Dislikes

Honestly, going into this I thought I would have some dislikes but I was surprised to see that I didn’t have a single dislike.

Recommend?

Would I recommend this? For sure! It’s everything. This movie is for the children who like Transformers and animated movies and this is for the Transformers fans who want to see the early days of Cybertron.

Verdict

A fantastic prequel movie that sheds new light on the time before Cybertron was ravaged by war and destruction. The movie showcases a friendship between Optimus Prime and Megatron long before they were enemies. The action was fantastic. The story was great and the animation was incredible.

Rating: 9.4/10

Transformers One is available in cinemas worldwide. You can visit here for more information on Transformers One.

For a limited time, Paramount+ plans start at $2.50/mo. for 12 months! Billed annually. Stream the NFL on CBS live and more. Redeem now!

Story – 10

Structure – 9

Quality – 10

Action – 10

Characters – 10

Entertainment – 10

Antagonist – 8.5

Hype – 8

9.4

Amazing

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Movie Reviews

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

Published

6 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

“So it’s like Avatar?” one character quips in Disney and Pixar’s “Hoppers,” bluntly translating the film’s high-concept premise for the sugar-fueled kids in the audience. And yes, the comparison is apt. The story follows a nature-obsessed teenage girl who manages to quite literally “hop” her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver in order to spark an animal rebellion against a greedy mayor determined to bulldoze their forest for a freeway.

It’s a clever hook. The kind of big, elastic idea Pixar used to make look effortless. “Hoppers” does not reach the rarified air of “Up,” “Wall-E,” or “Inside Out,” but after a stretch of uneven originals like “Turning Red” and “Luca,” and outright misfires such as “Elemental” and “Elio,” this feels like a genuine course correction. The environmental messaging is clear without being preachy, the animals are irresistibly anthropomorphized, and the studio’s once-signature emotional sincerity is back in sturdy form.

Pixar can afford to gamble on originals when it has a guaranteed cash cow like this summer’s “Toy Story 5” waiting in the wings, but “Hoppers” earns its place in the catalogue. Director Daniel Chong crafts a warm, heartfelt film that occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition, yet remains grounded by character and theme. Its meditation on conservation and animal displacement feels timely in a way that never tips into after-school-special territory.

We meet Mabel, voiced with bright conviction by Piper Curda, as a child liberating her classroom pets and returning them to the wild. Her moral compass is shaped by her grandmother, voiced by Karen Huie, who imparts wisdom about nature’s sanctity. True to both Pixar tradition and the broader Disney playbook, this beacon of guidance does not survive past the opening act. Loss, after all, is Pixar’s favorite inciting incident.

Years later, Mabel is still fighting the good fight, squaring off against the smarmy Mayor Jerry, voiced with slick menace by Jon Hamm. He plans to flatten the glade where Mabel and her grandmother once found solace. Mabel’s resistance feels noble but futile. The animals have already mysteriously vanished, the machinery is coming, and her last-ditch plan involves luring a beaver back to the abandoned forest in hopes of jumpstarting the ecosystem.

That’s when the film gleefully pivots into mad-scientist territory. At Beaverton University, Mabel discovers her professor, voiced by Kathy Najimy, has developed a device that can project human consciousness into synthetic animals. The process, dubbed “hopping,” allows Mabel to inhabit a robotic beaver and infiltrate the forest from within. It’s an inspired escalation that keeps the film buoyant even when the plotting grows predictable.

Her new posse includes King George, a lovably beaver voiced by Bobby Moynihan with distinct Bing Bong energy; a sharp-tongued bear voiced by Melissa Villaseñor; a regal bird king voiced by the late Isiah Whitlock Jr.; and a fish queen voiced by Ego Nwodim. As is often the case with Pixar, even in its lesser efforts, the world-building is meticulous. The animal hierarchy, complete with titles like “paw of the king,” is layered with jokes that play for kids while slyly winking at adults.

The plot ultimately follows a familiar template. Scrappy underdog rallies community. Corporate villain twirls metaphorical mustache. Emotional third-act sacrifice looms. At times, you can feel the machinery working a little too cleanly. Pixar, and Disney at large, has grown increasingly reliant on sequels and established IP, and “Hoppers” does not radically reinvent the wheel. In an animated landscape where films like “K-Pop: Demon Hunters,” “Across the Spider-Verse,” and “Goat” are pushing stylistic and narrative boundaries, being safe and sturdy may not always be enough.

And yet, there is something refreshing about a Pixar original that remembers how to tug at the heart without squeezing it dry. “Hoppers” is playful, peppered with cheeky needle drops, and builds to a sweet emotional catharsis that may or may not have left this critic a little misty-eyed. It feels earnest and engaged.

“Hoppers” may not be top-tier Pixar. But it is a welcome return to form, a reminder that the studio still knows how to marry big ideas with a bigger heart.

HOPPERS opens in theaters Friday, March 6th.

Movie Reviews

‘Hoppers’ review: Who can argue with hilarious talking animals?

Published

18 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

‘Hoppers’ review: Who can argue with hilarious talking animals?

Just when you think Pixar’s petting-zoo cute new movie “Hoppers” is flagrantly ripping off James Cameron, the characters come clean.

movie review

HOPPERS

Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG (action/peril, some scary images and mild language). In theaters March 6.

“You guys, this is like ‘Avatar’!,” squeals 19-year-old Mabel (Piper Curda), the studio’s rare college-age heroine.

Shoots back her nutty professor, Dr. Fairfax (Kathy Kajimy): “This is nothing like ‘Avatar!’”

Sorry, Doc, it definitely is. And that’s fine. Placing the smart sci-fi story atop an animated family film feels right for Pixar, which has long fused the technological, the fantastical and the natural into a warm signature blend. Also, come on, “Avatar” is “Dances With Wolves” via “E.T.”

What separates “Hoppers” from the pack of recent Pix flix, which have been wholesome as a church bake sale, is its comic irreverence.

Director Daniel Chong’s original movie is terribly funny, and often in an unfamiliar, warped way for the cerebral and mushy studio. For example, I’ve never witnessed so many speaking characters be killed off in a Pixar movie — and laughed heartily at their offings to boot.

What’s the parallel to Pandora? Mabel, a budding environmental activist, has stumbled on a secret laboratory where her kooky teachers can beam their minds into realistic robot animals in order to study them. They call the devices “hoppers.”

Bold and fiery Mabel — PETA, but palatable — sees an opportunity.

The mayor of Beaverton, Jerry (Jon Hamm), plans to destroy her beloved local pond that’s teeming with wildlife to build an expressway. And the only thing stopping the egomaniacal pol — a more upbeat version of President Business from “The Lego Movie” — is the water’s critters, who have all mysteriously disappeared.

So, Mabel avatars into beaver-bot, and sets off in search of the lost creatures to discover why they’ve left.

From there, the movie written by Jesse Andrews (“Luca”) toys with “Toy Story.” Here’s what mischief fuzzy mammals, birds, reptiles and insects get up to when humans aren’t snooping around. Dance aerobics, it turns out.

Per the usual, “Hoppers” goes deep inside their intricate society. The beasts have a formal political system of antagonistic “Game of Thrones”-like royal houses. The most menacing are the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep — I’d call her a chameleon, but she’s playing a bug), a staunch monarch butterfly and her conniving caterpillar kid (Dave Franco). They’re scheming for power.

Perfectly content with his station is Mabel’s new best furry friend King George (Bobby Moynihan), a gullible beaver who ascended to the throne unexpectedly. He happily enforces “pond rules,” such as, “When you gotta eat, eat.”

That means predators have free rein to nosh on prey, and everybody’s cool with it. Because of bone-dry deliveries, like exhausted office drones, the four-legged cast members are hilarious as they go about their Animal Planet activities.

No surprise — talking lizards, sharks, bears, geese and frogs are the real stars here. They far outshine Mabel, even when she dons beaver attire. Much like a 19-year-old in a job interview, she doesn’t leave much of an impression.

Yes, the teen has a heartfelt motivation: The embattled pond was her late grandma’s favorite place. Mabel promised her that she’d protect it.

But in personality she doesn’t rank as one of Pixar’s most engaging leads, perhaps because she’s past voting age. Mabel is nestled in a nebulous phase between teenage rebellion and adulthood that’s pretty blasé, even if a touch of tension comes from her hiding her Homo sapien identity from her new diminutive pals. When animated, kids make better adventurers, plain and simple.

“Hoppers” continues Pixar’s run of humble, charming originals (“Luca,” “Elio”) in between billion-dollar-grossing, idea-starved sequels (“Inside Out 2,” probably “Toy Story 5”). The Disney-owned studio’s days of irrepressible innovation and unmatched imagination are well behind it. No one’s awed by anything anymore. “Coco,” almost 10 years ago, was their last new property to wow on the scale of peak Pixar.

Look, the new movie is likable and has a brain, heart and ample laughs. That’s more than I can say for most family fare. “A Minecraft Movie” made me wanna hop right out of the theater.

Movie Reviews

Review | Hoppers: Pixar’s new animation is a hilarious, heartfelt animal Avatar

Published

1 day ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

4/5 stars

Bounding into cinemas just in time for spring, the latest Pixar animation is a pleasingly charming tale of man vs nature, with a bit of crazy robot tech thrown in.

The star of Hoppers is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), a young animal-lover leading a one-girl protest over a freeway being built through the tranquil countryside near her hometown of Beaverton.

Because the freeway is the pet project of the town’s popular mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who is vying for re-election, Mabel’s protests fall on deaf ears.

Everything changes when she stumbles upon top-secret research by her biology professor, Dr Sam Fairfax (Kathy Najimy), that allows for the human consciousness to be linked to robotic animals. This lets users get up close and personal with other species.

“This is like Avatar,” Mabel coos, and, in truth, it is. Plugged into a headset, Mabel is reborn inside a robotic beaver. She plans to recruit a real beaver to help populate the glade, which is set to be destroyed by Jerry’s proposed road.