San Diego Comic-Con is just getting underway in sunny southern California, and one of the major day-one panels is bringing a new sneak peak at “Transformers One.” If you’re tired of so-so live-action “Transformers” flicks, don’t worry: “Transformers One” is set to offer something totally different from the Michael Bay “Transformers” films, “Bumblebee,” and the like. Namely, it’s being advertised as the first-ever totally computer-animated “Transformers” film, and while that could be a good or bad thing depending on the quality of the CGI in question, the filmmakers behind the new movie clearly put a lot of work into these visuals.
The first trailer for “Transformers One” dropped in April, and it did a great job convincing anyone who might be on the fence about yet another Transformers story that this one’s a standout. As /Film’s Devin Meenan put it, the movie looks like a “a breezy and colorful animated adventure akin to the ‘Spider-Verse’ films,” with a stacked cast to match. “Atlanta” star Brian Tyree Henry stars as D-16, the low-level worker who will one day become Megatron, while Chris Hemsworth voices Orion Pax, aka the future Optimus Prime. Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm round out the impressive voice cast.
A Cybertron-set origin story, “Transformers One” will deepen the existing cinematic lore for the Hasbro franchise by explaining exactly how Orion and D-16, once best pals, eventually became enemies. Today’s trailer (above) offers another early look at the upcoming movie, which is thankfully going the theatrical route with distribution from longtime “Transformers” home studio Paramount. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura also claimed the animated film takes place three billion (with a “b”!) years before the live-action “Transformers” movies at its SDCC panel, but you may want to take that with a grain of salt for now.
