One of the biggest hits of the year, Transformers One, is now streaming on Paramount+. But if you haven’t seen it yet—what do you need to know before you view it?
The story of the Transformers is both interesting and amazing. From giant robots that can turn into cars and jets, and a crossover with G.I.Joe, Transformers have made their way to the hearts of boys and girls for the past 40 years. Sure, sometimes the shows are not that great, but they still do it. From the first episode of Transformers to the recent Transformers One movie, this is the story of how the Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.
To understand the story of the franchise that is Hasbro’s biggest cash-cow, you must understand what started the war for Cybertron, the Transformers home planet, and the ones fighting. The Autobots are the heroes and, in most cases, protectors of earth. Their leader, Optimus Prime, or as he is called in Transformers One, Orion Pax, leads the Autobots as they try to survive the war, mostly because in most recent variations, the Autobots are both outnumbered and losing.
The Autobots fight the Decepticons, Cybertronians who want to rule with an iron fist. Their leader is Megatron, or in the new movie D-16. He was a gladiator before he became a revolutionary activist before he became an evil warlord. In every show the Decepticons are always at eachothers throats with, with occasionals attempted coups and infighting going on in its ranks. This was because Decepticons believe only the strong shall rule.
In the original show, G1 as it is referred to, not much is known about what was going on before the war except that the Decepticons wanted to take over Cybertron and kill Autobots. But in recent versions of the franchises, it makes the war a bit gray. This is because it is shown that most, if not all, Decepticons were actually slaves and lower cast citizens on Cybertron while Autobots were the rich and powerful, Megetron saw the injustice started a revolution which later became a genocide.
After years of fighting the Autobots left Cybertron to find a place to regroup, and to find a new source of energy, but Megatron finds this out and chases them, all the way to earth, and are lucky species are caught in their war. But in more recent updates of it, the reason why they came to earth was to find the allspark, the device that gave them life and was the ‘heart’ of cybertron, without it, the planet began to die.
So now with the oversimplification of the franchise, it’s time to know what to expect for Transformers One. From what we can tell from the trailers, it seems like Orian Pax, young Optimus, is a miner like his best friend, D-16, young Megatron, this is new because usually Pax is a librarian. We can expect many cameos from other characters like Starscream, Bumble Bee, and Elita-1. In the movie Pax, D-16, Bee, and Elita receive a distress call from the surface, they go to the surface and then get the ability to transform. Eventually, most likely in the end, D-16 becomes Megatron and Orien Pax becomes Optimus Primes, thus beginning the war for Cybertron.