Orion Pax? D-16 who?
You’ve probably never heard those names before, and you what you know what?…That is ok. Because this movie is their tale to becoming the names that you ARE more familiar with. Optimus Prime and Megatron. And boy let me tell you what a tale it is.
So I had the chance to go watch this the other day and to say my expectations where bottom of the barrel would be putting it nicely. I mean the Bay movies have more than ran their course with me and the trailer for this one didn’t do it any favors. Have you seen it?
(here you go)
This was a movie I expected to be nothing but a corny mess of forced humor and a movie aimed more at toddlers. With piss poor casting choices for the voices. Still think they shoulda hired someone younger sounding for Bumblebee…BUT other than that the voice acting actually ranged from good to a couple of really good ones(won’t go and say great). And even more to my surprise the main focus of the story was a well crafted “friends to enemy” type story between Orion and D-16. Two best buddies who have each other’s back no matter what, to becoming Optimus and Megatron, two characters that we have all come to know for their rivalry with each other. “So a tragic tale with consequence?”..Well um.. yeah, and that was totally not how I expected to come out describing this movie. But here we are, and that IS what it is.
I think many of us have been conditioned with Bay’s movies so our expectations have been skewed. We have come to expect some low common denominator humor here and there. Some good looking people that you know won’t really face much consequences. And you can’t forget lots of on screen action that eventually becomes visual noise. Now I don’t wanna just sh*t on Bay because the first one in his series I thought was good and Transformers: Dark of the Moon had a really fun Third act extravaganza, but come on. Most of his movies felt low effort and recycled from one another. Movies that mostly went from at best, ok to middling, and at worst, outright bad.
Sure you also had Rise of Beasts earlier this year which brought the franchise back to being Okay-ish, but if you want to truly compare it to something more comparable, it was more like Bumblebee. Well more like the first 15minutes anyway. What I mean is you finally get Transformers being the main Characters of a Transformers movie. And more importantly being on Cybertron rather than on Earth. Now getting to see things like more of the expanded lore on the big screen. Or like getting to see The Societal Structures of these Transformers and just getting to vibe out in this world we use to only get snippets of. The things that fans have been clamoring for since the beginning. Only took ’em how long to get it right? Lol.
What this movie gives you is lot’s of positives. cool action that you can see and follow. Nice easter eggs and cameos that if you don’t know go over your head but you don’t feel like you miss something. And i f you do know it’s so freaking cool and well incorporated. A story that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and has a good pace. Really the only negative other than the Bumblebee voice casting is the music isn’t as banging as the ’86 animated movie.(kind of flat music for me). Oh and maybe this other race that is introduced as the enemy of Transformers could have been fleshed out a little. That ties with the over conflict that sets the story going so don’t wanna go too in depth there. But really overall you get fully fledged 3dimensional characters. You see the conflict that sparked the difference in thinking between Megatron and Optimus. What lead to Megatron choosing a path of revenge and Optimus one of Justice, and it’s so fascinating to see their parallels, just how similar but different their paths are. Same with their overall characters and seeing why side characters would side with who they ultimately do. You get to see the parallel in the leadership skills in both Orion (Optimus) and D-16(Megatron) and how that impacts and will ultimately lead to the formation of their respective factions.(Autobots and Decepticons).
I say do you wanna watch a conflict on Cybertron? A conflict that that has pre-Optimus and Pre-Megatron forming a team to solve it? Only for their solutions to the conflict to be that catalyst that sets them down the path we know they ultimately go down. If yes this is easy go watch the movie while it’s still in theaters. Sure you can wait to watch it at home on streaming, but a movie that gives the fans what they want I think deserves to be respected back. Show your support so we get more movies like this.
