TRANSFORMERS ONE Director Addresses Comedic Tone, but Also Says There's "Real Danger" in the Movie

When the Transformers One trailer was released, fans of the franchise were caught off guard by the strange, childlike comedic tone of the film. It’s not what any of us were expecting.

During an interview with CinemaBlend, director Josh Cooley addressed the comedic tone of the trailer and explained that when they set out to make this film, it wasn’t to make a comedy. But, that’s what it looked like!

Cooley explained: “The trailer definitely leads into the comedy of it and shows the fun of these characters together. Which was actually very easy to do. It wasn't like we set out to make a comedy, but it was setting out to make a film for everyone.”

He went on to say: “And it was easy to do with the characters because they were so clearly defined. But also with our actors, there's a lot of improv that came into this. … The beginning of the film definitely has that."

While the movie will have a fair share of comedy, the director also explained that the movie will also feature real danger. He said: “But there's real stakes that we're not showing yet in the trailer that has the epic scale and adventure and action that we know about Transformers films.”

He added: “There's a lot of danger. There's some real danger in this film. Yeah. And there's always that, like we talked about earlier, that ticking time bomb of when's this relationship going to fall apart between Orion and D-16.”

We’ll just have to wait and see how the story for the film plays out. That first trailer, though, did not do anything to get me excited to watch the film. I’m also not a fan of the animation and art style of it.

I will watch the movie because I’m curious to see if it can win me over. My expectations are low, though, which means it can either meet them or surpass them.

This movie tells the “origin story of how the most iconic characters in the Transformers universe, Orion Pax and D-16, went from brothers-in-arms to become sworn enemies, Optimus Prime and Megatron.”

The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax / Optimus Prime, Brian Tyree Henry as D-16 / Megatron, Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1, and Keegan-Michael Key as B-127 / Bumblebee.

Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura previously said: "This is … the origin story of young Megatron and young Optimus. If you know the origin, they started as friends, and over time things devolved for them and they ended up on two sides.

“So we're telling the young Optimus and the young Megatron story. We really are telling the origin story of all Transformers, both what they were at the beginning of it, to how they grow, to how they grow apart."

This will be the first of what Di Bonaventura calls a "natural trilogy,” and it’s going to explore “Cybertron in a way you've never seen it, that no one's ever seen it before.”

Jon Hamm is also in the film and will voice Sentinel Prime. The movie will be released on September 20th, 2024.