Transformers, robots in disguise! Transformers, more than meets the eye! So the iconic theme tune goes, and so seems to be the case with Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley's upcoming Transformers One, an all-new animated origin story for everybody's favourite metamorphic hunks of metal. Set three billion years before Michael Bay's movies, Cooley's movie is taking us back to before the fall of Transformer homeworld Cybertron, where we'll get to see how Chris Hemsworth's Orion Pax and Brian Tyree Henry's D-16 — better known to us now as Optimus Prime and Megatron — went from firm friends to fierce foes. The latest trailer for the film, premiered last night at SDCC, reveals more about how the Transformers got their power and the roots of the millennia spanning conflict between Autobots and Decepticons. Check it out below:
It's hard to believe it's been 38 years since Transformers: The Movie gave us our last animated Autobot adventure — the medium is such a natural fit for those iconic designs and the franchise's epic scale! Showing off Transformers One's slickly stylised CG animation and insanely stacked voice cast (Scarlett Johansson's Elita! Keegan-Michael Key's B-127/Bumblebee! Laurence Fishburne's Alpha Trion! Jon Hamm's Sentinel Prime! STEVE BUSCEMI'S STARSCREAM!), this latest look at the film promises to deliver on both the fun and the tragedy Cooley teased when Empire spoke to the director back in April. From Orion Pax and D-16's humble origins slugging Energon together to throwing down in more recognisable Prime and Megatron form, to the 'Formers getting powered up by Alpha Trion, to the ideological battles bubbling beneath the Bumblebee bants and cool-looking chrome, there really is more than meets the eye here. And that's without even getting into the nerdout reveals of Shockwave, Starscream, and Soundwave (as Bumblebee observes, "There's a lot of waves!")
The buzzy new trailer was also followed by a new poster for the battling bot movie, which has been written by Andrew Barrer, Steve Desmond, and Gabriel Ferrari. Check it out:
With Hemsworth bringing it in the voice booth as a pre-Peter Cullen Prime, an all-star cast supporting, and kinetic animated action everywhere you look, it seems Cooley and co are about to deliver the Transformers movie many fans, us included, have been dreaming of for years. Transformers One rolls out in cinemas Stateside on 20 September, whilst over here in the UK we can see the Autobots and Decepticons' origin story take shape on 11 October.