The Transformers franchise has admittedly been struggling at the box office since Michael Bay stopped directing those movies, but Paramount Studios is trying a huge gamble with an animated prequel called Transformers One.
While a lot of Transformers fans think the movie isn’t getting as heavily promoted online as it should be, the movie just got the seal of approval from one of Twitter’s most beloved creatives—celebrity game director Hideo Kojima.
Kojima on Transformers One and X-Men: First Class
Kojima usually posts on his Twitter account about movies that he watches in theaters, and he gives them small reviews if he feels especially passionate about a movie. Just in, he posted about the Transformers prequel and compared it to Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class.
Here’s what Kojima posted:
Kojima didn’t go into specifics about how Transformers One was like X-Men, but the two movies are origin films and feature the friendship of two characters before they eventually became rivals—X-Men had Professor X and Magneto, and Transformers has Optimus Prime and Megatron.
With the Transformers franchise starting out with the Autobots and Decepticons already at war with each other, this looks to be the first iteration of the characters that were actually friends. Though the two may not agree on how robots should treat humans, Optimus Prime and Megatron have always had what’s best for Cybertron and its robot citizens in mind.
There's also the fact that both Transformers and X-Men are considered by some as allegories for LGBTQ+ stories, what with the "more than meets the eye" and themes of oppression and discrimination.
Transformers Should be CG Animated?
Another interesting part of Kojima’s tweet was that he pondered the idea of Transformers just being an animated franchise. Back in the 80s, the Transformers movies were exclusively animated, and it wasn’t until 2007 that they were brought into live-action and became mega box office smashes.
In the 2020s though, it does seem that Transformers has lost a little of its fire ever since Michael Bay had left the director’s chair. Though fans like to bash Bay online, his movies definitely had mass appeal, and each Transformers movie was a guaranteed spectacle.
It’s not all bad though, as a lot of fans do love the new G1-inspired looks for modern Transformers as compared to the mesh of metal that were the “Bayformers”.
As far as animation goes, Transformers One is getting a lot of critical praise, but the box office numbers will be a major tell if the studios are going to be leaning in on animated Transformers films moving forward.
A lot of fans are concerned that this movies isn’t generating enough buzz online, and audiences don’t seem to be aware that the movie is already out. It’s likely that Paramount is focusing its marketing on kids, and adult Twitter users have yet to pick up on the great reviews.
Maybe once it gets a home release it will get more eyes, but there’s still time for word-of-mouth to get people interested in buying ticket seats for Transformers One.
Catch the origin of the clash between Optimus Prime and Megatron in Transformers One which is now showing in theaters.