Transformers One, known quaintly as the only smidgen of good production quality throughout the entire Transformers franchise for most mainstream audiences. If you're not a hardcore Transformers fan or a fanatical loyalist of Bay, you recognise the first movie as the one where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were coolest, toting a character element which cannot be pinpointed exactly, but spurred the movie onto the pedestal of greatness which it is seen by. Or at least, pedestal of average moviemaking considering the franchise as a whole is a testament to greed and CGI explosions.
The movie's plot revolves around the Allspark, a famed MacGuffin that encompasses many differing Transformers versions and variations, though the interpretation is usually universal. A cube-like structure holding immense power over all comprehensible machinery. It's pretty useful, which is why the evil Decepticons led by Lord Megatron wanted to obtain it and utilise the dark powers within to conquer the universe. Simple, straightforward, and precise. Which is the problem. You may ask why, isn't the story supposed to be understandable for the audience?
Well, Transformers is more. As I've stated in aforementioned blog posts, this franchise isn't simply war robots destroying each other. Transformers can have deep emotional moments despite the kiddish material. But, this is my most minor gripe with this flick, since of course I'm not going on a tirade against a movie marketed for children, pre-teens, and early teenager gender demographics anyway.
Transformers One is average, that's the consensus. I can't disagree, the movie still has several elements which foreshadow the horrid mess of it's successors, but still retains a feel of familiarity and fun action with Optimus, Bumblebee, and Megatron. This formula was expected to persist into an average line of movies which testosterone-induced consumers would flock too and rake Mister Bay hefty amounts of hard cash. Unfortunately, Bay got lazy, the easy and quick sampling template left in this movie became too arduous to copy, apparently, as he began actively contradicting the elements which gave this movie some charm in the sequels.
Instead of amplifying the "comedy" of human characters, Bay reduced it down to racist jokes and defecation jabs, making fools out of Shia Lebeouf, Megan Fox, and their colleagues. In fact, two particular Autobots in Revenge of the Fallen were racist caricatures, and an entire controversy sprawled over this very fact.
In stark conclusion, there's nothing special about this movie, just bland with a proper formula and enjoyable enough setpieces to spawn a franchise of botched sequels.