Transformers One review – action-packed prequel adds brains to the metal monster smash-ups

Few franchises can match the Transformers movies for thunderous stupidity. It’s a series that tends to take a giant metal fist (with added bazooka attachments) to storytelling niceties such as plot coherence and character nuance. It delivers a frequently overwhelming and nonsensical viewing experience that feels like trying to cross the road during a monster truck rally. It’s loud, brash and aggressive. And that’s fine, I guess. Sometimes all you need from a movie is a bunch of self-aggrandising metal monsters bashing the rivets off each other.

With its tradition of dyed-in-the-wool dumb-assery and its loyal and defensive fans (the only time I ever received a death threat from a reader was after a one-star pan of Michael Bay’s 2007 picture), the Transformers franchise is not an obvious contender for reinvention. But the latest instalment, the slickly animated and sharply scripted Transformers One, which explores the previously untold origin story of Optimus Prime and rival Megatron, feels like a refreshingly new breed of Autobot adventure – one that has been notably souped-up in the brains department.

The first animated Transformers film since the 1986 outing Transformers: The Movie (which, incidentally and unexpectedly, featured Orson Welles in its voice cast), the picture benefits considerably from having Pixar alumnus Josh Cooley at its helm. The director of Toy Story 4, Cooley knows a thing or two about stewarding a beloved franchise; and as one of the writers of Inside Out, he’s no slouch when it comes to ideas-driven comedy. I didn’t expect to be recommending a robot-car battle animation as my film of the week – and there’s the caveat that, due to a combination of mainstream movies avoiding Joker: Folie à Deux and meaty arthouse titles cherrypicked to premiere at the London film festival, it’s an unusually thin week for quality releases. But Transformers One is genuinely impressive, offering a jolt of fresh energy – it’s a knowing comedy that doesn’t shy away from self-mockery – while remaining true to the visceral metal-monster-smash thrills that fuel the series.

The story unfolds in a time long before the Autobot-Decepticon war. The Autobots live underground on the ravaged planet of Cybertron – Cooley’s first notable triumph is the vision of the subterranean Iacon City, in which jagged skyscrapers sprout from the floor but also hang downwards like stalactites. It’s a glinting, hyperrealist style of computer animation, designed to showcase this world of glistening metal impressively. But not everything in Cybertron is polished and perfect. A battle with the alien Quintesson aggressors long ago resulted in the loss of the “Matrix of Leadership”. (I know. It’s hard to believe that a film that features something called the Matrix of Leadership can be anything other than risible, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this.) Without the Matrix, the life force of Cybertron, called Energon (again, I know), has ceased to flow. The leader of the Autobots, Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), makes daring forays to the planet’s surface in search of the missing Matrix. Meanwhile, an underclass of indentured labourers toils in the dangerous and unstable Energon mines. But one of the miners, Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth), has dreams beyond the grinding, shifting walls of the Energon pit and, together with his best friend D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry), his former boss Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and garrulous tag-along B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), he sets out to the surface to locate the Matrix.

One of the aspects that makes this an unexpectedly satisfying piece of storytelling (aside from the obvious improvements in the joke quality) is the way that the film digs into the structure of Autobot society. It’s a rigidly stratified world, with something reminiscent of a caste system in place: miners – Autobots born without the crucial transformation cog – are predestined to take on the drudge work to support the higher-status Transformers. They have no say in their future, essentially providing slave labour for the benefit of the wider community. In the meantime, a ruling class – the Primes – automatically supplies the society’s leadership. Which is fine, just as long as the anointed Autobot dictator is benign. However, this, we soon learn, is not always the case. Faced with a corrupt leadership, there are limited options to remove the powers that be – the Autobots have yet to discover democracy, so voting out those in control is not an option. With that in mind, it starts to make sense that violence is intrinsically hardwired into Autobot culture.

And on that level, the film is unlikely to disappoint seasoned Transformers fans: for all the self-mocking humour and the examination of the strains on the friendship between Orion Pax and D-16, the picture doesn’t stint on action. In one thrilling early sequence, the streets of Iacon City are turned into a racetrack for an epic Transformers stock car rally. In another, Orion Pax saves a fellow miner from the treacherous rocks that clamp on his limbs like teeth. And barely a scene goes by in which an Autobot doesn’t get punched in the face. Something for everyone then.

• In UK and Irish cinemas