It’s a bright, sunny day and Alasdair Stuart just watched a trailer on a TV set 125,000 feet above the surface of the Earth. Let’s talk about it.

Transformers One is the first animated Transformers movie since the generational trauma-inflicting Transformers: The Movie. That film concerned the end of the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. This one, it seems, concerns the beginning. Chris Hemsworth plays Orion Pax, the future Optimus Prime while Brian Tyree Henry plays D-16, who will become Megatron. Perpetual MVP Keegan-Michael Key plays B-127 who will become Bumblebee and Scarlett Johansson plays Elita-1 who was always cool and doesn’t need a name change for us to learn that.

Directed by Josh Cooley, who directed Toy Story 4 and written by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, the movie is in its own continuity so there’s no need to fold space around how this connects to anything else. Instead, it looks to drill down on one of the most interesting plot elements explored by recent Transformers media, most notably the More Than Meets The Eye and Lost Light comic series. Namely, that Cybertron as a society is as dystopian and unfair as our own. With a quick aside to note those two comics are some of the best science fiction I’ve read this century, the basic concept is that Cybertronian society has a caste structure and the movie seems to explore that. Here are the four big things that jumped out at me.

Transformation is Evolution

The big beat we see here is the four kids given what seem to be T-Cogs, the component that allows Transformers to transform. Without the cogs they’re just four (it’s implied) blue collar teenagers with no prospects, doomed to work a job until it kills them. With the cog, they can be anything. For Pax, that means becoming the future leader of the Autobots and embodying what Cybertronian society could and should be. For D-16, it means it becoming Megatron and embodying the consequences of Cybertronian society to this point. Megatron’s idealism is forged in his wounds where Prime’s is forged in his scars. One has healed and is trying to make something new. One is trying to break everything down so he can heal. No wonder they both think they’re right. No wonder they’re on opposite sides.

Battlemasks as Status Symbols

Notice the cop who picks Pax and D-16 up has a full facemask and visor, something all the kids lack until they get their T-Cogs. This speaks to the idea of transformation as an element of status.

The Matrices

The T-Cogs also look a lot like the Matrix of Leadership, the sentient-ish item that turns Primes into Primes and has a near-religious significance for Cybertronian culture. That’d be a really fun twist, if they’re all chosen to lead but D-16 is manipulated away from the same path.

All of This Has Happened Before

At 1.07 in the trailer there’s a shot of D-16 sitting on the moss-covered body of a much, much larger Transformer whose facemask appears to be the Decepticon logo. The scale thing is nice to see and it’s a good way to show how diverse Cybertronians are. City-sized bots are common, and brilliantly, we’ve even had a Cybertronian traffic light (also Soundwave turned into a lamppost at one point).

There’s also the tiniest possibility this is Tarn, a character who was originally introduced as a Megatron cultist. It’d be fun to have that reversed, and have Megatron adopt his teachings. Either way, it seems clear this is a key moment for D-16 and implies, heavily, the Autobot/Decepticon war has happened before. Maybe this is even the future, and they’re going to end up taking on the mantles of the classic characters. That’s happened before too, most notably with Optimus Primal in the Beast Wars/Beast Machines series and Rise of the Beasts, who was heavily implied to be named after Optimus Prime.

Note also the scenes around 1.37 in the trailer where the kids make their way through what seems to be a battle full of dead, larger scale Transformers covered in moss.

Who Was That Mossed Man?

The figure who gives them the T-Cogs is an interesting one. Transformers lore is rife with Old Wise Dudes Who Show Up, Do The Thing And Then Leave. Alpha Trion, one of the oldest living transformers, is a safe bet but it may also be one of the previous Primes. One wild-card theory. There’s a shot at 2.31 where we get a close up of this mysterious older figure. They’re largely purple and they have a three pointed crown shaped head. They look surprisingly like Galvatron, the future version of Megatron. If this is a mythic cycle plot, Galvatron surviving the war and redeeming himself by choosing the next generation would be a hell of a twist.

More Than Meets The Eye

Not only do we get a ‘He said the thing!’ moment with Pax but we get that great action beat from Elita-1. At 2.35 to about 2.38 we see why transformation is such a gamechanger. Elita-1 shifting between forms and using both forms, the shift, and her momentum to fight is incredibly cool.

Quintessons?

At 2.29 we see a partially organic tentacled creature grab a cybertronian. This might be a Quintesson. They’re an ancient race who have claimed to be the creators of the transformers in the past and are one of the (MANY) elements of Transformers lore which is a bit divisive. They do seem more organic than mechanical though which leads to my final point.

Bio-Mass

That’s a lot of trees and foliage and wildlife for a mechanical planet isn’t it? Beast Wars and especially Beast Machines explored the idea that Transformers could be a hybrid of mechanical and biological and there are hints of that here, with the moss, the jungle and so on. This is another major dividing line in Cybertronian society and the addition of our tentacled chum and friends up there suggests this is going to be at least touched upon in the movie.

Transformers One is going to be divisive. All fandom is divisive now and Transformers fandom is ruckier than most. Which is ironic as the franchise has always been unafraid to take big stylistic swings and this looks like it does the same. I’m really excited to see how it goes.