New Transformers One Trailer Shows How Optimus Prime And Megatron Went From Friends To Enemies

San Diego Comic-Con is just getting underway in sunny southern California, and one of the major day-one panels is bringing a new sneak peak at "Transformers One." If you're tired of so-so live-action "Transformers" flicks, don't worry: "Transformers One" is set to offer something totally different from the Michael Bay "Transformers" films, "Bumblebee," and the like. Namely, it's being advertised as the first-ever totally computer-animated "Transformers" film, and while that could be a good or bad thing depending on the quality of the CGI in question, the filmmakers behind the new movie clearly put a lot of work into these visuals.

The first trailer for "Transformers One" dropped in April, and it did a great job convincing anyone who might be on the fence about yet another Transformers story that this one's a standout. As /Film's Devin Meenan put it, the movie looks like a "a breezy and colorful animated adventure akin to the 'Spider-Verse' films," with a stacked cast to match. "Atlanta" star Brian Tyree Henry stars as D-16, the low-level worker who will one day become Megatron, while Chris Hemsworth voices Orion Pax, aka the future Optimus Prime. Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm round out the impressive voice cast.

A Cybertron-set origin story, "Transformers One" will deepen the existing cinematic lore for the Hasbro franchise by explaining exactly how Orion and D-16, once best pals, eventually became enemies. Today's trailer (above) offers another early look at the upcoming movie, which is thankfully going the theatrical route with distribution from longtime "Transformers" home studio Paramount. During the SDCC panel, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura stated the animated film takes place three billion (with a "b"!) years before the live-action "Transformers" movies, but you may want to take that with a grain of salt for now.

I think we all could have assumed that the Autobots and Decepticons were pretty old. After all, in live-action, we've seen these stories go back millennia, and the existence of the Maximals in "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" basically implies that these transforming lifeforms have been around during the age of the dinosaurs. But three billion years is an entirely different calculus. The passage of time is one of the most simultaneously beautiful and tragic aspects of life, but when your lifespan is billions of years (and maybe more!), that must have a major impact on your day to day life and outlook about the universe.

Amusingly, this trailer opens with a voiceover of Optimus Prime saying, "For thousands of years, we have been at war. But before we were enemies, we were like brothers." Thousands of years, eh? In a lifespan that crosses the 3 billion mark, thousands of years is barely a drop in the bucket. This one piece of information, said in an off-the-cuff way by a producer at a convention, adds a layer of tragedy to the mythology on display here, and a weightiness that's extremely at odds with the zany, boisterous, child-friendly energy of what we're seeing in these trailers. It seems like this is going to be another one of those situations, like with Pixar's "Cars" movies, where most people will just enjoy this movie for what it is, while a small subsection of the audience will be fixated on the rules and mechanics of these characters and the existential implications of their place in this larger story. Which audience member will you be? We wish we could be the former, but we already know we're going to be the latter.

"Transformers One" hits theaters on September 20, 2024.