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How Optimus Prime and Megatron Learned to Transform in ‘Transformers One’


The director Josh Cooley narrates an action scene from the film.

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Transforming can be tough, especially if you’ve never done it before and you’re being shot at while tumbling down a hill.

That’s where the characters find themselves in “Transformers One,” the animated origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron. Up to this point in the movie, the film’s leads have not been in the possession of the cogs needed to transform. Having just acquired them, the characters must quickly figure out how to use their new powers while under attack. It initially doesn’t go well.

“I had all the toys growing up,” the director Josh Cooley said in an interview. “Most of the time, they were just sitting around on the ground half-transformed because they were actually pretty hard to do.” Cooley said he thought it would be enjoyable to watch the characters struggle the same way he struggled with his toys.

Regarding that tumble, Cooley said that he wanted to use the hill to make transforming even more difficult. He said that one of his references was a cheese rolling competition that takes place each year in England.

Read the “Transformers One” review.

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