@Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Press Conference With Actors Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry & Director Josh Cooley
Q: When the opportunity to jump on board for Transformers One, what was it about the material that made you think this would give fans more of what they already love about Transformers, but also add something new to the franchise?
Brian Tyree Henry: For me, it was the nostalgia of this franchise. I am in my ‘40, I spent some years with the Transformers. I immediately thought about my younger self, waking up Saturday mornings at the crack of dawn, getting a sugary cereal, and sitting as close to the television as I possibly could. Watching this four to five-hour block that included Transformers and then going outside in my neighborhood and playing with the toys from the cartoons you just watched.
Transformers have always been a part of my youth. What’s cool about what Josh has done with this movie is going back to the origin, finding out where the beginnings of these two, I like to call them both heroes, to find out where they both started. It’s something that I’ve always wondered about, that I’ve always wanted to know about. The new generations now get this opportunity to see this side of the Transformers, together with that sense of ownership that I felt when I was a kid watching it.
Chris Hemsworth: I asked my kids first if I should do a Transformers movie and they answered: “Absolutely!” Then I read the script and loved it. It was a shining origin story, there was something new to tell, to justify continuing on this incredible universe of transformers. We needed to find out something different about these characters, so understanding that they were first friends before they became enemies, they were just regular guys. Guys with jobs in the mines, trying to make their way in the world. They are wonderful, fun characters that we had an opportunity to dig into and invent. We weren’t mimicking something.
Josh Cooley: I loved that it’s an origin story. On Cybertron, there are no humans; everything is new in this world. The thing I’m really connected with is the relationship between these two characters going from best friends to enemies. um, The audience is already coming into the film with a preconceived notion about them, so it’s really fun to play against that and to show we can truly tell a human story with characters that just happened to be robots.
Q: Is there anything about bringing Transformers to life on screen, in an animated feature, that posed a unique challenge for you?
Josh Cooley: My entire career so far has been at Pixar. So I was bringing all of my knowledge and experience into Transformers One. From a certain angle, both Toy Story and Transformers are all about scale. With Transformers or with Toy Story, it’s all about making things feel smaller. With Transformers, it’s all about shooting, so they feel much larger. It was interesting not having humans in it, forcing yourself to create a scale that everything’s based on.
Q: Was there any experimenting with their voice when it came to leaning into what we already know, what they sound like, but also making these versions of the characters new?
Chrirs Hemsworth: I was certainly nervous about mimicking what Peter Cullen had done so brilliantly. That was probably my biggest hesitation about taking the role. I talked to Josh and he said: “As it is an origin story, there’s a youthfulness and fullness, a spontaneity to the character that is different to what’s been done before. So I was excited about that. Then as the film progressed and Optimus Prime was born, we began to play with the cadence and the vocal quality and started to lean a little more into what Peter had done. And this was trial and error. It was nice to have that as a reference and an endpoint. But fun to start somewhere else too. There was no pressure at this point because we don’t know who they are as youthful robots.
Brian Tyree Henry: I was like: “Well, we can go in and just play. What informs me most about the beginning of who this character is? I tacked it as a coming-of-age story. And I thought about myself when I was about 20, we met our characters just trying to figure out the youthfulness of what it was like to be out in the world, and try to follow the rules. What was that like? What was conformity like? The friendships that you develop around that time, the friends who are always trying to get you to do stuff that you don’t normally want to do. It was cool to put that in there and show it because the great part about what Josh has done with this universe is that even though there are no humans on this planet, there’s still humanity within the characters. You got to see the heart of them. Which was important.
@Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Q:. Can you talk about previous Transformers designs that you knew you had to hold tight to?
Josh Cooley: I had to create a little bit of a franchise through the line of sorts, but then also something unique about the Transformers design we developed for our film. I grew up watching the original which is called Generation 1. I knew I wanted to start there and do something that was similar to my childhood vision of Transformers. Everybody from our generation knows pretty much every design of it. This is the first time that a story has been set when they were younger and didn’t have the cog in their body. I thought that was a cool idea to start a Transformer story where the characters don’t transform. That was fascinating. They’re missing something even visually.
Q: You’ve played heroes in your career and in this movie too. Who was your hero when you were younger?
Chris Hemsworth: A lot of different people inspired me, to become some kind of heroic figure. My dad is an obvious one. A surfer named Kelly Slater is a World Champion 11 times. He was the one to religiously watch every time in his surf films, and then go out there and spend my entire day surfing.
Brian Tyree Henry: Captain Planet. I really wanted to be Kwame from Captain Planet. I was like: “We can save the planet. And we get cool rings and cool powers of the elements!” I never wanted to be Captain Planet though: he’s blue with green hair and wears underwear.
Josh Cooley: Superman. Batman. I loved them.
Q: One theme of the Transformers franchise is the spark that gives hope. In which way does the spark metaphor resonate for you personally?
Chris Hemsworth: I liked the idea of forging your own path and not believing that everything is preordained and set out before. You have the idea that you have some influence. The universe has to align in certain ways. Listening to your heart, your inner calling of virtue, and following that. It resonates throughout this film very heavily. You have to grab the wheel yourself. It brings hope. It was crazy how this movie reflected my coming of age, the concept of identity, the concept of friendship, the concept of what’s right and what’s wrong. The metaphor is all over the place in Transformers One. I think it’s a story and a lesson that stands the test of time.
Brian Tyree Henry: I love the concept of origin. There are so many different beginnings we go through in our life, if we’re lucky. So this concept of this spark, this light that we within us can be shared. It’s all about humanity in the end. And I think that that’s what the spark represents the most.
Josh Cooley: This movie is called Transformers One, it’s because we’re all one. That’s a theme that’s in the film, that idea that we all have a spark, we all come from the same world where no matter what we look like or what we believe, we’re all in the same role. Sometimes people forget that.
@Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Q: Who is your favorite transformer besides the one you voice?
Chris Hemsworth: My kids love Bumblebee. I am glad because in our movie he is so surprising and enjoyable. Watching that character was amazing, we hadn’t ever heard him speak before. There’s such a wild sense of humor. I really enjoyed the enthusiasm he brought to the story and the other robots.
Brina Tyree Henry: He was a wonderful comic relief. I was pretty partial to Elita. Back in the eighties, our cartoons were very much geared. Boys watch something, girls watch something else. And Transformers was unfortunately like that. What I like a lot about our movie is that you get to see all these different Transformers living together, and you get to see more female Transformers. Elita is a leader. Respected. She is the common sense of the movie.
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here’s the trailer for Transformers One: