best Transformers movie made, at least since the original 1986 film Transformers: The Movie. However, that movie included a key element that Transformers One is bitterly missing, that being the original song made specially for the OST, Stan Bush's The Touch.
Coming hot off of The Transformers: The Movie - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, The Touch is a key component of what makes the film so memorable, even all these years later. The song is used in two key battle sequences throughout the film, most notably, when Optimus Prime takes on the Decepticons all by himself in Autobot City shortly before he sacrifices his life, traumatizing young Transformers fans for a lifetime. The song is then played again when Hot Rod opens the Matrix of Leadership, spiritually succeeding Optimus and becoming Rodimus Prime.
Transformers One Needed "The Touch" By Stan Bush
One Song Would Have Exponentially Improved The Entire Story
It's hard to point to many flaws in Transformers One, but not including The Touch among the film's soundtrack is perhaps one of the film's biggest blunders. For starters, it would have been a prescient callback to the original movie that started the Transformers' career in film in the first place, with Transformers One being only the second major theatrical release of an animated Transformers movie many decades later. But more importantly, The Touch would have fit in brilliantly both thematically and stylistically into the action of Transformers One.
Transformers One is, appropriately enough, a movie all about transformation, showing how two best friends as close as brothers became bitter enemies and very different people all because of their ideological divide. As both Cybertronians gain the ability to harness the awesome power of the Transformation Cogs, so too do they decide to use their newfound strength to polar opposite ends as a response to Sentinel's corruption. The film even shows Orion Pax becoming Optimus Prime via the Matrix of Leadership, just as the '80s film did with Hot Rod.
Transformers One's Matrix Of Leadership: Why It Was Missing, Powers & Future Explained
Transformers One features the Matrix of Leadership, with its disappearance, powers, and future being integral to the animated sequel's story.
Finally, the action of Transformers One would have fit very well with the blaring power rock of The Touch. Playing the song over the film's final battle makes it an eerily appropriate choice, and considering how well the decisive blows of the Cybertronian combatants line up with it, it's easy to believe that the animators actually created the scene to be set to the tune of The Touch before the soundtrack was finalized. The battle even mirrors the '80s film, being Optimus and Megatron's first fight rather than their last, and similarly has Optimus taking down hordes of Decepticons alone.
"The Touch" Has Been Used Many Times Since The 1986 Movie
The Cultural Impact Of "The Touch" Goes Beyond Transformers
The Touch has been used throughout the various Transformers cartoons and films since the 1986 film many times. During the serialized retelling of the film's events broadcast in the first generation animated series, Optimus Prime tells the human boy Tommy "I leave you with 'The Touch!'" before leaving, prompting the footage to cut to the song's music video. In Transformers Prime, one human character makes reference to the song by humming it, and in Transformers Earthspark, its notes are faintly heard when another human character tells another "You've got the touch", referencing the initial lyrics.
Stan Bush himself has made multiple updates of the song over the years to sync up with the release of the live-action movies, once in 2007 for the first Michael Bay film, and one uniquely Linkin Park-inspired version, complete with early-2000s angst and a rap section, for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The Touch actually did make it into Bumblebee, with the titular Autobot hero briefly playing it from the radio to encourage his new human friend. Even in Transformers One, Elita-1 actually references the song's lyrics, telling Orion he doesn't have "the touch" or "the power" in her introduction.
The pop culture influence of The Touch has even extended beyond the Transformers franchise. Mark Wahlberg sang a karaoke version of the song in the 1997 film Boogie Nights long before he would star in a Transformers movie himself. Various cartoons and video games like Regular Show or Guitar Hero: World Tour have also similarly included the song as a pure distillation of '80s nostalgia. In some ways, the fame of The Touch has almost eclipsed that of the Transformers franchise itself.
Why Transformers One Is Transformers' Best Movie In 20 Years
Even If It Was Failed By Its Marketing
Even without The Touch, Transformers One has still distinguished itself as easily the best piece of Transformers media created in a very long time. Orion Pax and D-16's diverging arcs and the painful destruction of their believable bond is made all the more poignant by Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry's top-notch vocal performances. The actual animation, fight scene choreography, and set dressing are all stunning as well, making a world like Cybertron, supposedly devoid of any organic life, feel more alive and real than many science fiction planets in contention with it.
Orion Pax and D-16's diverging arcs and the painful destruction of their believable bond is made all the more poignant by Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry's top-notch vocal performances.
Sadly, Transformers One was a huge box office flop, earning only $129.4 million against a budget of $75–147 million before any advertising. Speaking of which, the marketing for Transformers One was ittedly abysmal, focusing on quippy one-liners that came across as cringey in a vacuum and betraying the depth of the film's emotional core by reducing it to a jokey blockbuster cashing in on its star-studded cast. Few films have been as betrayed by their advertising as Transformers One was, contributing to its poor financial standing.
Transformers One Box Office: Totals, Worldwide, Opening Explained
How much money has Transformers One made at the domestic and worldwide box office, and how does it compare to the rest of the movies in the franchise?
Because of this, any promise of a Transformers One sequel is made on shaky grounds, with Paramount likely to be nervous taking another risk on an animated Transformers film despite the overwhelmingly positive critical response. Perhaps The Touch could have made all the difference in giving the film that much more bit of appeal to nostalgic audiences and fans of the original cartoon. Knowing that the film itself is aware of the song's influence because of Elita-1's throwaway line, if there is a sequel to Transformers One, it had better have The Touch.
Transformers One
- Release Date
- September 20, 2024
- Runtime
- 104 Minutes
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