Bay Area filmmaker’s journey goes full circle with ‘Transformers One’

Josh Cooley has left behind one set of toys for another — from Woody and Buzz Lightyear to Optimus Prime and Megatron.

The Bay-Area-raised animator and filmmaker, who still has a home base in Livermore, won an Oscar in 2020 for directing “Toy Story 4,” and is now at the helm of “Transformers One,” which opened across the country Friday.

“I think the reason I got into animation in the first place was every Saturday morning, watching ‘Transformers,’ ‘G.I. Joe,’ ‘He-Man,’ ‘Looney Tunes,’ all that,” said Cooley, who recently visited San Francisco to discuss the film. “What I wanted for this film was the feeling of those Saturday mornings.”

He found kindred spirits in the folks at Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco’s Presidio , where they did early visual story-reel and motion-capture work “to get the characters into the computer.“

“ILM is a dream come true. They grew up with ‘Transformers,’ and they have a love for it,” he said. “Some of them have more intense love for it. They'd throw characters in there, and I'd go, ‘Wait a second, who is that?’ They'd go, ‘That's a character I loved as a kid. I had the toy, so I just thought I’d put him in.’ I’d go, ‘Great, let’s do it!’”

“Transformers One“ tells the story of Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and K-19 (performed by Brian Tyree Henry), two robots without the ability to transform who are forced to work mining Energon, a substance the robots need to survive.

In a twist of fate, they learn the sinister truth about their planet’s rulers, and they begin down the path that will turn them into the good Optimus Prime and the evil Megatron, respectively.

Cooley said he remembers seeing the first “Transformers” movie, the very clunky but much-loved 1986 animated feature, in the theater. Nine years after that, his teenage self saw the original “Toy Story,” little knowing he would be part of its legacy.

“I was part of the general audience seeing all those films,” he said. “It's really trippy.“

In 2003, he was recruited as an intern at Pixar, and began working as a storyboard artist on “The Incredibles” and other films. He wrote and directed the short film “George and A.J.,” which was based on characters from the film “Up” and released in 2009.

He co-wrote the screenplay for “Inside Out” (2015), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay, and led to his directing “Toy Story 4.” After that success, he left Pixar for Los Angeles and a new direction.

He received the script for “Transformers One,” and was excited to take it on, but did one thing before saying “yes” — he asked Keegan-Michael Key, who played “Ducky“ in “Toy Story 4,” to play the robot B-127, who would eventually become fan favorite Bumblebee.

“I knew I wanted to have Keegan in this movie,” he said. “He can read the phone book, and it’s amazing. His improv is insane. And so he brought a lot of himself into it as well. I like to let him go. I’ll throw out some ideas from the side, and he just kind of runs with it.”

Unsurprisingly, “Transformers One” has an incredible look and feel, like a shiny, metallic thing with many moving pieces that slide along and satisfyingly snap together. But Cooley found many opportunities to make things feel organic.

“It‘s a subtle thing, but seeing them stretch before the race — it’s like, what are they stretching for, exactly?” he said. “But it’s those little touches like that that make it human, make them a little bit less robotic.”

The sound design, however, was something of a challenge.

“Everything’s metal”, he said. “I did not want this movie to sound like pots and pans were just banging on each other for two hours.”

But the right talent knew how to solve the problem.

“Our sound designer, Scott Martin Gershin, is like a mad genius — he’s got a jillion sound effects that he's created and just knows what the right thing is,” Cooley said. “He had just done ‘Pinocchio’ with Guillermo del Toro. He said, ‘I just figured that out with wood, not having wood blocks just hitting each other the whole time.’”

They concentrated on metal hitting other surfaces, such as dirt on the ground.

“It‘s not a tinny sound,” Cooley said. “It’s just a solid thump. It’s satisfying.”

Cooley has two kids, 13 and 16, who he said have grown up around the animation process. It’s demystified for them. They didn’t have much interest in the film.

“It’s just dad doing his thing,” he said.

However, there are good omens.

“It's funny, I was looking at some shots at home a couple months ago, and I didn’t realize my daughter was behind me,” Cooley said. “And she goes, ‘This looks really good. I want to see this!’”