Transformers One End Credit Scene & Twist Explained By Director

Transformers One is now in theaters and if you saw it, clearly there is plenty to talk about. Yes, there’s an end credits scene that teases what’s to come, but it’s more so what happens in the movie—specifically how and why D-16 becomes Megatron—that is both shocking and ripe for discussion.

We did just that with the film’s director Josh Cooley. Cooley, who previously directed Toy Story 4, spoke to io9 about the film’s big twists as well as, yes, what that scene in the end credits means. Read all about it below.

Germain Lussier, io9: One of the things that really struck me watching the movie is that D-16’s disillusionment with his heroes is what drives him toward evil. I thought that was really interesting. It’s not what you expect going in. So I’m curious, was that always the idea? Tell me about tracking his path, and how you hit the right beats to make sure that arc was seeded throughout.

Josh Cooley: That wasn’t always the idea. It became part of it when we were just trying to get his arc right. Knowing he’s got to become antagonistic. But what I love about that character is you understand why he’s acting that way, which is something from day one that I was like “Okay, if we can do that—that’s huge.” That, and also if we can sell the relationship between the two of them in act one. So the part of that relationship being sold was if he’s a fan of Sentinel [Prime, voiced by Jon Hamm], that’s a great way to turn him, is by having his hero betray him. You understand that. You’d be mad, too.

Then it became “Okay, that’s great because then we just need to play Sentinel waaaaaay like the nice guy.” Like he’s like a politician who’s going around kissing babies. The guy with his sleeves rolled up but then he turns out to be the devil. Then letting that be a revelation right in the middle of the movie, that totally twists everything. That’s where everything starts to make a real change. And so I’d say it all came out of just trying to put us on D-16’s side. And at one point we went too far. I had a screening and our whole crew was like, “I kind of agree with D-16, the whole movie.” I was like, “Uh-oh, that’s not what we want.”

io9: [Laughs] Well that leads to the next question, which is I was surprised at how much you hate Sentinel. Like everything he does is so evil but then you get the cog reveal and you’re like, “Dude, this is, like, so fucked up.”

Cooley: [Laughs]

io9: Like you took the hearts out of all these babies on the planet. Tell me about how evil you wanted to push him.

Cooley: Yeah, that’s part of it. The more evil he is, then the more you side with D-16. And you go, “Oh, I get why he’s upset and yeah, I’d want to shoot him too.” That was the whole goal. We need to make our bad guy really bad so that everybody understands where D-16 is coming from. And I mean, Jon Hamm’s perfect. He just did an absolutely amazing job there. And he got it immediately. And all the animators were fighting over animating him because of the smugness and just the levity that he had throughout the entire film, basically. There’s only kind of a couple of times when you really lose it. And I think that just adds to the, you just want to smack him in the face because he’s just like, “I don’t know. I’m pretty great” right before he carves something into your chest. He’s just a great bad guy.

io9: Yeah. And was it was it just a pacing decision that put the Decepticons reveal at the end credits or how did it end up there?

Cooley: I would say, yeah, because we did have it earlier. Like when he first puts the cog in and says, “I’m Megatron”—we had a version where he said, “We won’t be deceived anymore, now we’re going to be the Decepticons.” But it was too much. It was like, “Wait, there’s too many things happening at the same time.” But I knew we needed to have that scene. I mean, that’s just so powerful and awesome. And so it became like, “Well, what if we did it as an end credit scene?” and left it at the very, very end. And that way, that’s the only time we hear the word “Decepticon” is right there at the very, very end.

io9: Lorenzo [di Bonaventura, producer] said at Comic-Con that he thinks there are probably three billion years between what happens in here and what happens in the stories we’re used to. And we know some of what happens in between, including the fall of Cybertron. So I’m wondering, this story takes place over only a couple of days. How much talk was there of the story being bigger? I know you would never say if there’s are sequel plans or anything, but how much story kind of didn’t make it in that could be told in the future?

Cooley: I think just knowing that they come to Earth, because that’s what everybody knows about Transformers, there is more story built in. In terms of this film, I’d say it was always within a handful of days. Because if you had a large time jump in there with our main characters, you’d lose the relationship. It needed to kind of be fresh in your mind. It couldn’t feel like a month had gone by when they were out walking around because then you’re like “What happened during all that month?” You want to see what happens there. So it always had this kind of immediacy to it, which was necessary. I mean, it really drives act two and three, which is like, we need to get back as fast as we can.  And so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens in the future.

Transformers One is now in theaters

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