Upon its release in 1986, Nelson Shin’s “The Transformers : The Movie” was massively influential — less as entertainment inspired by a popular line of children’s toys than one that was willing to eliminate a major character in order to make room for new ones. The death of heroic Autobot leader Optimus Prime proved so traumatic to a generation of young viewers that toy company Hasbro scrambled to prevent Duke from a similar fate in “G.I. Joe: The Movie,” released a year later. For almost four decades, it prevented many family-friendly cartoons from raising the stakes too high. Thankfully, “ Transformers One ” mostly ignores its predecessor’s downstream legacy.

Now, in the first animated film in the franchise to play theatrically since that one, director Josh Cooley doesn’t commit widespread Cybertronian genocide. That wouldn’t do, since “Transformers One” serves as an origin story for the central conflict between Autobots and Decepticons that the various animated series, live-action films and various media spinoffs have explored since the toy line debuted. And yet, while still delivering the fun and excitement expected of Hasbro’s metamorphosizing robots, “Transformers One” approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity (as well as violent finality, in a few cases) that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.

Lending their voices as Orion Pax and D-16, Chris Hemsworth and Bryan Tyree Henry portray the two droids who will one day become Optimus Prime and Megatron. Eager to make his mark on Cybertronian society, Orion dreams of the two of them rising above their current station as miners of Energon, the energy source for the planet that has all but disappeared. Meanwhile, D-16 is more cautious and fearful of disrupting the status quo, even if it means a life of unremarkable servitude.

Although neither possesses a cog — the component that enables these robots to transform — Orion enters them in a celebratory race hoping to catch the eye of Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm), the last remaining Prime after his brethren were slain by the ruthless extraterrestrial species, the Quintessons. His plan succeeds, but Prime's attention proves fleeting and they find themselves relegated to a lower echelon of society than before, this time joined by fellow outcast B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key) and their disgraced former supervisor, Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson).

To regain their honor, Orion, D-16 and their comrades venture from their home in Iacon City to the surface in search of the Matrix of Leadership, a legendary artifact said to restore the planet's Energon flow. Instead, they uncover a complex conspiracy that stretches back to the era of the Primes, with consequences that redefine the very identities of almost all Cybertronians. Equipped with this newfound knowledge, they embark on a perilous journey back to Iacon City to unveil the truth to their fellow citizens, even as they grapple with how to navigate the aftermath of such a monumental revelation.

Despite the expert visual effects work done by Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain and others on the first five live-action “Transformers” films, ILM not only surpasses itself here in creating believable animated characters but makes a compelling argument that photorealism is not the best aesthetic for bringing them to life on screen. (It’s an argument that was already made by Travis Knight on the 2018 installment “Bumblebee,” while Steven Caple Jr.’s “Rise of the Beasts” minimized or avoided the noisy, overcomplicated machinery of Bay’s movies for something that more closely resembled the characters of the original cartoons.) These are androids that transform into vehicles, after all — and signing up to watch a film about them suggests as a viewer you’ve already accepted the premise. The fact that these characters now have identifiable faces, rather than a swirling mass of pixelated metal, is a significant step in itself.

But Cooley, an Oscar winner for directing “Toy Story 4,” goes beyond simplifying these heroes and villains' familiar silhouettes. He creates a stylized and cohesive world where these characters are both physically and metaphorically finding their place. The screenplay by Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari not only presents a Cybertron younger than audiences have ever witnessed, but characters who are less fully developed. As a result, a mutual transformation takes place. Orion lacks the unwavering authority of Optimus Prime, and D-16 the calculating ruthlessness of Megatron, but as they uncover their origins, each reacts in ways that are simultaneously canonical and deeply relatable.

The dynamic is reminiscent of Caesar and Koba in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” — one strives to champion and embody the best of the world around them, while the other has endured pain too profound to forget, or forgive. The force that brings these perspectives into conflict proves powerful enough to form the central dynamic around which virtually all “Transformers” lore has revolved.

Amidst all this philosophical complexity are some absolutely breathtaking visuals, including a snakelike track that materializes into a fiendish loop-de-loop in front of the racers as they vie for the top spot, or the buttes and mountain ranges that emerge like geometric screensavers as Orion, D-16 and their fellow fugitives explore the surface of Cybertron. While constructing his 'bot dystopia brimming with heroic moments and fast-paced action sequences, Cooley manages to infuse the film with impressionistic scenes that will captivate longtime fans (likely parents) seated alongside its intended audience — namely, children already enamored with Optimus and Megatron.

By casting Steve Buscemi as the perpetually sniveling Decepticon Starscream, he also makes one of the single best voice casting choices since Orson Welles as Unicron in “The Transformers: The Movie,” although the rest of the performers, from Hemsworth and Henry on down to Hamm as the smooth-talking Sentinel Prime, are all perfectly suited for their roles. Opinions may differ on Key's rapid-fire performance as the future Autobot sidekick Bumblebee, but if his humor (and the rest in the film as a whole) is often silly, I'd argue that's preferable to the sophomoric, raunchy, occasionally racist humor of Bay's live-action films.

Regardless of age, expectations won’t be subverted, but the movie offers a more nuanced portrayal of Cybertron’s heroes and villains than ever before, and it doesn’t shy away from the, let’s say, final fates of certain characters. Even so, in an age of more sophisticated animated offerings and the collective experience of audiences since 1986, Cooley’s film seems unlikely to provoke the same kind of backlash that its predecessor faced. In fact, “Transformers One” holds up well in a particularly robust year for high-quality animated fare: released in close proximity with “The Wild Robot,” another story of machines gone awry, its material may not seem as obviously emotional, but for a viewer who was first traumatized by “The Transformers” 38 years ago, it’s exciting to watch a new installment in this franchise and actually feel something again.