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For at least one era of “Transformers” fans, the death of Optimus Prime in the 1986 animated feature “The Transformers: The Film” was a formative, if not downright traumatic, cinematic experience.

The backlash to Hasbro’s decision to kill off the Autobots’ boss to make room for new toys was so swift and loud that it saved a franchise that had largely been relegated to children’s entertainment until Michael Bay forced it to grow up — into adolescence, anyway — along with his live-action film series. With the release of “Transformers One,” director Josh Cooley hopes to find a middle ground between the kid-friendly adventures of the animated series and Bay’s antics as he explores the times that reshaped starry-eyed droids Orion Pax (Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) into future archenemies Optimus Prime and Megatron. Along for the ride are B-127 (Keegan-Michael Key), soon to be Bumblebee, and Elita-1 (Scarlett Johanson) as they navigate an era in Cybertron’s history that seems anything but golden.

Ahead of the Sept. 20 release of “Transformers One,” Cooley spoke with Selection regarding the Unicron-sized shadow that “The Transformers: The Film” solidified into its own animated project and the various influences, from biblical epics to Michael Bay’s live-action films, that shaped his vision for this never-before-seen slice of “Transformers” mythology.

How much, if at all, did “The Transformers: The Film” influence your approach to “Transformers One?”

After I was seven, I saw it in the theater at a friend’s birthday party, and we were kind of shocked that Hasbro was trying to wipe the slate clean and create new characters. I went back and watched it before I started this movie, and the feeling I remembered seeing in the theater was just how huge it was — Unicron coming in and just destroying the planet. Even “Star Wars,” at the time, never felt that big. That was the factor I wanted for this movie: As a result of not having the human scale to tell the story, I wanted to go the other way. So instead of the robots feeling big, it’s the world around them that’s big, Cybertron itself.

What were its visible characteristics in the creation of this world?

I wanted to start with G1, which is the series that we grew up watching. There’s something really clear about the design of these characters and something iconic… every little thing seems to be based on that. So we started with Floro (Dery), who was the original designer of all these characters. After that, the other factor in giving it its own little thing that was totally different was to draw on art deco and the way that this 1930s design model was all about post-depression — that everyone’s feeling better and things are going well. And this was a Cybertron where things are going well before it starts to fall apart. And so that design model is always about how grand and elegant every little thing can be. The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, that design model looks like a robot that they actually created. So that was something that we used for the manufacturing design of it, and we even brought it into the character design as well.

Clearly, it’s important to meet Megatron as a villain. However, how did you make sure you didn’t betray, or overdo, the friendship between the two?

The thing I really hung my hat on was the connection between the two of them and making sure it wasn’t, “I don’t like you anymore, I hate you, now let’s fight.”[The conflict comes]as a result of them imagining that each of them has the right answer to this problem. And the more dangerous the last dangerous man is, it makes you sympathize with Megatron more because you understand where he’s coming from. And from the beginning, I really wanted to make him someone that you could understand where he’s coming from, so you feel that relationship more and not just someone who becomes evil for the sake of showing evil.

In terms of tone or narrative, were there any films that served as a touchpoint for what you wanted to capture?

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a great example because[Caesar and Koba]have the same goal, but one wants to do more with it than the other. I was looking at something that had siblings or friendly relationships that fall apart. The things that got me most excited were looking at “Ben-Hur,” or “The Ten Commandments,” or “Spartacus,” these big epic tales that have a central relationship that kind of falls apart in the middle of them. Because initially when I read the script, I thought, this feels like pure good versus evil in the biblical sense, like Cain and Abel to me. And that’s why I went to see those early films that were huge in scale but very personal in the middle.

Michael Bay’s films have created their own visible and narrative ecosystem. How consciously did you have to differentiate this reality from that?

Well, the truth is, this is already animated, which makes it very different. And also, since Transformers One is set on another planet, we can have completely different looks right away. So, being able to push the look of it, and also not having to, like with live-action, make everything look 100% there, 100% real. If you put a real person in our movie, they’re not going to line up, because that’s not the goal. So, that allowed us to simplify some things and make things a little bit clearer. Normally, especially when robots are fighting and they’re the same size, it can be hard to learn. So I wanted to make sure that with ours, the color really popped so you could tell who was who right away.

Also, the prevention model. Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian, who worked on all the live-action films as well, were showing me how they would use motion capture to announce some of the fighting experts. That really made me decide that that wasn’t what I needed to do, because it felt like two people in attacks defending each other. So I decided that we wanted to take full advantage of the power of transformation as a solution for attacking and defending. And I liked being intrigued by what could make this film completely different from anything that had been done before.

There are some lovely scenes in the film, especially towards the top when Orion Pax is starting to transform into Optimus Prime. How important is it to include these creative moments when you’re dealing with a story that’s meant for audiences of all ages?

This is one of my favorite sequences in the movie, if not my favorite. I completely agree with you that it’s more condensed and impressionistic than the rest of the movie. However, back then, if we had the audience, they would have known what was going on, and I felt confident that we could have lost any kind of sound there and mostly let the music carry it almost like an opera. After that, it makes his name Optimus Prime for the first time that much more impactful if that’s the only thing we’re really hearing when it comes to dialogue. However, I’m of the opinion that kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Having worked on Inside Out, I remember sitting in the preview audience and just crossing my fingers hoping that this whole concept of the mind would make some sense to kids. You had their mom and dad in the audience saying, “My kids are not going to understand this movie,” but their similar kid just said, “I totally get it,” and told us what the movie was about. So it just needs to be clear. And that’s not easy — it just needs to be clear.

Optimus Prime’s demise in “The Transformers: The Movie” was driven by the toys. This was, at the time, a controversial resolution among fans. However, over time, audiences have become more nuanced, and so has the animation. How mature or “adult” did you want to go with this?

Well, if there was any dialogue at all, it was more about how things were presented on screen. We had some moments of more overt violence, not even at the end of the movie, but at the beginning we had some images that were very clear — you’re just seeing them. And the note was, “This might be too much.” And I was happy to get the note, because it allowed me to almost… not show the shark in “Jaws,” what do I mean? Where, here’s the violent act, but you’re probably not seeing what’s coming out of it, which actually makes it that much more intense. So it was just figuring out that balance, figuring out that this would be a movie for everyone. I feel like even with the climax of the movie between the two of them, it was like, let’s show what feels right and not go overboard with it.

How much policing was there of the mythology by Hasbro so as not to stray too far from the mythology that is already known?

Everyone knew from the beginning that this was a reboot… a continuity that was separate from what had gone before. So we had our four most important characters (Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, and Arcee) that we all knew needed to be in it. After that, I got a bunch of lore from Hasbro about totally different variations of what had gone before. I also did my own analysis of the lore, but at the same time, it was all about not getting too caught up in the weeds, because the last thing you need is a story lesson being told to you if it’s not emotional. So figuring out that the connection between Optimus and Megatron was going to be the emotional factor, it was like, what can we use to help with that? There was no mandate to use this character or that character. It was whatever was best for the story.

To what extent did this film set up a story trajectory that leads in the direction of the mythology that audiences are already familiar with?

The cool thing about this being an origin story is that we were able to go back further than anything that’s ever been seen in a movie before. And then to find out that these two were going to “split up” at the end, meaning there’s a whole series of stories before they end up on Earth. So that was as basic as we thought. It wasn’t like, “Let’s plan every little thing that’s happening.” It was just more like, once they split up, that’s their arc for the story — and there’s positive room for that to continue.

This interview has been edited and condensed.