Transformers: Rise of the Beast

While it doesn’t reach the heights of 2018’s Bumblebee, this is still one of the better live-action Transformers movies thanks to its sense of fun and inventiveness, but unlike Bumblebee, it’s unlikely to appeal to anyone other than fans of the series.

Premise:  In 1994 New York, ex-military electronics expert Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) is struggling to pay his little brother’s medical bills, and so is persuaded by a friend to steal a Porsche to support his family – but the Porsche is really the Autobot Mirage (Pete Davidson) in disguise.  Noah is then drawn into the Autobots’ mission to find a Transwarp Key hidden on Earth by Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) and the Maximals, before Scourge (Peter Dinklage) and his army of Terrorcons can use it to summon the world-eating Unicron (Colman Domingo) to devour the planet.

Review:

After paying to watch the godawful Transformers: Age of Extinction in 2014, I vowed never to pay to watch another live-action Transformers movie (and certainly didn’t when Transformers: The Last Knight came out in 2017).  But I relented when Bumblebee came out in 2018, and I’m glad I did, because that film was an absolute tonne of fun, and was by far the best live-action Transformers movie to date.  In comparison, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is no Bumblebee – but it’s also managed to avoid a lot of the problems that beset the overblown later Michael Bay directed Transformers films.

Firstly, it does a pretty decent job of developing the main human character, both in terms of giving him more backstory and depth, and in terms of getting him involved in the robot-v-robot sequences.  Anthony Ramos is given enough screentime to establish Noah’s character and struggles before the Transformers enter his life, and as anyone who’s seen In The Heights or Hamilton will know, Anthony Ramos has enough charm and charisma to win audiences over very quickly.  That said, in comparison it does feel like Dominique Fishback’s intern character Elena Wallace is more of an exposition-delivering-device than a three dimensional character (which is a shame after Bumblebee managed to develop both Hailee Steinfeld’s and Jorge Lendeborg Jr’s characters in that film).

“…the film manages to find enough screentime to flesh out the characters…”

The second thing that the film gets right is doing a decent job of giving the Transformers themselves personalities and characters.  Outside of Bumblebee (which really just focused on one Transformer character), the live-action Transformers films have all struggled to give any of the Autobots other than Optimus Prime recognisable or memorable personalities – which is ironic, given that the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie did such a great job of fleshing out the Autobots into individual, recognisable characters.  In this movie, the main focus is arguably still on Optimus Prime – but even then, the film gives him some different notes to play – and then alongside Optimus Prime, the film manages to find enough screentime to flesh out the characters of Mirage (Pete Davidson), Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) and Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), even if the other Autobots and Maximals are all fairly interchangeable.  In terms of the antagonists, Peter Dinklage ensures that Scourge is an effective and villainous presence, although Colman Domingo has little more than a cameo as Unicron.

Plotwise, it’s probably not a good idea to get too hung up on how/if this film connects to the others in the series – it appears that even the filmmakers are playing fast and loose with whether the “prequels” (Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts) take place in the same timeline as the Michael Bay films, so I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.  This film (like Bumblebee before it) arguably works best in any event if you treat it as a standalone movie … although the ending does suggest that director Steven Caple Jr may have some ideas about where he might like to take the story from here.

“…the best Transformers-versus-Transformers third act battle sequence of the franchise…”

Overall, if you’re not a fan of the Transformers generally, then this film is unlikely to win you over, as it’s all just a bit of nonsensical fun when all is said and done.  But if you have any affection for the series/characters (even if you didn’t enjoy some or all of the Michael Bay movies), then there should be enough here to keep you entertained for a couple of hours – especially as this film has arguably the best Transformers-versus-Transformers third act battle sequence of the entire franchise so far.