‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’ Review: Prequel Lacks Michael Bay’s Eye For Action
Optimus Primal in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Regardless of all of the strange aspect ratio changes and excessive cuts in his Transformers movies, there’s no question that Michael Bay has an eye for action and knows how to make it enjoyable. Unfortunately, he’s not directing Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, a movie that, even if you turn your brain off, becomes numbingly dull in its second hour, wasting the best parts of the Transformers mythos on a movie that is so unsure of itself and seemingly prioritizes sequels in its third act. The film, a prequel to the five Transformers movies directed by Bay that started in 2007 and a sequel to 2018’s Bumblebee — which is by far the best Transformers movie — begins with a “so, here’s what you need to know” sequence introducing Unicron (voiced by Colman Domingo), the ultimate big-bad of the Transformers universe if there is one.
Optimus Prime in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
This sequence, narrated by Ron Perlman (who plays Optimus Primal, leader of the Maximals), introduces us to the Maximals, another race of Transformers (not Autobots or Decepticons) that, when transformed, loosely resemble animals instead of vehicles. We’re thrust into the film’s first battle scene when Unicron — a being bigger than a planet, consuming them for fuel — intends to eat the homeworld of the Maximals. He succeeds, of course, except for the few that escape, carrying the Transwarp Key, the film’s McGuffin. Then, it’s 1994, and we’re on Earth, following the dual stories of Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos from In The Heights) and Elena (Dominique Fishback from Swarm), two Brooklyn-born people who, for different reasons, discover the existence of the Transformers. Noah, unemployed and behind on his brother’s medical bills, meets Mirage (Pete Davidson), the f**kboy Transformer if there ever were one. Noah and Mirage share some of the film’s best moments, including a contender for best line of the year, “Work friends? You were inside me!”
The two serve as this film’s pair (think Shia LeBeouf and Bumblebee), joking back and forth throughout the film until they hit a moment where the film disregards all ideas of reality, doing something that should set a precedent for future films (our past, in the future chronologically) but doesn't — a plot beat that makes little to no sense for how quickly it’s disregarded. Outside of that, the story isn’t hard to wrap your head around — aside from using the franchise’s ultimate threat in the first film (of a trilogy?) — following a generally straightforward plot that takes us around the world, searching for the fragmented Transwarp Key in hopes of getting to it before Scourge (voiced by Peter Dinklage), the servant of Unicron (who sold his soul to him, à la the devil).
Bumblebee & Cheetor in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
One of the most frustrating things about Rise of the Beasts’ third act — aside from how MCU it gets — is how bad the CGI looks at times. When you take a film with very few physical (human) characters and put them in an (almost entirely) computer-generated environment, it really needs to look good. That said, Ramos and Fishback are clearly just standing on green/blue screens, visible from just the fact that the lighting on them is different than the lighting on the Transformers and the environment itself. When it comes to the Transformers themselves, we get some of the usual suspects — Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, mainstays of the franchise — alongside new/revamped additions to the team (outside of the Maximal roster, which features Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh as a falcon-esque robot) including Arcee (now played by late 2010s YouTube sensation Liza Koshy) and Wheeljack (voiced by Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernández).
There’s nothing truly good or bad that stands out about Rise of the Beasts. The film is just average, still placing above all five of Bay’s entries — primarily due to the fact that it tries to care about its characters and their characterization as well as telling an entertaining story — but not reaching the heights of Bumblebee, which, though it strayed from the traditional Transformers formula, felt more like something we’ve seen before, just with a giant (sometimes talking) robot. One puzzling thing, however, is the decision to change the design of Optimus Prime, who, in Bumblebee, had his best live-action look yet.
Optimus Primal (left), Cheetor, & Wheeljack in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
For a movie called Rise of the Beasts, there sure aren’t a lot of beasts to be found, as they’re clearly sidelined to make room for a more familiar story with characters we either already know or can easily relate to. The film’s third act and climax do deliver a solid amount of thrills and strong visuals, as there’s a clear idea for where the franchise wants to go — though it’s unclear as to whether or not they’re retconning Bay’s decade of movies. Though, when watching the third-act battle, there’s a clear disconnect from reality when it comes to the involvement of Ramos and Fishback’s characters, more than when Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox were fighting alongside the robots a decade ago purely due to the scale and scope that the film aims for — it feels unrealistic that they expect any of the human characters to be able to contribute, let alone participate in these events. It’s a battle that, while fun to watch, lacks the excitement that was promised in Bay’s films. Regardless of that, the film is by far the most enjoyable and entertaining since the first Transformers, throwing away the childish humor, though it replaces it with cheesy dialogue and useless exposition. It’s certainly a small step in the right direction for the franchise, but not the big leap that Transformers desperately needs.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now playing in theaters worldwide.
