★★☆☆☆
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the 7th big screen, live-action Transformers film. It’s a winning formula: big robots fighting each other amid handsome explosions. Michael Bay has obviously crafted his entire career around such a genre and the Ambulance-director was responsible for the first five Transformers films, which are of varying quality. The general consensus is that the franchise ran out of juice after the second film.
2017’s Bumblebee, directed by Travis Knight, managed to breathe some fresh air into a tired franchise. By setting the action in the 80s, with a killer soundtrack and Hailee Steinfeld as the mandatory human protagonist, Bumblebee represented a new, bold direction for Transformers.
Unfortunately, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts drops the ball and returns the franchise to its old, tired tropes.
Credit: Paramount Pictures
This time, we have two humans getting themselves involved in Autobot business. Noah (Anthony Ramos) is an ex-soldier, who is struggling to pay for his little brother’s hospital treatments. Elena (Dominique Fishback) is interning at a museum of archeology and becomes fascinated by a statue, which, unknown to her, is actually a Maximal relic.
What are Maximals you might ask? They’re like Autobots – the robots who can turn into cars – but they’re animal shaped and mostly based in Peru. The Autobots and Maximals team up in order to stop a massive space robot, Unicron, from eating Earth and every other planet in existence. Poor Noah and Elena must also help because they’re tiny and get into places the robots can’t. How convenient.
Rise of the Beasts has a peculiar problem. Most of the Michael Bay films were criticised for the human characters; they weren’t interesting and no one paid money to see humans interact, people wanted mass destruction and robots. Somehow, Rise of the Beasts not only features the most interesting, if still bland, human characters but the stand-out sequences are the ones where Noah and Elena are on their own, sans robots.
An early sequence at the museum is tense and leans into horror as both Noah and Elena try to make it out alive without being detected by the spider-like Freezers. A similar sequence later takes place in a cave and these are the only truly thrilling scenes in the film. While the Maximals and Autobots are still impressive, the drawn-out battles are messy and poorly shot.
The film jumps from one battle to the next, but fails to make the scene in-between interesting. There are heavy exposition dumps throughout the film and it clumsily sets out its themes at the beginning, but mostly abandons them.
Ramos and Fishback are proof that casting matters. Fishback especially is charismatic and while Rise of the Beasts might not make Ramos into a full-blown action star yet, he certainly proves he still has the leading man charisma we glimpse at In The Heights. The script sprinkles in just enough humour to make Rise of the Beasts amusing, if not exactly laugh-out-loud funny. Pete Davidson, who voices the Autobot Mirage, mostly just plays it as a version of himself. Ron Perlman gives Peter Cullen a run for his money as the two voice Optimuses Primal and Prime respectively.
It doesn’t get much more iconic than Cullen roaring “Autobots, roll out!”, but that cool factor isn’t enough to power Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. While it manages to establish a playful tone, Stephen Caple Jr.’s film leans too heavily into nostalgia rather than worldbuilding or any meaningful character dynamics. There is still a future for Transformers on the big screen and hopefully Rise of the Beasts is just a minor bump on the road.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is in cinemas 8 June.
