Thanks to the colourful, Spielbergian tone of the 2018 Bumblebee movie, the gargantuan Transformers franchise had a chance to fittingly change it’s form (most likely using that sound effect) from Michael Bay’s clanging, obnoxious, three hour, chaos-a-thons to something far more warmer and personable. While admittedly not raking in anything close to the box office of Dark Of The Moon or Age Of Extinction, Travis Knight’s if-E.T.-could-transform-into-a-Volkswagen, love letter to the 80’s garnered glowing reviews thanks to some great comedy, a genuinely touching storyline as some bitchin’, retro, Transformer designs that harkened back to the orginal toy designs that launched an empire.
Well, now the Transformers stands on a precipice as the latest entry, Rise Of The Beasts, aims to go large once again by hurling giant robot animals, planet eating mechanoid gods and an Autobot voiced by Pete Davidson at us, all the while hoping it doesn’t jump the Sharkticon and lose us in the din. Does it do it? Roll out and find out.
Its 1994 and Optimus Prime and his assorted band of Autobot warriors has been hiding out on Earth, waiting patiently for any opportunity to get back to their home planet of Cybertron. However, when an advanced piece of Transformer tech called the Transwarp key pops up in a museum in Brooklyn, Prime is eager to obtain it and use its portal creating ability as an intergalactic Uber to return everyone back where they came from. Streetwise, Autobot soldier Mirage hits upon the idea of using a human – unemployed, ex-soldier Noah Diaz – to help them nab it, but it soon becomes apparent that things aren’t going to be that easy.
You see, the Transwarp key was brought to Earth ages ago by a group of advanced, Transformer colonists named the Maximals as they fled the planet devouring God known as Unicron and his sadistic lieutenant, Scourge, who both want the key in order to bring the huge, robot deity to new planets to scoff with reckless abandon.
With museum intern Elena in tow to help decipher all the various puzzles that will lead to their prize, the Autobots brawl with Scourge and, after a terrible loss, eventually make to Peru where they finally meet the Maximals and their leader, the simian-shaped Optimus Primal.
The scene is set for a team-up for the ages as Scourge seems set to succeed in bopping his gluttonous boss directly into Earth’s atmosphere, but while Prime seems willing to partner up with his animal-shaped counterparts, he’s not so sure about putting so much trust in us carbon-based lifeforms. Can Noah, Elena and Mirage persuade Optimus to not be such a grumpy mothertrucker in time for the big battle or will Unicron rock up to this all you can eat buffet, unopposed?
Despite being a fan of the original, G1 strain of the Transformers, I never really got Beast Wars to be honest, primarily because the franchise’s raison d’etre of featuring Robots In Disguise is somewhat diffused when your disguise is that of a twenty foot, mechanoid gorilla. However, bringing in these characters from the 1996 animated series does make a certain amount of sense as it expands the universe with something that’s subtly different – no matter how illogical it still may be (a robot with glasses – what the fuck is his prescription?).
Replacing Bumblebee’s Travis Knight with Steven Caple Jr. makes a certain amount of thematic sense as he’s a director who is no stranger to staging 80’s born grude matches as evidenced by the updated Creed vs. Drago face/off he delivered in Creed II. However, when required to fuse the heart of Bumblebee and the eye-popping mania of purest Bayhem, this opening salvo of what my retreating testicles tell me will be the start of some interconnected Hasbro-Verse, just can’t fully ditch the bad habits of entries past. The solo Bumblebee flick worked precisely because it put all the complicated lore in the background and kept globe trotting macguffin hunting to a minimum, however, Rise Of The Beasts brings all that back with a vengence, shoving your face into a big, steaming pile of galaxy hopping doohickies, a cast of new Transformers that have amost no bearing on the story whatsoever and and masses of Saturday morning cartoon levels of plotting in an attempt to make the messy premise make some sort of sense.
If you’re ten, or if the fact that an alien robot from another world can not only take the form of a cheetah, but is actually named Cheetor despite never having encountered one doesn’t bother you in the least, then you’ll most likely come out from Rise Of The Beast punching the air. However, everybody will most likely exit the cinema wanting to punch something else as, in its worst moments, this seventh movie in the series is content to make the same old mistakes all over again.
It’s not all bad. If you’d told me six months ago that Pete Davidson’s responsibility-adverse, fist bumping Auto-bro, Mirage, was going to walk away with the movie, I most likely would have spat an Energon cookie back in your face, but to give the devil his due, he’s a perfect, chatty, counterpoint to the doe-eyed, mostly mute Bumblebee, who weirdly takes something of a backseat in this film. Also working well is Anthony Ramos’ Noah Diaz, whose working class hero has far better motivation for joining an intergalactic war than both Mark Wahlberg’s ditzy inventor or Shia Labeouf’s entitled man-child combined even if stringing in Dominique Fishback’s flustered museum intern to decode Crystal Maze-level puzzles is somewhat of a strain. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to stop a string of twists, sacrifices and shock deaths pass us by without twanging any emotional strings whatsoever – which is incredibly worrying, considering some of the voice actors involved (Ron Pearlman, Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage), not to mention that we’ve been in the company of these movies since 2007.
I guess we should thank our lucky stars that Bay isn’t calling the shots anymore because we probably would have got a moment where Optimus Primal flings his robot monkey poo at an approaching villain, however, the movie makes some baffling continuity errors that probably wouldn’t of happened under Bay’s meticulous visual style. At one point, Mirage visibly changes sizes by a good couple of feet in a single scene and some of the green screen work isn’t as polished as you’d expect.
However, despite some iffy staging and some typically bland, Transformer characterization, the movie plays with its 90’s setting incredibly well, needle-dropping countless musical bangers from the decade with the impact of a particularly bitchin’, Prime delivered fatality. Also, despite the adolescent storytelling, whenever the film drops the plot and focuses solely on the war mongering robots doing their thing, it’s tough not to engage with your inner child as these giant, literal, toys warp, shoot, flip and brawl with exaggerated gusto.
At the end of the day, however, classifying Rise Of The Beasts isn’t as straightforward as it might first appear. While a massive step down from Bumblebee, it’s also, for all its faults, a massive step up from The Last Knight and so I’m in somewhat of a conundrum. However, if I’m being honest with myself, it’s a shame the filmmakers couldn’t use this reboot to transform the franchise into something less dumb.
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