Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts review: reboot is long on action, short on ideas
Generic installment continues to prioritize spectacle over character, leaving stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback stranded
Film Reviews Transformers
It’s understandable why most critics and many fans of the popular Hasbro toy line view the five Transformers movies directed by Michael Bay with utter disdain. They’re narratively incoherent, and defined by a lazy, cynical approach to the IP. However, Bay is such a wizard of eye-popping, grand-scale action that he deserves more credit for nailing just how big these epics—centered on giant, robot-like aliens capable of shapeshifting into recognizable vehicles—should be. With IMAX-ready wide shot compositions and go-for-broke action sequences, Bay delivered maximalist spectacle so immersive that it intermittently eclipsed the films’ story and tonal issues, especially in series standout Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the 2011-released third entry, which spent nearly the entirety of its second half on a thrillingly sustained “battle for Chicago” set piece.
The series’ first non-Bay-helmed outing, 2018’s charming spin-off Bumblebee, didn’t offer much in the way of memorable action, but director Travis Knight and writer Christina Hodson wisely jettisoned much of what was problematic about the previous films—the narrative bloat, the leering sexism, the queasy-making politics—and infused the story with a welcome emotional sincerity that suited the smaller-scale approach. The result was a likable coming-of-age yarn that just happened to feature giant alien robots, and the first series entry to offer characters worth caring about.
So it seems like a no-brainer that the ideal way to go for the franchise at this point is to combine the endearing heart of Bumblebee with the event movie grandeur of Bay’s installments, which is what the new Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, set seven years after Bumblebee, strives to do. Unfortunately, this thoroughly generic reboot doesn’t exert enough effort in the attempt, working from the same tired story template of earlier sequels that focused on a quest for a sci-fi MacGuffin—in this case, the Trans-Warp Key, which opens portals in time and space allowing whoever possesses it to travel to distant planets. It’s an easier-to-follow variation on the template than most of its predecessors, but still one dependent on long-winded exposition dumps. And the character-based material here lacks Bumblebee’s sweetness, coming off as cloyingly manipulative instead.
For example, in establishing our put-upon human hero Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), co-writers Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, and Josh Peters feel it’s not enough to make him a military dropout and tech whiz desperately chasing one canceled job interview after another. He’s also stuck living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment with his 11-year-old brother, Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez), who suffers from sickle-cell anemia so severe that it causes wrist pain when he fiddles with his beloved Game Boy, and their mother (Luna Lauren Velez), who struggles to pay the bills for Kris’ treatment. The amount of buttons being pushed with these crisis-defined characterizations surely exceeds the number found on your average Autobot chassis.
These dire circumstances push Noah to steal a silver Porsche for a neighborhood criminal outfit that’s been looking to exploit his mechanical know-how. Little does Noah know, however, that the Porsche is secretly an Autobot named Mirage (voiced by Pete Davidson). Soon enough, Mirage reveals his true, wisecracking robotic alien self to Noah, and whisks the stunned Earthling away on a mission to find and retrieve the Trans-Warp Key before it falls into the hands of the evil, planet-devouring Unicron. They enlist the assistance of archeological researcher Elena (Dominique Fishback), Autobot stalwarts Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and, once the adventure takes them to Peru, a band of Maximals, which are Transformers who resemble animals instead of vehicles.
Aside from an overcrowded, overextended climax pitting this array of heroes against Unicron’s army of defenders, the Terrorcons, director Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) executes the action scenes with flair, making that one department in which this ho-hum blockbuster doesn’t disappoint. While Caple Jr.’s action staging lacks Bay’s unique, primary color-saturated style and is slightly less mammoth-scaled, it’s more visually coherent in its long take-driven, cause-and-effect flow, which will please those who find Bay’s fast-cut-powered action indecipherable. Era-appropriate needle drops (the film is set in 1994) like Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” and LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” add even more spice and energy to the fun car chases and robot-on-robot battles.
But unlike Creed II, this project doesn’t give Caple Jr. anything to work with in terms of intimate human drama, and the thin characterizations hamper the lead actors’ talents. As charismatic as Ramos was in In The Heights, there are diminishing returns to Noah being a more cliched version of the same character type as that musical’s protagonist—a street-smart New Yorker whose cockiness can’t disguise that he has yet to realize his potential. Fishback, who was so good in Judas And The Black Messiah, seems understandably bored delivering the majority of the film’s exposition.
For anyone curious about where the Transformers franchise can go from here, a fan-service epilogue has the answer which, without spoiling anything, indicates an expansion of the series’ cinematic universe. What really needs expanding, though, are the dramatic possibilities of these movies, because the formula of a convoluted fetch quest with no credible human anchor but spectacular action has become extremely rusty.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts opens in theaters on June 9
57 Comments
“a fan-service epilogue has the answer which, without spoiling anything,
indicates an expansion of the series’ cinematic universe.”
So Transformers vs. G.I. Joe would be my guess.
Transformers vs. Go-Bots would get my butt in a seat, just because it’s so out there.
I just watched the post-credits scene and it’s actually Jem and the Holograms.
It’s truly outrageous you’d spoil such a reveal!
Transformers meet Barbie, I’d imagine. And maybe with Jenna Ortega playing a giant kid who makes them kiss each other and stuff.
. . .and, *ahem* stuff.
In terms of Hasbro properties that recently had a successful film, there’s Dungeons & Dragons.
Did D&D have a good weekend but overall underperform? I mean it was a fun movie but from a Hasbro perspective I have heard its not a hit
My objection to the live action Transformers films is rooted entirely in how busy the designs are. You legitimately cannot tell what the hell is going on half the time. Here, look at this still. I defy anyone who hasn’t seen the movie to tell me what the hell is happening here.
So if you didn’t know, the answer is a dude is staring at the gonads of a robot made of smashed together construction equipment.There may be other reasons to hate these movies.Anyhow, compare to how the same combiner (Devastator) looks in the Legacy of Cybertron toy line. Note that you can not only tell he’s made of individual work trucks, but also that he’s a big robot person and not a confusing pile of nonsense:
Honestly, I’ve never seen a single minute of a Transformers movie, but looking at the picture I was going to make a joke about how it’s obviously some giant robot hanging dong. So I guess you can tell what’s happening, though I’m sure that doesn’t make your main point wrong by any means.
Just a reminder that the image from the movie above is what happened the last time the WGA went on strike. This is why we need to pay writers!! Keep Robot balls off the screen
Also, we got a good look at the various vehicles that combine into him, and not a single one has wrecking balls. So they actually had to add that to the design for the sake of a lame joke. And it REALLY doesn’t help that Devastator’s design is so monstrously complicated that it literally melted the first computer that tried to animate it, which is why he doesn’t actually do anything besides this joke that people might remember.
The internet insists this Dall-E 2-looking-ass abstraction is a still of him but it looks so shockingly bad I’m not even sure I believe that.
That’s a bootleg devastator but you’re not entirely wrong lol
Yes. I hate it. Transformers look cool. The Transformers in the movie do *not* look cool. I feel it’s the result of “senioritis” wherein a major cultural property is worked on by people at the top of their game who are more interested in how fucking amazing their hard-surface modeling and ridiculously complicated animation rigs are than making things actually look cool. Everybody involved in these types of movies are surely among the best at what they do, but they’re unable to tone down their career/industry-minded gee-wizzardry in service of a holistically functional work of art.
My main of objection is the complete lack of realism in the design.Less of what you posted, more of this please:You’ve even got the sequel good to go, Rise Of The Toroidals.
i also hated the ways the characters are always moving around and doing flips and weird shit during normal conversations. it’s one thing to have an incoherent, busy action scene. it’s another for a dialogue scene to have that same problem.
Scrotobots.
i’ve only seen the first Bay Transformers, but I was so angry the whole time that it never once felt like I was watching giant. fucking. robots. They were just these weird, CGI, weightless things, racing around at some indefinable scale. I want to see a giant, lumbering foot crush a house – somethign which the recent Godzilla/Kong movies have gotten better at.
You picked the one scene most people remember about that movie. The enemy scrotum.
It’s Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 from Idiocracy. Millions died that day.
I hated the robot designs for the movies right off the bat, it looks like somebody just threw the whole silver drawer up in the air in slow motion and hoped it somehow formed a robot.
That’s a macro photo of you picking up dirt!
BUMBLEBEE and RISE OF THE BEASTS largely use more traditional, less busy designs than those terrible Bay films. Arcee, for instance, looks pitch perfect in the new movie. That said, the Terrorcons have this generic army of Bay-style bad guys working under them, and the generic ones suuuck.
Gorillas in the Midst… of transforming into giant robots.
gorillas in the mids
Gorillas in the Motherboard
Gorillamancer
Bumblebee was good. Why not just make Bumblebee 2 instead of whatever this is?The trailer for this also drives me nuts. “Of all the threats from both your past and future you’ve never faced anything like this” makes absolutely no sense! Not to mention that, yes, they have, repeatedly. It’s the exactly same thing as all the other Transformers movies!
I guess you could have seen this and still have the synopsis read “Plot unknown.”. It’s how I feel about all the Transformers movies after the first one.
My vague recollection of the first Transformers movie is that the transformers took the alternate forms of Earth vehicles in order to blend in/hide. What’s the purpose of transforming into a giant robotic cheetah?
To get the coveted Cheetos endorsement.
I saw it last night at a fan-event preview. (Saw it with a friend who is a much bigger fan than I. I used to be a fan/collector of the franchise, but fell away years ago.)It’s not very good. But… it’s a different kind of bad than the Bay films.Some random thoughts:
1. I bet the screenwriter once saw the phrase “show, don’t tell”, and said “Naw, fuck that!”2. The movie doesn’t trust its audience to figure anything out. Every goddamn thing is explained.3. Leans obnoxiously heavy on reminding you that this is the 90s, especially early on.4. Unlike Bay’s films, I didn’t wish death upon every human character. However, the humans were still boring. 5. Pedantic OG gamer complaint: Early on, Noah’s brother puts down an OG Game Boy and complains “I still can’t beat Bowser”. Issue 1: The Game Boy plays the NES SMB death jingle. Issue 2: Bowser was not the enemy in the Game Boy’s Super Mario Land games. Just fucking lazy writing.
The rest of it I can live with, but Game Boy inaccuracies? That’s too much, man!
I’ll take it over Rumble in the Bronx, which asks us to believe a kid is playing a Game Gear that clearly doesn’t have a cartridge or batteries.
How do you feel about the kid playing a DS in Snakes on a Plane, which he then uses to land the plane?
rumble in the bronx also asks us to believe the bronx has mountains.everyone knows the elite game gear appearance is in surf ninjas.
pedantic rap fan complaint (marketing department edition):it’s not the movie’s fault but the trailers having a giant ‘1994′ onscreen and then starting a trailer-long interpolation of ruff ryders anthem, a song from 1998, really, really, really bothered me.
I similarly got way too distracted when Elena started humming TLC’s “Waterfalls” on the cargo plane. The movie was set in summer 94, while that album released in Nov 94 and the song wasn’t released as a single until May 95. There was another pop culture reference that was slightly too early, but I forgot what it was. (I think it was one of Bumblebee’s samples)
Just fucking lazy writing.Nah, just pedantic viewing.
Wasn’t the og Mario released on the Gameboy too?
Nope. Not until the Game Boy Advance.
Super Mario bros. Deluxe was released on the Color in 1999, that’s what I was remembering.
There’s a GameBoy Color version of SUPER MARIO BROS. However, the kid isn’t playing a GameBoy Color, so the filmmakers still got it wrong. https://www.nintendolife.com/games/gbc/super_mario_bros_deluxe
Ah, nice, somehow I didn’t know about the GBC one. But yes, not relevant for the movie.
There’s a GameBoy Color version of SUPER MARIO BROS. However, the kid isn’t playing a GameBoy Color, so the filmmakers still got it wrong. https://www.nintendolife.com/games/gbc/super_mario_bros_deluxe
I’m aware of that one. I was mistaken in thinking it was a GBC game that could have been played on the original GB, many were, but Deluxe was not one of those.
On the one hand, I understand using Bowser instead of the name of the villain I had to look up even though I played that game a lot myself. On the other hand, they could have easily used Kirby or Mega Man instead, since their villains have some name recognition. Or if they were really unmotivated, Tetris.
You don’t need “pedantic”. It’s implied if you are complaining about games.
his beloved Game Boy???the film is set in 1994I’ll allow it. Though if they wanted to be really edgy they would have handed him a Game Gear and had scenes where he’s desperately hunting for batteries to keep his Sonic run alive.
If they wanted some real bonafides, they coulda given him an Atari Lynx.
I don’t need the humans to have a ton to do because they’re supposed to be there to serve as an audience analog for all of the giant robots punching each other.So if they serve that purpose and we get some character out of Prime and Primal…good.
Nobody buys tickets for fucking Transformers movies because they want “ideas”
The main awful thing about Beasts is bumblebee had great robot designs and this movie goes back to Bay onesAnd it swaps vehicle modes, personalities and names indiscriminately. Jazz is now Mirage. Wheeljack isn’t Ironhide but looks like he’ll become Bay’s Wheeljack. Scourge is Tarn.
Its a transformers movie man