“Of all the threats you’ve faced from your past and future, you’ve never faced anything like this.”
In 2018 the Transformers franchise began something of a … well … transformation. Michael Bay stepped down as the franchise director while maintaining a producer role. The focus also shifted from the continuing story started with the first film and transitioned to the idea of standalone films set within the general continuity established from the beginning. The new focus also allowed the films to go to different times in the mythology. So Bumblebee became more than just a Transformers film. It was a rather charming 1980’s period piece and it was actually a better movie than some of the original run. That tradition is continued with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The film is rather loosely based on the Beasts Wars story from the early cartoons and takes us back, but a decade later than Bumblebee. Now we’re in 1994, and a couple of your film favorites have returned for the next chapter in the Transformers legacy.
This time Steven Caple, Jr. steps into the director’s chair. He’s coming off a pretty good success with Creed II. He employs a brand new cast of characters to the story and makes this truly a standalone film while throwing in plenty of references to both the other films and to the toys and cartoons that launched the franchise back in the 1980’s. Creed II didn’t really prepare him for the massive f/x and overall hugeness of the franchise, but one thing I think he did take away from his Creed experience is the concept of characters first. The biggest takeaway I have from this film is how much the human characters are anchored into the story, with a lot more heart and soul than all of the other films combined. It might not do as much to save the film from any box office grounding, but it makes for a better film.
It’s 1994 and we meet Noah (Ramos). He’s living in Brooklyn, and he’s fresh from the military, and now he’s facing the realities of a brother with cancer who is in need of the kind of treatments his family simply can’t afford. He’s turned away at the hospital until his previous bills have been paid, and he has trouble finding a job. He has the reputation of not being a team player, and it’s causing doors to be closed for him. He’s pretty much at the end of his rope when he finally agrees to join a friend in his car-stealing business. Unfortunately for Noah, the first car he tries to steal is “more than meets the eye”. It’s the transformer Mirage (Davidson). Before he knows it, he’s in a car chase, and he’s not driving the car. Of course, autonomous cars are becoming a reality these days, but they haven’t reach the point where they do these kinds of moves, all while running from the police, leaving a ton of action-packed destruction in their wake. At the same time autobot Optimus Prime (Cullen) has spotted a bright beam in the air that he recognizes as a transwarp drive, and he puts the call out to all of the autobots to convene. Mirage has no choice but to bring this unwitting car thief to the meet. If you think the self-escaping car was a shock, imagine Noah’s shock when it turns into a giant robot along with his giant robot friends. Before he understands what’s going on, he’s a part of the autobots’ mission to stop the bad guy from getting the transwarp key and getting it to the autobots so they can finally go home. Bad guys? What you talking ’bout, Willis?
In a prologue we meet our film’s bad guys as well as our new heroes on another distant planet very much like Earth. Scourge (Dinklage) has been sent by arch-villain Unicron (Domingo) to get the key from the Maximals, the new hero transformers. They are robots like the others, but instead of transforming into cars, jets, and other machines, these guys turn into animals like tigers, hawks, and giant apes. They manage to escape their planet and take the key to Earth sometime in our distant past. The key is in two parts, and the first finds its way to the New York Museum where it’s being analyzed by Elena (Fishback). Her scans end up breaking the idol it was hiding as and reveals the first key. Unicron sends an army of machines to get it, and he does. But it’s only the first half. Optimus Prime knows how to find the second key. They have to go to South America and confront the Maximals, led by the giant ape Optimus Primal (Perlman). He entrusted the key with a surviving tribe of indigenous people who have kept it safe for many years. But Scourge and Unicron are going to put up one heck of a fight for the remaining half of the key. You see Unicron is a lot like Marvel’s Galacticus, who devours planets to feed his hunger. Unicron has pretty much run out of planets where he is and needs this transwarp device to come into our zone where he can feed on a wealth of new planets … starting with Earth. The autobots team up with Elena and Noah along with the Maximals to stop that from happening, and it’s a huge battle with thousands of bad-guy minions fighting for control of the key. It’s the typical Transformers climactic battle with worldwide implications and low odds of success.
All of the things you expect from a Transformers film can be found here, the new gimmick,being the Maximals. Ron Perlman voices the leader, while Michele Yeoh voices the pivotal character of Airazor, a hawk who gets corrupted by Scourge’s touch and becomes one of the bad guys. Peter Cullen returns as the only person to be directly involved with all seven of the Transformers films and even going back to the 1985 animated film. He literally is Optimus Prime and a somewhat comforting element to the real fans. He’s kind of been with them all of their lives. The two human leads are far superior than the Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox combination. These are real people, and the actors don’t have to rely on silly antics to make their characters pop. Both Anthony Ramos as Noah and Dominique Fishback are grounded actors who play these people with far more authenticity than the previous couple could do on their best days. Heck, I bet that Fishback even let the crew look her in the eyes. Noah is also given a little bit extra push in the motivation department with his little brother Kris played by Dean Scott Vasquez. The kid isn’t in the film much, but he shows up at just the right times to remind Noah, and us, what he’s fighting for.
The Peru locations add some real production value to the film and give us yet another exotic location in which to deliver. It all continues the franchise tradition of looking great. The f/x won’t disappoint as some of the recent Marvel films have. There’s a concern that the f/x houses are getting too much work, and the look has suffered, at least that has been Marvel’s excuse of late. But this film delivers on that front, and the little x-factor might just be better actors and characters with more heart. That really started with Bumblebee, and I’m happy to see that retained. This is certainly not the end of these films. The credits stinger offers an interesting crossover possibility. Whatever the franchise’s future holds, there will be more movies. I say, “Let them come.”
