The Plot: A group of autobots known as the Maximals, led by Optimal Prime (Ron Perlman), are intent on stopping the planet-ingesting Unicron (Colman Domingo) and his servant Scourge (Peter Dinklage) from gaining possession of an all-powerful artefact. The Maximals hide it on Earth, where it’s discovered much later by museum intern Elena (Dominique Fishback) and soldier-roped-into-the-scheme Noah (Anthony Ramos). Together with Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and the rest of his autobot crew, they team up to retrieve the artefact as a way to go home to Cybertron and a way to protect Earth from suffering a doomed fate…
The Verdict: When a film franchise based on a popular toy line is seven films deep after 16 years, throwing critical words at it seems like tossing a handful of ball bearings at a mega-sized autobot… but here goes. The Transformers live action films have worked best when following a straightforward theme. Michael Bay’s original worked so well because it played out as a comedy with a teenage boy and his cool autobot angle. The series got progressively sillier and increasingly excessive after that, as the exhausting Bayhem threatened to topple the whole damn thing. Then the filmmakers tried something more compact with spin-off film Bumblebee, which proved to be a refreshing change of pace and the right direction for the franchise to go in. It’s surprising then that they didn’t do a direct sequel to that film. Instead, we have Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts which like its predecessor goes backwards in order to go forwards – with very mixed results.
If Bumblebee was back-to-basics Transformers, then Rise Of The Beasts is back to business-as-usual. Set in New York in 1994, there’s a brief reference to the previous film but otherwise this finds the autobots still stuck on Earth and looking for a way home. This is where the much-wanted artefact of the piece, the Transwarp Key, comes into play as a way out – or a way to destroy two worlds. Optimus Prime therefore has to ally with two regular joe humans to protect the Transwarp Key from falling into the wrong metal hands. That’s nothing original of course – we’ve been here before and in a more impactful form of delivery too. There’s a lot of push-and-pull in the story involving the artefact as it switches ownership but ultimately it’s not really that important – a literal macguffin. What’s more important is the bond between human and autobot as an in-point for the audience. In that regard, director Steve Caple Jr. does at least work some magic with the introduction of cool autobot Mirage (Pete Davidson) and his friendship with Noah (there’s a killer line in there). Magic is lacking elsewhere though.
When looked at as a whole, Rise Of The Beasts doesn’t really work as a title for the film. Partly taken from a 1996 animated TV series about a group of mechanised beasties, it’s not particularly clear why they’re rising or if they’ve already risen. When they enter the story again in Peru, the Maximals have already established themselves and their environment. If anything, they’re more like background players who just conveniently swoop in for the send-in-the-cavalry-moment. It’s hard to get excited by an autobot gorilla when he’s barely there as a character, despite some rumbling voice work by the ever-excellent character actor Ron Perlman. Where’s Mechagodzilla when you need him? It’s a deficiency in the script by Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer and Josh Peters that there’s too much going on. Let’s throw in a few more autobot cameos just to fill in the spaces where a bit of character development would otherwise do. It all builds to a climax that is an obvious rip-off of The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, but where it’s hard to know who is fighting who in the melee. Peter Jackson might want to have a word with Paramount.
Unlike Bumblebee, Rise Of The Beasts is sorely lacking in imagination, sparkling wit and a knowing sense of its own place in popular culture. It’s just another Transformers film indistinguishable from the later Michael Bay ones. It can essentially be distilled into crash bang wallop filmmaking with an expensive price tag attached to it. It’s passable as big, dumb summer blockbuster fare accompanied by a mountain of popcorn, but there’s little nourishment here. Lessons were learned on Bumblebee and then mostly abandoned. Judging by that teasing closing scene, there’ll be no more going back-to-basics now.
Rating: 2 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: Crash bang wallop
Directed by Steven Caple Jr.
Starring Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Pete Davidson, Colman Domingo, Peter Dinklage, Ron Perlman, Peter Cullen.