Ryan Shoots First: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

I sat down to write this review and it occurred to me for as formulaic as the Transformers movies have seemingly become, the way we review them has become equally formulaic. Blah blah blah, Bay, blah blah blah, explosions. Even though the last film in the series Bumblebee did a good job of recentering the franchise a bit and injecting some heart back into it the vibe for Rise of the Beasts was giving me a lot more Age of Extinction vibes than Bumblebee. So which is it? Is the franchise back on track to becoming a thoughtful story about young people and their cars or are we back to metal-on-metal CGI-fests that Rotten Tomatoes reviewers will crush like an AI on copy paste. 

HOT TAKE…. It’s somewhere in the middle. 

Beasts to me is still far and away better than some of the final Bay entries like Extinction and Last Knight (The Whalberg ones) but I felt the slimmer focus and scaled-down feel of Bumblebee helped to get our feet firmly back on the ground. It leans into humor more than really any entry and has a 90’s vibe about it which will really hit the nostalgia button for some. Plus the director Steven Caple Jr. was a big fan and you can tell in the film. It may play safe at times but when it is sincere you can let it go and just enjoy your time in the theatre. I really like the design language they introduced in Bee, the bots have more defined and distinct feels and resemble more to their infamous “G1” looks. The relation to the main humans and the bots is also key to establishing heart to the film. Shia and Haylee brought that with Bee before and in this film it is Noah played by Anthony Ramos and his Porsche 911 Mirage voiced by Pete Davidson. Davidson may seem like a stunt hire, just going for the name and recognizable voice but he really does give it his best. I can’t recall him doing a lot of voice-over work so with such little experience he really delivered. Mirage was entertaining and funny and a worthy successor to Bumblebee added by the fact that he can in fact talk with his human avatar. Ramos, who always brings a sense of authenticity to his roles was a great choice here as well.

But of course the name of the film is Rise of the Beasts so how about those Maximals. They definitely look better than the CGI we had in the Beast Wars show growing up. They inject some life into the film and even represent a shift in tone to a more Indiana Jones-like adventure film. Of course, the movie has to make direct reference to this multiple times but still it was a fun shift. Going in I expected Beasts to feel like X-Men: Days of Future Past. Allow me to explain. The X-Men franchise had run its course so to revitalize it they went away with a new director, went back in time for a prequel in a bygone era and refreshed all the creative and performance roles. And it worked. First Class is many’s favorite X-Men film and it brought people back to the franchise. Then with the next one, they went back to super serious and even shoehorned in as many of the old cast as possible. Kinda killing what made First Class feel unique. Sound familiar? After doing something similar with Bumblebee I was getting the same vibes with Beasts, but I am happy to say this film keeps more of what worked and resists the urge to pull in too much of what bogged the franchise down to begin with. 

We don’t ask much of our Transformers films anymore, entertain me, make me care and look stunning doing it. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts checks all those boxes. It doesn’t really “push anything forward” and doesn’t leave an indelible mark like Across the Spider-Verse did last week but it really isn’t set up to. You have to walk before you can run and Beasts is a good step towards reestablishing Transformers as an important franchise in entertainment.