Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the seventh film in the series and a sequel to Bumblebee. Steven Caple Jr. directs from a screenplay credited to Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber and Jon Hoeber. It runs 127 minutes. The tagline is “Unite or fall.” Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback star. The film is a science fiction adventure, and it is a poor one.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
Brooklyn, 1994, and a Stolen Porsche
The setup is the best thing here. Ramos plays Noah Diaz, an ex-military electronics expert in 1994 Brooklyn who cannot find work and needs money for his ill brother Kris, played by Dean Scott Vazquez. His friend Reek, played by Tobe Nwigwe in his film debut, talks him into stealing a Porsche. The Porsche turns out to be the Autobot Mirage, voiced by Pete Davidson.
That is a workable premise. A man tries to steal a car and the car has opinions. The film does almost nothing with it.
A Falcon Statue and Scourge
Dominique Fishback plays Elena Wallace, a museum intern who studies an ancient statue of a falcon bearing the Maximal symbol. She breaks it open and finds the Transwarp Key inside. The key opens portals through time and space. Unicron, a planet-eating Transformer, wants it so he can consume planets faster, and he has sent his herald Scourge, voiced by Peter Dinklage, to get it.
Scourge kills Bumblebee outside the museum and takes the key. The Maximal Airazor, voiced by Michelle Yeoh, arrives and drives the Terrorcons off. Airazor explains that the Maximals have been hiding on Earth and that Scourge holds only half the key, split in two to keep it safe. Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, wants the halves rejoined so the Autobots can return to Cybertron. Noah secretly plans to destroy the key instead, to protect Earth.
The pieces are all in place. They never move.
Unite or fall.
Ron Perlman and the Maximals
Ron Perlman voices Optimus Primal, the Maximal leader who escaped to Earth with the key after Apelinq sacrificed himself so the others could flee Unicron’s attack on their homeworld. A sequel was fast-tracked after Bumblebee‘s critical and commercial success and announced in January 2019. Two more films were in development the following year, one based on Beast Wars. Caple Jr. was hired as director that November. The film was announced in 2021 during a virtual presentation as both a Bumblebee sequel and a Beast Wars film in one. Principal photography ran from June to October 2021 across Los Angeles, Peru, Montreal and New York City.
You can feel the two movies fighting each other. The Maximals get a leader, a dead predecessor and a lost planet, then stand around while the Autobots argue about a key. Perlman has the voice for it. The script gives him nothing to do with it.
What the Cast Is Given
Cullen returns as Optimus Prime, a franchise regular, and remains the most reliable asset in the series. Yeoh is wasted on Airazor. Dinklage is wasted on Scourge, a villain whose whole function is to take things and leave. Liza Koshy voices Arcee, Cristo Fernández voices Wheeljack, and Luna Lauren Vélez plays Breanna Diaz.
Michaela Jaé Rodriguez was announced as the Terrorcon Nightbird, with Colman Domingo and Tongayi Chirisa also announced among the voice cast. The record does not say whether all three appear in the finished film.
The Problem With the Key
The Transwarp Key opens portals through time and space, which means the film can go anywhere and has no reason to. It splits in two so the plot can stretch. It gets stolen so the plot can move. It gets reassembled so the Autobots can go home, except Noah wants to destroy it, except the movie never makes that conflict cost anything.
Five writers share screenplay credit, and years of development produced this: a 127-minute chase for an object that matters to nobody on screen for longer than a scene.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is not the worst thing to carry the name. It has Ramos and Fishback, who are better than the material, and a Brooklyn setting that briefly suggests a smaller, stranger movie. Then it becomes a battle to save Earth, which this series has staged before and done no better.
4.2/10.
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