Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Blaine: My friend, Timothy Durbin is a “Transformers” expert, and he collaborated with me in writing this review with his feedback and also added in some sentences and paragraphs.

“Transformers” has been around since 1984. It was created by the toy company Hasbro with their Japanese partner, Takara. The franchise was a huge success with the storyline made the most popular toy of 1984 on top of having a popular Marvel comic series and a popular cartoon. Like other classic cartoons, “Transformers” managed to remain popular for the generations that were to come after the 80s. Steven Spielberg had watched the series with his kids, and always believed it could make a great live action film. More than two decades later, it seemed possible to create live action versions of the Autobots and Decepticons with digital technology. Steven Speilberg thought Michael Bay was a perfect choice to direct a “Transformers” movie, but everyone else disagreed. While “Transformers” was in pre-production, someone managed to hack into Michael Bay’s computer and reveal to the public the designs they had in mind for the Autobots, and it was disappointing for a lot of fans. This wasn’t what everyone had in mind. They were expecting a more traditional look from the cartoons.

That didn’t change anything. Michael Bay made ‘Transformers” the way he believed it should go. “Transformers” wasn’t a critical hit when it was released, and those fans weren’t so pleased with it either, but it did attract a new fan base, and it did well at the box office. Michael Bay made 4 more “Transformers” movies after that and “Transformers” fans kept speaking against Michael Bay’s way of making these movies. For years, I've heard my friend, Timothy Durbin, complain about Michael Bay’s approach to “Transformers” despite the fact that it got him into the franchise. He thinks the first movie is okay and the third movie, "Dark of the Moon," is a big guilty pleasure for him. Still, at the end of the day, he finds them lackluster in terms of what he loves about the franchise, i.e. stories, mythology, and characters. Michael Bay really didn’t give a shit what everyone thought though. He just did what he did and had fun with it.

As for what I think of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies, I like half of the stuff that has been done in them. I love the Autobot characters, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. I like most of the visual effects work, and some of the cinematography shots. What I don’t like basically is the human’s way of life, mainly Sam played by Shia LaBeouf. Sam seemed alright to me in the beginning. After that, he was wanting more of a normal average life which feels boring to me compared to having a relationship with Autobots, which feels more special. Plus, a lot of times I feel it’s a popularity contest. Sam is acting cool and trying to fit in with everyone else from high school to college, to fancy jobs, but he’s hanging out with the wrong crowd. With the Autobots it’s not a popularity contest because they care for everyone else.

The first 4 “Transformers” movies that Michael Bay had made were box office hits. The last one Bay had made, “The Last Knight” wasn’t that popular with a lot of people. At the end of that movie, it looked like they were planning to make another sequel, but that got canceled. It wasn’t the end of “Transformers,” though. It's a popular franchise, and even though “The Last Knight” wasn’t a success, it doesn’t mean fans are tired of “Transformers.” They want to see more of the iconic characters. Michael Bay and Paramount studios decided to make a prequel with an origin story on one of the franchise's most popular characters, Bumblebee. Michael Bay would produce, but not direct.

“Bumblebee” is a prequel, but it’s more of a reboot to me. In fact, there's confusion among the public as to whether to view "Bumblebee" as a prequel or a soft reboot. For fans like Timothy, it's evident that it's a reboot considering the changes made that make it more of its own continuity, but if you ask anyone else they might think "Bumblebee" is a prequel. Director Travis Knight gave the Autobots the form fans have been wanting since the beginning. “Bumblebee” was the first “Transformers” movie to get a positive reaction from both critics and fans. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is the continuation of this reboot, and it takes place in 1994, 7 years after “Bumblebee.”

The human characters of “Rise of the Beasts” are Noah, and Elena. Noah was in the military, but then he abandoned it because his little brother got sick and he wanted to help his mom take care of him. He now works with electronics, but he’s trying to get a real job, so he can provide a good doctor for his brother. Everywhere he goes, they turn him down. They don’t like that he left the military, but for him family comes first. Noah tries to steal a car, and turns out to be an alien robot.

Elena, is an intern at a museum who is passionate and more mindful about artifacts. She’s very clever, but everyone is holding her back. Both Noah and Elena are trying to prove to everyone that there is more to them than they think. Elena has an urge to take a look at a new artifact of a falcon. She breaks it, but there is something inside it that sets a beam up into the sky. And that’s where the Autobots come in, along with the bad guys, the Terrorcons.

Optimus Prime, we’ve seen him going through changes both on the inside and the outside. In the first “Transformers,” he was open minded and always supporting the human race. Then by the 4th movie, “Age of Extinction,” he was something else. The human race was hunting down him and his kind, and that support was gone. He didn’t like humans anymore, he hardly trusted them, and he had enough of them.

The look of Optimus Prime in Bay’s movies I would say is more detailed because he has all of these truck parts split and spread out all over his body when he’s in Autobot form. Now we see him with that traditional look in this reboot. Optimus Prime’s looks are slightly different compared to how it was in “Bumblebee.” He was more colorful in that movie, whereas in “Rise of the Beasts” I see more gray on him, mainly around the middle part with his lower chest to the upper legs. His chest was all red in “Bumblebee,” along with the drop visors that are on top of the windshield. When there’s a new director in charge, they have a different idea of how the character should look or what certain parts should be changed.

Optimus Prime had squinty and triangular eyes in Bay’s movies, whereas in “Rise of the Beasts” they’re not only wide eyed, and more expressive, but they make him look like he has a soul. Optimus shows a lot of facial expressions. My favorite expression he shows is towards the end, when he’s looking at Noah with a smirk. I’ve never seen Optimus Prime smile before. It looks good on him.

Optimus Prime is a leader, but in “Rise of the Beasts” I see him more as a learner. Optimus is homesick after being on Earth for 7 years. He has been trying to figure out how to get the Autobots back to Cybertron for a while, and that beam hitting the sky is a sign. He’s also not that open to working with humans. Not much of a difference there compared to “Age of Extinction.” It’s not that he dislikes humans, he just hasn’t gotten to know them that well. You think he would after spending 7 years on Earth, but Cybertron is all he can think about. Optimus Prime was always the one to explain what makes the human race so special, but in this movie, it is Optimus Primal who tells him why.

Another thing I didn’t like about Sam was the way he treated Bumblebee. He treated him as if he wasn’t cool enough. Bumblebee is one of the coolest characters in my book. I like his personality, his energy, his moves, the way he expresses himself. Hailee Steinfeld treated Bee with more respect in his stand alone movie. Bumblebee loses his life after trying to save Prime from the main bad guy, Scourge. I wasn’t concerned about it because it’s predictable that Bee won’t stay dead. Optimus Prime lost his life in “Revenge of the Fallen,” and then was resurrected. I knew it was going to be the same for Bumblebee. The Autobots take Bee’s body with them, so he’s not missing out on this adventure in a way.

Optimus Prime and BumbleBee have always been the main focuses of the Autobot group in the previous movies. Mirage is the first Autobot, who isn’t Prime or Bee, to be the main character of the story. Mirage can project holograms of himself so his opponent won’t see what’s coming. Unlike Optimus Prime, Mirage thinks Earth is a cool place to hang. His vehicle transformation is a Porsche 964, but you see him transform into various things in this movie, including a garbage truck. You would think transforming into something as big as a garbage truck would take a lot out of you. He’s been hiding in a garage for a while, then Noah shows up trying to steal him, and Noah ends up being taken on a joyride.

Steven Spielberg loved the idea of showing the relationship between a boy and his car when they started making the movie trilogy. I already explained how things between Sam and Bee looked nice in the beginning, but then went in a different direction after that. “Bumblebee” the movie showed that kind of relationship in a more sweet way. In “Rise of the Beasts,” it is Mirage and Noah who develop that kind of relationship. Noah doesn’t know what to think of Mirage at first, but Mirage takes a huge liking to him fast, and through their journey Mirage grows on him, and becomes something like a second brother to him.

Like BumbleBee, Mirage I see as a character who likes to have fun while kicking ass, and that’s what I love about him. Director Steven Caple Jr. wanted Mirage to have a Pete Davidson approach. Peter Davidson gets around a lot, and I see his face everywhere. He’s not showing his face in this movie. He’s loaning both his voice and spirit into a CGI character. Steven Caple Jr. gave Pete Davidson a lot of creative freedom as they were recording his voice.

One fun fact about Mirage is he technically has appeared in a live-action "Transformers" movie before. In "Dark of the Moon," he appeared as a cocky, Italian-accented Autobot who transformed into a red Ferrari 458. However, Hasbro didn't have the license to produce official Ferrari merchandise, and Ferrari didn't want a character based on their car to be labeled with a Hasbro trademark. To work around this, Mirage kept his name in merchandise and tie-in media like comics and a video game, whereas in the film he was named "Dino" after Ferrari company founder, Enzo Ferrari's son.

There’s a female Autobot who can transform into a motorcycle, and her name is Arcee. She was the first female Transformer ever created, who debuted in the animated movie, "The Transformers: The Movie" in 1986. Hasbro was against the idea of female toys in their brand focused on boys, but the animated movie's writer, Ron Freeman, convinced them to create a female Autobot, on the basis that his daughter, as Freeman put it, "loves this stuff." Hasbro's reluctance led to Arcee being the only new Autobot introduced in the movie without a toy, but her creation was still a major impact that led to many more female Transformers over the years. Michael Bay used the character only for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and re-invented her by fusing her and her sisters, Cromia and Elita-1, into a single being controlling their bodies. They called them the Arcee twins in that movie (even though there's three of them,) and they didn’t have as much screen time as the other Autobots. They were basically extras, who, after the movie, were either killed off or phased out in tie-in media. It was a poor way to introduce that character.

Again, this reboot shows the Autobot characters in a more traditional way, and Arcee not only is a main character in “Rise of the Beasts,” but she looks just as she did in the cartoon. Arcee was at the beginning of “Bumblebee,” and like Optimus, her looks have been re-designed. The way she looked in “Bumblebee” was more robotic and anime. Now she looks more like an athlete, and the face has more of a personality to it. Liza Koshy was hired to do the voice of Arcee, and she’s an American media personality, meaning she does things online that fascinates people and attracts a lot of viewers. Makes sense. They gave the character more personality and they hired an actress who has a lot of that in her.

The Autobots want the key that can send them back to their planet. Half of it is at the museum Elena works at, and so they have Noah go in to get it, but the Terrorcans get it. Noah is thought of a deserter because he left battle to be with his family, but when he learns the fate of the planet is at risk if the Terrorcans get the other half of the key, he knows he can’t walk away from this. The whole world is at stake, including his family, and he’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.

There’s a lot of Transformers out there that come in different forms and “Rise of the Beasts” shows us the Maximals. They’re the ones who brought the key to Earth and hid it away. Now that one piece has been discovered by the Terrorcons, the Maximals must do everything they can to protect the other half of it.

Optimus Primal is the leader of the Maximals, and he helps make Optimus Prime see things in a different way, and gives him a lot to think about. He’s like a mentor. Optimus Prime has been a bit stubborn, whereas Primal is more carrying and open minded. Primal is very wise and knows exactly how to talk to Prime to make him change his ways. “We must defend the humans.” That’s a line Optimus Prime has said several times that it repeats itself in my head. Optimus Primal is the one who is saying it this time. He’s a carrying character.

Ron Perlman is another actor who you see and hear in everything. Through his career as an actor half of it was in front of the camera, and other times it has been voice work. He has done the voice of Optimus Primal before in the 2018 cartoon “Transformers: Power of the Primes.” Director Steven Caple Jr. thought it would be a good idea for Ron Perlman to voice the character again in “Rise of the Beasts,” and Ron Perlman himself was more than happy to do it because this would be a good chance to add more to the character compared to what he did for the cartoon.

Other Maximals are Cheetor and Rhionox. You don’t hear much from them as the rest, but you see what they are capable of. Rhionox is like a bowling ball knocking down every pin that is in his way, and Cheetor is fast and acrobatic.

Michelle Yeoh, she definitely is everywhere, and now she is the eye in the sky. She does the voice of Airazor, the Falcon Maximal. Like Primal, Airazor is the wise type too, and I think that’s why Michelle Yeoh was cast to voice her. She’s best known for playing characters that have wisdom and are also carrying. Airazor is there to comfort you. She knows how painful things can be when losing a friend, and feeling like you are the last of your kind, but she lives with it. It’s interesting because with all those feathers on her body, I keep forgetting she’s a machine. The artifact that got Elena’s attention resembled Airazor, and to be seeing her is like looking at a legend. She has been on Earth for thousands of years.

Another thing about Bay’s movies that I didn’t like was seeing Autobots like Ironhide and Ratchet being killed off. Disappointingly, you see some good get killed off in this reboot. Bumblebee, you know he’ll return, but eventually there is another who gets killed off that you know won’t return, and that is Airazor. Scourge plagued Airazor and Primal had no choice, but to put her down. She wanted it because she was suffering. It sucks because I liked her a lot. It really hurts Primal, and it disappoints me that someone as good as her had to die.

The Autobots certainly do a good job at staying undercover. That’s what it’s all about, being robots in disguise. They were always exposing themselves in Michael Bay’s movies. The Army would handle the Autobots flying transportation, but in this movie they have their own personal transportation to get to a location across the world. His name is Stratosphere, an Autobot who transforms into a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane. Mirage doesn’t like having Stratosphere as their transportation because he’s old, but he seems like a nice fella. He looks after Bumblebee’s corpse, while the other Autobots look for the other piece of the key. John DiMaggio does the voice of Stratosphere. We all know him best for doing the voice of Bender on “Futurama,” and Jake the Dog on “Adventure Time.” He is also a “Transformers” veteran. He did the voice of Leadfoot in “Dark of the Moon,” and Crosshairs in both “Age of Extinction” and “The Last Knight.”

According to my friend Timothy, the people who make these movies keep messing around with Wheeljack, an Autobot scientist and mechanic. The only time Wheeljack looked like himself was at the beginning of “Bumblebee” and when his corpse briefly appeared in the 1986 animated movie. Michael Bay made a lot of alterations to the character in “Dark of the Moon.” He wasn’t known as Wheeljack, he was named Q after the character from James Bond and given the face of Albeit Einstein. That’s another character in Bay’s movies I feel had a poor approach. In “Rise of the Beasts,” Wheeljack looks like a college nerd and his transformation is a 1970s Volkswagen van. I guess even with this reboot they don’t do everything traditionally. Why does everyone have to re-invent this character? What’s wrong with the way he looks?

My friend Timothy told me a lot about Unicorn. He said he was also introduced in the animated "Transformers" movie as the film's arch villain. He was voiced by cinematic legend Orson Welles, who is mostly known for his movie, "Citizen Kane." In fact, "The Transformers: The Movie" was the second to last movie he made before he passed away. In "The Last Knight," Unicorn was revealed to be the Earth itself having laid dormant for millions of years and on the brink of waking up. He was planned to appear in Bay's next film, but the idea was scrapped when they decided to make "Bumblebee," so his first official live-action movie appearance was saved for this movie instead. In "Rise of the Beasts," he's much closer to how he is depicted in Transformers media outside of Michael Bay's films. He is a dark god who eats planets to sustain himself. He’s basically the ultimate threat in the “Transformers” universe just as Thanos is the ultimate threat in the MCU and Darkseid is the ultimate threat in the DC universe. This is one of the big reasons why fans like Timothy see "Bumblebee" and "Rise of the Beasts" in a continuity separate from Bay's movies. It doesn't make sense that Unicorn would be a dark god eating planets in 1994 and then 23 years later turn out to be Earth itself.

Scourge is the leader of the Terrorcons, but Unicron is the master, and he’s after the key so he can transport to any world in the universe so he can eat them. It's almost like “Dark of the Moon” again. The Autobots and Maximals fight Scourge’s army, while Noah and Elena sneak their way to deactivate the key. You’ve seen the Autobots in battle several times, and they put a lot of their energy into tearing the Decepticons apart. With Scourge and the other two Terrorcons it takes more than that. They have thick armor which makes it challenging for the Autobots. One of the Terrorcons even says “someone give me a real fight.” You have to go 3 rounds with these guys. As for the Terrorcons’ army, they are easy to slice because of how skinny they are.

Autobots transform into vehicles, but the Maximals, their only two forms are animals and warriors. Both Primal and Rhinox’s warrior forms have I would say I knights approach, whereas Cheetor is an African warrior. Another thing that is a shame about losing Airazor is we didn’t get to see her transform. Judging by what I’ve seen on the internet, her warrior form is Native.

People don’t like Michael Bay’s vision of “Transformers,” but you gotta admit he certainly knows what he wants to see and has a lot of energy in him when creating the action shots you see in his movies, and I admire him for that. He has things blow up, with cars flipping on set, and he knows where to position the cameras when doing it.

As I said before, most of the visual effects shots and cinematography were some of the few things I like about Michael Bay’s “Transformers” series. A lot of the visual effects were added into live action shots Bay and his crew shot on set. The visual effects department would merge CGI into live action. For example, there’s a shot at the end of “The Last Knight” as the Autobots are saying goodbye and they’re on a hill as silhouettes with a sunset sky behind them. You are shooting live action environments in a unique way. They not only have to look good on camera, but also for the Autobots when they are added into the shot. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” has made film history by being the first movie to be shot in Machu Picchu, and a place as inspiring, massive, remote and mystical as that deserves to be shot as unique as possible, especially when it’s the first time. There are a couple of shots of Optimus Primal looking out at the view.

Optimus Prime starts off in vehicle mode during his introduction, and I like how it’s a low angle shot as he is driving forward and we are looking at him from underneath. It reminds me of the opening shot of “Star Wars: A New Hope,” when you see the Star Destroyer go on and on and on. Anyway, Optimus Prime is at a bus lot, and the camera is swiping through the buses as it focuses on him from the side, and through each bus you pass, you see Optimus transforming.

The Autobots look cool. They come in different colors, forms, shapes and deserve to look good in the shot. You’ll also see them do cool poses, like Optimus Prime doing a superhero pose when he jumps in to help Noah take on Scourge. The Autobots also need good close ups of their faces and I love the frame work on them, especially for when Optimus Prime is smiling at the end. These characters have interesting details on their whole body, and you want to look at them from all different angles and positions. The shot where Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Wheeljack and Arcee are lined up side by side looks good. The Autobots also look good from the backside. BumbleBee is resurrected, yeah, and Stratosphere takes him to the fight. The rear cargo door opens with Bee being focussed on from the backside and he spreads his wings out for he is about to jump.

The shot I am obsessed with the most from this movie is the low angle shot of Optimus Prime with Unicron above him, as he is about to send him away. The reason is because of the shapes, scale, opacity and focus point of the shot. Optimus is blocky and is leaning in from the left, opposing Unicron’s circular shape.

The last shot I like to talk about is that continuous shot during the final battle. You can see it in the trailer. Optimus Primal is killing scorpions on a bridge, then swings down below it and kills more of them. Then the shot moves down below to see what everyone else is doing. Cheetor is running towards a scorpion to take it out. The shot then swoops over to the right, and Rhinox is heading this way with Arcee riding him. It focuses on Arcee, she flips and is now fighting alongside Wheeljack. I’m a big fan of long take shots, it’s a unique technique. It can be challenging to create a long shot whether you are shooting live action, or creating it through a computer.

Scourge can really get on your nerves. I hate that he kills off a lot of good characters. Bumblebee, Airazor and now Mirage. Mirage sacrifices himself to protect Noah. I felt disappointed when that happened. I am sick and tired of seeing good characters who you get to know and care for are killed off. Especially when they are as fun as Mirage. However he wasn’t dead just yet, and that gave me hope. He doesn’t have the strength to fight, only to transform. He becomes a suit to make Noah a super soldier. Optimus Prime says he has had enough of Scourge, and that made two of us. Prime’s goal was to take off Scourge’s head, and using all of his strength he has accomplished it.

No sacrifice, no victory. Where have I heard that before? Oh ya, it was the Witwicky saying in the very first “Transformers” movie. How about victory without sacrifice because I’m sick and tired of seeing good characters getting killed off. The only way to get rid of Unicron is by destroying the key, and Optimus volunteers even though that is putting his own life at risk, but you knew this wasn’t going to be the end of Optimus Prime because you can never have “Transformers” without him. Plus it was predictable. Both Noah and Optimus Primal return to save Prime from being sucked away. A good soldier never leaves a man behind. Optimus Prime is saved, but there is a sacrifice out of this. The key was a way to get back to Cybertron, but Prime had to destroy it. It was for a good cause though, and Optimus Prime is learning to be more acceptive, and open minded about things.

The people who make these new movies say they’re leading up to the ones Michael Bay did, but it really doesn’t feel like that. Feels like it is leading up to something new, and I’m sure my friend Timothy would agree. This adventure really helped out both Noah and Elena’s careers. Elena is being interviewed for the discoveries she has made, and Noah, he’s going to another job interview. Michael Kelly, another actor whose face you see a lot, is the interviewer. He’s challenging Noah, and then he acts suspicious. He knows about the Autobots, and he wants both Noah and them to join their team. At first I thought it was going to be Nest or something like it, but no it’s something else. Playtime is about to get a whole lot interesting. Hasbro wanted there to be a crossover with “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe.” Looking forward to seeing how that looks.

There’s a mid-credit scene, and good news, Mirage is resurrected! Hurray! Noah uses his electrical skills and must have used the suit in order to build Mirage a new body. It’s good to have him back.

I don’t think I’ve had as much fun watching a “Transformers” movie as “Rise of the Beasts.” It didn’t have anything I felt was corny. Although I am disappointed that Airazor was killed off. I loved the relationships the characters were having with each other, and seeing them travel on this secret mission.

My rating on “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is four and a half out of five stars.