Movie Review: ‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’

New characters. New locations. Eye-popping CGI battles and transformations. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a great movie with which to start the Summer. It may not break a lot of new ground in the series/genre in terms of storytelling, but it is entertaining, fun for kids of all ages, and it seems they could be trying to set up their own Avengers-style or Godzilla/Kong-style universe in more ways than one without the need for a post-credits scene (though there is at least one mid-credits scene before the crawl starts).

For those not familiar with the Beast Wars subsection of the Transformers franchise, this film’s prologue introduces you to the Maximals and the Terrorcons; basically, they are like the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively, except they transform into animals instead of vehicles (which makes a lot more sense, honestly). The Maximals home planet is attacked, and subsequently destroyed, by Unicron and the Terrorcons. Using the artifact that Unicron is searching for, the Maximals escape to another planet beyond Unicron’s reach (want to guess which planet) and Unicron orders his minions to find them.

Cut to Brooklyn, New York circa 1994 where we are introduced to the new human protagonists Noah (Anthony Ramos; A Star is Born, Hamilton), a currently unemployed ex-military electronics expert and Elena (Dominique Fishback; Judas and the Black Messiah, Swarm), a museum artifact researcher. Noah has trouble finding a job because of his lack of teamwork skills (guess what he learns by the end of the film) and Elena does not get much respect at her low-level museum job. Through a series of action-packed, hilarious, and/or solemn circumstances, each is introduced, and decides to team up with, the Autobots to save at least one world, maybe more.

This Transformers movie is full of 90’s nostalgia, including references to Sonic and Tails, Bowser, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Donkey Kong, and a certain musical artist whom I will not name as (mild spoiler) it is a fun meta-nod to someone from the previous films. The movie also shows the Twin Towers in multiple scenes (this is not necessarily nostalgia specific to the 90’s, but it sure isn’t fun to think about them in the 2000’s). Not to sound like an old man, but this visual stuck in my head because I remember when production companies were cutting the Twin Towers out of TV and film projects that were filmed shortly before or even completed long before 9/11 (The Simpsons episode The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson aired 4 years earlier and I believe it is still edited on Disney+). Overall, it was enjoyable to see these nods to my teenage years, especially the Power Rangers shirt which I would love to have even though it would not fit me now.

As I said in the intro, there is not a lot of new ground in the storytelling. We have good robots fighting bad robots while both sides travel the globe searching for an ancient artifact for one reason or another. Any generalization of this movie’s plot could describe just about any of the previous movies and there are a few plot holes that Optimus Prime could drive through. However, the new characters make the story feel fresh and make the series feel rejuvenated. The locations are beautiful; for anyone, like me, that does not like to (or cannot afford to) travel, films like this can scratch any travel-itch you might have. Plus, we get to see the Transformers transform often, even if it does not entirely make sense. The audience in the screening I attended cheered and applauded several times (I won’t spoil why, but they were great reasons).