TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS: THE MOST EXPENSIVE TOY COMMERCIAL SINCE THE LAST KNIGHT

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a 2023 American Science Fiction Action Film based on Hasbro's Transformers toy line, and primarily influenced by the Beast Wars storyline. The film is the seventh installment in the Transformers live-action film series. Serving as both a standalone sequel to Bumblebee (2018) and prequel to Transformers (2007), the film was directed by Steven Caple Jr. from a screenplay written by Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, Josh Peters, Erich Hoeber, and Jon Hoeber. The film stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, as well as the voice talents of Ron Perlman, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Liza Koshy, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Pete Davidson, Colman Domingo, Cristo Fernández, Tongayi Chirisa, and returning franchise regulars Peter Cullen, John DiMaggio, and David Sobolov.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts premiered at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on May 27, 2023, and is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States today (June 9, 2023), by Paramount Pictures. The film has already received mixed reviews from critics, who took issue with how the third act of the film unfolded, but mostly deemed it an improvement over its four pre-Bumblebee installments. The film currently has a meager 55% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the Audience Score is a respectable 88%. It currently has a 42 on Metacritic (based on only 37 Critic Reviews) and a 6.6/10 on IMDB (based on over 3,000 reviews).

I’ll go ahead and admit I was hesitant to waste the time to go see this movie in theaters instead of waiting for it to hit streamers or on-demand cable, but…anything for content. After seeing the film I was right to have reservations about the ability for a film like this to be good. This was a movie only kids and true fans of the Transformer cartoons and toys would really enjoy. Casting the two biggest human characters was clearly an exercise in diversity hiring, and it just didn’t feel like the actors chosen fit the characters all that well, especially Dominique Fishback as Elena Wallace.

The premise was extremely derivative, a virtual Xerox copy of Transformer movies past. I had hoped for something new as it pertained to the kind of story we were going to get, but once the film started I quickly realized that I was going to be let down in that regard. And speaking of story, this one was overly predictable, even for a movie like this. The incredibly formulaic nature of the movie just served as a reminder of why I prefer indie films over modern-day mainstream blockbusters. Basically once you get past the set-up, you can pretty much set your watch to everything that happens from there on out.

Despite my mild objection to her casting, Fishback was actually decent in this film, though the writers didn’t give her much in the way of dialogue to work with, and her character felt a little flat, but then again she was clearly meant to be secondary to Anthony Ramos’ more fleshed out Noah Diaz. Noah was funny at times, especially during some of the back and forth between he and Pete Davidson’s “Mirage”, but there were more than enough cheesy, even at times cringe-worthy lines to be had from his character as well, but that’s a part of the deal with these kind of movies I suppose. I found the group of Transformers included in this installment aside from Unicron, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to be uninspiring (though I have to admit that by the time Beast Wars was a thing I had kind of moved on from being what I would call a Transformers “Die-Hard”), but we’re now on Transformers 7 as far as live action installments are concerned so…what are you gonna do, right?

I guess one thing that I found to be a net positive was that the movie wasn’t nearly as long as some of its predecessors, because I don’t know if I could have sat through an additional thirty minutes of this. Because of the shorter length, the story was paced fairly well, with a handful of nicely executed action set pieces, which the franchise has become known to deliver in serviceable fashion (thanks to Michael Bay). The plot points in the film move along pretty much as expected, that is until the ending of the film that is, when the writers clearly ran out of ideas, so they decided to conjure up the most preposterous nonsense I’ve ever seen for a climax, even in this franchise. That is then followed up by a resolution that is equally absurd, especially if it means we should expect a crossover film in the near future.

Like I stated before, this is a decent movie for little kids, who only know the Transformers from the live action films, or for real die-hard fans, who have been faithful to the franchise since the cartoons and the original action figures. If you’re not that, I’m afraid this movie will not serve as anything more than an excuse to blow thirty bucks a head for excessively buttered popcorn, a blue raspberry slushee and a comfortable seat in a dark room with high quality air conditioning.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts opens in theaters today.