by Jeffery Rahming, Contributing Writer
Despite its consistent negative reception, the Transformers franchise has been able to roll out to big box office successes mainly off of the bonkers energy that Micheal Bay gave to the series. But the last entry, Bumblebee,was a fresh start for the franchise, replacing Bay’s chaos with the more nostalgic eye of Travis Knight; it brings the series closer to the energy of the cartoon children of the ’80s loved so much. Rise of the Beasts is based on the ’90s series, Beast Wars, where the Transformers turned into animals instead of cars. Despite a clear effort to differentiate themselves from Bay’s aesthetics, they slide back into the same tired formula that made those films so frustrating. This latest entry, Rise of the Beasts, is a pretty basic, but strangely lengthy, romp that, while fun, doesn’t really leave you with anything but an empty popcorn bucket in the end.
Rise of the Beasts takes place seven years after the events of Bumblebee.The Transformers are still stuck on Earth, but a beacon in the sky signals a chance of a way back to Cybertron. Along for the ride with them, as usual, are human companions: Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) and Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback). Their adventures bring them into an uneasy alliance with another race known as the Maximals, who are part organic, part machine Transformers.
Needless to say, if everything up there seems dumb to you, this isn’t for you. The filmmakers don’t shy away from the fact that this is essentially a ’90s cartoon with a lot more swear words. On that aspect, it delivers well, and considering that many fans will be coming just for that, I can’t imagine they’ll be too disappointed. There’s no denying the movie is somewhat enjoyable, but its script is not great, unsurprisingly. Rise of the Beasts is set in the ’90s, and while that helps set it apart from the other films, the decade doesn’t really inform the story at all, except that the characters reference ’90s pop culture every two minutes. It’s cute at first, but after a while, it gets irritating, and it feels like they’re trying too hard to come across as nostalgic. There’s also some difficulty balancing the many characters, and many attempts at emotional moments just fall flat. The Transformers, humans, and Maximals do have an interesting three-way conflict, which adds another dimension to the plot, but even with that, everything falls apart during the third act, where the writers seem to challenge themselves with how many clichés and cheesy moments they can fit in before the end.
Like Bumblebee, the designs of the Transformers are more reminiscent of the series’ designs than the Bay ones. The animation is smoother and more fluid, but I found myself missing the grittiness and complex mechanics of the Bay designs, which had a distinct personality instead of just copying the ’80s designs.
The action, meanwhile, is fun enough, but nothing special, and the more cartoony style makes everything feel a bit weightless. I still have to credit the VFX artists for making the Maximals work, despite being one of the goofier things to adapt from animation to live action. Their designs are much more interesting than their Transformers counterparts, though maybe that’s just because it’s something new.
Unfortunately, the Maximals feel like background characters in what is supposedly their movie. The human characters and Autobots get most of the attention. The Maximals are mainly there to give story exposition, and to fight. They are barely characters, despite valiant voice performances by Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal and Michelle Yeoh as Airazor, both of whom I wish got more screen time. We’ve seen Optimus Prime eight times by now; it would’ve been fun to focus on some new leads for a change. I especially wish we didn’t have to spend so much time with Mirage, an Autobot played by Pete Davidson. Davidson sounds like he did all of his lines in one day with a performance that alternates between just being himself, and doing a half-baked Adam Sandler impression. Luckily, Fishback and Ramos are quite good as our human leads. They’re both extraordinarily skilled actors, and they bring in some groundedness that the movie desperately needs.
Rise of the Beasts had a lot of capable hands behind it, but it’s pretty run-of-the-mill. If you’re a fan of the series, it will be a fun enough outing, but nothing makes it different from any other Transformers film, and it adds nothing to the franchise that has already gone on too long. It’s clear from this and Bumblebee that they want to set themselves apart from the Bay flicks in terms of quality. Rise of the Beasts is a respectable attempt to do that, but they still have a long way to go.
Score: 5/10
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is currently playing in theaters
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