My Transformers Rise of the Beast thoughts.

They contain very minor spoilers.

I came into this movie with mixed feelings. The Michael Bay films turned me off of Transformers for over a decade. The BumbleBee movie reignited my love of the franchise. The promotional materials for Rise of the Beasts were a clusterfuck. The producer claims it's a prequel to the Bayverse, while the director says it's a reboot. So you can see why I was worried. BumbleBee was originally supposed to be a prequel to the Bayverse as well, but The Last Knight bombed so hard that the producers got cold feet and changed it to a reboot. I can safely say that Rise of the Beasts is a reboot and sequel to BumbleBee, throwing the Bayverse out the window.

Just because it's not part of the Bayverse also doesn't automatically mean it's good. BumbleBee had a talented director that cares and delivered a smaller-scale and more personal story that was heartwarming and fun. Rise of the Beasts isn't BumbleBee. I think a lot of us expected this. ROTB then is more of a turn-your-brain-off summer blockbuster that is fun and inoffensive to non-Transformers fans, and second best Transformers movie to fans of the franchise. The scale is bigger. The stakes are higher. The cast is bigger. The fact that it isn't a clusterfuck like the Bay movies is a small miracle, especially when you take into the behind-the-scenes drama that we heard about. The movie was said to be a clusterfuck months before release. I don't know if it's true, but they said the movie was 4 hours long and it's been cut to 2 hours. Whether the original was actually 4 hours doesn't matter. We know there are tons of scenes cut from the film just by watching the first 2 trailers. We know characters were cut from the film. We know lines were recorded for characters that we didn't see speak in this movie. The fact is, we still got an extremely watchable movie that's fun and still has a heart is an achievement.

Let's get the bad out of the way. The movie has plotholes. Some of these holes were no doubt due to the cuts. The movie also goes back to a battle for the McGuffin type plot. So that's kind of lame. There are A LOT of characters and quite a few of them got the shaft. I counted 15 characters in the film. We have 2 human leads, Noah and Elena. On the Autobot side, we have Optimus Prime, BumbleBee, Mirage, Arcee, and Pablo (more on Pablo later). For the Terrorcons, we have Scourge, Nightbird, and Battletrap. For the Maximals, we have Optimus Primal, Airrazor, Cheetor, and Rhinox. The Maximals got the shaft. Most of the time, they were in their beast modes. You barely get to see Primal's robot mode in action, same with Cheetor and Rhinox. Airazor doesn't even transform into her robot mode. Cheetor gets... maybe 3 to 5 total words in the entire film. Rhinox doesn't say a thing. We know Rhinox is voiced by the original Beast Wars voice of Depth Charge, so he had lines. What's most disappointing is that all the bot mode designs look good! There was outcry over the Autobots, but I think the Beast Wars cast got by unscathed. They were wonderful updates to the original show... from what little we can see. Most of what I know of Primal, Cheetor, and Rhinox came from the toys and box art. I don't even know WTF Airazor's bot mode looks like since there are 2 different designs for the toys. We don't even have promo art for her robot mode.

There's also the controversy of Pablo and Prime's mouth. Pablo's real name is actually Wheeljack. We call him Pablo because he looks nothing like Wheeljack. To add insult to injury, we got a glimpse of Wheeljack in BumbleBee. Why did they choose such a radical redesign of the character is just baffling. He's not even the same character. luckily, he's not in the movie much, so... whatever. Prime taking off his battle mask just gives us Michael Bay PTSD. He's definitely nowhere near as ugly, but it's a totally unnecessary addition. He's masked and unmasked 50/50, I'd say.

Where the movie gets it right is the plot. By that I don't mean it's amazing, it's competent at best, but we Transformer fans had to set our expectations at rock bottom for over a decade now. So maybe the plot isn't amazing, it doesn't make us want to destroy the movie. I think the movie's biggest strength is the pacing. That just 2 hours, the movie never felt boring. The characters that do have character arcs are likable enough. The human drama is relatable. Optimus Prime gets his own character arc. Noah and Mirage get to bond without the cringe. Annoying characters aren't too overly annoying and don't take up too much screen time. Airazor and Primal get the most screen time out of the Maximals and have the most character. Scourage and the Teracons are... there. I mean, they are threatening enough, I guess, but hardly memorable villains. Special shoutout to Arcee. While she isn't important to the plot, she was full of character. Whether it's her fighting style, to her confident demeanor, it was all very well done and shown off even with limited screen time. Mirage, while not always nailing the humor, he was never annoying in the movie. What deaths do happen in the movie felt impactful and consequential. For the good guys anyway.

For anyone wondering why there is a planet with giant robots that transform into cybernetic versions of Earth's animals, this has existed in the Transformer lore for years now. I'm not saying it's good or that it makes sense, but it's not something the writer pulled out of their ass.

Lastly, the soundtrack is just fantastic. The movie takes place in 1994, and it captures the HipHop and Rap vibes of NYC. There is a musical call back to the Bayverse though, but that was one of the few, and I mean very very very few highlights of the Bayverse.

So yeah, for me, it's a good but flawed movie. Part of the reason I'm a bit forgiving of the flaws is due to the fact that the production of this movie was a mess. There were 5 writers involved with this script. Executive meddling. There was supposed to be a BumbleBee sequel AND a Beast Wars movie. Those 2 movies got merged into 1 and it's amazing the director was able to salvage this into something watchable. I would like to see a director's cut released on Blu-Ray. We need that damn Transit fight scene!