Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Alien Robots that change into vehicles and wage war against each other have come back for our viewing pleasure. Now in no way are these movies supposed to be epic films that will be remembered for all of time, but they are supposed to be fun. So was this movie fun? Was it even good?
Rise of The Beasts is supposed to be the story of the Maximals and it sort of is, we do get a little of their story, bare minimum if you ask me. The story isn't the highlight of this film obviously, much like all the Transformers movies, well the Michael Bay ones anyway. The story of how the Maximals get to Earth is shown, it's very quick, and we get a glimpse of the Universes biggest threat in Unicron who eats planets.
The human characters are so-so like always they throw the humans at us even though we are here to see robots fighting. With that said, we do get a great duo with Mirage who is voices by Pete Davidson, who did an amazing job, and his relationship with Noah who is played by Anthony Ramos was pretty great. But again, it's just too many human scenes to me, I get why, we are following all of this through Noah and Elena Wallace's character who is played by Dominique Fishback. It's just too much in my opinion.
The main bad guy that works for Unicron was Scourge who was voiced by Peter Dinklage, loved this character for awhile, he was basically a walking cheat code, way overpowered which I did enjoy, but convenience did him in at the end.
I did enjoy Optimus Prime voiced again by the legendary Peter Cullen who played a reluctant leader who seemed more aggressive, more scared for his people, and just wanted to go home. He wasn't sure about trusting humans even though some of his comrades have met and dealt with humans already, namely Bumblebee, he just didn't want to get involved in that, but Mirage basically forces that issue and makes the point that they need one in order to get off Earth.
I loved the look of the Transformers in this much like Travis Knights Bumblebee (2018), the battles looked great, I love me some giant robots fighting it out. I also liked the bringing in the Insecticons to battle the Maximals and Autobots instead of the same old battle against the Decepticons who obviously don't know Optimus is on Earth or they would of sent forces there to kill the high ranking Autobots.
There were a few "WTF" moments that threw me off in this film and one moment that happened that caught me completely off guard, to the point that it had me saying, "They can't do that!", but it plays out well. It was unexpected.
Rise of The Beasts isn't really Rise of the Beasts, it's like Revenge of the Fallen, The Fallen barely makes an appearance until the end of that movie, does some damage for a minute and then gets his ass kicked by a Super Saiyan Prime who just dismantled The Fallen, Megatron, and Starscream like they were jobbers. We barely get the Maximals until they are needed near the end and the only one that gets screen time is Optimus Primal voiced by Ron Perlman and a little bit by Michelle Yeoh's Airrazor who pushes the characters towards meeting the Maximals story wise.
This reminded me more of the Bay movies than Knights Bumblebee, in pretty much style and even the battles. Steven Caple Jr directed this movie and did a decent job bringing some good characters to the big screen and shows one of the biggest reveals at the very end which caught me both off guard and made me extremely excited for the future of this franchise.
The movie gets a 67 out of 100 from me, which will make me reevaluate the other Transformers films that I ranked, because this would be at the bottom and it shouldn't be, this is a middle to upper mid tier Transformers film that doesn't deserve the last ranked grade. It's a fun film with decent characters, some cool moments, and a great reveal at the end, that's enough for me. I recommend watching it.
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