Audiences, roll out! The seventh movie in the live-action film Transformers franchise is Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. This science fiction action film takes us back to 1994 as a standalone sequel to 2018’s Bumblebee and a prequel to Michael Bay’s films. This movie is directed by Steven Caple Jr., who previously directed Creed II. It stars Anthony Ramos as Noah Diaz, an electronics expert in Brooklyn who befriends an Autobot named Mirage (Pete Davidson) and must save the world from the Terrorcons. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a decent film that serves as one of the franchise’s stronger installments, which isn’t saying all that much.
This series has evolved a lot in the past 16 years. We’ve gotten to see Shia LaBeouf, Mark Wahlberg, and Hailee Steinfeld as the human faces of this series, and now Ramos gets to take the wheel as the new protagonist of the Transformers series. Those who have seen him in musicals like Hamilton and In the Heights know that he has the swagger, charisma, and screen presence to carry a franchise like this. Noah is quite different from Sam Witwicky, Cade Yeager, and Charlie Watson. He’s worked with the military before but is now struggling to get a job to support his family and get his younger brother the medical treatment he needs. The film does a great job of building the emotional weight in the opening act.
After losing a job opportunity, Noah resorts to attempting to steal a Porsche. However, it’s not just any Porsche. He finds himself in an Autobot who helps him escape from the police. This leads to a fun car chase where Mirage gets to show off a few of his abilities. Although Transformers: Rise of the Beasts could have benefitted from more of this, the sequence is fun because it allowed an Autobot to do more than just fight, which is what many have grown accustomed to with this series. He takes Noah along the ride as the Autobots must retrieve a Transwarp Key before it can land in the wrong hands and cause the destruction of worlds.
This movie has everything a blockbuster needs. It has world-ending stakes, a young hero willing to step up to the plate, humor timed at all the right moments, and a few stars. It can almost be easy to confuse this film with a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, as it sometimes feels like this movie has everything people complain about with those films. This movie can feel generic at times, not capturing the soul of a non-superhero blockbuster the way Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves did earlier this year.
However, that’s not to say Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is not devoid of fun. There is a lot of joy to be had in the film’s action sequences because seeing robots rip each other apart is quintessential popcorn entertainment. However, the locations of these action scenes are much less memorable than Bay’s films. Although the movie largely benefits from removing Bay’s male gaze and risqué humor, so much personality gets removed too. The film ends with a battle where two opposing armies run towards each other, which is something we’ve seen recently in Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Although Marvel certainly did not invent these scenes, they’ve saturated it enough where when this movie does it, it feels disposable.
Speaking of saturation, the film also has that desaturated “grey” look that MCU viewers love complaining about. However, Transformers fans won’t be disappointed about seeing their favorite Autobots roll out. Mirage is a fun character with an entertaining personality, and he is joined by franchise favorites such as Bumblebee, Arcee (Liza Koshy), and of course, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). In the same way that Bay’s original Transformers reflected what a typical blockbuster looked like in 2007, this movie is a shining example of a 2023 blockbuster.
The first and third acts are fun, but the second act could have used some work. There’s a fun Indiana Jones-style adventure in there, but it doesn’t add much to the characters or emotional stakes. Although it’s a little predictable and it won’t knock your socks off, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is crowd-pleasing enough to get you on their side. It doesn’t have Bay’s rich color palette, but it also doesn’t have his endless government subplots, allowing for a more focused narrative. Some of the humor doesn’t land, particularly from Reek (Tobe Nwigwe). However, Ramos is excellent alongside Dominique Fishback.
Ultimately, there is just enough gas in the tank of this vehicle to create an entertaining popcorn blockbuster. The film’s lack of personality may be the biggest thing holding it back. Despite having five credited screenwriters, it feels like an artificial intelligence watched thousands of hours of MCU content and then wrote a Transformers screenplay recycling what they saw from those films. Caple, who has directed the eighth movie in the Rocky series and the seventh in the Transformers series, has not yet developed a distinctive, recognizable voice as a filmmaker. However, he knows how to entertain with all the joy, humor, and thrills that a movie like this needs.
SCORE: 6/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Transformers: Rise of the Beasts review.
