The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
Following Fast X, The Boogeyman and now Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the cinematic theme of summer 2023 seems to be movies that are unable to meet even the lowest of expectations. Like Fast X and The Boogeyman, I wasn’t expecting the latest Transformers to be a good movie (does anyone go into these movies with high expectations?), but I was genuinely surprised by how miserable I was while watching this movie. Sure, these movies have never been good and one must go into them with the expectation of basically watching a dumb cartoon, but Bumblebee was a step in the right direction and is easily the best entry in the series. I had hoped that Rise of the Beasts would build on that film’s mild momentum, but it instead reverts to the mind-numbing idiocy and poor writing of the prior installments.
Set in 1994, Rise of the Beasts is a sequel to Bumblebee and a prequel to the first Transformers movie from 2007 (make a mental note of that timeline; it will come up later). I’ve never been a big Transformers fan (I was more of a Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kid), so you will have to bear with me as I try to summarize this plot. So, long ago there was a planet of animal transformers that was attacked by evil transformers that work for a giant robot globe that eats planets. The animal transformers flee to Earth and have some sort of key that they split in half and they need the key to get back home. Flash forward to 1994 and one half of the key is discovered, which sends a beam of light into the sky. This is noticed by both the usual transformers (Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, etc.), the animal transformers and the evil transformers. They are all after the key for different reasons: the animal transformers need it to get home and the others need it for…I don’t know. Definitely something. I didn’t follow this very well.
With a plot that engrossing, you really need solid characters to carry the film and that’s where Transformers: Rise of the Beasts truly falls flat on its face. I can deal with a nonsensical, McGuffin-based plot. This is a Transformers movie, so I’m not expecting a master class in character development and dialogue. However, when a movie has me longing for the superior charisma of Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, something is seriously fucking wrong. The human characters in this (painfully played by Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback) are awful. Just frigging awful. I don’t care about these people, they have zero charisma, they have zero chemistry together and the film never even presents a reasonable explanation for why the transformers keep involving them in the story. There is no reason for them to be there. This is already a 75% computer-animated movie, so why have human characters at all? Who gives a shit about them? Just make it about the fighting robots and stop trying to shoehorn human characters into a story that doesn’t need them. While I didn’t really understand the transformer plot, I could at least stay awake watching Optimus Prime. I was agonizingly bored during this movie because I simply couldn’t care less about these people and was counting the seconds until the end credits would roll.
Much of the drama also hinges on the idea that the audience doesn’t realize that this is a prequel, even though the film is constantly (and obnoxiously) reminding you that it’s 1994. If a movie is a prequel, then you can’t threaten the death of a character that fucking appears in the movies that we have already seen. The entire last act of this movie pulls this bullshit like I’m supposed to forget that the goddamn character is in the other movies that come after this. That’s like trying to make the audience think that Yoda is dying in The Phantom Menace for fuck’s sake. How the hell did someone get paid to write this?
The animal transformers are also pretty damn disappointing. I wasn’t a Transformers kid, but I do remember thinking that the animal transformers were the coolest ones. Here we only get four of them: a gorilla, an eagle, a cheetah and a rhino. Alright, so we only get four of them. But here’s the thing: out of the four, only the gorilla and the eagle ever do anything. I am not exaggerating when I say that I don’t think that the rhino has a single line and the cheetah might have a couple of short lines that amount to nothing. These characters literally do nothing other than stand around in group shots and add to the effects budget. It’s a frigging robot rhino. They couldn’t think of something cool for a robot rhino to do?
I will give the film some credit for the quality of the effects. One of my biggest problems with the Michael Bay Transformers movies is that I had no idea what was happening in the action scenes. I didn’t know who was fighting who or who I should be rooting for. It was always just a blur of CGI bullshit flying across the screen. At the least, Rise of the Beasts does correct this. The fight scenes are well composed and I could always tell what was happening. The transformation animations are also smooth and impressive. I just wish that there was a script to go along with them. There was a funny moment near the end, though, when all of the good transformers are having a talk and regrouping during the big final battle. While this is happening, there is still a massive battle raging in the background. If all the good guys are chatting, what the hell is happening back there?
This series needs to either just abandon human characters and go full animation or find a writer than can actually give these movies some sort of emotional grounding. Bumblebee was the most successful at this, largely thanks to Hailee Steinfeld, but Rise of the Beasts is a massive step backward for a series that was never good to begin with. The series could also just end. I would be fine with that.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers%3A_Rise_of_the_Beasts#/media/File:Transformers-_Rise_of_the_Beasts.jpg
