A car thief named Noah (Anthony Ramos) makes the bad decision to try to steal a Transformer. Meanwhile, Elena (Dominque Fishback), an intern at a museum, accidentally sets off a beacon while cleaning an ancient artifact that awakens a giant planet-eating robot. Autobot leader Optimus Prime grudgingly turns to Noah to steal it so he and his robot pals can go home. Naturally, the bad Transformers want it, so the humans and Transformers make an alliance with a tribe of robot animals called “Maximals” to save Earth.
The motto for Transformers has always been “More Than Meets the Eye”, but with Rise of the Beasts, it’s more like, “What You See is What You Get”. Creed 2 director Steven Caple Jr. at least knows how to keep the camera still during the action and doesn’t go overboard like Michael Bay did. He makes sure the various robot battles are coherent, which is more than I can say for Bay. Caple also tries to give the film a bit of heart a la Bumblebee as a chunk of the movie is about a boy and his car… err… robot, albeit with less successful results.
The problem is that the robot animal Transformers are kind of weak. I mean, as a series goes on, the ideas should get cooler, not lamer. Age of Extinction had robot dinosaurs, which is an admittedly cool idea. (Even though it was poorly executed in the movie.) After seeing robot dinosaurs, robot monkeys and birds seems like a big downgrade.
The human cast is filled with no-names, all of whom are okay, but unmemorable. They’re not as annoying as some of the humans in the Bay-directed films. It’s just that they lack personality. The voice cast is rather stacked, with Michelle Yeoh, Peter Dinklage, Colman Domingo, Pete Davidson, and Ron Perlman providing the voices for the new robots. However, their voices are so overprocessed and computerized that they could’ve been voiced by anybody really.
Overall, Rise of the Beasts is a step up from the first five Transformers films, but that’s not exactly much to brag about. It still has all the moronic stuff people want from the Bay movies (robots fighting, pissing, and talking in jive accents), albeit not nearly as mind-crushingly stupid. It is, however, a big step down from Bumblebee. (I did like the stinger at the end, though.)
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ReplyDeleteI personally like Bay's movies a lot better and his directing never bothered me personally. I thought robo-dinos in Age of Extinction were done very well. I thought Fox was really good in the Bay films and not annoying at all same with Shia.
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