Ratchets and Clanks

I have an ambivalent relationship to the Transformers movies. I wrote about the franchise earlier this spring, when Paramount released a snazzy boxed set of the 4K steelbook editions of the first six features – partly to show off, but mostly to tee up the theatrical release of number seven, Rise of the Beasts, which is now available on disc in a 4K steelbook of its own. (This one has better art, though.)

Set seven years after the prequel action of Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts sketches out yet another galaxy-spanning conflict between ancient races of extraterrestrial robots that just happens to find its way to stage a grand battle on Earth. Here it’s the animal-like Maximals – a race of mechanoid gorillas, cheetahs, falcons and such – who portaled their way to Earth five thousand years ago when their home planet was eaten by Unicron, a sentient planet or ship or something that functions in the Transformers world much the same way Galactus does in Marvel comics: It survives by consuming entire planets, so you’d better hope it doesn’t notice yours.

Anyway, the Maximals escaped Unicron and his sinister herald Scourge thanks to a magic transwarp stick that lets them jump across the universe in the blink of an eye – and which Unicron would find very convenient for meal planning, as you can imagine. The stick eventually ends up as an artifact in the Ellis Island museum in 1994, where intern Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) notices it doesn’t really resemble any of other other items from the Peruvian dig where it was found; her attempts to understand it manage to trigger its power, summoning Scourge from across the depth of space and serving our planet up on a platter for Unicron.

Fortunately, Elena is about to meet Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), an ex-soldier turned HBO unscrambler (hey, remember the ’90s?) whose need to provide for his mother (Luna Lauren Velez) and sickly younger brother Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez) has led him to a gig boosting cars – specifically this one Porsche that happens to be an Autobot named Mirage, whose friends who are also invested in finding that magic stick because they’ve been trapped on Earth since the events of Bumblebee and they’d really like to go back to Cybertron to rejoin the war against the Decepticons.

That was a lot, right? And of course none of it really matters because Rise of the Beasts, like most every other Transformers movie, is a big ol’ rock-em-sock-em smash-up where giant robots punch other giant robots and a handful of human characters scurry around underfoot, looking for the mystic doodad of the day. It’s a more interesting variation because of the diversity – not just among the cast, where you can see the co-stars of Hamilton and Judas and the Black Messiah, respectively, trying to bring some dramatic weight to paper-thin characters and cartoonish situations, but also among the giant robots.

With their feathers, fur and hair woven into their design, the Maximals are visually very different from the chrome-and-grime look of the various Autobots and Terrorcons, and the climax plays out in Cusco and Machu Picchu, along mountainside roads and in deep, verdant valleys. The Transformers movies have skewed pretty urban in their visuals, and this is, at least, something different. Beyond that, it’s a return to the story model established by Michael Bay in 2007, with unsuspecting civilians caught up in a ticking-clock quest to stop the end of the world. It’s a little more watchable than Bay’s films because people actually take a moment or two to talk between explosions … though zero effort is expended to define those people beyond “capable and loyal” in Noah’s case and “smart but insecure” in Elena’s. Oh, they’re also both from Brooklyn.

Stuff blows up, the good guys win, and because this is a prequel there’s never any real possibility that the Autobots get to go home to Cybertron. Other key moments are blunted by the fact that none of this can possibly stick: One of the Autobots is brutally murdered in the first hour, but we know he’ll be back because we’ve seen him in five other movies that take place after this one. That’s fine, because it works in the moment, but it also has a way of undercutting the other deaths that follow – and there are a surprising number of straight-up robot murders in this one. Fans of the '90s Beast Wars cartoon might find this a pretty difficult watch.

Now, to the key question: Did the filmmakers learn anything from the more modestly scaled, character-driven Bumblebee? The featurettes on the 4K disc (which are duplicated in full on the Blu-ray edition) are surprisingly revealing about that: Apparently quite a few Transformers fans were unhappy with how long it took to get to the ’splosions, so producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura made a point of having more of them in this one – hence the great big battle between Maximals and Terrorcons that opens Rise of the Beasts, and the larger scale of mayhem throughout. Not mentioned is whether those True Fans were equally hostile to the fact that the human lead of Bumblebee was a girl – and for whatever reason, Hailee Steinfeld does not make it back for this picture.

Director Steven Caple, Jr., who got this gig immediately after making Creed 2, comes across as a genuine ’90s kid, talking as enthusiastically about re-creating the New York of his childhood as he does when explaining the intricacies of the Beast Wars cartoons he very clearly grew up watching. There’s a sequence in one of the featurettes where he goes into very deep detail about the Dark Energon and Light Energon energies that power the various robot warriors, rattling it off like a Ph. D student defending a dissertation; it’s adorably nerdy, though almost none of it has any relevance to his film.

Another featurette has the writers explaining they took their inspiration for Mirage – a wisecracking Autobot bro voiced, inevitably, by Pete Davidson – from Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, because he’s the kind of guy who talks back and punctures the stuffiness of his surroundings. To which I can only say that is the least accurate interpretation of Fight Club and the role of Tyler Durden in both the novel and the film, and also: The fuck. Once again: Who are these movies even for? And who do the producers think they’re for?

Davidson does his thing well enough, I guess, though he’s maybe the least interesting member of the voice cast: Michelle Yeoh, Colman Domingo, Peter Dinklage, Ron Perlman (reprising his Beast Wars role of Maximal leader Optimus Primal) and Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernandez all turn up voicing robots, and there is not nearly enough footage of their recording sessions in the extras. There’s nothing at all of Peter Cullen, who’s been voicing Optimus Prime for four decades now; that feels like a missed opportunity. Maybe he’ll get a proper celebration when the eighth movie comes out.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now available in separate 4K and Blu-ray editions – and in a combo steelbook release – from Paramount Home Entertainment. It is very noisy.

In this weekend’s paid edition: Horror classics in Ultra High Definition! Because you’ve been good. Upgrade that subscription and you’ll be even better.