Transformers – Rise of the Beasts review: The Maximals are here, but it's not enough

3/5

Story: The planet-devouring villain Unicron is hungry, and the means to that end is a trans-warp key to open portals in space that lead to different galactical systems, which the Maximals (animal-shaped Autobots) manage to hide away, moments before he destroys their planet. Like the Autobots, the surviving Maximals too seek refuge on earth and all is well until an archeological discovery of one piece of the key lands at a museum. The key emits a signature beam that the Autobots and Unicron’s cronies, the Terrorcons, see, with both parties intent on securing it for themselves.

Autobot leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) wants to use it to return home to Cybertron, while the Terrorcons, led by Scourge (Peter Dinklage), need it to have Unicron feast on Earth and move on to greener pastures.

Review: Director Steven Caple Jr’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts follows a template that is oh-so-familiar. There is an impending threat to the planet that man and machine must fight together. But first, man and machine have to meet, for which we are introduced to Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), a former army man and tech whiz-kid, who decides to steal a car when he can’t land a job. No points for guessing that the car he picks is an Autobot, which springs to life at the exact moment that Noah’s gets inside, in response to Autobot leader Optimus Prime’s call to band together and check out the source of a beam in the sky. The car, Mirage (Pete Davidson), convinces Optimus and gang that Noah is the right person to sneak into the museum from where it is emanating. The Autobots, though, are not the only ones on this mission; main villain Unicron’s lackeys Scourge, Nightbird (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), and Battletrap (David Sobolov) are also after the key and not too worried about making their presence known or killing a few humans along the way. Scourge gets the key, only to find out it is only one half of it. And so, begins the hunt for the missing piece, which brings them all to Peru, where we finally meet the Maximals, who join the Autobots in the battle to stop Unicron.

As exciting as it is to see the King Kong of the machine world Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), Cheetor, Rhinox and Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), Steven just doesn’t devote enough of the narrative and, thereby, screentime to any of them. Hell, it is called Rise of the Beasts and the expectation was that it would be something like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where it was all about the apes. Yes, we see the Beasts scurrying alongside their Autobot buddies and fighting off the Terrorcons, but we don’t get to see the full extent of what the Maximals are capable of. The film is, honestly, disservice to the title and considering that we’ve seen Optimus and gang in six other movies, with all their mid-air transforming, kick-ass action, etc., we didn’t need more of that. But that’s exactly what we get, with Prime battling Scourge – eerily similar to the conflict with Sentinel in Dark of the Moon, where the latter wanted to use Cybertron technology to bring their home planet to Earth, and destroy Earth in the process. So, in terms of story, Steven doesn’t follow a lot of originality.

The thing about the Transformers movies is that you know you are not expecting a great plot – it’s about newer Autobots in every edition and the metal crushing action sequences. For me, the draw has always been Peter Cullen’s magnificent voice as Optimus Prime and he’s in glorious form in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. This time, he’s given ample competition in the voice acting department by Ron Perlman and Peter Dinklage. The scene-stealer, though, is Pete Davidson as Mirage, who owns his Autobot avatar, to the point that one can almost see him in the robot.

Verdict: The Transformers series has always been one of my guilty pleasures; I’ll watch it even if it is bad and it’s not something I can explain. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was a decent watch; no complaints there, but I could not help feeling that it could have been so much better. And if there’s going to be an eighth movie in the franchise, no doubt, I will queue up to watch that too.