Movies need not succeed on all fronts to be successful overall. Having enough laughs in a comedy might make up for a lack of interesting characters. Give us truly great chemistry between the leads and a romance can spin its wheels for a couple of hours. Blow something up really well and an action movie can otherwise trod well-worn ground. It is, of course, better to a have movie that does everything brilliantly, it’s just not essential for the overall experience. Problems exist though when a movie doesn’t do anything particularly well, when everything about it is rather ho-hum; that’s when what otherwise might be overlooked flaws stand out in stark relief.

This last is undoubtedly the case with the latest entry in the “Transformers” saga, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.” This seventh live action film takes place mainly in 1994, putting it seven years after the events of the last installment, “Bumblebee,” and 13 years before Sam Witwicky gets his car in the first of the live action movies (which is seemingly still canon). But, don’t worry about those specifics, this film only cares about the other movies so it can toss in easter eggs for the fans. Instead, directed by Steven Caple Jr. and with a screenplay from Joby Harold and Darnell Metayer & Josh Peters and Erich Hoeber & Jon Hoeber based on a story by Harold, what we get is a mishmash of ideas as convoluted as the writing credits appear.

One minute the leader of the Autobots (the good guys), Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), might be against fighting anyone ever and the next he’s ready to lead his team into certain death. One minute, the general for the Terrorcons (the bad guys), Scourge (Peter Dinklage), is virtually invincible and the next he’s quite vincible indeed. One of the few consistencies “Rise of the Beasts” does have in terms of its plot is sending human Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) either with or without fellow human Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) into a small space that the Autobots can’t possibly enter to accomplish a task essential for the saving of not just Earth, but the entire universe. By my count, that happens at least three time over the course of less than two hours of movie.

In their quest to save the world/save the galaxy/save the universe/return home, the Autobots also have help from the Maximals (they’re like Transformers, but they turn into animals, hence the “Rise of the Beasts” title) as they fight Scourge; Scourge’s minions; and Scourge’s boss, Unicron (Colman Domingo). You don’t really have to worry about the Maximals or the minions or Unicron. You might think that those things were relevant, but they all tend to offer less character depth than our ever-changing Optimus Prime.

If that makes the affair sound terrible, I haven’t done it justice. It’s not terrible, it’s merely numbing in its foolishness. As bad as the Michael Bay-directed “Transformers” movies tend to be, they at least numbed the audience by going overboard on spectacle. Here, the cadre of writers have come up with the clever notion of offering a climax featuring a massive hole in the sky that the bad guy can come through and which must be closed at all costs. So, kind of like [enter name of any of a dozen films here]. Unicron could be eliminated (or renamed Thanos) with minimal other script alterations. That is, he is largely missing and never terribly threatening (so not “Infinity War” or “Endgame,” but certainly the first “Avengers”). The actions of the characters are entirely driven by plot, which helps explain why motivations shift.
The movie’s main success is the relationship it offers between Autobot Mirage (Pete Davidson) and Noah. That evolves in a way that may be predictable, but the back and forth between Davidson and Ramos is great, it is the perfect example of great chemistry overcoming a deficit. Whether or not the two were ever on set together or worked together in person in any capacity, it feels real in a way that nothing else in the movie does.

That relationship, however, is all too often put by the wayside so we can get a few minutes that make one question Elena’s job and her boss’s job or what happened to Noah in the military or any number of other things that are never explored in the slightest. If there was a version of this movie in which those things mattered—and the way they are presented it feels like there was—it is not the one we have before us.

“Rise of the Beasts” does somewhat better with Noah’s home life and his trying to take care of his brother (Dean Scott Vazquez), who has sickle cell anemia, but not much. It is a device that gets things moving and is meant to offer some sort of grounding for Noah’s character rather than a true relationship.

With diminishing returns setting in early in the action sequences and a plot that is generously referred to as one, it is the Mirage-Noah relationship that keeps the audience tuned in. It’s not enough to carry the affair even if it is enough to save the movie from disaster.

Over the series of “Transformers” films we have gotten over the past 20 years have had some good moments (most notably the immediate predecessor to this one), but many more bad ones. While “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is not one of the franchise’s highlights, it is also a far cry from the worst. It is, as with so many entries into so many series at this point, best described as “another one.”

photo credit: Paramount Pictures

Categories: review

Tags: Anthony Ramos, Autobots, Bumblebee, Decepticons, lassismore, Maximals, movie, movie review, Optimus Prime, review, reviews, Rise of the Beasts, Terrorcons, Transformers, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts