Being born in 81, I grew up with the G1 Transformers and the 1986 movie is one of my first movie theatre memories as a child. It is crazy to think that Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the seventh live-action Transformers movie! To be fair, I think that most of them are at the very least good, the only one I did not care for was The Last Knight.
How to Stream or Download Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
You can expect to be able to download or stream the film from Paramount+ sometime after its theatrical release date which was on June 9, 2003. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. Be also on the lookout for Transformers One which is to be released on September 13, 2024.
The Movie Review
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a sequel to Bumblebee which served as a prequel to the first live-action Transformers. There are many people (myself included) that feel Bumblebee was more of a reboot than it was a straight-up prequel to the 2007 Michael Bay Transformers!
So far, I have read mostly negative and mixed-at-best reviews from the “experts” about this movie. I have to say that I am not all that surprised as the Transformers movies have never really done all that well with the critics. At the end of the day, these are movies about warring robots, it is never going to be something like The Shawshank Redemption so I never get the hate some people have for these movies, they are fun, and having fun with a movie is never bad!
As the title suggests, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is themed around the Beast Wars CG animated series that first aired in 1996. The Maximals are a race of good “Transformers” that protect something that is known as The Transwarp Key, but a giant entity called Unicron wants that key!
Unicron is a giant planet that feeds on other planets in order to survive and he wants this key so he can freely move through space and time, devouring planets as he wishes. He sends his lackey, Scourge, and his troops to do his dirty work, but the Maximals manage to feel and get the Transwarp Key away from him.
There were many things I hated in Transformers: The Last Knight, mainly the portrayal of Hot Rod and Unicron. Let me tell you, this is Unicron and exactly how I wanted to see him in live-action form. I was also very impressed by the way they handled Optimus Primal and the rest of the Maximals.
On Earth, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994 and our two human characters are Noah, a former soldier, trying to make money to look after his mother, and Elena a history expert who pieces together the history of the Transwarp key. After meeting Mirage (who is awesome by the way) the two end up joining Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Arcee, and Mirage to try and stop Unicron from destroying Earth and helping The Autobots return to Cybertron.
The Autobots, Noah, and Elana meet the Maximals and form a super team to try and stop Scourge from bringing Unicron to Earth. This movie runs at a pretty quick pace, something a few of the other Transformer movies could have done with doing! I liked how it learned from Bumblebee in terms of its Transformers casting.
By that I mean it was not stuffed to the brim with Transformers! There are far more Transformers here than there were in Bumblebee, but it never feels like there are just random robots on the screen at all times! Sometimes I have felt like the human characters were annoying or again, that there were too many of them, but that is not the case here either.
If you liked Bumblebee, you will like this, it is more of the same, but at a bigger scale! The action and the CG are fantastic, I loved what they did with Mirage and it was so awesome to see the Maximals in live-action form. To be honest only Optimus Primal and Airrazor get any kind of depth, but Rhinox and Cheetor were badass!
This is just a really fun movie and one that is even more fun on the big screen! If you have enjoyed the previous Transformers movies, especially Bumblebee, I do not see there is any way you do not have a blast with this. Oh, I also must give props to the sound department! The movie sounds amazing and has this epic 1990s hip-hop soundtrack that I looked for on Spotify pretty much as soon as I came out of the theatre!
