After a 5 year absence of giant shape changing alien robots in theatres, Transformers Rise of the Beasts has hit cinemas worldwide June 9^th.  Thanks to the generosity of Hasbro and Paramount Pictures, some of us lucky folk even got to attend Special Preview Showings on Thursday 8^th, being able to quench our thirst for Autobot antics a day early.

Warning, this is a Movie Review – so SPOILERS!

One of the main complaints of the live action Transformer films is having to wait around for ages to finally see some robots.  No such complaint can be made here.  One of the main groups of protagonists – The Maximals, and the main antagonists – The Terrorcons and their gigantic master Unicron, are introduced at the outset, setting the stage for much mayhem to come.  We are also introduced to the Allspark Matrix Control Pillar Seed Staff of Merlin Transwarp Key, a… glowy thingie… which will be used as an excuse for robots to travel to Earth, trapse all over the globe and fight each other to obtain it.

And then of course we transfer to the obligatory human characters and their backstories.  Firstly Noah Diaz, an ex-solider who is about to embark on a life of crime in order to support his younger brother who, I dunno, has a pain in his hand or something.  And Elena Wallace, an undervalued researcher in a museum.  So yes, we have humans but good news – there is no romantic subplot!  That’s right folks, a live action Transformers movie with no romantic awkwardness between teens or overt sexualization of young women – can I get an amen!

Anyways, these humans need to meet the Transformers for the plot to advance, so Noah tries to steal Mirage, police chase ensues, they escape and we get introduced to the bulk of the Autobot cast.  Brooding Optimus & perky Bumblebee, the mainstays of the movie series are on hand with Arcee, returning for her third outing, combining her robot look from the Bumblebee movie with her motorcycle altmode from ROTF.  But its Mirage who takes the staring role both in this scene and for much of the movie (oh thank you, thank you Primus for not making yet another movie all about Bumblebee and Optimus again!).

Lets take a look at Mirage shall we.  Originally in Generation One the character was a blue & white Autobot Warrior, a member of the upper class who wants the war over so as to return to his lavish lifestyle on Cybertron, who could turn into an Indy Racer as well as cloak himself with invisibility.

Here he seems to be a pastiche of other G1 Transformer characters.  He has the youthful exuberance of Hot Rod, the altmode of Jazz and the holographic powers of Hound.  That said, at least there is some resemblance to previous incarnations there.

Mirage also seems to be able to turn into anything.  Yes I know that’s the point of Transformers, that they can change their forms, but Mirage can change into most anything on a whim.  In short order he transforms into a Porsche, a Lamborghini and an Indy Racer (in an homage to his G1 counterpart).  Yup, all cars approximating his mass and size, so what’s the problem?  No problem as such yet, but a short time later he transforms into a garbage truck bigger than Prime himself, and near the end an exo-suit for Noah which is not much bigger than the human.  By making Mirage seemingly able to be anything, it waters down the specialness of the transforming ability in general.

It isn’t long before, in pursuit of the glowy key thingie, the Autobots meet the Terrorcons, with much fighting and general violence taking place.  Thankfully for the franchise it learned from Dropkick and Shatter from the last flick as in a few fleshed out bad guys can prove more interesting than an army of generic ones (don’t worry, that happens later too). Scourge, the Terrorcon leader and main Herald of Unicron, is powerful and commanding enough as the main villain, though can’t be said to be breaking new ground – at least he comes with a couple of deployable Freezer minions.  Battletrap is pretty cool, using chains with clamps and wrecking balls on the end in both his modes to hurt his opponents, often using the environment around him to help smash his foes.  Nightbird can fly to provide her group air support, she also produces her signature swords near the end of the movie but doesn’t do much with them.

The glowy thingie is found, but oh no!  It got all broke up and now we need to find the second half!  Cue off to Peru, courtesy of Stratosphere, a pretty cool old transport plane character.  They meet up with Pablo Wheeljack who has an idea where the second half may be.  There we see the Autobots actually using their ‘robots in disguise’ moniker by hiding around the city in vehicle mode while the humans do their thing.  Then off to the jungle where the Maximals are hiding out where they are most definitely not robots in disguise.  Don’t get me wrong, they look cool.  But they are all way bigger than the animals they are supposed to be disguised as (the glowing eyes don’t help much either).  Maximals and Autobots team up, get their arses kicked, the glowy thing is put back together and thus the final act is underway.  The transwarp portal is opened, allowing Unicron to come and chow down on Earth.

But things don’t happen that fast.  Despite the transwarp portal castle thing materializing in seconds, it takes a long time for the portal to open enough for Unicron, so even though Airazor is now dead and Bumblebee near death himself, the remaining bots go to stop the portal opening, Optimus and Noah learning the magic of friendship (or something) and trusting each other.  Here we get the big final battle, with all the good guys who survived near dying at some point but never quite managing it, while the bad guys (along with the promised hordes of weaker bad guys to go smashy smashy on) get their comeuppance.  Cue some post battle scenes and that’s a wrap folks.

Movie Review – Bumblebee

So yes, the plot is very formulaic and nothing you haven’t seen in a hundred other flicks.  So is this movie worth watching?

Yes, yes it is!  This is actually to my mind the best live action Transformers movie to date, as well as being the most fun!  The majority of robots are treated like actual characters, receiving their fair share of screen time and character development, not simply murderbots to show up to kill each other between prolonged human scenes.  Speaking of, they finally seem to have struck the right balance for robot-to-human screen time – it’s a Transformers movie with actual Transformers!

The only time I got sick of the squishies was the final battle scene; a huge stunning battle taking place with the Maximals and Autobots fighting the Terrorcons and a legion of their minions while Unicron decends from above, and they halt the action for two full minutes for Noah to have a heart-to-heart with his brother over a walkie-talkie?!  Shut the hell up Noah – we want to see the robots fight!  This did detract from the exo-suit scene for me, as I was all pissed off with Noah ruining the flow, but thankfully times like this in the movie were rare – no 10 minute scenes of Sam Witwicky having a mental meltdown in class, followed by talking about how a kiss had a deisely tinge to it.  The pacing of the movie is spot on, keeping you entertained without things going so fast you don’t know what’s happening, the humour gives you a few genuine laughs without it ever sinking into the gutter, in short this movie seems to have listened to all the fan gripes about the first 5 movies and rectified them, producing a fun and entertaining flick about our favourite giant, shape-changing alien robots!

I give Transformers Rise of the Beasts 9 out of 10 stolen Autobot badges.

Have you seen this movie?  What did you think of it?  Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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