Transformers: Why 'Rise Of The Beasts' Makes Absolutely No Sense
Contains spoilers for "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts"
The Transformers franchise started as toys, and everything that came out after that, from TV series to live-action films, basically serve the function of selling more toys. It started out innocently enough with the good Autobots and the evil Decepticons. But as time passed, more action figures were required, resulting in a slew of other alien races entering the eternal war between worlds. One of these races was the Maximals, the protagonists of the "Transformers: Beast Wars" series. They're descendants of the Autobots with the power to transform into robot animals instead of vehicles.
General audiences will get introduced to this new race in the live-action movie, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts." Some of their backstory gets changed in the film. For starters, their not direct descendants of Autobots as they exist at the same time as them, and their standard forms are that of Earth animals, such as Optimal Primal (Ron Perlman) looking like a gorilla.
The inclusion of Maximals in "Rise of the Beasts" is a good way to separate the film from others in the franchise, but some fans may feel a bit letdown at their arrival. Despite being hinted at in the movie's subtitle, the Maximals play a minimal role in the film, to the point where it feels less like a proper "Beast Wars" movie and more like another opportunity to show off Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and Bumblebee to audiences that just so happens to include a robot cheetah.
The beasts don't so much rise as they're just kind of ... there
The Maximals, particularly Optimus Primal and Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), get some chance to shine in "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts." The opening sequence is devoted to them as they travel to Earth with the Transwarp Key. After that, though, they aren't really seen until roughly halfway through the movie. Airazor pays a visit to the Autobots in New York, but the true meeting between Autobots and Maximals doesn't occur until much later. Even at that point, Optimus Primal pretty much exists to show Optimus Prime that he should be willing to trust humans. Rhinox (David Sobolov) and Cheetor (Tongayi Chirisa) barely get any dialogue, and Airazor dies before the final battle.
It's hard to see a scenario where the Maximals truly "rise" in the film because, as it stands, they're there mainly to serve as reinforcements when the Autobots attack the army led by Scourge (Peter Dinklage). Even after the climactic fight that sees the Autobots emerge victorious, the Maximals just kind of shuffle off to not be heard from again. And since "Rise of the Beasts" supposedly takes place in the same timeline as the Michael Bay "Transformers" movies, it does beg the question of why they weren't there to save the world all those times.
Granted, this isn't the first time the "Transformers" movies have underutilized some new robots. 2014's "Age of Extinction" teased the appearance of Dinobots, but similarly, they don't appear until much later in the film despite being teased in the title. Perhaps it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. These are "Transformers" movies, after all, so the likes of Optimus Prime always have to get the spotlight over anyone else. But "Rise of the Beasts" as a subtitle may be overselling it a bit. It should be more like "Transformers (And Also Beasts Are There)."