Rise of the Beasts Transformers: Rise of the Beasts General News & Discussion Thread (TAG SPOILERS)

[Pennywise]

 

[Slick]

This makes me very happy.

 

[The Caped Knight]

The possibility are enormous.

 

[emc5466]

It's going to need some impressive international numbers to break even. I don't see how it makes more than about $150 million-ish domestically with all the big movies coming out in the next few weeks.

It’ll struggle to get to $400m worldwide. It’ll end up making less than Bumblebee.

 

[TheVileOne]

It’ll struggle to get to $400m worldwide. It’ll end up making less than Bumblebee.

I think it will do a little bit better than Bumblebee at this rate.

 

[The Caped Knight]

For sure this will make more than Bumblebee, it’s actual fun and broad in scale.

 

[DCnightwing23]

Just got a chance to watch this in the cinema and was surprisingly entertained. I will say, this is a complete waste of the Beast Wars characters that are included here, I don't even think Rhinox has a single line. That aside, the tone, pacing, and action in this one reminded me of the first three Transformers movies that I happen to like to this day. I even think they played the score from the first few movies at the end of this one which was neat. Not too bad at all, it's a rewatchable fun popcorn flick. Oh and if I am allowed to nitpick, can we please stop giving Optimus a little pigeon-looking mouth, he looks so much better with the mouth covering on that they should just leave him like that always, these robots don't have to have mouths to talk.

 

[HBarnill]

There's a really good Transformers movie in here. But it's so overstuffed for a below 2hr movie, w/o credits. All they needed to do was to not have the Maximals/Terracons/Unicron included, give some focus to Arcee/Wheeljack, expand on Prime's arc and Noah's development.

There are really good ideas that aren't executed well, especially when Prime's arc is far too rush and Noah's character is so inconsistent. Unlike the previous films, save maybe AOE, Prime is a static character, which makes the attempt to give him an arc here worthy of mention. His arc is understandable, Prime blames himself and has no interest in anything except getting back home and he then evolves into the hero we know he can be. I love that. But it isn't as well-defined as I'd like it to be.

Spoiler

Prime effectively has to be given a pep talk by Primal, rather than have it develop more organically with his time with the humans, particularly with Noah.

It almost plays like his arc from AOE, albeit performed much better here which only shows how that film messed it up even worse than here.

As for Noah, his concern is for his little brother but we barely get to see him after the first act. And that not mentioning how his next concern is with saving the earth when nothing from his first few scenes establishes that kind of character. You could squint and say he wants to do it for his family and he's a vet but it just happens so quick. His conflict and similarities with Prime is also a great idea but it feels like there was much left in the cutting room floor. Apparently, according to test screenings,

Spoiler

Noah's experience with leaders in the army have left him distrustful of Prime,

why was this left out, if this is true? I can't even mention Elena, honestly. No disrespect to the actors, they've done great work before and they try their best. I know we come here for the Transformers but if the humans are gonna be there, they have to be far less generic than they are here and it hurts to see how much potential they had.

I'm grateful for Prime and Mirage having personalities (Prime being sarcastic!?) and Pete Davidson was quite good. What about the rest? Primal is stoic yet paternalistic. Rhinox and Cheetor are mainly henchmen. Airazor's there to be motherly and spout exposition. Arcee is... tough? And Wheeljack's... an accent? The Terracons are generic baddies and Unicron shouldn't be used in a movie that's supposed to be the second of a trilogy. I'd rather have the film be just about the autobots learning how to trust/adapt to earth and the humans likewise learning to trust them. The subplot where

Spoiler

Noah secretly and selfishly plots to betray them so he could put the needs of Earth over Cybertron's

is easily the most dramatically effective part of the plot and it's finished as quickly as it's introduced. What also doesn't work is

Spoiler

Bee dying, when we all know they wouldn't dare kill off the 2nd most known character of the series, especially after his solo movie, and is revived with an annoying deus ex machina. Then they do the same for Mirage. Yeah, because 2 fake death scenes are always so riveting. Ok they do actually kill off Airazor but I honestly didn't care at that point because of how little she brought to the proceedings that wasn't explaining stuff
.

Shooting the movie in Peru gives it a unique feeling but that's pushed aside for the usual climatic CG fare where it's all camera whizzing around a gray area for 10 minutes or more. The action is at least more coherent than in Bay's films but they sacrifice the personality that those movies, at the very least, had in their action. Oh, and

Spoiler

Noah gets an exo-suit, just like when the humans had them in the 1986 movie. Yippee.

Not a jab at Caple. His direction is quite good. I'd compare his work here to Bayona's work in Jurassic World 2: good direction, let down by bad writing.

Understand this: I'm reviewing this from both a critical perspective and as a huge Transformers fan. I didn't hate it. There's something really good here. It either needed another editing pass or a straight up new script. It doesn't help that there are some allegations of Paramount mishandling the film as major studios usually do. The fact there are 5 credited writers seem to indicate this. But yeah, I know, it's Transformers, what did I expect? I expected it to rise above what people think of it and have it be treated with respect. They had it with Bumblebee and yet they didn't understand what made that tick.

Spoiler

Less said about GI Joe, the better. Stop trying Hasbro, people have rejected them 3 times already.

4.75/10. Sad to say, it's maybe the second best of the live-action movies.

 

[Iceman]

 

[Pennywise]

 

[samsnee]

On par with most summer blockbusters but not good overall

 

[psylockolussus]

The numbers are so low, I just don't know how could Paramount Pictures move forward with another Transformers movie, without doing some major move that will really attract the general public.

 

[Chris B]

The numbers are so low, I just don't know how could Paramount Pictures move forward with another Transformers movie, without doing some major move that will really attract the general public.

Thy really need to dump Lorenzo di Bonaventura and recruit a completely new creative team. Probably also put the franchise on ice for awhile in order to let the Bay films fall into distant memory.

 

[TheWiseGuy487]

I think with the new animated film coming out next year and the popularity/success of films like Into/Across the Spider Verse, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and most likely the upcoming TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, it might be best to just give up the ghost on live-action and start fresh with animation.

Bumblebee aside, a spiritual reboot that clearly takes its cues from the Michael Bay directed series that already showed significantly diminishing returns by the fifth film with a very low box office is clearly not paying dividends anymore. Audiences are tired and just not that interested anymore, and it shows. They’ve tried and failed two times already, with the last film and now this, so they might as well just cut their losses. They’re just beating a dead horse, resurrecting it and beating it way past the point of death over and over again at this point.

Transformers has always historically performed better in the realm of animation anyway, and with this new animated film series being disconnected from the live action films, both tonally and stylistically and a new cast, they can make a fresh new start without any previous baggage.

 

[psylockolussus]

I doubt an animated Transformers movie would drive more interest.

I think its time to give the Ip a rest in the movies, unless they really want to spend another 250 million for a Transformers live action film.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Just got back and I personally enjoyed the hell out of this. The maximals were a cool new addition and Ron Perlman brought the goods as Optimus Primal. Scourge was a cool new villain and at least something a bit different in the movies in villain terms from Megatron. He was bad ass in his own but I love it when Prime is in vengeful god mode as he was here. They keep giving us bad ass Prime and they will keep getting my money.

Mirage was pretty good as the new human friendly bot, he was a bit silly at times but he also had a lot of heart and his loyalty to Noah was touching at times. Noah and Elena were really good human leads I would love to see them back. And while Bumblebee sat most of the movie out he possibly had the best scene in the whole thing.

The only bad spots for me were that Unicron was a bit of a waste but obviously set up for more. But Scorponok was well and truly wasted. He could carry a whole movie as the villain if done right but was a cameo at best here.

I hope this movie has a bit more BO gas in the tank as I would like to see Caple Jnr do another one. Totally disagree with the critics' on this one. 7.5/10.

 

[Sithborg]

Finally saw this. It is indeed a Transformers movie. Not the worst of the bunch (low praise). I do like having the main Autobot who pairs up with a human having an actual voice, instead of Bumblee "talk". Designs are improving, but I could really go for less bit CGI mess final battle with copy paste minions.

 

[*Dead*End*]

Hello, everyone!
I have been away for a while (not sure if anyone remembers me). Anyways ... haven't seen the new Transformers movie yet, which would be unthinkable for me sixteen years ago, as I ended up going to see each film on opening night (the 1st movie 10x).
Hope to stick around the forums for a while. Happy Independence Day!

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

Hello, everyone!
I have been away for a while (not sure if anyone remembers me). Anyways ... haven't seen the new Transformers movie yet, which would be unthinkable for me sixteen years ago, as I ended up going to see each film on opening night (the 1st movie 10x).
Hope to stick around the forums for a while. Happy Independence Day!

Go see ROTB it's really enjoyable.

 

[samsnee]

It finally made $400M. Budget is supposedly $200M. Assume $100M for marketing. So will break even at best.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

It’s actually showing really good drops since it’s 2nd weekend. I believe it’s out digital on Monday though but if Paramount had any sense they would delay that.

I really hope Paramount pushes on with the franchise as it’s still rebuilding goodwill from the Bay movies and I thoroughly enjoyed ROTB.

 

[samsnee]

If they’re serious about following through on that tease and are faithful to the original designs, I think the next one will do better.

 

[Pennywise]

 

[The Caped Knight]

 

[#root]

Saw this the other day and it was decentish. Better than Bay’s movies but not as good as Bumblebee. Even conceptually, this was like a weird mixture of Bayverse and Bumblebee i.e. Wheeljack’s whole personality being that he has an accent. It did have a fairly solid first half though. They did a good job introducing the characters with some fun interactions b/w them and also with setting up the stakes but when they got to Peru, most of the bots just disappeared into the background. Especially Mirage who definitely needed a lot more time with Noah.

Also, the way Bumblebee was using his radio speech in the beginning… why not just give him a voice at this point? This whole schtick has gotten way too old now. It really doesn’t work especially when he’s not the main lead.