Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Review: The Prequel Tones It Down A Notch

It only took seven big screen outings of space robots turning into a variety of "built Ford tough" vehicles, but the "Transformers" franchise has finally brought their furry counterparts along for the ride. "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" introduces the Maximals from the popular '90s animated series "Beast Wars" to the fore, so now, armies of CG artists get to work out the logistics of a robot turning into an ape instead of a big ol' truck.

Though this is the first in the series to incorporate time travel and introduces not one, but two separate teams of new characters, it is conversely the simplest, most straightforward adventure the franchise has birthed thus far. Part of that is the efficiency of Paramount's Hasbro writing rooms, which have focused on streamlining the narratives from the sprawling, bombastic messes even the best of the Michael Bay films often devolved into. It means that the credits feature five whole writers for a movie based on a children's toy line, but that it also focuses on what matters (thrilling audiences) and not what doesn't (pretty much all the weird excursions Bay's films regularly subjected us to).

But while "Creed II" director Steven Caple Jr. does an admirable job steering the ship, it's hard not to miss Bay's acumen for spectacle, even if it's undeniably refreshing to have lost all the other baggage his vulgar auteurism brought to the finished product.

Picking up seven years after the Amblin-esque, '80s set palette cleanser of "Bumblebee," "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" transports to Brooklyn to introduce two new human protagonists. There's ex-military tech wiz Noah (Anthony Ramos), a young man struggling to take care of his mother and his ailing little brother, and Elena (Dominique Fishback), a museum researcher stuck under the thumb of an ungrateful boss who doesn't see or value her. The two are set on a collision course when Elena discovers a mysterious artifact central to the film's core conflict and Noah gets trapped inside a Transformer while trying to steal a car at the exact moment the Autobots become aware of this artifact's presence in the city. 

There's a lot more about the planet-eating Unicron (voiced by Colman Domingo), the Predacon forces he sends to Earth in search of the artifact, and the fact that they, and the Maximals, the animalistic counterpart to the Autobots, are in fact all from the future, despite some of them landing in prehistoric times. But "Beasts" is more simply about a device that allows for travel between Earth and Cybertron and how hard Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) is willing to fight to get his people back home. Noah and Elena join their cause, globetrotting as the franchise's requisite human core to the ongoing war between enormous space robots that turn into cars and planes and now apes and birds. 

Having all of this messy lore stripped down to its barest essence allows an audience to just focus on the scene-to-scene back and forth between the good guys and the bad guys and the stakes of two planets hanging in the balance. It may sound reductive, or a little condescending, to damn the film with faint praise for being fun and easy and simple. But think about how convoluted, inconsistent, and strange the Bayformers films were, and how much cataclysmic chaos, jingoism, and toilet humor so often muddled some blockbuster pictures that otherwise were astonishingly ornate in their visual construction and ambition.

By simplifying this franchise back down to a digestible Saturday morning cartoon vibe, viewers can come to the multiplex and check on their favorite shapeshifting alien machines without being confused as to what happened in the last one, or worried this new one will prove an embarrassing waste of cinematic effort. "Beasts" provides a pleasant viewing experience for all ages, which is about the most you ought to expect from a feature film based on a line of action figures. But there's still a tinge of Bay missing that is hard to shake.

Caple Jr. brings two primary elements to "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts." He knows how to wring maximum pathos from the human leads, making Noah and Elena's arcs feel vital and sincere. It helps that Ramos is a charmer and Fishback is the most underrated actress of her generation working today, but there's a tenderness he brings here that was very present in "Creed II." The other part is largely flavor. This being the unabashed "urban" "Transformers" movie, with ethnic leads and a setting rife for lionizing the boom-bap era of New York hip-hop, Caple Jr. can't help himself from staging set pieces around classic cuts from the likes of Black Sheep, Digable Planets, and LL Cool J. It's a likable makeover for a franchise that usually just spams Linkin Park no matter the context or mood. 

He's assembled a pretty strong voice cast, too. Ron Perlman fits right in as Optimus Primal, the King Kong-y descendant of our favorite mac truck hero. Pete Davidson is at his most entertaining and least cloying as Mirage, the Autobot Noah forms such a bond with. But maybe the two standouts are Domingo, for turning Unicron into such a malicious, sultry kind of big bad, and Cullen, who continues to imbue Optimus Prime. The two share a brief interaction at the film's climax that is sure to be added to every YouTube supercut of "Optimus Prime being as badass for ___ minutes straight," but Optimus finally gets the same kind of heartwarming arc Bumblebee got in his titular outing.

But the one nagging thing it was hard for this reviewer to shake? There's something so restrained and practical about this movie. It's impressive, craft-wise, watching Caple Jr. shrewdly construct sequences to save the big, elaboration transformation animation for the heavy set pieces. It's smarter for the budget and makes for some interesting visuals, but noticing it just calls to mind how Bay would have each Transformer transform multiple times, sometimes within the same shot, and seeing the care and detail that went into those sequences made the movies themselves feel bigger.

"Beasts" is a sharper, more efficient, and more respectable kind of "Transformers" film, but it feels so much more slight than its predecessors. That may be the right call for the franchise as it exists right now, but one hopes in the future, they can work back up to Bay's level of scope, without the baggage that often overshadowed it.

"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" premieres in theaters June 9.