That discovery sets off a beacon in the sky, earning the attention of Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, whose time in the role hails back to the OG 80s animated TV series) just as Noah and Mirage are getting acquainted. After hours, she's examining an unusual artefact with intriguing markings, which happens to be a key that lets the Transformers warp between different worlds, including back to their own. He gets light-fingered for a payday, attempting to steal a Porsche that's actually the Autobot Mirage (voiced by Pete Davidson, Bupkis). They're strangers with Brooklyn in common, and soon trying to save existence as well. That dashing and staring, and befriending extra-terrestrial machines in general, is the result of doing things that neither Noah nor Elena are meant to. Still, even the best thespians can only do so much when they're primarily tasked with rushing around and peering upwards at CGI chunks of walking, talking metal. Both of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' on-screen stars are excellent actors - Ramos was in Hamilton's debut Broadway cast, while Fishback has a BAFTA nomination for Judas and the Black Messiah - and the film benefits from their presence. Fishback is archaeology intern Elena Wallace, whose vapid boss (Sarah Stiles, Billions) constantly cribs from. Ramos plays former solider Noah Diaz, who has that ailing younger brother (Dean Scott Vazquez, also an In the Heights alum) and massive medical bills to prove it. Were the Transformers themselves asked to write the most cliched screenplay they could?Īnthony Ramos ( In the Heights) and Dominique Fishback ( Swarm) are Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' prime living-and-breathing figures, running, chasing and palling around with Autobots as Shia LaBeouf ( Pieces of a Woman), Megan Fox ( Good Mourning), Mark Wahlberg ( Uncharted) and Hailee Steinfeld ( Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) all have before them. The feature's latest two leads do resemble people better than most flesh-and-blood characters in the Transformers world, welcomely, although one gets a sick-kid backstory and another a bad boss. The five-person team responsible for the script give no signal that they even wanted to. New faces and a new guiding force behind the lens can't dislodge that sensation with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. They show zero feeling, and seem to keep rolling out because the saga assembly line has already been established. Michael Bay, Hollywood's go-to director for maximalist action carnage, might've been enthusiastic about Transformers when he started the silver-screen series nearly two decades back - the Ambulance filmmaker was definitely devoted to crashing together pixels replicating chrome in all five titles he helmed, including 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight - but these movies can't be anyone's passion projects. It draws upon the Transformers: Beast Wars animation, comics and video games, too, and feels in every frame like a picture that purely exists to service intellectual property that does big box-office business (2011's Transformers: Dark of the Moon and 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction each made over a billion dollars). Set in 1994, the current instalment is a sequel to the last 1987-anchored franchise flick, which focused on the yellow-hued mechanised alien that can morph into a car, and also a prequel to 2007's saga-spawning Transformers. The toy-to-screen series it belongs to is now seven live-action entries in and - apart from 2018 spinoff-slash-prequel Bumblebee - largely still as dull as a smashed headlight. Alas, in this very realm, the newest Transformers film is indeed flickering through projectors. Now, the Oscar-winner voices a space-robot peregrine falcon in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and viewers should wish that this only existed in Everything Everywhere All At Once's kaleidoscope of realities. In the breakout movie of 2022, Michelle Yeoh was everything and everywhere.
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