Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

[LordGigaIce]

The Last Knight is where, I feel, the Bay films finally gave up any semblance of making sense or continuity, and I figure if the movie isn't going to care about that stuff, then why should I?

Turns out when you don't care about that stuff, it's an alright way to kill two and a half hours. Anthony Hopkins appears to be having a ball at leeast.

Medieval history was my academic focus in grad school and so the stuff about Cybertronian knights and dragon Transformers and King Arthur and Merlin... that's all stuff that hit me just right and it's the sort of stuff I'd lean heavily into if I ever got the chance to tell a Transformers story from scratch... but that movie just doesn't want to focus on that stuff. It's sooo frustrating to me because my imagination can see the workable ideas in there.

But it's also just dumb fun and I dare say better than AoE?
I mean it's a low bar but still...

It also didn't help that the writer's room was headed by the guy who wrote Batman & Robin.

To be fair that guy also wrote A Beautiful Mind. Like... writing is not an exact science.

 

[Sabrblade]

Medieval history was my academic focus in grad school and so the stuff about Cybertronian knights and dragon Transformers and King Arthur and Merlin... that's all stuff that hit me just right and it's the sort of stuff I'd lean heavily into if I ever got the chance to tell a Transformers story from scratch... but that movie just doesn't want to focus on that stuff. It's sooo frustrating to me because my imagination can see the workable ideas in there.

But it's also just dumb fun and I dare say better than AoE?
I mean it's a low bar but still...

Yeah, I will admit that the opening war scene with King Arthur, Merlin, and the Guardian Knights is legitimately my favorite part of TLK. Once that ends and we cut to modern day, the rest of the movie just dies off.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

It's the only part I stayed conscious for, so I'll give it that. It felt like it went on way too long, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was only three minutes or something like that. The movie might have already been messing with my sense of time.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Yeah, I will admit that the opening war scene with King Arthur, Merlin, and the Guardian Knights is legitimately my favorite part of TLK. Once that ends and we cut to modern day, the rest of the movie just dies off.

Honestly I'd be down for a show/movie/comic with Cybertronians showing up in the early Medieval period

 

[Sabrblade]

Honestly I'd be down for a show/movie/comic with Cybertronians showing up in the early Medieval period

I've been saying that for years! I've even envisioned a proper reboot of Beast Wars set during that time.

 

[Steevy Maximus]

But it's also just dumb fun and I dare say better than AoE?
I mean it's a low bar but still...

Age of Extinction always came across to me as a…mean?…movie. From the opening where Ratchet is killed, the entire film had this overriding sense of being a “negative” film. There was no hope, no fun to be found. And what they did with the Dinobots LEGITIMATELY made me physically angry. And you guys know I’ve been pretty chill about the general changes done in the live action films. But hyping them up as “legendary knights” and then, just, they were pretty much glorified set pieces! It was a waste all the way down.
The Last Knight, for all its issues, at least felt like a grand adventure. If nothing else, I’ll at least applaud them for having greater ambitions than I saw in Age of Extinction, and Jablonsky stepped up his music game as well.


I view Rise of the Beasts the same way as I view GI Joe Retaliation- the prior film was technically a “better film”, but this one is just a lot more FUN, flaws and all.

 

[Sabrblade]

Age of Extinction always came across to me as a…mean?…movie. From the opening where Ratchet is killed, the entire film had this overriding sense of being a “negative” film. There was no hope, no fun to be found.

To say nothing of what the movie did to Lucas, and then rubbed it in our faces by having the camera dwell on it for way too long.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Age of Extinction's meanness was supposed to serve a purpose. It was supposed to be such a dire situation that even Optimus Prime has lost his famous optimism. It was supposed to be uplifting when we watch him regain his faith in humanity and become his old self again.

Unfortunately they forgot the uplifting part. Hopeless Bayverse Prime and normal Bayverse Prime just aren't different enough. It dooms what actually could have been a decent Transformers story.

 

[Sabrblade]

In a way, all of the film's joy and jolliness was completely embodied by Hound. And he refused to share any of it with the others.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Like if AoE were the first time we saw Optimus brutally gunning down 'Cons and being a bit of a manic it would have sold the idea better. But Bayverse Prime was always like that so it just didn't register as different enough.

That was another flaw with RotB. The moody, angry Optimus. I get what this movie wanted to do, and they did a good job giving him an arc.
But after five Bay movies I was ready for a more uplifting take from movie Optimus and it just wasn't there.

It would be fine in a vacuum but unfortunately it doesn't exist in one.

 

[Sabrblade]

Like if AoE were the first time we saw Optimus brutally gunning down 'Cons and being a bit of a manic it would have sold the idea better. But Bayverse Prime was always like that so it just didn't register as different enough.

I mean, the first movie didn't have him be nearly as hostile as he was in the sequels. He even called out Ironhide on being a psycho when the latter suggested terminating Sam's parents when they were being merely a mild nuisance: "Ironhide! You know we don't harm humans! What is with you?!"

This video, I feel, does a pretty decent job of psychoanalyzing Optimus's descent into rage and hostility across the first five films, and points out the exact moment that he became as vicious as he's commonly perceived to be:

 

[CoffeeHorse]

There is so much in these movies that could form the bones of a good story. It'll always be a shame things turned out the way they did. They just refused to stop and make the effort to put together a polished script. Part of me wonders if they just overestimated how much effort it would actually take. It's always so frustratingly close.

 

[LordGigaIce]

There is so much in these movies that could form the bones of a good story. It'll always be a shame things turned out the way they did. They just refused to stop and make the effort to put together a polished script. Part of me wonders if they just overestimated how much effort it would actually take. It's always so frustratingly close.

I think that Sabrblade might be right about corporate influence? Like Hasbro wanted Dinobots for AoE and Maximals for RotB but Bay and Caple wanted to tell stories about KSI/Cemetery Wind and Unicron and so we get these scripts that try to do too much because no one's willing to back down?

A good step in the right direction would be getting creative and corporate on the same page. Not to simp for corporations but I'm just being realistic. If everyone wants their pet thing in the movie it becomes a bit of a mess to balance it all.

 

[Sabrblade]

I think that Sabrblade might be right about corporate influence? Like Hasbro wanted Dinobots for AoE and Maximals for RotB but Bay and Caple wanted to tell stories about KSI/Cemetery Wind and Unicron and so we get these scripts that try to do too much because no one's willing to back down?

A good step in the right direction would be getting creative and corporate on the same page. Not to simp for corporations but I'm just being realistic. If everyone wants their pet thing in the movie it becomes a bit of a mess to balance it all.

The irony of this is, in these cases, I feel like most of us fans would have preferred that the movies focused more on what Hasbro wanted than what the directors wanted. We were so hyped up to finally see the Dinobots in AOE (especially after so many years of Aaron Archer saying "giant mechanical dinosaurs wouldn't make any sense in these movies because they would be terrible disguises"), yet that movie treated them like little more than a footnote.

Likewise, we knew about the Beast Wars influence in Rise of the Beasts long before Unicron was announced (and "Beasts" is in the name of the movie, no less), so many of us were hoping for a more Beast Wars-influenced movie than what we got (even if what we got was still not that bad and could have been much worse).

 

[CoffeeHorse]

As much as people used to cry "Executive meddling!" when Hasbro would try to insert their ideas in their media, they really try to have good ideas when they do that. All of these films would have been better if Hasbro had more creative control.

 

[Sabrblade]

Truth be told, ROTB honestly feels like one of the nerdier live-action TF films that actually lovingly embraces the lore of this brand. Can't really say the same about any of the Bay-directed movies where any aspects of the lore used in those were more like surface-level fanservice thrown in as Easter eggs instead of being at the core of each movie's plot.

The closest any of the Bay films came to being as nerdy as ROTB was, surprisingly, ROTF, with its plot centering around the, at the time, semi-obscure, somewhat deep cut lore of The Fallen. But we all know what happened with that movie getting drowned in Bay's particular style of potty humor thanks to the writers strike that happened at the time forcing Bay to finish the movie on his own.

 

[Cybersnark]

thanks to the writers strike that happened at the time forcing Bay to finish the movie on his own.

Chiming in (as a[n uninvolved] writer) to clarify: Bay wasn't "forced" to do anything; he chose to be a scab. He could equally have chosen to halt production, as many other productions did because they valued their writers.

 

[Sabrblade]

Chiming in (as a[n uninvolved] writer) to clarify: Bay wasn't "forced" to do anything; he chose to be a scab. He could equally have chosen to halt production, as many other productions did because they valued their writers.

That's fair. "Forcing" was just the first and simplest word that came to mind when I wrote that. "Leaving" might have been a better term.

 

[unluckiness]

As much as people used to cry "Executive meddling!" when Hasbro would try to insert their ideas in their media, they really try to have good ideas when they do that. All of these films would have been better if Hasbro had more creative control.

Executive meddling sucks because it tends to create bland, inoffensive product. Of course it would be an improvement in the case of the movies.

 

[Sabrblade]

The more I think about it, the more I began to wonder if KSI may have actually been a very subtle jab at Hasbro itself on Bay's part, what with KSI being a big corporation that manufacturers Transformers, including "retools" based on existing designs (Stinger, Galvatron), full of a bunch of nerdy designers who seem way more into their own products than "normal" people (as in, casuals and non-fans who aren't deep in the sauce like we fans are), and who come up with a bunch of goofy sci-fi-ish names like "Transformium" that only dorks would really like.

Sure, Bay has gone on record claiming that he became a fan of the brand after his initial skepticism, but his movies really conveyed an attitude that heavily suggested the contrary.