'Transformers' Stomp into Theaters This Weekend

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts attempts to take over the box office this week with the latest installment of the franchise featuring giant robots from outer space. But the movie is going to have formidable competition in the form of last week's top movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. If Transformers performs according to expectations and Spider-Verse keeps up the outstanding success it enjoyed last week, the US domestic box-office race could be a nail-biter. Read on for details.

Via The AV Club.

It’s understandable why most critics and many fans of the popular Hasbro toy line view the five Transformers movies directed by Michael Bay with utter disdain. They’re narratively incoherent, and defined by a lazy, cynical approach to the IP. However, Bay is such a wizard of eye-popping, grand-scale action that he deserves more credit for nailing just how big these epics--centered on giant, robot-like aliens capable of shapeshifting into recognizable vehicles--should be. With IMAX-ready wide shot compositions and go-for-broke action sequences, Bay delivered maximalist spectacle so immersive that it intermittently eclipsed the films’ story and tonal issues, especially in series standout Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, the 2011-released third entry, which spent nearly the entirety of its second half on a thrillingly sustained “battle for Chicago” set piece.

The series’ first non-Bay-helmed outing, 2018’s charming spin-off Bumblebee, didn’t offer much in the way of memorable action, but director Travis Knight and writer Christina Hodson wisely jettisoned much of what was problematic about the previous films--the narrative bloat, the leering sexism, the queasy-making politics—and infused the story with a welcome emotional sincerity that suited the smaller-scale approach. The result was a likable coming-of-age yarn that just happened to feature giant alien robots, and the first series entry to offer characters worth caring about.

So it seems like a no-brainer that the ideal way to go for the franchise at this point is to combine the endearing heart of Bumblebee with the event movie grandeur of Bay’s installments, which is what the new Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, set seven years after Bumblebee, strives to do. Unfortunately, this thoroughly generic reboot doesn’t exert enough effort in the attempt, working from the same tired story template of earlier sequels that focused on a quest for a sci-fi MacGuffin—in this case, the Trans-Warp Key, which opens portals in time and space allowing whoever possesses it to travel to distant planets. It’s an easier-to-follow variation on the template than most of its predecessors, but still one dependent on long-winded exposition dumps. And the character-based material here lacks Bumblebee’s sweetness, coming off as cloyingly manipulative instead.

For example, in establishing our put-upon human hero Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), co-writers Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer, and Josh Peters feel it’s not enough to make him a military dropout and tech whiz desperately chasing one canceled job interview after another. He’s also stuck living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment with his 11-year-old brother, Kris (Dean Scott Vazquez), who suffers from sickle-cell anemia so severe that it causes wrist pain when he fiddles with his beloved Game Boy, and their mother (Luna Lauren Velez), who struggles to pay the bills for Kris’ treatment. The amount of buttons being pushed with these crisis-defined characterizations surely exceeds the number found on your average Autobot chassis.

Get the rest of the story at The AV Club.