8/10 Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the seventh Transformers movie since the franchise got underway in 2007 and the second not to be directed by Michael Bay, is a good time if predictable to a fault.

Brooklyn, 1994- it’s revealed that transformers have been on Earth for several centuries, just like in Transformers 2, 3, 4 and 5, but these transformers are Maximals, a distant cousin of the Autobot tribe the series has followed so far, who transform into wild animals instead of cars. I think we can all agree that wild animals are much cooler than cars. The Maximals came to Earth fleeing Unicron (Colman Domingo), an evil planet-eating god who wants their transwarp key so he can teleport to new planets – he’d been walking to planets before, I guess.

The Maximals split the key in two for safety, but archaeologist Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) discovers half of it from a find in North Africa, and suddenly every Autobot, Maximal and Terrorcon – Unicron’s team of goons who apparently don’t have the same logistical concerns, they can just show up wherever they want – in the solar system wants a piece of her. After a showdown on Ellis Island, the whole gang races to Peru to find the second half of the key as Unicron starts walking toward Earth, just like he was at the end of Transformers 5 even though that’s set a quarter century later.

That’s the cosmic scope of the plot, but the movie really belongs to Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), a down-on-his-luck Puerto Rican American who can’t get a job after being dishonorably discharged from the military who gets mixed up in all of this. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a pointed immigrant story – the movie opens with a bunch of aliens having it out in the courtyard outside the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, it’s not subtle. Diaz, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and his Autobots and Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman) and his Maximals are all rogue soldiers protecting adopted homes. Diaz wants to stay in New York and make it, Prime wants to get back to his homeworld and Primal is still grieving for the planet he lost to Unicron, and the transwarp key and Unicron’s approach means something different to each of them.

What really elevates Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, though, is the gorilla. The gorilla is like a father to me. Every time the gorilla is onscreen, I lose it.

The 30-year nostalgia cycle, its dominance in this era of monopoly-class movies and Transformers’ central role in how this as all played out is very well documented, including the emotional effects of identifying with characters who are toys first and characters second, but I’m 31 years old, “Beast Wars” was a big part of my childhood and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the first time that’s directly been repackaged and sold to me.

To be short, it feels great. In only one film that features only four Maximals, Rise of the Beasts obviously doesn’t capture the incredibly well-written characters from the show who wrestle with morality, destiny and the necessity of violence, and it doesn’t really try to, but seeing that familiar design blown up to film scale, being able to attach my own emotions and memories to it, is something I hadn’t quite experienced first-hand yet.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts instead focuses on its human characters and essentially turns into an Indiana Jones movie – the better of the two Indiana Jones movies to release June 2023, I dare say. Director Steven Caple Jr. gives us deliberate, pointed references to The Maltese Falcon and Drive, those are what I notice in one screening but I’m sure there are others, that certainly aren’t applause breaks, but they let me know I’m in the hands of someone who cares about movies as an art form and their history.

Michael Bay is not here anymore – well, he’s still attached as a producer – and that means this is not a Michael Bay movie. As we’ve already seen with Bumblebee, this is a very good thing. The cartoons are a lot easier to parse, looking much more like they have solid moving parts and not the constantly shifting masses we see in earlier movies, and the action rules and is also much easier to see.

Rise of the Beasts feels like a retread of Bumblebee, to which it is a direct sequel, in a lot of ways. It has a much more humble, human-focused story in which the humans’ decisions actually matter. Diaz’ and Wallace’s expertise and ability to fit in small spaces put them in for a lot of mission-critical tasks the transformers can’t handle.

Rise of the Beasts doesn’t obviously despise its human characters and render all of them as comic relief. Also, there are multiple female transformers, and a human woman who is both old enough to drink and not being drooled on by the camera. Those are nice things to have, and they’re noticeably absent from many Michael Bay movies.

Rise of the Beasts also takes several cues from Marvel, and though it isn’t bad enough for me to drop into “oh no, it’s another Marvel movie!” mode, you can tell. The film’s climax is a direct recreation of The Avengers’ battle over New York, with a skybeam opening a portal with an invasion force coming through, and Diaz even gets some Iron Man armor to personally fight the Terrorcons at the end.

Also like Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts noticeably sticks tighter to a two-hour runtime, 127 minutes when every other mainline movie runs past 140, and the lower runtime is reflected in a lower budget. Rise of the Beasts’ estimated $200 million is the same as the first Transformers movie, which cost $150-200 million in 2007 before the housing market collapse or the MCU money-printing machine came into existence. It’s doing OK – it only opened in 3,678 theaters, fewer screens than The Little Mermaid and Spider-Verse on its opening weekend, but still grabbed the no. 1 spot with $61 million domestic and $171 million worldwide, and it’s hanging out at almost $421 million worldwide as of this writing, which is about $50 million behind what Bumblebee made. It probably needs to downsize a bit, but that seems like plenty of scratch for a second-tier franchise movie.

Then we get a post-credits sequence to announce the Hasbro Cinematic Universe. Great.

Don’t look now, but the last Hasbro movie, Snake Eyes, was a heartfelt human drama about betrayal and the weight of family legacy with absolutely killer action – actually, do look now, that movie is a great time and you should watch it – and this newest Hasbro movie is this thoughtful story about the tenacity of immigrants and how human ingenuity can avert a seemingly unstoppable global catastrophe. Transformers as a franchise may be toy advert first and story second, but it didn’t endure because it was a great toy advert, it endured because it was a great story. “Beast Wars” has endured with me personally because it’s a great story.

So to the Hasbro Cinematic Universe, go to it and good luck, it seems to be on the right track.

Leopold Knopp is a UNT graduate. If you liked this post, you can donate to Reel Entropy here. Like Reel Entropy on Facebook and reach out to me at reelentropy@gmail.com.