It’s been 14 years since Michael Bay’s first Transformers movie blew up cinemas, scoring monumental box office success for the franchise but every follow-up movie since the first has sort of lost the plot as Bay resorted to his signature style of unnecessary explosions that eventually caused the franchise itself to bomb.
However, the Bumblebee prequel in 2018 saw some fresh Allspark injected back into the franchise as the Transformers donned their classic G1 looks that most of us grew up watching.
Success for Bumblebee sparked rumours of a reboot for the franchise and the seventh title announced today further plays into that.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts takes a leaf out of the Beast Wars storyline and will introduce the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons into the universe.
As the name suggests, the Beast Wars storyline saw robots that took animal forms and fought alongside the Autobots and Decepticons. The Maximals were the good bois and the Predacons the baddies.
The movie sees the return of Optimus Prime as the protagonist and he’ll appear in his G1 form that was teased in the opening sequence of Bumblebee. Peter Cullen will continue to voice the character.
A new protagonist that’s bound to appear will be the gorilla leader of the Maximals; Optimus Primal. He’s also a confidant of Optimus Prime.
Opposing the heroes will be Scourge, leader of the Terrorcons. Not much is known about his onscreen form but the character loves fusing parts of slain Transformers onto his own body as trophies.
Bumblebee will be present as well but in the form of an all-terrain Camaro while Arcee; also teased in the Bumblebee movie, will take on the silhouette of a Ducati 916. You might remember Mirage from the Bay movies as the red 458 Italia but this time around, he’ll be a Porsche as his abilities include shifting into different forms.
Serving Scourge in the fight for evil will be Nightbird. As for the Maximals, fans can expect Air-Razor and he’s bird-form as well as Rhinox in, well… rhinoceros shape.
The studio also promises the introduction of new Autobots and Decepticons never seen in the franchise before.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will be set in New York and Peru in 1994; after Bumblebee but prior to any of the Bay movies. That places it perfectly in the timeline to play along with the rumoured reboot of the franchise.
Complementing the Transformers as the human characters will be Anthony Ramos of “In The Heights” fame and “Project Power’s” Dominique Fishback.
Filming has already begun with a release date of 24 June 2022.