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Movies: Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts

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BertCorbeau said:
Michael Bay seems to have made me disinterested in the franchise.. but I did hear good things about Bumblebee… maybe I should give that a go and watch this eventually
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It's not a bad movie, though it perpetuates some of the annoying things from the bay movies (I'm sick of Bumblebee not talking/talking through sound bytes and radio clips. It was cute the first time but after a while it robs him of his ability to be a full-blown character. There's also some instances of them using a classic character name with a distinctive/specific historic personality and then just sticking it on whoever/whatever. like how the tank in the first movie was Devastator until they just went "shut up, devastator is the Constructicon combiner and has been the whole time stop saying otherwise"). Still it's better than like 90% of what the Bay movies did.

If there's a downside it's that there's a couple of short flashback sequences of the war on Cybertron and they're going to make you say "why can't we just have a whole movie of that?")
 
BertCorbeau said:
Optimus is Beast Wars is Optimus Primal .. Optimus Prime is a direct descendant of him. Recall Beast Wars occurred when dinosaurs roamed, so it was some time ago
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Not quite on either count. Beast Wars takes place on prehistoric Earth (though the show doesn't make it totally clear it's Earth until some time into the series), but they get there via a wormhole/space vortex thing and time travel shenanigans. the Maximals and Predacons are actually distant descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons from some indeterminate amount of time after the present day events of the original Transformers content. (this is important for significant plot reasons towards the end of the second season of the show)

The timeline is something like

9 million years ago - the great war of Autobots vs Decepticons starts. Optimus Prime is "born"

4 million years ago - The heavy hitters from both factions leave Cybertron. They fight in space and end up crashing on Earth, with the Autobot ship (which has both sides on it since the Decepticons boarded it during the fight) embeds itself in the side of a mountain. The crash knocks all of the Transformers offline and as well as the ship's main computer

Present day (1984 given the timeframe of the cartoon) - the mountain's dormant volcano aspects stir to life. The eruption jostles the ship computer to life and knocks a Decepticon into range of its repair functions (the ship then unknowingly repairs the Decepticon presumably because it's too scrambled to tell who's who at that point). After the rest of the Decepticons are revived, Starscream, being a massive idiot, shoots the ship from the outside, intending to "say goodbye" to the Autobots and bury them in more rubble. Instead all it does is knock over Optimus and let him get repaired/reactivated so that he can do the same for the rest of the Autobots.

2005 - The events of Transformers: The Movie (the 1986 cartoon one) happen

2006 - The events of the 3rd season of the Transformers cartoon happen.

Some indeterminate number of years in the future - The great war between Autobots and Decepticons is over. Facing a fuel shortage, the factions are largely reformatted or freshly built into smaller, more energy efficient bodies. The factions then rechristen themselves as the Maxmals and Predacons respectively.

Still further after that - Beast Wars Megatron (who has named himself for the G1 character) swipes an important artifact from Cybertron and flees into space. He is chased by a "science vessel" captained by Optimus Primal (who is not in any way directly connected to Optimus Prime. Nor is he a "Prime" in the same way that Optimus/Rodimus was. It's presumably just a venerated name that he adopted or was given. The pilot of the show makes it sound like everyone re-names themselves after they format into their beast forms, which makes sense since almost everyone has a name that specifically references the alt mode they end up with, but that is mostly forgotten afterwards and it's treated as if each bot always had the name they have even if it makes no sense because there'd be no gorillas, rhinos, pterodactyls, rats, cheetahs, spiders, or anything of the sort on Cybertron). The two ships fight and are sucked through a time vortex, sending them back about 4 million years into Earth's past where they crash on the prehistoric planet. Again, this is very significant to a plot reveal late in season 2 of the show.

I'd say more but I don't want to spoil everything for anyone who hasn't seen the series and might want to watch it because as I've said, it's worth watching and is one of the better storytelling efforts in Transformers history if you can get over that the CG is primitive and dated since it's from 1996-2000 and was made for classic SD TVs in 480 resolution. The stuff that this is plot relevant to is easily the best stretch the show has.

The whole series is available to watch for free without an account on Tubi


Honestly the first portion of season 1 is kind of a slog because it's a bit more kiddy and silly but it also has some necessary character stuff and plot development. It kind of kids into high gear around "The Trigger" 2 parter, which is episodes 16 and 17 of the first season (which ran for 26 episodes. The next two seasons were half-length at 13 episodes apiece). Then it gets really good in the last 3 episodes of the first season before transitioning into the second one.

yes, I am a giant nerd for knowing all of that. Transformers is kind of my "thing". :laugh:

Actually on a dedicated Transformers forum I've spent the last couple of years watching every episode of every Transformers series for review and discussion with some other posters there. Right now we're in about 2010 or so and have covered I think just over 500 episodes of material (which isn't even the halfway point of the franchise :biglaugh:)

Other secondary point is that there are no known direct lineages between any Beast Wars character and a G1 namesake or thematic counterpart. The only connections that come up are 1) as mentioned BW Megs named himself for G1 Megatron (mild hot take: I think Beast Wars Megatron is the far superior version of the character. In fact I think he might be the best Megatron across any iteration of Transformers, period) and 2) Rattrap makes a comment like "what in the name of my Great Aunt Arcee..." at one point, though it's highly likely he's just being a flippant smartass as is his usual mode and he's not actually familially related to G1 Arcee.
 
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The Nemesis said:
If there's a downside it's that there's a couple of short flashback sequences of the war on Cybertron and they're going to make you say "why can't we just have a whole movie of that?")
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Who know. With the smashing success of Mario Brothers animated movie, maybe that is something that they do. Mario Bros cost well over $100 mill to make as a comparison.
 
StreetHawk said:
Who know. With the smashing success of Mario Brothers animated movie, maybe that is something that they do. Mario Bros cost well over $100 mill to make as a comparison.
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They are making an "origin" type movie that will show the beginnings of the war that will be fully animated and set entirely on Cybertron, though it remains to be seen what sort of style it will use and how it will play out. All we know so far is the director (Josh Cooley from Toy Story 4), the writers (a pair who were involved in the writing of the first two Ant-Man movies) and the major cast list and actors:

Optimus Prime: Chris Hemsworth
Megatron: Brian Tyree Henry
Elita-1 (or just "Elita"): Scarlett Johanssen
Bumblebee: Keegan-Michael Key
Sentinel Prime: Jon Hamm
Alpha Trion: Laurence Fishburne

Transformers One (franchise) - Transformers Wiki

tfwiki.net tfwiki.net
 
The Nemesis said:
They are making an "origin" type movie that will show the beginnings of the war that will be fully animated and set entirely on Cybertron, though it remains to be seen what sort of style it will use and how it will play out. All we know so far is the director (Josh Cooley from Toy Story 4), the writers (a pair who were involved in the writing of the first two Ant-Man movies) and the major cast list and actors:

Optimus Prime: Chris Hemsworth
Megatron: Brian Tyree Henry
Elita-1 (or just "Elita"): Scarlett Johanssen
Bumblebee: Keegan-Michael Key
Sentinel Prime: Jon Hamm
Alpha Trion: Laurence Fishburne

Transformers One (franchise) - Transformers Wiki

tfwiki.net tfwiki.net
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Love Peter Cullen, but his Optimus voice is sounding older these days. Can understand the desire to move off him. Having big name voice actors gives the film more press, so I can understand them moving off Cullen and Welker. Honestly, those are the 2 big TF voice actors. Everyone else can be changed without too much fanfare.
 
StreetHawk said:
Love Peter Cullen, but his Optimus voice is sounding older these days. Can understand the desire to move off him. Having big name voice actors gives the film more press, so I can understand them moving off Cullen and Welker. Honestly, those are the 2 big TF voice actors. Everyone else can be changed without too much fanfare.
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Agreed. Though I don't fault Cullen all that much for his perforamances in more recent stuff like the Bayverse movies or the last couple of TV shows he did (Prime regularly, its sequel Robots in Disguise as a part-time gig), I do feel that the fact that he is obviously 35+ years older than when he started in the role has changed the voice and that the loss of some of that does factor into how a lot of modern Optimuses are made into either weird, shouty, angry ragemonsters (the movies) or stoic, flat, two-dimensional cardboard cutouts who only exist to be all serious and say profound lines, cliches, and contractually obligated fanservice lines (his catchphrases, or most of his dialogue from the 86 movie).

Welker's not having as much of an issue because Megatron always being quite raspy has helped disguise the aging in his voice, and his performance in Transformers Prime may have actually been better than his G1 performance because he dialed back some of the harsher aspects of the voice and gained a ton of range in the process.

What they need to do though is not only allow other actors to take the reins, but also allow them to do something different that's not just a bad impression of Cullen/Welker. A lot of modern not-Cullen Optimus perforamances have boiled down to "how much can you sound like Peter Cullen?" and it doesn't work. Something like Garry Chalk doing Optimus Primal for Beast Wars (and then Optimus Prime for the 3 anime series in the early 2000s) is that his voice sounds like the right fit for the role while also not simply being a take on Cullen. That's what we need. Similarly David Kaye's Beast Wars and Unicron Trilogy Megatron is absolutely its own voice that sounds nothing like G1 Megatron, but it works because they craft a suitable character for it to inhabit



(huge Beast Wars spoilers, naturally)
 
I also enjoy Patrick Stewart as captain Picard from Star Trek but his voice these days doesn’t carry the authority and charisma it once did. Reality of aging. Him sitting in the captains Chair giving out orders in a weaker voice loses something.

Cullen very similar at his age now.
 
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The "critic consensus" at Rotten Tomatoes reads "Thanks to some genuine human drama between the set pieces and palpable affection for the title characters, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is one of the franchise's more enjoyable outings."

...which gave me a laugh because the critic score is a "rotten" 57%. That says a lot about the previous movies. :laugh:
 
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I saw this today. I agree with some people's sentiment that this was the 2nd best Transformers movie. The last scene (not post-credit)did get me interested though...
Yo Joe!
 
The human element is still the worst part of these movies. The only humans I want to see are related to the ending.

Pete Davidson carries this entire movie and I went in thinking he was going to be the worst thing about it. You watch him and the main human guy interact and it's frustrating because it's how Sam and Bumblebee should have been in the Bayformers but they made the stupid trope of him talking through the radio that won't go away. This movie still uses that and I don't know why they're still keeping terrible Bayformers ideas.

The Unicron Medley and Arrival to Earth uses were a nice touch.
 
Nemesis Prime said:
The human element is still the worst part of these movies. The only humans I want to see are related to the ending.

Pete Davidson carries this entire movie and I went in thinking he was going to be the worst thing about it. You watch him and the main human guy interact and it's frustrating because it's how Sam and Bumblebee should have been in the Bayformers but they made the stupid trope of him talking through the radio that won't go away. This movie still uses that and I don't know why they're still keeping terrible Bayformers ideas.

The Unicron Medley and Arrival to Earth uses were a nice touch.
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I will give them credit for using Roddy Piper's "I have come here to kick ass" line.
 
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