A Cromulent Transformers Film

The Transformers movies are bad. Bumblebee (2018), rendered with more love than the rest of the series combined, was too charming to be just acceptable. And the rest of the films, all directed by Michael Bay, fall short of the IP-cromulent benchmark by being a mix of too offensive, too shameless, too ugly, and too careless. The seventh installment in the Hasbro giant robot film series, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is the only perfectly cromulent entry of the bunch.

Rise of the Beasts is something of a fresh start for the series. The only films it claims relation to are Bumblebee, as a sequel, and Transformers (2007), as a prequel. The connections are little more than typical cape-shit cameos that don’t fundamentally change one’s experience of the film. Using the same recognizable IP that has made the Transformers title one of the most profitable in film history, director Steven Caple Jr.’s (Creed II) take on the franchise goes full superhero. I’m not just talking about a special effects blockbuster with a silly-third act. If our mainstream films are signs for our time, Rise of the Beasts makes it clear that every major studio action film must make the choice: to lean into the superhero of it all or to actively reject it. If a film franchise worth almost $5 billion rejects its own tried and true formula for the cape, there is no going back: everything has been Marvelized.

Even if it’s not a hard story to follow, it is a difficult story to summarize just because of the sheer number of made-up words and silly gimmicks. No Decepticons here, only Unicron, Autobots, a Transwarp Key, Maximals, a Scourge, Terrorcons, and an army of Predacons. Even if the individual words mean nothing, the sum of them tells us all we need to know: the Terrorcons and Predacons, led by Scourge (Peter Dinklage) and serving the dark planet-devouring god Unicron (Colman Domingo), are bad; the Autobots and Maximals are good. The Transwarp Key is the whatchamacallit that both sides need so that X doesn’t happen or so that Y will happen. You follow?

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.