The seventh live-action film in the Transformers saga is here with a brand new cast and director. Canonically, this is the second film in the live-action timeline, based in 1994 in the streets of New York City, seven years after the prequel, Bumblebee, is set.

Director, Steven Caple Jr, has some giant footsteps to follow after the first six films have left their impact on the market, for better or worse, but having a Maximal-sized ace up his sleeve is a great way to start.

The film’s central protagonist, Noah, played by Anthony Ramos, is a soldier returning to his humble beginnings and is caught between chasing a better life for his family and pursuing the means to achieve it. Meanwhile, Elena, played by Dominique Fishback, is chasing her own dream of breaking away from the low-level intern at the museum and starting to make some splashes in the historical scene.

Having both characters striving for something better with personal motivations already placed them in a better position than previous protagonists in the series, which made their inevitable class with the Transformers more engaging.

Speaking of which, Mirage, voiced by Pete Davidson, is arguably the central focus of the Autobots, as his sleek silver Porsche form was the target of Noah’s ill-advised scheme, and when the call to action comes in, he takes Noah along for the ride.

Optimus Prime, which had the legendary Peter Cullen return to voice him, isn’t quite as friendly to the humans at this stage, and having an unsure and stand-off nature to him made his character more endearing. It created tension between the humans and the Autobots that gave an underlying plot point for Noah to pursue his own agenda under the nose of the Autobots. It was a refreshing tale of the combined storylines as opposed to blindly following along with each other.

Spanning across the concrete jungle of New York with a killer soundtrack based around the hip hop and RnB influences of the time, all the way to the actual jungles of Peru, the parallels match the different factions of robots.

The rich open areas in the broad daylight of Peru were a showcase of how technical the animations were, and the nighttime scenes in New York gave a bit of a horror-style flair to the events. Smaller sized Terrorcons branch off to hunt down the humans and hid in the dark shadows, only for their red eyes to pierce through the darkness as they lashed out.

The title of the movie though doesn’t quite seem to fit with how the rest of the film played out, however, as the Maximals’ presence in the film fluctuated between a lead and supporting story. Their battle with the Terrorcons kickstarted the movie before a jump in time saw them narrowly escape the planet-eating Unicron.

As a small side note, there is a bit of retconning storyline from Transformers: The Last Knight, but this event leads the Terrorcons to Earth. All three factions have their own goal to chase that revolve around one central item, and the ultimate goal is to keep this out of the hands of Scourge. The Terrorcons leader will unite the Maximals and Autobots.

Optimus Primal, voiced by Ron Perlman, and Airazor, voiced by Michelle Yeoh, were the two front runners for the Maximal characters. They were given ample screen time at the back end of the film, but Cheetor and Rhinox were background additions at best. It was a little disappointing as they were integral to the cartoon from the 90s. Peter Dinklage as Scourge was a match made in heaven.

His dominating screen presence and sinister dialogue showed little remorse for those who opposed him, but it managed to convey a sense of despair when he had to face Unicron. While the balancing of the converging storylines was a notable improvement from the Michael Bay set of movies, the final act did fall victim to the overwhelming scale of combat.

A seemingly never-ending army of disposable Terrorcons flooded the open field and was little more than an inconvenience to the Autobots and Maximals, and the perfectly human-shaped problems presented to keep the human elements relevant were a little on the nose. In saying all of that, it didn’t stumble on delivering a climactic finish, and it managed to drop a bombshell of a reveal to leave the audience wanting more.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has heart and intensity at its core and is a return to form for the franchise. With rumours of this expanding out to become a trilogy, there are many directions to follow, and one that hopes to follow the Maximals to a more prominent role.

Written by: Shane Fletcher