Race to save the planet
TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS
12A ★★★
Critics hated Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. They were loud, crass, largely nonsensical and had the cheek to rake in $4.5 billion at the box office. Thankfully, the director finally grew tired of the series with 2017’s Arthurian-themed The Last Knight.
Bay shoots every scene as if it’s his last but his finale was memorable.
Catapulting an Oscar-winning veteran (Sir Anthony Hopkins) over an exploding Stonehenge neatly summed up the series’ gleeful irreverence. Now Hasbro have decided to tear up Bay’s timeline and start again. This time, the Oscar winner is Michelle Yeoh who voices a giant cyborg eagle.
She’s just one of the alien beasts of the title (Ron Perlman also lends his gravelly tones to robo-gorilla Optimus Primal) and they’ve been hiding out on Earth for centuries to guard a portal-opening device which could let the ginormous planet-swallowing alien Unicron into our solar system.
In this new timeline, the Autobots – the good aliens, who include Optimus Prime (a returning Peter Cullen) – have only been on Earth for seven years. When half of the portal-opening device is accidentally activated by museum researcher Elena (Dominique Fishback) in 1994 New York, the Autobots team up with their hairy, feathery friends to stop Unicron’s henchman from making off with the second half.
Their human allies are Elena and Noah (a likeable Anthony Ramos), a jobless army vet who looks after his sick kid brother.
New director Steven Caple Jr honours his predecessor by trashing Peru’s Machu Picchu in his zippy finale. But the action scenes are easier to follow, the dialogue is wittier and there’s no leering at young girls’ bottoms (a Bay staple). It’s also a good 15 minutes shorter than the average Bay instalment. That’s a big improvement.