Just got back from the movie today as I’d missed the advance screening due to exam season.

It’s a good enough movie but nothing amazing or game-changing, about what I expected. I was actually quite surprised how much they channeled the 2007 Transformers film with this one, albeit in the 90s and with a lot less noisy camera work/sensory overload. Once again it seems like they are being purposefully ambiguous on ties to the original five movie run, enough that it could plausibly be a prequel or sorts while being free to go down the reboot route fully at some point. Probably depends on how this film performs.

I liked the Maximals, but they could have gotten a lot more impact by really playing on the simultaneous past and future stuff, besides a few throwaway lines. Primal’s voice performance was excellent and had tones of the original BW incarnation mixed with something new. The other Maximals and Terrorcons had basically no characterisation, which is a shame. None of the big battles really had compelling stakes, especially the kind of boring museum fight. I’m not a big plot holes obsessor, but they implied that Scourge and the other heralds are nigh invincible as seen in that first fight, but all they had to do overcome them was just fight a little harder? Their weapons did nothing in that first scene, but the Autobots come in with more gumption and win over them?

Probably a hot topic issue but I didn’t really like Optimus in this film. I get what they were going for with him being conflicted over their duty to Cybertron and to the humans, but they didn’t really stick the landing well. He was rageful and fighting purely out of vengeance, which seems to work out for him in the end, with the lessons from Primal not really actually changing anything. There are other movies to develop the character into the thoughtful Dad character we know still, but it was a bit irritating. Some of the lines were very cringe and had give-me-your-face vibes. That said, at least he had a characterisation. You can hear Peter getting old now, he’s given so much to the character and always does a great job. Interesting that he always refers to Bumblebee as Bee, it really stuck out to me.

Unicron was cool, he’s not really in the film much besides being the drawticket for fans. Scourge is fine but they could have probably as easily done some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff and just straight up do Galvatron in a similar vein to the (terrible) WFC Kingdom show. Stuff with fate and the future and all that are powerful parts of Beast Wars and the better parts of WFCK, it would have added a bit of stakes that the movie was lacking.

Noah is a fun character with a decent story, even if it’s a bit generic. Charlie’s story was better emotionally and felt fresh for film and for the franchise. Performance and lines were good for Noah too but it can’t help but feel like the misunderstood guy who’s lost his way with a struggling family story thrown into something bigger than himself trope didn’t benefit the already quite generic film. Still, his line chemistry with Mirage was excellent, who was maybe the standout character of the film. The Autobots were mostly characters this time around.

I liked it. It’s not a great film. Plenty to build on and it’s a cut above the plot and character messes we hit with the Bayverse, great camera work and dialogue. It’s hard to know what to expect as fans, we’ve had a few mediocre things for a while now but perspective is hard to keep. 6/10