Yesterday, I watched Carrie Pilby (2016).  My thoughts on that one will not be published for a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, just know that it is a lovely movie.  It is also the complete opposite of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.  With the previous evening’s viewing still fresh in my brain, I hazarded a trip to see this latest monstrosity.  I have not seen any of the installments in the franchise since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).  I laughed myself hoarse seeing that one, and I may have damaged some friendships among my co-workers at the time with whom I saw it.  That was enough to keep me away from these cinematic travesties about vehicles that can turn into humanoid robots, no matter my love for the original cartoon series.  To illustrate how far I have strayed from my childhood, just know that I labeled my notes and the file in my computer for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts as “Transformers Whatever.”  It does not matter.  It is all a load of crap either way.

Had the words “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” come on the screen after the opening credits of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, I would have gotten up and left the theater, and you would not have this review.  Nonetheless, it is an accurate description of the beginning of the film.  A million, billion, gazillion, or however many years ago on some distant planet, the Maximals are attempting to keep the MacGuffin (called the Transwarp Key) away from the Terrocrons.  Context should give you who is bad and good, as well as a description of what the former look like.  The latter are working for Unicron (voiced by Colman Domingo), a world-sized, sentient, planet devouring machine.  Unicron’s main lieutenant, Scourge (voiced by Peter Dinklange) leads the Terrocrons in obtaining the Transwarp Key so that their boss can travel through space and time doing what Unicron likes to do best.  The leader of the Maximals attempts to hold off Scourge while his right hand, er, robot-ape Optimus Primal (voiced by Ron Perlman) makes off with the doohickey.  Guess the world on which they land?  You would be right if you guessed Earth, but it is before time began, so I guess life here evolved from alien robots according to the movie.  We then fast forward to 1994 and in New York City lives Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos).  He is a former soldier, but is having difficulty getting medicine for Chris (Dean Scott Vazquez), his little brother, as well as finding a job.  An interview on which he had been pinning his hopes falls through, so he decides to take up a friend’s offer to help steal high end cars from an upscale charity event.  This task requires him to use his skills with electronics, and the vehicle he selects is a silver Porsche with a blue racing stripe down the center.  Once he manages to get inside, he finds that this sports car is not your typical speedster.  When the cops show up, the car starts driving itself.  During the pursuit, there are a number of other abnormal features on display.  It becomes somewhat clearer when it takes him to an abandoned warehouse and they meet Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), leader of the Autobots, and the rest of his crew.  They have been summoned by Optimus because on the other side of the city, the Transwarp Key has been triggered by Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback).  It is something that only the robots can see. Because giant automatons walking into buildings is not your everyday occurrence, they enlist Noah to go to the museum where Elena works to retrieve the whatchamacallit.  Unfortunately, its activation has attracted the attention of Scourge and the Terrocrons (band name!), and they arrive on planet and go straight to the museum.  The giant robot fight that takes place out front convinces Elena and Noah that there is something bigger than themselves going on here.  This is driven home when Scourge easily handles Optimus Prime and makes off with the key.  But, wait, here comes some plot convenience: Scourge only has half.  Also, thanks to the genius level work Elena did in the space of a couple of hours, she has figured out where the other half is located: Peru.  Because Optimus Prime says that the key can bring Unicron, Elena and Noah say they are going to South America as well.  Thus, with another Autobot that turns into a big enough plane to fly them all (what this one was doing when Scourge showed up, who knows?), they make it to their destination.  Once again because (what I will laughingly call) the plot needs something for the humans to do, they journey into the ancient Incan temple under a Peruvian city where the other half of the doodad should be located.  Of course, Scourge and the gang have followed them south.  When the key ends up not being where they expect, they journey into the Peruvian hinterland.  There is some more fighting along the way, with Scourge turning Maximal Airazor (voiced by Michelle Yeoh) against her friends.  This works out for the Terrocrons because the human allies the Maximals have cultivated since time immemorial have been hiding the other half of the key.  Not long following this revelation, Airazor takes it and brings it to Scourge.  He then unites the halves to create the tired blue laser (it is actually orange, but the concept is the same) that is going to destroy the world.  Yet again, the tiny humans are given a purpose so that we do not forget about them, I suppose, having to sneak up to the panel creating the beam that is summoning Unicron.  There is a whole bunch of computer generated image (CGI) battling while Elena and Noah do their part.  It gets stretched out to the point of boredom.  The long and short of it is that the good guys win and the bad guys lose.  And then the final scene is Noah being recruited by G.I. Joe?  What?!

The last sentence of the previous paragraph, as well as others sprinkled into it, are only a few indications of the nonsense in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.  This was, of course, to be expected.  Despite this, like the last of these turkeys I saw, I was laughing in all the wrong places.  There was also an audible slap heard around the theater coming from my hand hitting my forehead when Optimus Primal refers to humans as having “more than meets the eye.”  It is the classic line from the cartoon, but horribly misplaced.  It is also ridiculous when Optimus Prime is about to sacrifice himself to destroy the key and all the Autobots and Maximals are sad that their leader is about to do so.  But, nope!  A few seconds later he is saved by Noah, so way to waste your noble sentiments.  All the same, the aspect that I would most like to nitpick is the music.  It is a near constant stream of 1990s hip-hop, with Wu-Tang, A Tribe Called Quest, Diggable Planets (I would have only the mildest of curiosity to know how they pulled that one off), and Biggie Smalls, to name a few.  Now, these movies are supposedly made for children.  As I recall, when Wu-Tang was releasing songs like “C.R.E.A.M.,” which is their contribution to these shenanigans, Congress was requesting that labels be put on these kinds of records in order to protect our children.  After all, the song talks about selling drugs to survive.  Yet, now it is okay to put them in a movie aimed at the same age range?  Oh, but I am sure no young ‘un sitting in their seat is going to wonder about the music they are hearing, right?

My complaints with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts do not end with the music, but rather bleed over into my Catholic thoughts on the film.  In the city in Peru where they go to find the other part of the Transwarp Key, Elena, the intern who is able to use the internet in 1994 as if Google were a thing at that time, decides that it must be located under the Catholic Church in town.  There is a throwaway line, and I was probably the only one there who caught it, about the church being built over the top of an Incan temple.  This is actually a tiny bit of historical accuracy in the proceedings, and not an uncommon practice with the Spanish when they came to the Americas.  Unsurprisingly, such words have little context.  Yes, the Spanish conquest was brutal.  There is no denying it.  What is too often left out of this discussion is that the evangelization portion of this process was accomplished relatively bloodlessly.  Literal miracles like the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531 in Mexico helped.  When you come down to it, since the conversion of the native populations was accomplished, their former buildings were not being used.  Thus, many times the sturdy stones out of which they were constructed were repurposed for building churches.  Modern-day researchers are understandably frustrated by this because it means the loss of potential sources of information about the past.  Then again, they were not thinking of future Ph.D. candidates in the sixteenth century, and neither am I, really.  My concern is with the popular imagination who I have a feeling assumes that something violent happened when they hear such lines in movies.  Luckily, the film does not dwell on this manner.  Instead, this ancient Incan temple is so far below the church that it could not have been a factor in its construction, which further adds to the silliness.

Rather than seeing Transformers: Rise of the Beasts this weekend, stay home and watch Carrie Pilby.  If brainy, thought-provoking films do not do it for you, go for a nice walk.  Maybe you could take up painting, or call a friend with whom you have not spoken in some time.  Please, do anything but see Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.  Who knows?  Maybe I can start a movement that will lead to them canceling the next production?