Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is undoubtedly going to have massive ramifications for the long-running series, but adapting the Beast Wars concept might be exactly what the franchise needs. Since the first live-action movie debuted back in 2007, audiences have been enamored with the ongoing battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. The expansive lore of Beast Wars has never been explored on-screen before, Age of Extinction's messy introduction of Grimlock and the Dinobots notwithstanding. Since 2018's soft reboot Bumblebee didn't quite rebuild franchise interest to the levels that were hoped, Rise of the Beast could be exactly what the Transformers IP needs.
The original Transformers Beast Wars cartoon takes place hundreds of years into the future, with the Autobots and the Decepticons having evolved into two new warring factions: the Maximals and the Predacons (or as parents in the 90s knew the tie-in Hasbro toy line, "the animal Transformers"). Based on the already messy mythology of the current live-action Transformers franchise, the introduction of the Beast Wars characters may seem like a lot. However, this is a great way for director Steven Caple Jr. to bring something totally fresh to the Transformers franchise, forcing it to explore new stories in the process. Here's why making Transformers 7 the Beast Wars movie was the best direction for the film series.
The Transformers Movies Are Stuck In The G1 Timeline
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts can introduce newer Transformers to the movie canon, something that's severely needed. Since the first movie, the Transformers film series has been perpetually obsessed with the iconography of the G1 line. Within the fandom, G1 refers to Generation 1 — the very first Hasbro toyline that launched the Transformers into pop culture. The toyline debuted in 1984 along with the TV series, with the animated Transformers movie arriving two years later. The one-two punch of the toy line and the animated show essentially created the Transformers lore from the ground up and introduced the world to the core tenets that would eventually become the foundation for any Transformers media: the Autobots, the Decepticons, Optimus Prime, Megatron, and their long-standing rivalry.
So far, the live-action films have exclusively played in this sandbox, right down to the characters that have taken priority on-screen: Bumblebee, Starscream, Ironhide, Soundwave, Ratchet, and many more were all created in the G1 era. While the movies have offered a few exceptions, most of the media within them is re-purposed from the G1 era, giving each of the films a uniform feeling. Even Bumblebee falls into this same pattern, and while its Cybertron battle honors the G1 era in an incredible way, it's still a part of the generational bias previously holding back the franchise.
Rise Of The Beasts Will Significantly Expand The Universe
Transformers' Beast Wars takes place in a different timeline, meaning Rise of the Beasts can explore events aside from the War for Cybertron — which at this point is feeling as stale as some superhero origin stories. Not only do the previous Transformers movies tend to stick to the G1 timeline, but most of the comic books and video game spin-offs of the IP explore the same time period as well. The obsession with G1 was so intense that G2 was mostly a launch of new toys based on the original characters, as well as a re-released edited version of the original animated Transformer show.
The movie's fixation on this time period mirrors the evolution of the source material. It genuinely wasn't until the premiere of Beast Wars: Transformers in 1996 that the world of Transformers opened up beyond the initial war for Cybertron. Serving as a pseudo-G3, not only did Beast Wars introduce brand new characters and two new factions, but it radically changed everything fans knew about the Transformers universe, including the forms they took, the setting of the conflict, even the nature of good and evil that had plagued the previous factions.
The same raw creative energy that Beast Wars brought to the IP back in the '90s can be harnessed and used to rejuvenate the films again. As awesome as it is to see Bumblebee transform into a Camaro mid-action sequence, it will be mind-blowing to see Optimus Primal destroying Terrorcons as a mechanized silver-back gorilla. The animated series even introduced the idea that Predacons were capable of reprogramming Maximals, creating morally-ambiguous and thought-provoking scenarios beyond anything in Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Transformers 7 being a Beast Wars movie means Rise of the Beasts has source material that's fresher, more expansive, and most importantly more nuanced than previous franchise entries. Plus, it means more animal Transformers, which as the 1996 Beast Wars series proved, you can never have too much of.
Rise Of The Beasts Can Solve The Transformers Continuity Problem
As fantastic of a film as it is, Bumblebee's 1980s setting opens some timeline plotholes that throw the live-action films out of whack. There are various chronological incoherencies that don't line up with the rest of the movies in the series, specifically dealing with the recency of the destruction of Cybertron as well as when certain Transformers arrive on Earth. In particular, Optimus Prime's cameo in Bumblebee didn't match up to the rest of the Transformers timeline. Because of this, many fans view Bumblebee as a reboot of the live-action timeline, but there isn't a concrete answer.
In the original Beast Wars narrative, the Maximals and the Predacons are transported through a wormhole to a foreign planet with strange organic life; however, it's revealed much later that they're actually on a prehistoric Earth, thousands of years before the original war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. The time travel introduced to the series through the concept of transwarp technology could be precisely what's needed to rationalize the continuity errors mounting within the series. The trailer already hints that some kind of temporal displacement features in the plot, and since Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is set in 1994, it could be that it rewrites the timeline entirely, nulling everything that happened in the Michael Bay Transformers movies and starting the slate clean.
The Rise Of The Beasts Trailer Proves The Time Is Right
The Transformers: Rise of the Beasts trailer arrived in December 2022, around two years after the first news of a Beast Wars movie being in development broke. While many fans of the original show have been asking for a Beast Wars movie for literal decades, audiences only acquainted with the live-action Transformers might have wondered why the decision was made to make such a break from the established formula. The first Transformers: Rise of the Beasts trailer put all these questions to bed, however. As the first footage from Transformers 7 shows, the time is right for a Beast Wars movie.
Not only does the visual design on, for example, Ron Perlman's Optimus Primal look incredible, but what little is revealed about the Rise of the Beasts story hints that it's borrowing some of the best elements from the Beast Wars show. While 2018's Bumblebee wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, it received some criticism for feeling like it didn't push the franchise in a new direction — arguably an essential component of any soft reboot. Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts already feels like it's grown from previous entries, and not just because of the inclusion of animal Transformers. If the trailer is anything to go by, making Transformers 7 the first Beast Wars movie will boost the franchise's standing with wider audiences, and could be the entry that propels the series back to the heights of the first Michael Bay Transformers trilogy.
