Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Not sure how much stock can be placed in this observation but, as far as my own tastes are concerned, the Transformers features that have entertained the most are those willing to describe these reconfiguring creatures as biomechanical landscapes of incredible complexity and detail. The gold standard, of course, is The Transformers: The Movie, an 80s animated feature directed by Nelson Shin that begins with a nomadic metal globe braving the tidal forces of two overlapping stars to feast on a planet settled by a race of peaceful, intellectual robots. The destruction is described in excruciating detail: cities and their skyscrapers are crushed and consumed; countless millions of lives pulverised by continent-sized hydraulic teeth. All in an effort to power an engine of pure extinction. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts kicks off in much the same way - Movie Picture Company and Weta FX's computer generated vistas capturing the churning outline (if not the full, pulsating phantasmagoria) of Floro Dery's original Unicron design - but the apocalypse presented here is significantly less harrowing. 

Mandibles the size of tectonic plates do plunge into the home world of the Maximals - a futuristic Cybertronian faction hailing from Beast Wars: Transformers, a mid-90s toyline - but we are not confronted with either enormous collateral damage or an extended breakdown of the abstract biology inherent to a world-eating machine. Similarly, Steven Caple Jr's film might inherit the spine-ripping violence synonymous with Michael Bay's pass at the property but the execution is far less inclined to delight in the twitching disassembly. Bay appraised these spasming, mechanical nervous systems with a slow-motion photography designed to distend these agonies. Conversely, Caple Jr and his VFX vendors treat these decapitations as a repulsive (or even shameful) holdover from a previous regime. Blessed with likeable leads and a hip-hop soundtrack that finds room for many East Coast greats, Rise of the Beasts is the first of these live action adaptations that actually seems designed to appeal to children. It rejects the photorealistic, cybernetic musculature of its predecessors, preferring to depict these titans in toyetic and knowingly unreal terms. This breakfast cartoon affectation even threatening to pull in other, less successful, Hasbro properties for further big screen adventures.