TRANSFORMERS Rise Of The Beasts Breakdown: New Trailer, All Characters Explained, Cast, Release Date And More

Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show! I’m your host, Paul, and in this video we’re going to be doing a big breakdown on Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts. The brand new trailer for the movie dropped last week, and I thought that I’d do a big video covering that, the new characters, cast, release date, and everything that you need to know about the movie.

Now the film is due for release on June 9 in the US. It was originally meant to drop on June 24th, but they bumped it up a bit to the one week next year when I’m on vacation. Fingers crossed for an early screening, but this will be introducing a lot of major characters into the franchise.

Who Is In Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts?

Starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, we’ll watch as the stars of Beast Wars are brought into the franchise in order to integrate them altogether. The timeline for the movie franchise is messier than the Targaryen family tree, but this will be a continuation of the continuity that was first started in Bumble Bee. That movie starred Hailee Steinfeld, who sadly won’t be returning for this, but it will be continuing on from that in order to start a new trilogy with this movie.

That was set in the 80s and this film will be picking up in 1994 setting it after that but before the original film franchise with Shia LeBeouf.

I remember covering the Netflix trilogy, and I had to constantly keep explaining how stuff had changed from certain timelines to the other, which is probably going to be something that we have to do here too.

Transformers is almost 40 years old at this point, and it’s covered so many different movies, shows, games, and so on that there were always going to be clashes in the continuity.

Now in the movie, we’ll see the Maximals and Predicons along with the Autobots and Decepticons. The former two transform into animals instead of machines, as they originally were. They are descendants of the Autobots, and depending on what continuity you read, there’s time travel involved with them going back to the past.

Lots of timey-wimey wibbly wobbly stuff, but the main villains of the movie will be the Terrorcons, who are hunting both the Autobots and Maximals.

Primal could have come back from the future to warn him, and this may lead to them going further into the past, which we’ll talk about more later on.

Peter Dinklage will be playing Scourge, who is the group’s leader. He can transform into a black Kenworth logging truck, and he will be joined by several others. This includes Night Bird, who changes into a Nissan Skyline, and Battle Trap, who is going to be turning into a General Motors C4500.

The former will be voiced by Micahela Jae Rodriguez, with David Sobolov playing the latter.

Now Scourge has ties to Unicron, which is a planet-sized machine that has traveled through the universe and reality itself. I have a feeling that they’ll end up teasing it much like how they did Thanos in the MCU. In The Last Knight, it was revealed that Unicron is actually the Earth itself, and potentially, Scourge could be trying to find a way to weaponize this.

Now the trailer actually gives a lot away, and from the start it’s filled with the idea that we’ll be seeing a clash between jungles and more modern industrialization.

We start off with a jungle shot of what is apparently Peru before cutting to New York. The words over the top talk about how our world has transformed too, and I think they’re clearly showing they’ve got lots of different aesthetics going on.

Now Anthony Ramos will be playing Noah, and by the looks of it, he’s in deep with the Autobots due to him having a porch ache that’s actually Mirage. How he comes toit, this we dknow, know as he seems to get in the car and then be surprised at what it canHe’s being He’s chased bypolice,olice so potentially he was trying to steal it, and it was the one that ended up taking him fora  joyride.

Or I’m just a prejudiced piece of sh*t.

There are lots of other explanations for this, and he might have just seen the car sitting there with its door waving him over like ‘come on, Georgie, come get a red balloon.’

Now Mirage will be played by Mr. Steal Yo Girl, Pete Davidson. The guys have taken some time away from waking up covered in women, and he’ll be playing the car, who seems like he’s good friends with Noah. He’s taken him too, and who knows what the guy is going to take next?

He’s comfortable enough to transform around him, and he also helps him evade the police by creating duplicate cars.

This is a mirage, and the character is tapping into his holographic abilities in order to pull off this escape.

Mirage has actually appeared in the films before, as he briefly popped up as a red Ferrari back in Dark of the Moon.

But I dunno if we talk about that anymore.

Now the trailer gives us the goods right up top with us having Optimus Prime meet Optimus Primal. These are two major characters from separate timelines who rarely unite due to the many issues with continuity it would cause. It’s awesome seeing them here together though, and I love how suspicious Prime is from the get-go.

I dunno how they’re gonna work the timeline but my assumption is that they’ll go with the more classicly accepted one and have the Maximals and Predacons being the factions that have taken over the Autobots and Decepticons. Their war still continued, and they were launched back into the past along with the Predacons. This sent them back millions and millions of years, and they will likely have waited it out until the time was right, unless this theory is completely wrong.

The way that Optimus Prime jumps down makes me think that Noah and Elena are working with the Autobots due to Mirage, and he’s now protecting them. He’s been looking over them, and he jumps down after believing that Primal is a threat.

Now, if you look closely at Primal’s chest, you’ll notice the Maximal emblem. This is shown at the end of the trailer in the logo as well, and it’s really cool seeing it here. He also has fur around the shoulder pads, indicating that this is something they’re adding to the design of the maximals. Prime is ready to smash him like he’s the like button, but instead he thinks he should wait and hear him out on why he should subscribe.

I love seeing them both on screen at the same time. Going as my bloody wallpaper indicates

Now Primal is voiced by UnicRon Perlman, and he’s actually played the character before. Back in 2018, he voiced Primal in Transformers: The Power of the Primes.

Now Prime’s design has changed slightly, and he looks slightly more removed from a truck than he has in the past. His chest, especially, has a different look to it; there’s more silver to him, and I also think his face looks kind of simplified compared to what we’ve had in the past.

Over the top of this, we hear Notorious BIGs Juicy, and the rapper came from Brooklyn, which is nicely coupled with this shot of the Brooklyn Bridge. The lights flicker on and off on it, and this is going on as Primal is talking about a big incoming threat. Therefore, I think this is likely power being pulled from the planet by the Terrorcons, who may want to use it to create energon.

It however might link back to Unicron, but again, big theory time, big theory time, big theory time on that one.

I’ll stop doing that now.

Prime can be seen on the bridge watching this happen firsthand, and it somewhat echoes the ending of Bumblebee with him riding out. Now speaking of Bumblebee, we see him transforming in the next shot. Currently there’s no voice actor attached to him, and because the rest of the cast list is out, I’m guessing that they’re just going with the silent but violent route with him. He can of course talk through his radio which I think will return for this movie.

Bumblebee is Prime’s right hand man, and with this following on from his solo film, we might get some of the backstory filled in on what happened between that and this one. He was sent to Earth to establish a base, which is possibly something we could visit in the film.

Wait, wrong clip.

Now we get a shot of Bumblebee riding alongside Cheetor, who is a cheetah. You got it, mate. This helps to demonstrate her size and speed, as we can see him running alongside an off-road bumblebee. He is still a camero, however, he has been altered slightly to deal with the terrain. Great shot of these two stand-ins riding alongside each other, and they are pretty much the right-hand partners of the Primes. Cheetor in Beastwars could pass as the animal itself, however, much like Primal, the look has been changed for the movie. Rather than being able to appear to be Earth animals, they are clearly creatures that have taken on their design rather than becoming animals themselves. They have the size and strength that you’d expect from the Maximals, but they aren’t hiding out.

Is Michelle Yeoh In Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts?

From this point on, we get introduced to Airazor. This giantbird is going to be voiced by Michelle Yeoh, who’s coming off the back of the seminal Everything, Everywhere all at once. Airazor acts very much as the eyes in the sky for the Maximal, and she can provide strategic insight whilst also being a deadly foe to go against.

Designed primarily for recon, she is potentially scouting out the area and providing air support for the Maximals.

We see her blasting a bridge, demonstrating just how devastating she can be.

Now, if you look closely at this shot, you can also see a figure running along the path. They’re very small and difficult to make out, with Youtube’s compression not really helping that much either. I did try and zoom in to see who this was, but there’s not enough here where I could say for sure exactly who it is.

This could be the Maximals and Autobots getting their wires crossed (pun not intended) and going against each other when they should be allies. This part of the movie definitely seems like it’s going to be a big action scene as we see a boulder falling along with several machines. The one at the back looks like Optimus, and there’s also a car in the distance that you can see following as well. This looks like Bumblebee, likely following behind Mirage as the fight on the road happens.

From here, we see Battletrap, who is firing a missile. This seems to be coming out of the exhaust on the hood of the car, which is a really cool way to transform something we see all the time into a weapon.

This is Arcee, who he ends up missing. She’s hanging out of another transformer called Wheeljack. Wheeljack was based on Albert Einstein, and the genius inventor has helped to create several devices that have aided humans and Autobots. My man…my man died in Dark Of The Moon and shut that off…shut that off.

Here is’ going to be voiced by Cristo Fernandez, while Liza Koshy will be playing Arcee.

Such a good shot seeing her hanging off the side with the doors open so that they can dodge the missile and seeing it go past her head in slow motion.

Arcee is rollerskating alongside Wheeljack, firing his guns, and looking like a G1 wearing that Combat Visor. Arcee first showed up in Revenge of the Fallen, and she too appeared in Bumblebee during the Cybertron scene. We already know how she dies in the franchise, so it won’t be here, but it is nice seeing her show up.

Now, after a quick cut of Primal, we see what looks like it could be the death of a bumble bee. However, I have a theory: “Time, time, time. This isn’t the case here. On the ground, we can catch Optimus Prime looking defeated, with Scourge walking towards him. This is our first look at the villain in the teaser, and they introduce him in a big, bad way. Bumblebee jumps at him, but the villain then turns around and stabs him. It’s a big way to bring the character in, and it’s nice that they aren’t just going with the usual Megatron villain arc. This new quote-unquote soft reboot of that was started with Bumble Bee has done well in steering clear of the villain that we’ve seen countless times, and I like that they’ve put the focus on Scourge rather than Megatron again.

Now how does Bumblee Bee get out of this? Well, I don’t actually think that’s him.

Mirage has already shown that they can do duplicates and… well, mirages, so I think this is a trick at the last second to distract Scourge.

In one of the wide shots, we see that there are lots of blue lights around them, and though this could be electricity, it also resembles the holographic images that Mirage puts out.

I don’t know if the images hold up to the point that he could get stabbed, but that’s just what I thought when watching this moment.

Optimus is also on what appears to be a hexagon and shouts out the Ragin Nation for theorizing that this could be related to Cybertron and the tech to keep him in place.

We get another shot where Scourge is holding Bumble Bee in place, and we can see that his face has changed to be more in line with the armored look that he takes on.

From here, we cut to a shot of the humans and the Autobots. We can see Wheeljack at the front in his robot form, and this is the group traveling to Peru. This links back to the jungles we talked about earlier, and we can see that there’s a festival going on.

There were some clips taken by locals that were posted on YouTube, and they showed Optimus Prime and co. out there at the location.

Now Rhinox is someone we haven’t touched upon in the video so far, but the following shot establishes that they’re going to be in the movie.

According to Collider, they will also be voiced by David Sobolov, and this giant rhinoceros is one of the most powerful maximels there is.

Was one of my favorite toys as a kid, and he was basically your Hulk powerhouse figure that packed both brawn and brains.

It looks like he can fire out of his mouth, and a nice little detail is that the character’s tongue can be seen as well. I think he’s just roaring here, and this helps set up the ramping up of the trailer. This has some machines crash-landing into the Hudson, and we can count three coming down. This is obviously the Terrorcons, who are the only team in the film to have three members. This possibly happens just before the Brooklyn Bridge scene, and potentially they land here and then start to suck the power out, which is why the lights on the bridge flash on and off.

This would make Optimus aware of them as he’s riding along the top of it, and then they could head to Peru to investigate what’s going on.

This is coupled with Optimus transforming and getting his armor together, which makes for such a good shot to tease the incoming threat. His face plate slides on

At this point, we get the money shot of the trailer with a big battle playing out.

Originally, I thought that this might have been in the past, but there are some indicators that it’s happening towards the end of the movie, or at least later on after the two good guy sides have met.

We have a battle trap running forward, and to the left, a purple transformer flies by. If we look at the concept art for the film, this looks like Nightbird, who is potentially destroyed in this scene. Cheetor runs forward in beast form before transforming as he jumps over a rock.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Trailer Breakdown

Lastly, we see Optimus Primal change, and if you look to the right, you can see Optimus Prime’s red arm. He also has his blade out, cementing that this happens after they’ve met. Unless they’re doing an MCU and lying to us in the trailers, Now, because of the landscape, this might be in the past, with them potentially traveling back there in order to stop the Terrorcons in the past. It is possible that the Maximals could even be stuck in some sort of time loop where they meet the Autobots, travel back to stop the Terrorcons, get stuck here, and then have to wait it out until the present to do the whole thing over again.

We can see a ship behind them that looks like it’s crash-landed, and this could be where the Terrorcons came from after they hit the planet. They might be going back to stop them, which would bring everything full circle.

That’s me really clutching at straws, and you’d think they’d get a bit sick of it after a while. As mentioned up top, timelines are a mess in the Transformers universe, so they may travel back and the rest of the trilogy could be about them being stuck in the past.

Anyway, next to Primal, we can also see Rhinox and potentially Cheetor beside him. We end with Primal leaping towards Battletrap, and the teaser closes out with a nice little joke before we see Noah and Mirage showing up all causal like.

It’s got the whole walking away from explosions feel to it, and that closes out the trailer. Interesting details are that we can see dismantled plane wings to the side, possibly teasing a plane-based transformer showing up in the movie.

Anyway, that is all that we could unpack from the teaser and tidbits that we have on the movie. I know it’s been a long time coming, but Thursday was manic with all the trailers, and then I was in the hospital on Friday and had to recover over the weekend. Monday was Rick and Morty, and then I’ve been putting this together over the last couple of days, so I hope you guys don’t mind the wait.

I am excited for the movie, and this teaser has a lot going on with it as well as some really interesting characters coming to the forefront.

Such a good way to get me hyped for 2023, and I think that the movie is going to be something special as I love the new timeline. Bumblebee was one of my favorite Transformers films, and carrying on from that has me hyped even if we don’t have Hailee Steinfeld back.

Eithereway, that’s everything we know so far, and I hope you enjoyed the video.

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If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of the perfect scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming. We break down the entire thing, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you want to know more.

With that out of the way, thank you for sitting through the video; I’ve been Paul, and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace