Transformers: El despertar de las bestias

After the success of 'Bumblebee' I was hoping that this instalment might offer a more rewarding viewing experience than the previous cash grab Transformers outings, but I was sorely mistaken. It is unfortunately a rather drab affair.

Within about 5 minutes every cliche possible is ticked off the list. The dialogue is grating and so corny it hurts. The action is messy and disorienting. The newly introduced 'Maximals' are severely wasted with limited screen time. The plot centres around a silly doohickey that is hard to care about. The human characters are kind of annoying and poorly written. None of the humour really lands and neither do any of the emotional story beats. The story sags a little in the middle. I could go on.

Saying all that, this film is mildly entertaining and does have its moments, although they are too few and far between. I guess it's worth watching if you are into your Transformers films, but the casual movie goer should probably save their money and skip this one.

Well, after I left the theater I felt somehow lobotomized, numb and dead like a rock (well, maybe I'm wrong and stones are more alive than I realize). Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is one of those many examples that raise one question: where are the talents and the creative people these days? Certainly not too many are involved in the movie business - Rise of the Beasts got nothing that will raise it above the bar of barely acceptable: a dead boring story line, dead boring characters, and terrible dialogues we listened to one million times before. The special effects are somewhat okay, but, well, that's pretty standard these days. Recommendation only for the absolute hardcore fan of the Transformer universe or for those who are - for whatever reason - in need for some brain killing experience.

I appreciated the fact that this film made Optimus Prime an actual character, and that it found a couple of interesting, believable ways to give the human characters a legitimate use in the story.

Aside from a few moments involving these things, I was bored senseless by this movie.

I struggle to comprehend how a script like this passes so many hands and makes it to production; it has some of the worst dialogue this side of Attack of the Clones.

Everything in this movie is told to us, rather than creatively shown. It's obnoxious, it's lazy, and it's stupid. It treats us, the audience, like we're stupid as it spoon feeds every piece of information to us like we're infants, even though the story is really simple and nothing original or complex happens once.

All this could be saved if the action were entertaining and investing. But it isn't, aside from a handful of stylish shots.

Say what you will about Michael Bay's movies. (They're bad.) But at least they had huge scale to them and the stakes were understood.

This is a bland blockbuster movie, through and through. The action never features any destruction or threat to human life. There isn't a practical, real thing happening on screen.

Artificial, boring, and derivative, with about 5-10 minutes worth of good material.

I thought Bumblebee was a bright spot, but it looks like the good streak has been cut short.

Most of this movie is boring, even when there is action on the screen. The first 1h30 should have been cut to an hour, and it would have been more entertaining. Up until this point, it was a middling 5/10 for me, just like the rest of these movies (bar 1 perhaps).

HOWEVER, the final act/fight is honestly stellar - I actually sat up and properly enjoyed the battle, the fact that the people were actually involved (due to what I thought was a pretty neat, if cliché device).

It actually felt like there were some stakes too, both on large and small scale. The music, both soundtrack and needle drops were on point. Just a pity that the rest of the movie didn't have this level of quality.

At no point did these characters pull me into this movie, there was just zero connection. I have no idea who any of them are! How is that possible for such a big franchise such as Transformers? Is this all they could find when casting? Mirage was the only entertaining character and carried the movie.

Also is it just me or did it feel like it took a long time for the movie to take off? I understand we need to develop characters but at times in the first part of the movie I forgot I was even watching a Transformers movie.

I felt like the CGI was a little overdone too. I feel like some parts the bots looked almost cartoonish compared to the grungy look from previous movies.