Virtually every major review aggregate site shows that 2018’s Bumblebee was better-received than any of the previous live-action Transformers movies. Many suspect this is because Paramount let someone other than Michael Bay sit in the director’s chair. And this summer, that trend will continue with Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Lots of fans are eager to see what Creed II‘s Steven Caple Jr. does with Hasbro’s robots in disguise. Regardless, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says audiences will still feel Bay’s influence when Rise of the Beasts hits theaters. And while speaking with Collider, he explained exactly what this means.
The first five Transformers movies notably featured Bay’s signature brand of catastrophic excess. But on Bumblebee, director Travis Knight reigned in the scope in favor of telling a far more personal story. And in the end, most critics seemed to appreciate this. Di Bonaventura indicates that Rise of the Beasts will try to follow suit in a similar way. However, with more Transformers and more locations involved, the new film will also mix in some of Bay’s penchant for high-stakes action.
“In making Bumblebee, our objective was to see how far, frankly, we could create intimacy in a movie with a robot,” said di Bonaventura. “And it was a conscious attempt, not to make the biggest scale, but to center the story around an emotional construct. I think the movie is very successful in what it did. There were fans that complained there was not enough action, but it was very well received as a movie. Our hope was when we started out, and our intention, was to bring the intimacy that we were able to create in Bumblebeewith the scale that was represented in what’s called the ‘Bay movies.’”
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Paramount’s Transformers series routinely gets dinged by fans who would rather watch giant robots be the protagonists instead of any human drama. In fact, di Bonaventura himself seemingly admitted that Shia LaBeouf’s character’s journey in the original 2007 film wasn’t particularly nuanced. But as long as they’re on Earth, the Autobots need humans to fight alongside. That’s why the filmmakers gave the new human protagonists “more significant” character arcs than anything the franchise has attempted before.
“In this case, Anthony Ramos and Dominique [Fishback’s] characters are both characters who are trying to find their way in a life, and in a cultural society, that’s not making it the easiest for them,” continued di Bonaventura. “And so, the experience of the movie for those characters is to come to terms, not exactly about who they are, but how to move forward in their lives. It’s an interesting character arc for both of them where they fulfill, to a certain extent, the desire that they were having for themselves.”
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts opens on June 9.
Does this sound like the right approach to take for the upcoming sequel? Let us know in the comment section below!
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