THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
The clockwork thunder blockbuster resurfaces with a new take on the franchise transformersthe second after Bumblebee (2018), extending the original pentalogy, devoted to giant robot fights, produced by Michael Bay, chief pyrotechnician and demolitions expert. The man has since swapped his hat for that of producer and passed the keys of the saga to younger directors, in this case Steven Caple Jr., 35, a native of Cleveland, fresh from the success of Creed 2.
The universe has not moved one iota: factions of alien robots from a planet in the throes of civil war continue their clashes on Earth, camouflaged in motorized vehicles. The episode responds to the principle of the “prequel” by going back to the sources of the saga, to land in New York, in 1994, in the popular and cosmopolitan district of Brooklyn.
Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos), a former soldier suffering from discrimination in hiring, robs a luxury car one evening, but finds himself driving a Transformer: Mirage, which belongs to the gang of friendly robots led by Optimus Prime. They embark him, along with the young archaeologist Elena (Dominique Fishback), in the quest for an interstellar key also coveted by the enemy league of the Terrorcons, led by the villainous Scourge.
Technological gigantism
The fetishization of big cars and the fantasy of technological gigantism are the alpha and the omega of this saga, inspired by a range of children’s toys and watched for by a certain obsolescence at a time when Hollywood is converting en masse to software. “woke”. With its soundtrack drawing on the classics of hip-hop “ old school » (Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Black Sheep, Notorious BIG, a clear East Coast trend), Rise of the Beasts He also operates his transformation, first at the level of the cast: exit the virile rednecks formerly embodied by Shia LaBeouf or Mark Wahlberg, make way for the visible minorities, Latinos and Afro-Americans, to which the duo of protagonists now belong.
On the more delicate side of ecological awareness, the range of robots is enriched with a new “species”, the Maximals, which borrow their forms from the animal kingdom and pride themselves on defending nature. These moral precautions take nothing away from the real substance of the show: the conquering hypertrophy of titanium colossi which destroy everything in their path, sometimes not without a certain grace.
You have 4.25% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.