It’s the mid-1990s, and two parts of a hitherto unmentioned magical key have been hidden somewhere on Earth. Both are likeable rising talents, and both spend around half of their screen time looking upwards while pulling faces that suggest they’re doing long division.

After 2018’s Bumblebee – a sweet, light, 1980s-set spin-off directed by the Laika stop-motion animator Travis Knight – this latest chapter plays like a belated attempt to Marvelise the franchise, with life-sappingly dreary results.Įvery shot is sluiced in flat grey light – the action scenes look like gravel in a food processor – while the dialogue is all botched quips and clichés (“Did somebody order backup?” one Transformer smarms while cocking a rocket launcher), and the human characters timidly written nobodies.Īnthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback star as former soldier Noah Diaz and museum worker Elena Wallace, the latest humans to become embroiled in the shapeshifting robots’ intergalactic feud. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts represents a depressing, if inevitable, change of tack. No Marvel or DC film ever had the dimbo jouissance to trash a world heritage site in the name of cinema – and precious few of their directors had Bay’s gift for doing it in images so adrenalisingly colourful and exciting, you could feel them fizzing in your bloodstream for days. I can’t say I ever cared much about the Transformers films’ characters or plots, but I loved their spectacular, firing-on-all-synapses crassness. The series’ original director, Michael Bay, obtained permission to shoot the live-action parts of the scene on location at the Neolithic monument, and allegedly growled at his cast and crew in a pep talk beforehand: “Alright, folks, let’s put this place on the map.” At the end of the fifth Transformers film – The Last Knight, for those unfamiliar with the cycle – the two robot armies wage a fearsome battle at Stonehenge.

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