Tag Archives: Transformers Rise of the Beasts

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts – Special Preview Screening Event!

Rise of the Beasts, the highly anticipated seventh live action Transformers movie, officially hit cinemas around the world on Friday the 9th of June, 2023 (June 22 in Australia).

A June 22 release for the rest of Australia, but a few of us lucky ducks didn’t have to wait that long

However, as befits a multi-million dollar movie of a beloved toy franchise, Paramount and Hasbro held a Special Preview Screening on Thursday the 8th, and for those notables lucky enough to receive an invitation, what an event it was!

If you are going to see a movie, do it in style!

Here in Sydney Australia, the event was held at the Hoyts Entertainment Quarter, and much excitement was in the air.  One could attribute part of this excitement to the fact that due to international date lines, it was the 8th here in Australia before the majority of the world, making this one of the first ever showings of the movie!

Love getting invitied to these special events – thanks Hasbro and Paramount!

The attendee’s were made up of executives from both Hasbro and Paramount, professional movie reviewers and various celebrities such as actors, social media influencers and even cosplayers.  Naturally everyone’s favourite radio star and blogger Big Angry Trev was on hand, much to the excitement of the crowds!  Photographers snapped pictures and a film crew was on hand to interview guests.

Video: Interviews at Transformers Rise of the Beasts Preview Screening

There were even some extra special guests in the form of some of the movie cast themselves – Bumblebee and Mirage decided to come along to grace their fans with their presence and pose for pics.

Mirage
Bumblebee

Over the course of the year we have seen many Transformers events here in Sydney, such as the Beasts Base Camp at Taronga Park Zoo, and the More than Meets the Eye Exhibition at Kings Comics.  What was wonderful to see with all these events, were not only the usual cream of society invited, but also notable members of the Australian Transformers Fandom.

Big Angry Trev & Miguel Maestre at the Beasts Base Camp

In attendance for this Special Preview Screening event were Transformer Exhibitors such as Lisamaree Chiu, Ben Keenan and Michael Vella and Transformer Superfans such as Trent Munn and Dallas Roderick.  Yes, the royalty of the Aussie fandom were on hand to strut their stuff and I know all were appreciative of how Hasbro and Paramount have included the fandom in this years movie festivities.

Big Angry Trev and his trusty sidekick Orion posing for photo’s with Superfans Dallas & Trent

Free soft drinks and popcorn was on offer for all attendee’s as they entered the theatre, where individual recliner seats, soft and plush, were on offer to cradle every buttock.  And for the very crème de la crème of the attendee’s, Hasbro reserved some very special seats dead centre of the theatre for the optimum viewing experience.

What’s better than attending an exclusive event? Getting VIP seating at the exclusive event!

These Special Preview Screenings were not only held in Sydney, but also Brisbane and Melbourne, making it not only a regional but national event!

The Brisbane event, photo courtesy of M.K Griffin of Ozformers
The Melbourne event, courtesy of Jason Murray of TCCA

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts turned out to be a fantastic movie, earning a well deserved round of applause from an appreciative audience.  I heartily recommend everyone get out themselves out there to watch this fun and entertaining flick.

Movie Review – Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Sadly, this event was likely the last event for the Transformers social season this year.  Lets hope that the powers that be make the next highly anticipated instalment just as fun!

Were you one of the favoured few to get to attend one of these Special Preview Screening Events?  Lets us know in the comments section below!

 

Movie Review – Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

After a 5 year absence of giant shape changing alien robots in theatres, Transformers Rise of the Beasts has hit cinemas worldwide June 9th.  Thanks to the generosity of Hasbro and Paramount Pictures, some of us lucky folk even got to attend Special Preview Showings on Thursday 8th, being able to quench our thirst for Autobot antics a day early.

Even Mirage got invited to his own flick! Love Hasbro & Paramount putting on these special events!

Warning, this is a Movie Review – so SPOILERS!

One of the main complaints of the live action Transformer films is having to wait around for ages to finally see some robots.  No such complaint can be made here.  One of the main groups of protagonists – The Maximals, and the main antagonists – The Terrorcons and their gigantic master Unicron, are introduced at the outset, setting the stage for much mayhem to come.  We are also introduced to the Allspark Matrix Control Pillar Seed Staff of Merlin Transwarp Key, a… glowy thingie… which will be used as an excuse for robots to travel to Earth, trapse all over the globe and fight each other to obtain it.

I can eat whole planets – but can be defeated by the lack of a glowy thing the size of your forearm

And then of course we transfer to the obligatory human characters and their backstories.  Firstly Noah Diaz, an ex-solider who is about to embark on a life of crime in order to support his younger brother who, I dunno, has a pain in his hand or something.  And Elena Wallace, an undervalued researcher in a museum.  So yes, we have humans but good news – there is no romantic subplot!  That’s right folks, a live action Transformers movie with no romantic awkwardness between teens or overt sexualization of young women – can I get an amen!

We are never scantiy dressed or sexually attracted to each other – are we sure this is a Transformers movie?

Anyways, these humans need to meet the Transformers for the plot to advance, so Noah tries to steal Mirage, police chase ensues, they escape and we get introduced to the bulk of the Autobot cast.  Brooding Optimus & perky Bumblebee, the mainstays of the movie series are on hand with Arcee, returning for her third outing, combining her robot look from the Bumblebee movie with her motorcycle altmode from ROTF.  But its Mirage who takes the staring role both in this scene and for much of the movie (oh thank you, thank you Primus for not making yet another movie all about Bumblebee and Optimus again!).

We are fam-i-ly!

Lets take a look at Mirage shall we.  Originally in Generation One the character was a blue & white Autobot Warrior, a member of the upper class who wants the war over so as to return to his lavish lifestyle on Cybertron, who could turn into an Indy Racer as well as cloak himself with invisibility.

‘A giant robot race car that can cloak? I rock!’

Here he seems to be a pastiche of other G1 Transformer characters.  He has the youthful exuberance of Hot Rod, the altmode of Jazz and the holographic powers of Hound.  That said, at least there is some resemblance to previous incarnations there.

‘You are  really going to enjoy me’

Mirage also seems to be able to turn into anything.  Yes I know that’s the point of Transformers, that they can change their forms, but Mirage can change into most anything on a whim.  In short order he transforms into a Porsche, a Lamborghini and an Indy Racer (in an homage to his G1 counterpart).  Yup, all cars approximating his mass and size, so what’s the problem?  No problem as such yet, but a short time later he transforms into a garbage truck bigger than Prime himself, and near the end an exo-suit for Noah which is not much bigger than the human.  By making Mirage seemingly able to be anything, it waters down the specialness of the transforming ability in general.

Wait, wasn’t I like 100 times bigger only an hour ago in the movie?

It isn’t long before, in pursuit of the glowy key thingie, the Autobots meet the Terrorcons, with much fighting and general violence taking place.  Thankfully for the franchise it learned from Dropkick and Shatter from the last flick as in a few fleshed out bad guys can prove more interesting than an army of generic ones (don’t worry, that happens later too). Scourge, the Terrorcon leader and main Herald of Unicron, is powerful and commanding enough as the main villain, though can’t be said to be breaking new ground – at least he comes with a couple of deployable Freezer minions.  Battletrap is pretty cool, using chains with clamps and wrecking balls on the end in both his modes to hurt his opponents, often using the environment around him to help smash his foes.  Nightbird can fly to provide her group air support, she also produces her signature swords near the end of the movie but doesn’t do much with them.

I will use the one ring to rule you all!

The glowy thingie is found, but oh no!  It got all broke up and now we need to find the second half!  Cue off to Peru, courtesy of Stratosphere, a pretty cool old transport plane character.  They meet up with Pablo Wheeljack who has an idea where the second half may be.  There we see the Autobots actually using their ‘robots in disguise’ moniker by hiding around the city in vehicle mode while the humans do their thing.  Then off to the jungle where the Maximals are hiding out where they are most definitely not robots in disguise.  Don’t get me wrong, they look cool.  But they are all way bigger than the animals they are supposed to be disguised as (the glowing eyes don’t help much either).  Maximals and Autobots team up, get their arses kicked, the glowy thing is put back together and thus the final act is underway.  The transwarp portal is opened, allowing Unicron to come and chow down on Earth.

‘Wait, you can tell that I’m not an Earth-gorilla? How?!’

But things don’t happen that fast.  Despite the transwarp portal castle thing materializing in seconds, it takes a long time for the portal to open enough for Unicron, so even though Airazor is now dead and Bumblebee near death himself, the remaining bots go to stop the portal opening, Optimus and Noah learning the magic of friendship (or something) and trusting each other.  Here we get the big final battle, with all the good guys who survived near dying at some point but never quite managing it, while the bad guys (along with the promised hordes of weaker bad guys to go smashy smashy on) get their comeuppance.  Cue some post battle scenes and that’s a wrap folks.

Movie Review – Bumblebee

So yes, the plot is very formulaic and nothing you haven’t seen in a hundred other flicks.  So is this movie worth watching?

Yes, yes it is!  This is actually to my mind the best live action Transformers movie to date, as well as being the most fun!  The majority of robots are treated like actual characters, receiving their fair share of screen time and character development, not simply murderbots to show up to kill each other between prolonged human scenes.  Speaking of, they finally seem to have struck the right balance for robot-to-human screen time – it’s a Transformers movie with actual Transformers!

We are in the film! We are in the film lots!

The only time I got sick of the squishies was the final battle scene; a huge stunning battle taking place with the Maximals and Autobots fighting the Terrorcons and a legion of their minions while Unicron decends from above, and they halt the action for two full minutes for Noah to have a heart-to-heart with his brother over a walkie-talkie?!  Shut the hell up Noah – we want to see the robots fight!  This did detract from the exo-suit scene for me, as I was all pissed off with Noah ruining the flow, but thankfully times like this in the movie were rare – no 10 minute scenes of Sam Witwicky having a mental meltdown in class, followed by talking about how a kiss had a deisely tinge to it.  The pacing of the movie is spot on, keeping you entertained without things going so fast you don’t know what’s happening, the humour gives you a few genuine laughs without it ever sinking into the gutter, in short this movie seems to have listened to all the fan gripes about the first 5 movies and rectified them, producing a fun and entertaining flick about our favourite giant, shape-changing alien robots!

I give Transformers Rise of the Beasts 9 out of 10 stolen Autobot badges.

You like me, you actually like me

Have you seen this movie?  What did you think of it?  Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Movie Review – Transformers: The Last Knight

Video: Interviews at Transformers Rise of the Beasts Preview Screening

On Thursday the 8th of June, here in Australia, some of us lucky few were chosen to attend a Special Preview Screening of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

Love getting invitied to these special events – thanks Hasbro and Paramount!

The lads Mikey and Clinton from the Toy Reel channel were invited along to do a pre-movie taping, discussing the potentials of the new film as well as interviewing some of the special guests attending.  This included professional film reviewer David Quinn, as well as fans Wes and Kelvin.

And naturally, if they are interviewing people they weren’t going to miss out on that master of all things Transformers, the curator of the world famous Transformatorium, Big Angry Trev himself!

I’m here, and I’m fabulous!

So enjoy this discussion from the lads from Toy Reel and their 4 interviewee’s (if you want to be naughty and watch the bit with me first, its at the 8.20 mark 😉)

 

Don’t forget to check out all the other video’s on the Toy Reel YouTube channel, and give them a like and subscribe while you are there 😊

Other Big Angry Trev Interviews:

Video: Interviews at More than Meets the Eye Exhibition

The Transformatorium Makes Front Page News!

 

Transformers Beasts Base Camp

With the imminent approach of the new Transformers movie, Rise of the Beasts, promotion and marketing is in full swing!

Yours truly was lucky enough to get invited to help represent the Fandom on the opening night of the Transformers Beasts Base Camp Roar & Snore Experience at Taronga Park Zoo.  Along with a couple of other fans as well as celebrities and media, courtesy of Hasbro we were treated to a truly amazing night!

First off, you knew you were in the right place when there are two big fellas ready to greet you!

Big Angry Trev & Optimus Prime – I smell a spin-off coming!

We were  given a guided tour by the keepers around some of the animal enclosures.  It was interesting to see just how more active many of the animals are at dusk, it was the most animated I’ve ever seen koalas in my life!  The zoo is very cool after opening hours.

They weren’t asleep!

We were subsequently ushered into an auditorium where we were given a special glimpse at some Rise of the Beasts material.  A non-disclosure agreement prevents me discussing what we saw, but fans will be very happy indeed!

Surprises on the way!

After our secret viewing we were treated to some displays of the upcoming Rise of the Beasts action figures, due to hit shelves here in Australia on April 10th.

Sometimes it pays to be a superfan

Next a jaumty stroll to Beasts Base Camp – so cool!  Everywhere you looked there was jungle-themed Transformer touches on show.

Into the main communial area we were ushered.  Plenty of food and drink on offer as we lounged about on Transformers-themed cushions.  Time for Big Angry Trev to go to work and shmooze with the other Aussie celebrities.

Miguel Maestre
Jordan Raskopoulos

As dark approached were escorted to our tents.  Each tent was numbered and had its own Transformers theme.  My tent-mate (Griffin of Ozformers) and I were in Tent 6 – The Mirage Tent.  And talk about the views!

Inside on our beds, we found the very pleasant surprise of gift bags, containing all manner of Transformers merchandise – thanks Hasbro!

Freebies!

After another short tour we were given dinner, a delightful array of different traditional African foods.  Then a special after-dark walk around some of the habitats.

No, not a satanic camel. At night the red light bothers the animals a lot less than white light

Next morning its more tours from the incredibly friendly keepers and then breakfast, followed by some up close and personal interactions with some of the animals.  I must admit I absolutely ADORE giraffes, so getting to hand feed one was definitely a personal highlight and I was almost in tears, feeling so moved by the experience.

The event finished just as the zoo was opening up for the day, and what a fantastic fun experience it was overall!  I’d like to thank Hasbro Australia once again for the opportunity, I can’t wait to bring my son to meet Prime & Primal!  Don’t forget that the toys hit shelves on April 10th, and the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts movie will hit theatres on June 8th.

“Don’t mess with us – especially the little bloke below me, he’s angry!”

 

Big Angry Trev visits Hasbro Australia!