Tranformers: Rise of the Beasts Character Posters Released

Paramount has released a number of character posters in support of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Up-close and personal looks at some of the film’s most iconic characters give a sense for the gritty, analog look of the characters, despite existing in the slick and all-digital universe of the Michael Bay Transformers. After the critical and fan success of Bumblebee, it seems like a return to the ’90s Transformers revival Beast Wars is trying to find a happy medium that will satisfy fans and critics while still making the big bucks the Bay movies did.  Whether it will work or not, we won’t know until the summer.

The posters  feature Optimus Prime, Mirage, and Optimus Primal. According to Transformers World, these posters are available via Paramount Rise Of The Beasts app.

You can check them out here:

During a recent presentation for Paramount, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts director Steven Caple Jr. revealed a few tantalizing details about the upcoming blockbuster, among which was the revelation that fans will get to learn more about Optimus Prime as a character, and more about his connection to and experiences on Earth.

“The main hero is Optimus, as we all know and love,” Caple said. “We’re bringing Prime back, paying direct homage to Generation One. I care so much about this character that I really wanted to dive into Transformers, and I saw a Bumblebee and I was like, okay, Bumblebee had his own movie, but I want to discover more about Optimus Prime, dig underneath the surface, get underneath the metal, if you would, and like explore who he is and his experience here on earth, you know?”

“I know everyone has been asking like crazy, are we going, G1, are we going to G1?” Caple continued. “The answer is, yes, we are going to G1, the Prime.”

The movie takes place about a decade before Michael Bay’s Transformers — and Caple plans to use that as an opportunity to explore a kind of “Year One” approach to Optimus Prime, and give fans a sense of how he became a great leader.

“It’s 1994, and in a way, both the animated series and the Bay films treat Optimus the same in the sense of who he is as a leader, what is his drive?” Caple said. “All those things. What we’ve done is we’re bringing it back to where you see how he becomes, what you’re familiar with. And that’s big new news.”

And, yes, it isn’t just a question of him spending 10 years on Earth. There’s more to it than that, and fans will get to see what his “emotional” tie is to the planet, according to the director.

“When you say got to where he is, you mean ‘we need to protect these earthlings and this biological planet,’” Caple explained. “The way to look at it is he’s new to earth and he doesn’t have a connection to earth the way we met him in the Bay films and the way we met him in the animated series where he’s already a protector of Earth. And so in this film, it’s forming, why does he have a link to humanity? And why does he have a link to earth? And that’s emotional…At the beginning of Bumblebee, we showed, he escaped from Cybertron his home planet. And so in a sense, he’s he literally is like an ex-pat here, right? He’s landed. He’s, he’s an alien and he’s never been here before. And so it allows us to get underneath say the stoicism of what we’re traditionally presented in an Optimus.”

Here’s the official synopsis for the film: 

Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ’90s globetrotting adventure and introduce the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons. 

Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in theatres June 9, 2023.