Unicron Confirmed as Transformers: Rise of the Beasts's Villain

A threat unlike anything the Transformers have faced before is coming for Earth -- and it's hungry. After more than a decade of rumors and false starts, Unicron is now confirmed as the central antagonist in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. It's a move that will make a lot of hardcore Transformers fans pretty excited, since the movie in which he first appeared -- the animated Transformers: The Movie -- has often been called the best movie theatrical feature the characters have starred in. The character showed up as a world-eating threat voiced by Hollywood icon Orson Welles, and was later retrofitted into the Transformers lore.

Unicron is, for all intents and purposes, a god of destruction. He is the twin brother of Primus, the Transformers' creator god, and Unicron's hope is to destroy all life in the universe, leaving himself the only thing left -- the sole living god of a dead universe.

Unicron was created by The One, to explore the universe as it began. The One then divided Unicron in two, creating Primus as his twin. The war between Primus and Unicron has gone on since the beginning of the universe, and Optimus Prime is one in a series of "Primes" created by Primus, whose function was to destroy Unicron before he could succeed in his genocidal mission.

Not unlike Marvel's Galactus, Unicron will often make deals with lesser threats, giving them power on the condition that they work for him. In Transformers: The Movie, Megatron and a number of other dead and dying Decepticons were saved by Unicron, who gave them power upgrades and new names.

In 2017's Transformers: The Last Knight, which is presumably still canon in the timeline of Rise of the Beasts, but also takes place about 25 years later than the new film (which is set in the 1990s), it was said that Earth had formed around the inactive body of Unicron, similar to stories told in the "aligned continuity," one of a number of popular Transformers timelines. Unicron's husk was a key part of the plan by Decepticons and Quintessa, who wanted to tap Unicron's energy to revitalize Cybertron (at Earth's expense). 

The new trailer for Rise of the Beasts, though, very clearly shows a version of Unicron that looks like he did in Transformers: The Movie, and there is a reference in-dialogue to the threat being a planet-eating being who is therefore much larger than a planet. Time will tell how these two different takes on Unicron are reconciled.

Here's the official synopsis for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: 

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 with the Autobots and introduce a whole new faction of Transformers – the Maximals – to join them as allies in the existing battle for earth. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in theatres June 9, 2023.