Hasbro’s famous toy franchise has been turned into seven live-action films, including this year’s summer release, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.” The film is the first mainline installment since 2017’s “Transformers: The Last Knight” and the first one to incorporate characters from the 1996-99 Canadian television show “Beast Wars: Transformers,” which had almost faded into obscurity. The new movie follows the story of the original characters disguised as vehicles, including the iconic Optimus Prime. However, this time around, we also meet the Maximals, time-traveling Transformers from the future that transform into animals. The characters are modeled after the rhinoceros Rhinox, the falcon Airazor, the cheetah Cheetor, and the gorilla Optimus Primal. These characters were lifted straight from “Beast Wars,” which featured the characters on a barren alien planet battling foes with literal names, such as the spider Blackarachnia and the scorpion Scorponok.
“Beast Wars” was created by Mainframe Studios, the same animation company that produced the pioneering computer-animated series “ReBoot” for the Canadian network YTV. The series featured computer-animated, bulbous character models moving simply around bare environments, similar to “Toy Story” but with starker, more rudimentary animation. The show ran for three seasons in Canada under the name “Beasties” and in syndication across the United States, earning a Daytime Emmy for outstanding achievement in animation in 1998. It also became the inspiration for a TV sequel, comic books, and two video games. Now, almost three decades after its debut, “Rise of the Beasts” has given new life to the characters and designs from “Beast Wars” in a way that will undoubtedly excite fans of the underrated series.
While “Rise of the Beasts” has not been promoted as a “Beast Wars” movie and has hardly mentioned the show in interviews and press releases, it puts the spotlight back on “Beast Wars” and reminds us of its place in transforming the “Transformers” franchise. It’s no coincidence that the movie is set in the 1990s, the heyday of “Beast Wars.” For those who want to revisit the Canadian series and its characters, the complete run of “Beast Wars” was released on home video by Shout Factory in 2011 and is now available for purchase on Amazon Prime Video.
