Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Trailer: Steven Caple Jr talks Unicron, Optimus Primal and The Mysterious Mirage

Ready to roll out? The action-packed trailer for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is just out, confirming the arrival of fan-favorite big bad Unicron, opening up the mad mythology of the Maximals, teasing a new batch of “bots,” and packed with engaging action sequences to boot. Everything is directed by Steven Caple Jr, the director behind I believe IIstepping into another franchise he loves and ready to make his mark there.

reached up Empire before the release of the trailer to destroy the machine-on-machine mayhem teasing his greatest plans for Unicron, the importance of the 90s New York setting, the crazy mix of influences that have come together to create the new Autobot hero Mirage and many more. Immersion.

pure maximalism

You could hardly blame the transformers movies are lo-fi cinema, but rise of the beasts looks set to be more maximalist than ever. By this we mean that a new generation of “oldies” is coming to these so-called ceilings: robots that aren’t exactly camouflaged, but that can transform into animals. At their head is Optimus Primal, who looks like a gorilla, voiced (as he was in the 2018 cartoon Power of prime numbers) by Ron Perlman. “It was like, ‘I want to fix some things and do something different that I didn’t do in the cartoon,'” says Caple Jr. “Having that kind of energy made me feel good.”

This new droid deck features all kinds of new personalities. “Cheetor is fast, very fast, very agile. He talks fast,” explains the director. “He’s got some guts in his character about him. Airazor is very beautiful, it’s a bird, it’s majestic, it’s elegant. Just like the actress who plays her, Michelle Yeoh. Optimus Primal is a great character because he’s clearly the Optimus Prime of the group, the leader. I wanted to make sure he was very noble and had those leadership qualities. Expect a different kind of background for these new heroes, armed with vital lore. “They’re from their own planet, and I’m not going to screw that up from there,” Caple Jr. jokes. “They’re traveling to Earth to protect something really important, and a really huge person, and a big bad bad boy that we’ve been waiting to see.” long since. And Prime doesn’t know it. We learn a lot from what comes from the Maximals.”

Myself

For example Bumblebee more precisely, it took place in the 80s in San Francisco, rise of the beasts He chose a different setting: 1994, New York. “We’ve always been on the West Coast,” says Caple Jr. “But they’ve never gone to the East Coast. And that was the hardest place because [on] on the east coast there are many people, there are many buildings. So the Transformers can’t really thrive. They can’t drive into the desert, turn around and talk, because you’re in a big city. What better place to try and really dress up than New York? It’s fair to say that Optimus Prime isn’t a fan of his new temporary home. “He has a certain smell, you know, you can love him or hate him,” laughs the director. “I felt like for Optimus Prime, someone who wants to go home, I might hate that!”

For Caple Jr, it was a time and place that offered many opportunities. “The 90s are really vibrant with color, culture, music and hip hop. It was a big pivotal moment,” he says. mecca for it.Stay tuned to see if Bumblebee comes to Central Perk for coffee.

Brooklyn rises

Channeling that New York spirit it is in the heights‘Anthony Ramos, stepping in as the main human Noah. And he’s a different kind of leading man than Sam Witwicky and Bumblebeeen charlie watson “New Yorkers are tough, man,” jokes Caple Jr. “It was a great place to work on characters. So if Optimus Prime, that alien, lands, you meet a human: this guy lifts the tube and says, “Come on! Combat! I don’t know what you are!” instead of having that Amblin-style “ET calls home” moment.

Noah, he explains, “runs into a glass ceiling, trying to get a job. He has a little problem with his confidence. He’s a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn trying to take care of his family.” His disdain for authority figures extends to a certain Autobot. “When he meets Optimus Prime, he doesn’t want to help him at first,” says the director. “You see Optimus Prime like the people he goes to interviews with, like a boss. “Why should I help you?” “And then when he realizes what’s going on on a grand scale, who’s really coming and what the threat is, he decides to put himself on at stake”.

create a mirage

Like the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name, Mirage has always been a less famous Autobot. It’s much more central here: Get moving, Bumblebee. “It’s always about Bumblebee,” says Caple Jr. “I say that being a Bumblebee fan, a center!” Come in rise of the beasts, the director wanted something different. “I was like, ‘How can we change this?’ They all line up: Arcee, Bumblebee, everyone listens to Prime because he’s the boss, the leader. What if we have a rebel? An outcast? Someone who, every time Prime wants to go right, says: “And the left? What about the use of humans? That’s where Mirage comes from.

Creating a full-fledged character for an Aubobot miner brought in all sorts of influences, from picking up a Porsche in one of Michael Bay’s favorite 90s movies (“This is the Year of bad guys – Will Smith and Martin Lawrence drove around in a Porsche,” observes the director), studying Bugs Bunny (“Who’s a rebel, who’s an outcast? Who could be fast, talkative, funny, cunning?”), to Bookmark to favorite Jim Carrey. “Do you remember The mask?” asks Caple Jr. “It became something that kept whispering in my left ear. He was really hard to deal with, you never knew when to trust him when he was wearing the mask. It’s pretty cool. The last piece of the puzzle was getting Pete Davidson to voice Mirage. “Mirage, it was him. Everything about Mirage made it look like it was Pete Davidson. We now have a rebel on our team.” Autobots…rebels?

Cream of the ‘Cron

that’s the thing transformers Fans have been waiting for years: Unicron, the planet-eating villain from the animated series transformers: the movie, correctly siding in live-action. For Caple Jr. (“I’m a fan first and foremost,” he says), it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “The first time I see the [animated] The movie was a VHS tape. The first character introduced to me in the rather crazy world of Transformers was Unicron. The introduction of him in the animated film astounded me. I was really excited. He chewed up an entire planet, killed those little robots. I was like, ‘Damn it!’

The plan, he jokes, is to put Unicron on the map for a while. “It’s the first step, it’s the introduction,” said Caple Jr. “I don’t feel like it’s over yet. I won’t spoil the movie for you, but I feel like it’s introducing Unicron and seeing what it can do, and then we can build from there. We don’t have to force everything into one film. But I think it needs to come to life. I think you need to talk. I think we need to say more: In the previous movies we’ve only seen a horn or something small like that. Fans were freaking out and saying, “We want Unicron! I hope I did you right by giving you Unicron. Does anyone know of a tasty planet I should try next?

fighting beasts

If you thought bringing the Autobots, the Maximals and the menace of Unicron together would lead to a quiet final reunion, have you never seen a transformers movie before. and the fights rise of the beasts seems especially danceable, teased here in a long carnage-filled rundown. “You have a monkey hanging off a fucking bridge and roaring; you have a cheetah coming from the left; Rhinox driven by Arcee, which is a motorcycle. It’s chaos at best,” Caple Jr. enthuses. “There are machines, there are robots, there are animals, there are humans. I try to mix everything in one.

while previous transformers The fights were hard to follow, Caple Jr. is eager to bring out the identity of every android in action. “Everyone has their own special ability, similar to their personality,” he observes. “With Mirage, his ability and the way he fights is who he is as a character and who he is as a vehicle. Rhinox destroys everything he sees. Primal will evolve, be agile, be strong as hell. The result should be a childhood dream come true. “I told the creators when we were in pre-production and planning the fight scenes, ‘I want him to feel like a kid in a bathtub playing with his toys. What’s the craziest thing I can do? Playtime it’s about to start.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts hits UK cinemas from 8 June.