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An attempt to revive the Hasbro franchise is a careless fumble put together without a hint of effort or interestDuring his tenure as chairman of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, industrialist Lee Iacocca declared the small hunk of land off the coast of New Jersey a “symbol of reality” to Lady Liberty’s “symbol of hope”. A fitting gesture, then, that Ellis Island should be obliterated as collateral damage in the first hour of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, in light of its deafening disregard for anything in the general galaxy of real.As obligatory human Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos, looking like he’s just walked into a party and realized he doesn’t know anyone) stumbles through a cosmic clash between opposing hunks of dinged-up CGI, he briefly questions the need of alien robots to disguise themselves as Earth-faring vehicles. His perfectly valid thoughts are hand-waved away by Mirage – voiced by Pete Davidson, saying things like “yo!” – with the instruction not to worry about it. It behooves a viewer to set their suspension of disbelief at a generously accommodating looseness in dealing with a film featuring Airazor, the extraterrestrial cybernetic eagle that speaks in the voice of Michelle Yeoh. But all parties involved with the production deliver a level of effort suggesting that these Saturday morning implausibilities have been seized as cover and cause to not give a shit. Continue reading...