127 min | PG-13 | June 9, 2023 | Paramount Pictures
Noah Diaz needs a job and a way to pay for his brother’s care. Optimus Prime needs a way home and a war he can win. The robots fight, the world stays small, and the movie settles for fine.
A planet-eating god named Unicron sends his herald to Earth to harvest the key that opens a gateway across the universe. Two humans get pulled into the chase. Noah Diaz steals a car that turns out to be an Autobot, and museum researcher Elena Wallace unlocks an ancient relic that everyone wants. The film grafts the Beast Wars corner of the franchise onto a 1994 New York setting and a heist structure. Underneath the spectacle, this is a story about people with no resources trying to matter inside a war between gods who barely notice them.
Anthony Ramos plays Noah as a man stretched thin by obligation, and he sells the desperation in the early scenes before the plot turns him into an action lead. Dominique Fishback gives Elena a sharp curiosity that the script keeps interrupting to move metal around. Peter Cullen returns as Optimus Prime and plays him harder and more impatient than the noble version fans expect. Ron Perlman voices Optimus Primal with a low gravel that grounds the gorilla. Peter Dinklage voices Scourge with a flat menace, and Pete Davidson voices Mirage as comic relief that runs hot and thin.
Steven Caple Jr. directs the action with more geographic clarity than the Michael Bay films allow, and you can usually tell which robot is hitting which robot. The script credited to Joby Harold, Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber, Darnell Metayer, and Josh Peters runs on a fetch-the-MacGuffin engine that flattens the stakes. The 1994 setting delivers a hip-hop needle-drop soundtrack and a grainy period texture that the production design honors in the Brooklyn streets. The final act relocates to the jungle and dissolves into the gray digital scrum that these movies always reach. The score swells on cue and tells you how to feel because the writing does not.
The film knows what it is and aims low enough to hit. The human leads are likable and the voice cast commits, and the result clears the floor of the franchise without testing the ceiling. The problem is the same one every entry has. The robots crowd out the people, the climax buries the character work under collapsing CGI, and a promising street-level premise gets swallowed by a cosmic threat nobody asked to see. It works as machinery. It does not stick.