Transformers: Rise of the Beasts post-credits scene changes the game

Transformers Rise of the BeastsThis is an odd Transformers movie. It’s mostly a reboot for the franchise, though it directly follows 2018’s BumblebeeIt continues the long-running trend of portraying Optimus Prime as a bloodthirsty (oil-thirsty? The movie continues to portray Optimus Prime as a more bloodthirsty character (or is it oil-thirsty?) Energon-thirsty?) Outside of live action installments, he is more often a villain than a noble hero.

It brings in Beast Wars’ Maximals characters, but doesn’t find much use for them, except to look cool in battle and partly counter Prime’s more Autobahnencratic (heh, autocratic) tendencies. It treats Transformer death with the same infamous casualness as 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie — several of its sentient machine characters die onscreen, which gets little more than a “That’s tragic and I’m sad. Anyway, moving on…” from their companions.

Maybe that’s because Transformers are so hard to kill permanently. By the end of the film, viewers are likely to want to stay in the theater just to see whether there’s any new wrinkle on the character deaths in Transformers Rise of the Beasts, because they seem so casual and ephemeral that it’s hard to believe they aren’t all temporary. Here’s how that actually plays out in the movie.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for deaths and other details in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.]

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ mid-credits scene

Jonathan Wenk/Paramount Pictures

Transformers Rise of the BeastsIt has a mid credits scene where we learn that Noah Diaz, formerly a soldier but now devoted to tech (In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos) has repaired and revived his new Autobot friend Mirage (Pete Davidson). Granted, you might have had to watch closely to realize that Mirage was meant to be dead in the first place — he takes a hell of a beating from Scourge (Peter Dinklage) in the final battle, then donates some of his parts to make a mecha suit for Noah. But it never really feels like he’s gone — Simply reconfigured

In the scene, Noah’s neighborhood friend Reek (Tobe Nwigwe), who tried in earlier scenes to turn Noah into a professional carjacker, excuses himself for abandoning Noah to the police in an earlier scene. Then he mocks Noah’s latest construction project, a junky-looking car pieced together out of random parts that Reek has sourced for him. “It’s a complete waste of your skills and my expertise,” Reek yells. “This car is a jigsaw puzzle made of garbage!” But then the car transforms and reveals itself as Mirage. “Your boy is back!” he yells — to Reek’s astonishment, since it’s his first encounter with a giant living robot that’s also sometimes a car.

Who Died in Transformers Rise of the Beasts?

Paramount Pictures

But it’s worth noting that while Bumblebee dies in the movie’s first act, and is then resurrected by a power surge, and Mirage apparently dies (??) in the third-act battle and is resurrected by Noah’s clumsy human repair job, Rise of the Beasts doesn’t have a post-credits scene, and doesn’t ever go back to the movie’s other big death. AirazorThe World At One Time star Michelle Yeoh) gets corrupted by Scourge, attacks her friends, and then encourages her leader, Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), to kill her so she won’t hurt anyone else. It appears that he kills her by pressing on her very hard.

Airazor seems just as ripe for a comeback as Mirage did — her body is damaged after Scourge’s attack, but it’s far less wrecked than Mirage’s was. Scourge apparently corrupted Airazor’s operating system or whatever Transformers has that is passed off as one. But it should be something that a reboot, and good alien virus prevention, can handle. But don’t bother waiting around for any post-credits sequence dealing with her fate, or with the future of the franchise. The franchise is concerned, as far Rise of the BeastsMirage remains the only Transformer in need of repair.

Is there going to be a G.I. Will there be a G.I.

Image: John Barber, Cullen Bunn, Fico Ossio/IDW

As for any further teases about where the franchise might go from here, the end-of-movie meetup between Agent Burke (Michael Kelly) and Noah tells as much of that story as we’re going to get for the moment. Agent Burke’s job is to work for G.I. Joe — he’s probably a reference to the James Bond-esque super-spy who appeared in one episode of the 1980s G.I. Joe animated series — there’s every reason to believe that Paramount is planning a G.I. Joe/Transformers cross-over movie. That team-up first happened in the comics, and it’s a natural pairing, since both of those properties are owned by Hasbro, and both of them originally came to TV in order to promote existing toy lines.

But you won’t find out more about that by waiting until after the credits are over — the mid-credits scene with Noah and Mirage is all for now. Airazor is a poor creature.