Transformers Rise of the Beasts trailer breakdown: So many cameos

The teaser trailer for Steven Caple Jr.’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts dropped on Thursday, and — by Primus! — it’s got more robots in it than you can shake a Power Booster Rod at!

These robots are who? Which are they? Which tusks shine in the night? All these questions will be answered with the exclamations we deserve. We’re not sorry we know this stuff!

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Look, I’m not gonna condescend to you and tell you who Optimus Prime is. You know which one’s Optimus Prime! And this Optimus prime is fresh off his short appearances in Transformers: The Prequel (2018). Bumblebee. For those who were born in 1995 or later, the gorilla on the right is Optimus Primal (voiced Ron Perlman). They’re different guys! Optimus Primal, a gorilla-sized creature, is about the same size that a human. Judging by Primal’s size here, however, Rise of the Beasts seems to be taking after Optimus Primal’s original inspiration, King Kong!

(That’s precisely why the original Optimus Primal found himself facing off against Megatron as a Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s true!)

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Later in the trailer, we see Optimus Primal in robot mode, wielding both of his swords. They are combined to the hilt, much like the original gorilla Optimus primal toy. We also briefly see them attached to a chain, which seems to harken back to that toy’s mace weapon. You will find many classic Beast Wars references here.

But who’s that orange guy going toe-to-toe with Optimus Primal?

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Battletrap is an orange-and black tow truck. Perhaps you remember Battletrap, a blue-and-gray Duocon from 1987. But this guy seems to have borrowed his name as Transformers do. He’s a member of a new faction (again with an older name) called the Terrorcons. These guys are what Primal is referring to when he talks of a “coming darkness.” Battletrap is voiced by David Sobolov, who was the voice actor for Depth Charge way back in the Beast Wars cartoon!

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Also, we see Battletrap on a mountain road in tow truck mode firing missiles at two Autobots. We now wonder who they are.

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Arcee (Liza Koshy) and Wheeljack (Cristo Fernández) are returning from their extremely brief cameos in Bumblebee. Arcee is very similar in robot mode. However, she now transforms into the red-and white motorcycle. This movie takes place in the 1990s, so it seems like she’s got a decade or so to become the three (!) motorcycles she appears as for about two seconds before getting blown up in 2009’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

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Wheeljack, that Volkswagen bus. No, he’s not a red-and-green Lancia Stratos this time around. And we don’t get a good look at his robot mode here, other than one shot of his shoulder in the battle scene and a look at him from behind in a wide shot, but we know the bus is Wheeljack from Caple’s Instagram.

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Keep your fingers crossed that the man’s ears glow while he speaks.

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Surprisingly, this giant cheetah is the Beast Wars child-appeal character Cheetor. In one shot we see him next to Bumblebee, Generation One’s kid-appeal character. Bumblebee in his off-road version, Cheetor again very large. This seems to be the running theme of this movie for Maximals. They’re just big!

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We see Cheetor’s robot mode from behind for a split second in the giant battle scene toward the end of the trailer. He looks like he’s got a few Wolverine-style blades on his forearms!

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We see an enormous falcon spouting fire across a stone bridge, which is a sign of the Maximals. That’s Airazor, who’s voiced by Michelle Yeoh! (Hot dang! Wow!

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Elsewhere there’s a presumably similarly huge rhinoceros. That’s Rhinox, who, like Battletrap, is voiced by David Sobolov.

I don’t believe we see either of their robot modes in this teaser trailer. You need to save some money for the trailer.

That’s all the beasts we saw, but who else do we have to get to?

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Mirage is the white-and blue robot that we see in both the preview clip, and the final teaser. It might be a little confusing, since Mirage was an F1 racer in 1984 and his alternate mode in this film is essentially Jazz’s white-and-blue Porsche, but it’s definitely Mirage! This is proven by creating several holographic decoys that are of him in high-speed chases in the middle. That’s something a guy named Mirage would do, right?

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Why isn’t Mirage an F1 racer? Look, F1 racers aren’t street legal. He’d drive like 5 feet on a regular road and then scuff himself up something terrible. Mirage was forced to buy a car.

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There’s another menacing robot we see just long enough for them to spear poor little Bumblebee through the torso! That’s Scourge (Peter Dinklage!!!), who’s the leader of the Terrorcons. He turns into an a. Road Warrior’d-out semi truck. There have been lots of Transformers named Scourge over the years, but the one this guy seems most closely related to is the black-and-gray-and-more-gray-and-some-teal semi truck Scourge from 2001’s Robots undercover. That Scourge was an evil clone of Optimus Prime, and while this Scourge doesn’t look much like Optimus Prime, he does pick up the 2001 Scourge slack in the Bad Guy Leader and Semi Truck departments.

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There’s one other Terrorcon we know of, Nightbird (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez), and while we don’t get any good looks at robots that are clearly a Nightbird, there are a few frames of purple blurs here and there! I’m guessing that’s Nightbird on the left. Generation One Nightbird is a ninja who was created by Dr. Fujiyama for the benefit of humanity. So, her ability to sneak in and out this trailer unnoticed may just be her doing her job exactly as she was supposed to. We know she transforms into a black sports car with purple hubcaps, but that’s about it.

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There are some other robots in this trailer, but I don’t think they’re literally cannon fodder! Scourge is otherwise in charge of, like, two other Terrorcons, which isn’t all that dark of a “coming darkness,” so I’m guessing that all the random wiry little guys we see in the background of the giant battle scene getting flipped around on mountain highways are various nameless Terrorcon nobodies. However, the film can give them any name or personality it likes. They will be revealed to us.

We also know John DiMaggio is voicing a robot named Stratosphere, but I don’t see any evidence of any big ol’ jets!

It’s a time of new darkness, people! Here’s hoping a big monkey can take it down.