Transformers: Rise of the Beasts arrives on streaming this week and it’s a good time.  However it also opens a can of Cybertronian worms about what’s canon and what isn’t in these movies now. Here’s what Alasdair Stuart has figured out…

And yes, of course there are Spoilers!

Sector 7

A big part of the initial live-action movie, Sector 7 were the organization who dealt with Transformers on Earth. After Megatron created what amounted to the angriest Singularity possible, they were both shut down and possibly folded into NEST, the Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty organization. NEST is a whole other thing, not just because it has a terrible acronym but because it’s a… death squad? Kind of? The first time we see them in Revenge of the Fallen they’re described as being a classified strike team hunting down Decepticons. One movie later they’re well-trained and armed enough to take down Decepticons in hand-to-claw combat and one movie after that they’ve been replaced by Cemetery Wind who are an actual out-and-out death squad. NEST are re-commissioned as the Transformers Reaction Force (TRF) in The Last Knight and presumably remain that Earth’s angry, sweaty version of UNIT to this day

So what of Rise of the Beasts? And Bumblebee? Well the latter has John Cena as a Sector 7 agent and the former canonically establishes that GI Joe are in the same universe and very interested in the large angry trucks that punch one another. What seems likely, especially given the events of Bumblebee are referenced in Beasts, is that Sector 7 was folded into GI Joe and that’s how they became aware of the Transformers.

Arrival to Earth… Before Arrival to Earth

This is partially me being cute as the ‘Arrival to Earth’ track from the original score is neatly riffed on at a crucial moment in Beasts when Prime becomes the leader he was always meant to be. But the fact he’s on Earth for that to happen is another change that runs from Bumblebee, establishing that the Autobots are on Earth long before the 2007 movie. Given those films have people popping back to Cybertron the way you pop out to the shops it’s very plausible that they leave at some point. What would be neater, and I suspect is quietly being looked at, is that Bumblebee is the new trailhead for the timeline and everything else flows from there. So the Bay-directed movies are a standalone franchise. We’re going to look at the biggest reason for this shortly. Biggest in every sense.

Historical Autobots

There’s also the fact that The Last Knight confirms Autobots have been active on Earth since at least 484AD. So much so that a secret society exist to catalogue their appearances, referred to as the Witwiccans. Sir Edmund Burton, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins in The Last Knight, explains all this and it is dizzying stuff. We meet the pocket watch Cybertronian ‘that killed Hitler’ and see Bumblebee and Hot Rod fight in World War II, among other deeply weird choices.

All of this means that The Last Knight basically retcons the franchise it functionally concludes. Certainly Bumblebee arriving on Earth for the first time is pretty definitively depicted in Bumblebee. The fact that Rise of the Beasts has the Maximals quietly influencing human history (at least in South America) instead of the Autobots is more evidence that these events also didn’t happen in this timeline.

Maximals

Go and watch Beast Wars, the show that introduced the Maximals. It’s fantastic and even though you’ll rankle at the animation a bit the thing has such heart and wit you won’t mind. Megatron is briefly a copper and purple T-Rex. A VTOL Copper and Purple T-Rex. It is such a good time. Anyway, the Maximals are a carryover from that and there’s a line in the movie that references the show’s weird timeline. Basically the Maximals are from the future and end up in the past. In the TV show they’re in the past of the original G1 cartoon. This is a different timeline but same basic idea. Also I can’t help but wonder if they hung out with the Eternals…

Oh also, Scourge’s habit of tearing the allegiance badge from fallen foes suggests he’s met the Predacons, the other faction from Beast Wars. Predacon comic relief Waspinator’s badge is clearly visible on his shoulder at several points.

Unicron

Right, the Big One. Established as a god-like, planet eating figure in Transformers: The Movie, Unicron is the Big Bad in every sense of the word. He’s also established, in The Last Knight, as being Earth. The planet formed around the inert core of the Cybertronian planet eater.

This becomes a Whole Thing, as they say, as Unicron’s horns sprout from the Earth and Megatron and a brain-washed Optimus Prime work to bring Cybertron to Earth so the planet can be revived by draining Unicron’s life force. This leads to a massive fight at Stonehenge, Sir Anthony Hopkins being shot by Megatron and a lot of shouting.

Rise of the Beasts has Unicron as a separate and extremely alive entity who sends Scourge in search of the TransWarp key he needs to get to Earth. The fact this is happening in 1994 suggests that Unicron is not in fact Earth. The fact Unicron briefly manifests near Earth and doesn’t sense that he is about to feed on his own corpse suggests, very strongly, that this Unicron is not in fact Earth. Likewise Scourge spending several days blowing up various bits of the planet without anything seeming familiar. We’re not saying this couldn’t be retconned but we are saying it would be a lot of work, even for this franchise.

 

Looked at this way, it seems likely we can look at the Michael Bay-directed Transformers movies as either a quintology or a trilogy and duology that build on each other and end. Bumblebee certainly seems to be the new first instalment and the way Rise of the Beasts builds on and expands it certainly bears that out. GI Joe’s certainly one fun addition; exploring the Maximals and Predacons is another. Regardless it’s a fun movie with a heart this series has too often lacked and I’m looking forward to what happens next and how the future transforms.