After a five-year hiatus following 2018’s Bumblebee, the Transformers series is finally racing back into theaters this June with Rise of the Beasts. Featuring the fan-favorite Maximals from the beloved Beast Wars: Transformers cartoon, the first trailer for the upcoming film inspired no shortage of excitement among countless fans of the franchise.
However, when the film’s second trailer was recently released, it dropped a massive bombshell regarding the plot of the movie: the main villain of Rise of the Beasts will not be the Terrorcon leader Scourge (voiced by Peter Dinklage) as previously believed, but rather the planet-sized destroyer of worlds Unicron. Unicron is an absolutely massive figure in Transformers lore, in more ways than one, and the reveal that he’ll finally be making his live action debut has made fans even more hyped to see the new film. But despite this, it’s possible that Unicron’s inclusion in Rise of the Beasts may be a bad omen for the upcoming sequel.
Who is Unicron?
The character of Unicron originated in the very first Transformers film — 1986’s animated feature The Transformers: The Movie, in which he was voiced by none other than Orson Welles himself in his final film role. A nigh-omnipotent force of evil who devours entire worlds, Unicron enlists the aid of a dying Megatron in his schemes, transforming him into a mighty new form as Galvatron. The Seekers Skywarp and Thundercracker are likewise granted new forms as Cyclonus and Scourge, joining their master in battle against the Autobots. In the film’s climax, Unicron reveals that he himself is a Transformer, shifting into his demonic-looking robot form to destroy Cybertron before he’s ultimately destroyed from within by Rodimus Prime using the Matrix of Leadership.
Writer Simon Furman would flesh out Unicron further in the Marvel-published Transformers comics, establishing him as an ancient god of destruction who was sealed inside a mechanical shell by his brother and opposite Primus — the god of light who became one with the planet Cybertron and first created the Transformers. Later interpretations would establish that the first Cybertronians, the Thirteen Primes, were created by Primus as champions to defeat Unicron.
Since his creation in the 1980s, Unicron has been a recurring presence throughout the Transformers franchise, appearing in cartoons, comics, and video games. He was the main antagonist of the Transformers: Armada anime and its sequels Energon and Cybertron, collectively known as the “Unicron Trilogy”. Later, the Transformers: Prime cartoon provided its own twist on Unicron, revealing that Earth itself had formed around the planet-eater’s sleeping body. This same twist would be repeated in Michael Bay’s last Transformers film, The Last Knight, which set up Unicron as an obvious hook for a sequel that never came — at least, not with Bay at the helm.
The latest Rise of the Beasts trailer provides a look at a Unicron who is very clearly not sealed inside the Earth. Rather, he seems to be the big bad pulling the strings of the Terrorcons, led by Scourge in a clear nod to the 1986 animated movie. On the one hand, the fact that Unicron will finally be appearing in a live action Transformers movie after years of waiting is certainly something to be celebrated. However, Rise of the Beasts may not necessarily be the best place to use him.
Will Rise of the Beasts Be Too Crowded?
No matter the continuity, Unicron is invariably the greatest threat in the Transformers franchise. He’s a planet-sized Transformer with the power to destroy entire worlds with ease — threats to the universe don’t get much bigger than that. Unicron is the Transformers equivalent to Marvel’s Galactus or DC’s Anti-Monitor: a cosmic force of destruction who serves as a seemingly unstoppable foe for the heroes to overcome. He’s the kind of earth-shattering villain who’s typically built up over the course of several films, which makes it rather jarring that Rise of the Beasts is bringing him in so suddenly.
While it’s the seventh live action Transformers film overall, Rise of the Beasts is only the second movie in the rebooted movie continuity that began with Bumblebee. In other words, the new timeline begins with a heartfelt, small-scale story with two rank-and-file Decepticons as the main villains, then immediately follows it with a showdown against the planet-sized cosmic embodiment of evil. It’s a colossal change in both tone and scale, and it does Unicron a disservice by introducing him without any buildup. But of course, Unicron doesn’t seem to be the movie’s main priority.
True to its name, Rise of the Beasts was initially billed as a clash between the Autobots and the Maximals, with both sides l inevitably teaming up against the common enemy of Scourge and his Terrorcons. Yet out of nowhere, the new trailer reveals that the film is actually about saving Earth from Unicron. It’s an absolutely massive shift in narrative that raises some major red flags. Balancing three rival factions of Cybertronians in one film — to say nothing of the human cast — is enough of a precarious juggling act as is. Adding Unicron himself into the mix on top of everything else feels like a recipe for disaster. With so many characters competing for attention in a single movie, it’ll be a miracle if any of them get any proper development.
Ultimately, it feels like a disservice to Unicron to throw him in as the main villain of a live action Beast Wars movie. The film is, after all, titled Rise of the Beasts, not Rise of Unicron. The Maximals are the main draw of the movie. A villain of Unicron’s magnitude ought to be the center of his own movie after years of setup, like Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. But instead, Unicron’s far-too-soon introduction as the big bad of a crossover movie reeks of Doomsday in Batman v Superman. Hopefully, Rise of the Beasts will manage to do the impossible and succeed as both a Beast Wars movie and a Unicron movie. But from the outside, forcing Unicron to compete with the Maximals for the spotlight feels like a repeat of the Michael Bay era’s narrative mistakes.