How It Takes an Old Beast Wars to Make a New Transformers

The Canadian-made computer animated series Beast Wars: Transformers serves as the unlikely basis for the latest film in the popular franchise.

This summers Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the latest of seven films in the long-running series of live-action films based on Hasbros hugely popular toy franchise; the first since the critically acclaimed 2018 spinoff, Bumblebee; and the first mainline installment since the Michael Bay-directed Transformers: The Last Knight (2017). Like all of the films in the series to date, Rise of the Beasts is based on characters first designed in 1984 as a line of childrens action figures, much like Mattels Masters of the Universe or Hasbros own G.I. Joe. But this new chapter also pulls from an unusual source: Beast Wars: Transformers, a somewhat obscure Canadian television show that ran from 1996 to 1999.

Rise of the Beasts takes place largely in New York in the 1990s, and follows the action-packed exploits of a race of powerful robots who live in disguise as cars and trucks, including the series hero Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, reprising his role as voice actor from all of the previous films). This time around, Prime and his allies are joined by the Maximals, time-traveling Transformers from the distant future who turn into animals rather than vehicles: They include the rhinoceros Rhinox (David Sobolov), the falcon Airazor (Michelle Yeoh), the cheetah Cheetor (Tongayi Chirisa) and the gorilla Optimus Primal (Ron Perlman), a descendant of Prime. All of the new animal Transformers have been faithfully lifted from Beast Wars, which featured these characters living on a barren alien planet and doing battle with the nefarious Blackarachnia (a spider) and Scorponok (a scorpion), among other foes with similarly literal names.