Transformers: Rise of the Beastsis a love letter to the 1990s. An iconic era where Sonic The Hedgehog and Notorious B.I.G were both cultural juggernauts. Long before the age of social media and smartphones we had a fundamentally different relationship with media, so it was fascinating for the latest robots in disguise blockbuster to take us back to this bygone era.
I caught up with Anthony Ramos (Noah Diaz), Dominique Fishback (Elene Wallace) and Tobe Nwigwe (Reek) to talk about embodying this era in their characters ahead of release. Turns out that acting alongside giant robots that don’t exist on set is also quite a challenge.
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“The clothes, the suspenders and the choker. Even Elena’s curls before things happen are all very specific to the 90s with curler irons and things like that,” Fishback tells me. Nwigwe echoes her enthusiasm as he praises all the costumes he was asked to wear during the film, alongside the fact that his character’s signature trait is a love of red twizzlers. There is one thing Nwigwe himself loves from the era that resonates more than anything though, and that’s WWF.
“It was the absolute best thing in the world,” he says as Fishback adds that she’d love to have been a wrestler in the same vein as Lita. “I almost was a wrestler too. I almost did it. Except I didn’t.” Out there exists a parallel universe where instead of feature films and music, Nwigwe is duking it out with Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega. That’s a match I’d love to see.
Rise of the Beasts is a continuation of Bumblebee in its character designs and world building, but it also draws far more from Michael Bay’s take on things for its humour and action. There is a lot of chaos, which for actors like Anthony Ramos presents some interesting work on set.
“You definitely roll with it,” Ramos tells me. “You roll out, know what I mean? You make it up. I said this earlier that it’s kinda fire you get to make it up because whatever the scene ends up being is whatever the VFX team who create the Transformers do. They create around what you did already. It’s kind of nice when you get to work with Dom [Murphy] or Steven [Caple Jr] who told me you really get to craft these scenes in a way where we’d be like, ‘If we did this, maybe the Transformer would do that, or if we did this Optimus could say this or do that’ and that’s really cool, and you can be 100 percent creative.”
We’re also in the midst of a new era for Transformers. Many of the Rise of the Beasts cast grew up with the Michael Bay films much like I did, while the newer films tap into both the animated show and the polarising glory of Bayhem. Every fan has their personal favourite.
“Cheetor is my favourite character and she’s got two lines in the movie,” Ramos says, to which I shortly respond by saying the film needed way more beasts given its namesake. “Maybe in the next one, you know. Go out and see the movie and we can see beasts fight a little more.”
While I won’t spoil how the film ends and what exact possibilities it opens up for the future, it isn’t something I can avoid talking about with the cast. “We can go anywhere,” Ramos says. “If someone asked me right now, ‘what are you doing?’ I wouldn’t know.”
I put forward the suggestion of “going to Cybertron and getting crazy” which is a big hit with Ramos, so much so that he wants it on a t-shirt. “Yes! Let’s go to Cybertron and get crazy! That is a t-shirt for that ass if I’ve ever heard of one. Let’s go to Cybertron and get crazy.”
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now showing in cinemas.
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