Rise Of The Beasts Robbed Us Of Zombie Transformers (Which May Be A Good Thing)
While "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" expands the "Transformers" live-action film series' canon with the incorporation of new facets of its extensive source material, it stops just short of introducing zombie Transformers — though that may be a good thing.
"Rise of the Beasts" serves as a sequel to "Bumblebee," which itself takes place prior to the continuity of the five movies that precede it. However, even though it's set in the first "Transformer" film's past, "Rise of the Beasts" introduces plenty of new Transformers, including robots that can shape-shift into giant animals known as Maximals first seen in the "Beast Wars" cartoon. Its principal antagonists, meanwhile, are known as Terrorcons, whereas evil animal robots called Predacons are the main villains of "Beast Wars."
The name Terrorcon, in fact, at one point played a key part in the three-season "Transformers: Prime" TV series that premiered in 2010. Rather than anything resembling a Predacon, it describes a dead Transformer reanimated with dark energy, and thus imbued with zombie-esque characteristics. These include the power to absorb energy from other Transformers and an inability to be killed through most conventional means. The Terrorcons in "Rise of the Beasts," meanwhile, have no relation to the zombie-like robots with which they share a name.
Zombies in Rise of the Beasts likely would have been a bridge too far
It's unclear precisely why "Rise of the Beasts" introduces Terrorcons for its villainous faction rather than Predacons like in its source material. Nevertheless, given that "Terrorcon" at one point referred to zombie Transformers, seasoned fans of the property could be forgiven for thinking zombies would show up in the latest "Transformers" film based on the inclusion of the name alone.
Theoretically, there's a universe in which introducing both beast and zombie Transformers in the same film might make for a good, weird time. Much more probably, though, incorporating zombified robots into a movie that already revolves around a new kind of Transformer would have been a hat on a hat, and "Rise of the Beasts" is likely better off the way it is. "Transformers" movies, as fans are well aware, venture into some pretty unusual territory already, making two big, bizarre ideas at once entirely unnecessary.
Moving forward, zombies could still show up in a future live-action "Transformers" movie — they would just have to do so under a name other than "Terrorcon."