The Classic Action Film That Influenced Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts

The "Transformers" franchise is a box office sensation, but most of the movies have been critically panned. As Rotten Tomatoes notes, only two of them boast a Fresh rating. However, Paramount has seemingly acknowledged the criticism and responded accordingly, retooling the franchise in an effort to make it appealing to moviegoers again. "Bumblebee," which gave the series an Amblin-style makeover, impressed some of the naysayers, earning a 90% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie brought some much-needed heart to a franchise that had been focused on machine-centric Bayhem before, and Paramount hopes to continue this momentum with "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts."

"Bumblebee" might have been a throwback to the 1980s style of blockbuster filmmaking, but the next movie takes cues from the action-packed cinema of the following decade. In a recent interview with ComingSoon, director Steven Caple Jr. revealed that "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" has mined one classic 1990s action movie — which just so happens to tell the story of machines at war — for inspiration. Furthermore, the director's words suggest that the film could be a grittier outing for the Autobots.

"Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" promises to be a globetrotting adventure, and Steven Caple Jr. wants to bring a sense of "expedition and journey" to the story. To accomplish this, he turned to James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" – a movie that essentially revolves around a deadly chase — to help him create a similar type of thrilling action-adventure. 

The director also went on to explain that the emotional weightiness and darkness of "Terminator 2" informed "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts." "The heaviness of the metal, if you will, all that stuff plays into it," Caple revealed to ComingSoon. "So I think when you're looking at our film and looking at sort of where we're taking it, [we] kind of want to bring that classic expedition, that classic journey through New York and where we go from there." 

The upcoming reboot will smash into theaters next summer.