Transformers : Rise of the Beasts 3D Blu-ray (2023) [Region Free]

[Interdimensional]

Saw this in Imax 3D.

What was a little strange was that before the opening credits, they had a disclaimer to say that the film had not been specially formatted for Imax presentation. I've never seen anything like that before. It was like Imax were washing their hands of it.

In spite of this, it really was an excellent 3D presentation, with multiple pop-outs, and a strong sense of volume and depth even in quiet scenes. It also made excellent use of the Imax sound system which felt truly immense, and was particularly useful in conveying the planetary scale of Unicron.

I thought it had one of the most promising setups of any of these films. The human characters are well integrated into the storyline. They also seemed to have more robot characters than previous movies, but they all had distinct designs which avoided confusion.

I don't know if it's a good or a bad film or what kind of critical reaction it's getting. I thought it started strong and ended strong, but in the middle it felt like something wasn't quite clicking. Some of the plot developments were perhaps a bit convenient, a lot was far-fetched. I'm not convinced that should be considered a fatal flaw in a film of this nature. On the whole I found it a lot better than expected, if a mixed bag. It's more of a B-movie than previous entries in the series. No star actors or director, no ILM. I don't think they even went with one of the established 3D conversion houses. The visual effects did the job, but suffered at times. The cargo plane transformer might be the single worst case of unconvincing CGI in the series.

The cinema I saw it in had some really young and inexperienced staff on duty, and I had to correct the girl who'd given me a pair of Real D glasses, instead of the linear polarized Imax glasses required. Luckily I got to the screen before they'd dimmed the lights, because the people sitting next to me had also been given the wrong glasses. Before the screening started I must've sent somewhere between 10 and 20 people down to get their glasses changed. I hate doing this, I'm not that sort of outgoing person to go up to strangers like that. Not the first time it's happened either. Considering the cost of Imax tickets, that's just not good enough. It would really ruin the screening, and that doesn't help the case for 3D either.

But the 3D was definitely worth it. There was a nicely executed popout when one of the trucks fired a missile, and there was an effective-in-3D scene where Optimus Prime picks up the main human protagonist. Prime looked believably massive. Definitely no miniaturisation effect there. I had a visceral reaction in another scene when one of the antagonist bots swung a ball on a chain weapon towards the screen. There may have been a minor conversion error in one scene where light reflections on a Porshe ended up looking like scrapes but it didn't really matter. 3D was a major enhancement to the film in every way. I haven't seen the other films in years so it's hard to judge, but I felt it might be some of the best 3D of the series. It's 3D with impact.