Trivia / Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

• Acting for Two: David Sobolov voices Rhinox, Battletrap, and Apelinq, while John DiMaggio voices both Stratosphere and Transit.
• All-Star Cast: Aside from Peter Cullen returning as Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal once again being voiced by Ron Perlman, the cast includes Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Pete Davidson, Michelle Yeoh, Liza Koshy, Cristo Fernández, David Sobolov, John DiMaggio, Peter Dinklage, Mj Rodriguez, Tongayi Chirisa, and Colman Domingo.
• B-Team Sequel: Among other things, visual effects duties for this film are transferred from Industrial Light & Magic to Moving Picture Company and WETA.
• Casting Gag: In the Latin American dub, this is not the first time Idzi Dutkiewicz plays the herald of a planet-eating creature.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • The European French dub has Club Dorothée host Dorothée herself as Airazor as well as singer Ophélie Winter as Arcee.
  • The Italian dub has comedian Frank Matano (who also voiced Duke Weaselton in Zootopia) as Stratosphere.
  • In the Japanese dub, Noah is voiced by actor and singer Kento Nakajima, better known for playing both Yūgo Hachiken and Aoyama in the live-action and animated adaptations of Silver Spoon, Elena is by Youtuber and fashion model Riisa Naka and Mirage by comedian and Youtuber Shingo Fujimori.
• Content Leak: Apelinq was indirectly confirmed to appear through the reveal of the film's Hungarian voice cast, followed by David Sobolov revealing that he would be playing Apelinq on his Instagram.
• Deleted Scene: Part of the opening was going to include a fight between Optimus Prime and Transit (a Decepticon), which would end with Prime killing Transit and dumping his body in the Hudson River, alongside the corpses of many other Decepticons he'd dealt with in the same way. The sequence was cut because test audiences found it too dark, but is intended to be included in the home release.
  • An additional scene of Optimus t-boning Scourge through a wall during the Peru car chase was also cut.
• Executive Meddling: Steven Caple Jr. revealed that Wheeljack's drastic "nerdy" redesign was mandated by the producers prior to his taking the director's chair.
• Flip-Flop of God: Famously so regarding whether or not the Transformers films have been rebooted starting with Bumblebee. Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who has been adamant that it's not been rebooted, admitted that the film being set in the 1990's was intentional to escape any potential continuity errors from the 2007-onwards films. Caple Jr. would later state that he considers the first three films to be canon to Rise of the Beasts, but that Age of Extinction and The Last Knight are not.
• Foiler Footage: To keep the presence of the G.I. Joe organization at the end of the movie a secret, all except one script referred to it as Sector 7, to heavily reduce the chances of it being leaked, to the point that there was only one copy of the G.I. Joe business card, safeguarded by director Steven Caple Jr.
• In Memoriam:
  • A closeup of the Studio Series Voyager Class Battletrap figure revealed a "Bernie's" logo on the door, a nod to the late Bernie Mac, fondly remembered for his performance as the car salesman Bobby Bolivia in Transformers (2007).
  • The film's Hungarian dub was dedicated to Optimus Prime voice actor Imre Szélyes, who passed away shortly before the dub's production.
• Irony As He Is Cast: The main villain of the film is the tall, lanky, and domineering Terrorcon trophy hunter known as Scourge... who is voiced by Peter Dinklage, famously known for his animal activism while suffering from dwarfism in real life.
• Meme Acknowledgment: Steven Caple Jr. and Cristo Fernandez have both jokingly called Wheeljack Pablo, which was the Fan Nickname audiences have bestowed upon the portrayal of Wheeljack for looking nothing like how he usually is.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • The two trailers for the film ended up having a lot of their lines not included in the film, including all of Primal's lines from the teaser trailer; Airazor and Scourge's lines from the official trailer; Optimus's line from the official trailer ("this is not our war") is edited to be "this is not our world"; and Mirage and Noah's exchange wherein the former explains how big Unicron is to the latter.
  • The teaser trailer's establishing shot of Rhinox ended up being cut from the film along with the longer sequence of Noah and Elena being chased by him and Cheetor in the tomb.
  • Subverted with the climax of the teaser trailer, which had an Onrushing Army sequence between the Autobot-Maximal alliance and the Terrorcons. The final film still kept this scene with much of the same actions from the characters, but was updated to take place on a rainy, overcast morning. The transformations of the Maximals also are shot from different angles.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Arcee is now voiced by Liza Koshy, rather than Grey DeLisle who voiced her prior in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and Bumblebee.
  • Wheeljack is now voiced by Cristo Fernández, assuming the role from his previous actors, George Coe from Transformers: Dark of the Moon (who passed away in 2015), and Steve Blum from his cameo in Bumblebee.
  • Rather than being voiced by Garry Chalk, Richard Newman, Ian James Corlett, and Pauline Newstone, Primal, Rhinox, Cheetor, and Airazor are instead voiced by Ron Perlman, David Sobolov, Tongayi Chirisa, and Michelle Yeoh. Though in the former two's case, they had prior experience with the Transformers franchise, through Perlman previously voicing Primal in The Transformers: Power of the Primes, while Sobolov already appeared in Beast Wars as Depth Charge, Shockwave in Transformers: Prime, and Blitzwing in Bumblebee. Averted with Optimus Primal in the Japanese version who will be reprised by Takehito Koyasu.
    • In the Latin American Spanish, and just like what happened with the dub of Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy, none of the Maximals and Predacons' voice actors reprise their roles. In this particular case, the replacements are justified, since many of their original voice actors either died (Cheetor, Dinobot, Predacon Megatron, and Tigatron) or retired from voice acting (Optimus Primal).
  • Mirage is voiced by Pete Davidson instead of Francesco Quinn, who died in 2011 after Transformers: Dark of the Moon was released.
  • In an interesting notion, John DiMaggio replaces Travis Willingham as Stratosphere, who voiced him in the Transformers: Dark of the Moon video-game adaptation.
  • From the last time Unicron was presented in a feature film as an active character in the plot, instead of being voiced by the late Orson Welles, he will now be voiced by Colman Domingo.
  • The Italian dub has Martina Felli replacing Chiara Colizzi as Arcee, Stefano Crescentini replacing the late Francesco Quinn as Mirage and Renato Novara replacing the late Giorgio Lopez as Wheeljack. On the Beast Wars side, Laura Romano replaces Caterina Rochira as Airazor and Riccardo D'Aquino replaces Mario Scarabelli as Cheetor.
  • In the Hungarian dub, László Horányi replaces Imre Szélyes as Optimus Prime, as Szélyes died a month and a half before the film's release. Also, Bumblebee has an uncredited actor reading his lines that consist of movie quotes, rather than his previous dubbing actor János Bácskai.
  • In the Japanese dub, Takako Honda replace Tetsuya Iwanaga as Airazor from the dub of Beast Wars; in this case, however, the change is justified, since Airazor was male in the Japanese dub for some reason, being the second time she is properly voiced by a female voice actress instead, though that also brings out that she's not voiced by Hinako Takahashi like in the Japanese dub of Kingdom. Likewise, Fairouz Ai replaces Masako Katsuki as Arcee, who had voiced her on and off since The Transformers: The Movie.
• Production Posse: Caple gets reteamed with composer Jongnic Bontemps since first working with him in his 2016 directorial debut, The Land.
• The Other Marty: David Sobolov (who also voices Battletrap, Apelinq and Rhinox) recorded lines for Unicron, but was dubbed over by Colman Domingo.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Anthony Ramos (who played as Noah Diaz) was a fan of Beast Wars growing up and his favorite character was Cheetor. The same goes for the film's director, Steven Caple Jr.
  • Colman Domingo is a noted fan of Transformers himself back in his youth, citing his younger brother's love of the franchise. Even made a shout-out to him after announcing his casting as Unicron.
  • Cristo Fernandez (voice of Wheeljack) mentioned that he played with the toys himself.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • Arcee and Wheeljack were among the initial Autobot roster for the very first film in 2007. Wheeljack was cut to reduce the cast members present and later was adapted into Que for Dark of the Moon.
  • Arcee was removed from the first film due to being much smaller than the other Autobots and because the writers felt they would have to explain gender in an alien robot species. Arcee ended up appearing as a minor character in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen with no comment on her gender and still the same size. Here, she appears as a main Autobot cast member at a similar size, with the concept of female Transformers having long since become mainstream in the franchise since 2007-2009 (not to mention general audiences having learned to embrace far stranger, more fantastical things in movies). Additionally, the Cybertronians post-reboot are generally smaller than their counterparts in the earlier films, making Arcee stick out less compared to her teammates.
  • After having been teased as the next main antagonist of the film series in Transformers: The Last Knight, Unicron finally makes his long-awaited live-action debut.
  • Concept art for The Last Knight implies that Optimus Primal would've made an appearance◊.
  • Transformers (2007) intended to have Lennox and Epps played by G.I. Joe characters before being made Canon Foreigners, and while G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra had a few cameos of Ratchet and Ironhide in vehicle mode the Transformer movies never went down that path. In The Stinger, Noah is recruited by GI Joe after his adventure with the Autobots.
• Release Date Change: The film was initially planned for release on June 23, 2022. In November 2021, the date was changed to June 9, 2023.
• Role Reprise:
  • Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, obviously. Primal on the other hand is voiced by Ron Perlman^note Garry Chalk has gone on record stating that he would have been more than happy to return but neither Paramount nor Hasbro had asked him, who previously played the character in The Transformers: Power of the Primes.
  • In the Japanese dub, Tesshō Genda returns as Optimus Prime, while Takehito Koyasu reprises his role as Optimus Primal from the dubs of Beast Wars, Beast Machines and Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy. Likewise, Wataru Takagi also returns as Cheetor from the dub of Beast Wars.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Blas García also returns as Optimus Prime, and Rebeca Manríquez reprises her role as Airazor from the original Beast Wars series.
  • In the Italian dub, Riccardo Lombardo reprises his role as Optimus Primal from the original Beast Wars series.
• Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy:
  • Optimus Prime's new transformation sees him pivot around on his torso to form the cab before his arms fold into the sides, which is exactly how many modern Optimus Prime figures use his G1 design transform. WETA's animation director even confirmed it to be the case when animating Optimus's transformation during the final battle, going so far as to use the original action figure for its basis.
  • Some toys made for this film are clearly based on early character designs and therefore don't look much like the film's models. The robot mode of Cheetor and Rhinox's mainline toys stand out in particular, as they look like highly detailed versions of their Beast Wars designs as opposed to their actual appearance in the movie.
• Spared by the Cut: Earlier drafts of the film had Mirage die for real at the end of the movie. After a negative reaction from test screenings, however, a new scene was added in the mid-credits showing Noah creating a new body for his friend out of car parts.
• Throw It In!: Mirage's quip about "Marky Mark quitting the Funky Bunch" was improvised in the recording booth by Pete Davidson, which Caple and the rest of the crew thought was too funny to leave out.
• Toyless Toyline Character: So far, Stratosphere, Unicron, and Apelinq are the only characters to not have a toy released by the end of 2023, the former two unquestionably due to their larger size making it more complicated for them to receive toys. However, Stratosphere and Apelinq have not been ruled out by Hasbro for inclusion in Studio Series, though Apelinq is more likely at this point due to simply being a retool of Optimus Primal's design while Stratosphere would surely necessitate a larger, rarer pricepoint like Titan or Commander.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Interviews and news articles promoting the film promised the inclusion of the Maximals, the Predacons, and the Terrorcons in addition to the Autobots... but shortly before the film's release Steven Caple Jr. revealed in an interview that he'd been forced to cut all but one of the Predacons from the movie. Concept art was created for Waspinator, Spittor, and Ramhorn, but never went any further. In addition, the corpse of cartoon Predacon Rampage was meant to cameo in the underground cave scenes; a full model was even created based on his original Beast Wars design.
  • Much like the scrapped opening featuring Transit, the ending was originally going to be darker with Mirage staying dead and Optimus going missing after destroying the Transwarp Key with The Stinger showing him floating in space with Unicron. However, test audiences didn't react very positively to this ending and it was changed to be less depressing.
  • There were more references to the events of Bumblebee, including a moment where Bumblebee tries to prove to Optimus that humans are good by showing a picture of him with Charlie Watson.
  • Reports indicate that Wheeljack and Arcee were supposed to have a romantic subplot that was cut after test screenings. This is the reason Wheeljack ended up with much less screen time than the other Autobots.
  • Early in production there was a fourth Terrorcon planned before he was cut. His name was Bloodhound, and he was to transform into a demonic-looking Oldsmobile.
  • At one point it was planned for the various Scorponoks to merge into a larger, more powerful robot that towered over the Autobots and Maximals before it was cut for time.
• You Sound Familiar: In the Japanese dub, both Nobuo Tobita and Ryōka Yuzuki, who previously voiced Terrorsaur and Blackarachnia respectively in the dub of Beast Wars, voice Scourge and Nightbird instead. Curiously enough, all four characters are villains. This is furthered by Battletrap being voiced by Kenta Miyake, as both he and David Sobolov previously voiced Shockwave from Transformers: Prime.

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