If you were paying attention to the commercials during the big game last night, you’d have seen the first trailer for Transformers Rise of the Beasts, which comes out on June 9th this summer. The 30-second spot was quite Porsche-heavy as the 964-based Mirage will play the hero role in the new film alongside actor Anthony Ramos of Hamilton and In The Heights fame. Set in the quasi-rebooted prequel universe that was established with 2018’s Bumblebee, this film takes place in 1994, and follows a pair of archeologists from Brooklyn. These archeologists get involved in a battle between three sects of earth-animal alt-form Transformer; the Maximals, the Predacons, and the Terrorcons.
We’ve talked all about the history between Porsche and Transformers before, including a bit about the history of Mirage. You can read all about that by clicking on this link.
The commercial—linked below in case you missed it—opens on a 964 RS 3.8 doing what it does best, drifting a gorgeous banked turn in the countryside. This is followed by a slick transition showing Mirage transforming and Ramos stepping out of the driver’s seat looking ultra cool. We see a couple of the characters we know and love in Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, and the gorilla-based Optimus Primal. This is a clear connection to the Transformers computer-generated-animated series Beast Wars: Transformers, which ran from 1996 to 1999 and was my personal favorite in my youth. The commercial continues with a joke bit about autonomous driving, and Mirage clearly leads police on a wild chase through town by splitting himself into five separate cars (four of them mirages). The spot ends with Mirage doing something we always want to do when we see a ramp truck with the ramp deployed and goes for a little jump right at the camera. That’s it, thanks for playing! It’s a short intro to what will surely become a beloved character, but a pretty good one anyway.
I’m certainly more excited—you could say Jazzed—to see this upcoming film, and will be in the theaters on opening day. It’s one of my favorite cultural institutions dating back to childhood, and with all of these nostalgia plays happening right now, there’s no reason not to fall into their trap as though it were a loving embrace.