Rise of the Beasts trailer: There's at least one reason to watch the new Transformers movie...

As a child of the '80s, Transformers nailed the formula for winning my heart and my parents' money: cars and jets that are also robots.

I mean, that's hard to top. Weird-lookin' turtles with swords and a trash diet were just no match.

Even now, I occasionally still throw on the 1986 animated Transformers movie. I shouldn't have been allowed to watch it when I was a kid, but as a grown manchild, it still hits all the right notes for a banging soundtrack, epic old-school animation, awesome big-name voice cast (Orson Welles famously hated that he'd ever accepted the job), memorable quotes and some very adult-oriented death scenes.

The new live-action movies, though? Nah. Ridiculous redesigns of the robots, fight scenes that are impossible to keep up with (who threw that punch?), and dopey scripts. (I'm told Bumblebee is a good 'reboot', so that's on my list to watch with my little boy.)

BUT NOW! A trailer dropped this morning for the new film, Rise of the Beasts, and it does look good. But I suspect the best reason to check it out might be for Mirage, the silver 964 911 voiced by SNL alumni and Kardashian-ex, Pete Davidson.

Car fans will probably also enjoy the return of Bumblebee in his Camaro form (he'll always be a Beetle to me though), along with the appearance of an R33 Skyline GT-R and a classic VW Kombi.

Oh, yeah, and Optimus is there in his much classier 'G1' look as a flame-free flatnose truck. (This argument on a Transformers forum back in 2007, when Optimus first appeared as a longnose truck, is hilarious.)

Transformers: Rise of the Beats hits cinemas in June, 2023.

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