Spoilers ahead for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, so read on at your peril.
After years of rumors, Paramount has finally gone ahead and planted the first seed for a crossover that not a lot of people seem to be asking for after Transformers: Rise of the Beasts dropped the bombshell that the Hasbro Cinematic Universe is on the cards.
While the optics of a toy company using a franchise that’s seven films deep to try and resuscitate another brand that’s tried and failed three times over to launch itself as a marketable entity is about as cynical as it gets, the reasoning behind plunging G.I. Joe into the thick of the ongoing war between the Autobots and Decepticons doesn’t appear to have a great deal of thought put into it.
Not that it’s a particularly surprising development given the studio’s approach to both brands so far, but when asked if there were plans afoot to recruit any familiar faces from either The Rise of Cobra, Retaliation, or Snake Eyes into the fold, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura admitted to Variety he had no clue.
“I don’t know honestly. We don’t plan that far ahead. We react to what the audience is reacting to, so in a way we can please them, but also in a way it makes it feel fresh, like ‘OK, they want to go that way, so let’s go explore that.’”
Does anybody want them to go that way, though? While Transformers is a multi-billion dollar enterprise, Rise of the Beasts is tracking for a box office run that could generously be described as mediocre. Meanwhile, G.I. Joe is quite literally zero-for-three in trying to win audiences over, with the crossover feeling an awful lot like one final roll of the dice.
