Based on what we know, the seventh live action Transformers film is going to be a faction smorgasbord. While Lockdown’s mercenaries and the addition of Quintessa did expand things a bit during the ‘Bayverse’ films, we’ve mostly only seen Autobots and Decepticons on the big screen.
Not only will Rise of the Beasts bring in the Maximals and Predacons with roots in the Beast Wars era, but in Steven Caple Jr.’s vision for the story the Terrorcons will act as a separate faction - something that has happened once before in Transformers: Energon. Often Maximals and Predacons are analogs for the more commonly used Autobots and Decepticons, being successor factions with goals and ideals that align with the original teams we all came to know and love through the 1984 cartoon - which is now on YouTube in its entirety. Whenever the factions meet, they tend to team up. It should come as no surprise then that Rise of the Beasts will incorporate this story beat, based on a new faction logo shared by director Steven Caple Jr. on social media. The logo is a merged Autobot and Maximal faction symbol, implying that the groups will team up in the movie as well. Merging these logos isn’t a new concept. Just recently, as part of the War For Cybertron Trilogy’s third chapter, Kingdom, many of the toys featured a different design that combines the two logos on packaging. Additionally, the Kingdom animated series on Netflix saw the Autobots and Maximals teaming up in the story, too. Digging deeper into the past of Transformers, the Maximal logo in Beast Machines also looked like a more ’techy’ take on the original Maximal logo, as if it were put through the filter of the Autobot symbol, so to speak. Design-wise, the new merged logo for Rise of the Beasts doesn’t as much marry elements from the two original logos as much as just… put a smaller version of the Autobot logo into the Maximal logo. It’s a look, albeit less elegant than the Kingdom take. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts opens in June 2022.
