Warning: this message contains spoilers for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
Three weeks – this is how the creators of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts locked in the surprise ending that features the long-awaited coming together of Hasbro’s biggest toy lines: Transformers and GI Joe. Not only does this revelation set the stage for an eighth Transformers movie behind beaststhe historic opening weekend of, it also teases the start of a shared Hasbro Cinematic Universe.
“I wanted a button at the end indicating where we were going,” director Steven Caple Jr. told Yahoo Entertainment. “We got it at the very last minute. … It’s scary now that I think about it!”
Here’s how the reveal unfolds. In The Rising of the BeastsIn the final minutes of the film, the film’s human hero, Noah Diaz (played by Anthony Ramos), meets Agent Burke (Michael Kelly), a government agent who wants to thank him for saving the world alongside the righteous. Autobots of Optimus Prime. At the end of their conversation, Burke offers Noah a job and sends him a business card with the name of his top secret outfit: GI Joe.
Watch our interview with the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts the cast and crew on the G.I. Joe teased crossover at the end of the film
According to Ramos and Caple, they shot two different versions of this scene with two different calling cards in case Hasbro vetoed the GI Joe reveal. In the alternate take, the card read “Sector Seven” – a reference to the paramilitary organization that played a role in Michael Bay. Transformers movies. The Rising of the Beasts is set in the 1990s, before the events of these films and before the three standalone G.I. Joe features Hasbro previously released: 2009 The rise of the cobra2013 Reprisals and 2021 Snake-eyes.
“Steven and I talked about it before we shot the scene,” Ramos recalled. “He was like, ‘We’re trying to merge the worlds, and there’s a lot of people who have to approve of that.’ That list included Bay, executive producer Steven Spielberg, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and everyone at Hasbro. “It’s only been lit for three weeks,” Ramos says with obvious astonishment. “When I flipped that card over, I was like, ‘Please God, let it be true.’ There’s so much we can do with these worlds.”
The idea of bringing the Transformers and the Joes together dates back to 2015, when Hasbro and Paramount reportedly made serious attempts to build a cinematic universe based on Hasbro that would also tie into other toy lines like the Micronauts and ROMs. But those plans fell by the wayside as di Bonaventura – who has overseas both the Transformers And G.I. Joe movie franchises – instead tried to reboot the Jo series with Snake-eyes. This time around, however, the producer was on board to merge the cinematic worlds, replicating a crossover that’s happened before in the comics.
“We thought about it for a while,” di Bonaventura said. “It was an obvious thing to do, but we didn’t want to burn through all the mythologies too quickly. We tried to introduce some new elements, and in this case we introduced the idea that Joes can enter. The ‘one of the things that has kept the franchise fresh is that we don’t plan [ahead]. We don’t plan ahead, because we want to see how the public is going to feel about things.”
To this end, di Bonaventura refuses to specify the importance of the role that GI Joe will play in a The Rising of the Beasts followed or if this film will necessarily lead into the continuity established by the previous Jo pictures. “I think it’s going to be related to mythology. … There’s a lot of stuff that we haven’t explored,” he says. “But this thing was decided at the very last minute, because we weren’t sure what everyone would think about it, including ourselves! But when we saw the movie, we were like, ‘ OK, that really works.”
It’s no secret that the standalone G.I. Joe franchise has struggled to match the success of the Transformers movies. The rise of the cobra And Reprisals both fell below $400 million at the worldwide box office, while the pandemic hit Snake-eyes only managed to earn $40 million worldwide. Di Bonaventura thinks a surplus of characters was one of the things that kept these movies from getting as big as those featuring Hasbro’s giant robot transformers.
“We have to be careful not to make ensemble films,” says the producer. “Six or seven characters is [about right] – you start getting past that and they have to be minor characters because you just don’t have the screen time. Maybe in the past we could have made a mistake or two [about that]. Going forward, we’ll try to keep the number of things we deal with from a character perspective to a relative maximum.”
For the record, Caple says he would love to be the one to finally unite the GI Joe team and the Transformers on screen. “I have a lot of ideas about where we’re going in the future – a lot of new vehicles, new characters, new storylines and new dilemmas. The universe has broadened overall and I have the feel like they can really fit in and add new life to the franchise.”
“I didn’t think about whether or not the next film should be linked to the other Jo movies,” Caple continues. “I’m always the one who says, ‘Let’s do something new.’ I would say my favorite G.I. Joe the cartoon is GI Joe: Renegades, which is about the outcasts of the Joes. It might be interesting – that way I don’t have anything to spoil in the lore that happened in the other G.I. Joe movies and doing our own thing. I think we could create something really cool.”
Ramos and his co-star Dominique Fishback are also set to team up with the Joes. “Before, I had all the toys, man”, In the heights said the star. “I had GI Joe toys, I had Transformers toys. I’m so excited and excited.”
“I was telling Steven that since my character was introduced to combat in The Rising of the Beasts, she’s going to practice between movies,” Fishback adds with a laugh. “She doesn’t know what life is going to bring her now! She wants to be prepared, and I think it can help her put on an easy G.I. Joe costume and kick some ass.” As the Joes have always said, knowing is really half the battle.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is currently playing in theaters.