Fortunately, Caple is no stranger to getting into a franchise midway. The filmmaker previously made “Creed II,” which was both the second “Creed” movie and the eighth “Rocky” movie. For “Creed II,” he would need the mentoring of “Creed” director Ryan Coogler and “Rocky” inventor Sylvester Stallone. As such, he understood that a balance needed to be struck between his own creative input and the series’ long-established aesthetic. Fortunately for Caple, Bay wasn’t so busy that he couldn’t make time for him. caple said:
“You want to make sure you’re in your creative bubble when you’re trying to design this world and build the franchise, but similar to when I went into the ‘Creed’ franchise, you call out those who have done it before you, whether it’s Sylvester Stallone or Ryan Coogler. So I’m doing the same here. I called Michael Bay, who, of course, is a producer on this project. he the he was doing’Ambulance’ at the time, but still picked up the phone and jumped into Zoom.”
The Transformers movies, it should be noted, are SFX bonanzas, with the Transformers characters being towering, car-sized robots, done via extremely complicated CGI. Not only do there need to be plenty of robot transformation scenes, but the movies are high-octane action spectaculars that often feature 45-minute-long battle and destruction sequences. “Rise of the Beasts” will feature a new army of transforming robots that can turn into large mechanical animals.
Finding a way to perform and film such complicated effects shots left Caple a bit out of his element. It was to effect that he sought Bay’s advice.