Cleveland native Steven Caple Jr. adds his touch to 'Transformers' franchise

Filmmaker Steven Caple Jr. has gone from his hometown with the indie movie “The Land” to Peru with “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” in his career.

It’s a significant elevation in projects and his profile in Hollywood. Caple, a Cleveland native, caught attention with “The Land,” a heist film set among skateboarders in his hometown, parlayed that into directing “Creed II,” which won praise, enjoyed box office success and, now, he finds himself helming one of the biggest franchises of the past 20 years – “Transformers.”

Going from character-driven films to effects-laden blockbusters offered a lesson in transition, he said during a recent Zoom call.

“We're stepping into a project this big, more the technical stuff, you know what I mean? In terms of working with CGI and these big elements, even the traveling,” he said.

Especially the traveling. While “The Land” was shot in his backyard, “Creed II” filmed in Philadelphia mainly.

“This one, Transformers are known for traveling all over the world,” he said, “and so having a project that had shots in Iceland, New York, Montreal and Peru and things like that was pretty huge and taxing.”

Michael Bay provided valuable knowledge to Steven Caple Jr.

Luckily, for everything associated with “Transformers” he could turn to Michael Bay, who first brought the story of Optimus Prime and the Autobots to the silver screen more than 15 years ago in 2007. Bay serves as an executive producer here.

“He wanted to make sure that I had and got everything I needed to pull across the vision. I was not necessarily naive to it all,” Caple said, “but I just didn't know what to expect when trying to deal with 30-foot robots and choreographing a scene.

“Knowing that there might be too many robots in the scene because they're all hard to fit in one frame and how it would affect choosing your locations and transformations. All that kind of helpful stuff was like Michael Bay in terms of just leaning on him and seeing how he's done things in the past.”

Steven Caple Jr. adds his voice to 'Transformers' legacy

Caple recognizes the fact that “Transformers” is Bay’s baby. He also understood that “Bumblebee,” the most recent entry into the franchise’s film canon, brought the series down to Earth – as down to Earth as films about alien robots could be. But he puts his stamp on the film also.

In the script from Joby Harold, Darnell Metayer and Josh Peters, the audience is given an Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) who is very different than the one audiences are accustomed to seeing on screen.

And the movie introduces the Maximals, transforming animals, to the franchise.

Some of the Maximals, characters from an entirely different series that never shared the screen with the Autobots, are similar to them. Optimus Prime leads the Autobots, while Optimus Primal (voiced by Ron Perlman) leads the Maximals. They could have too many similarities in this movie.

“I think it really helped to have Optimus Prime as a Prime we never saw before, meaning one that doesn't understand human beings, and then to have Optimus Primal come into play, and ‘he's like, he's not the Prime that I heard about in the past. He's not this dude.’ And (Primal is) actually being the wise one, which is pretty different.”

The film gave Caple an opportunity to show other aspects of the “Transformers” animated series not seen previously – including Unicron (voiced by Colman Domingo), which may have been the Autobots’ greatest adversary – on film.

'Transformers' take a thematic leap

Bay’s version of the “Transformers” will always be known for the destruction levied on screen. That was the draw until the series ran out of steam under his direction with 2017’s “Transformers: The Last Knight.”

Audiences will see on a basic level an exploration of overcoming differences. In the film, which stars Anthony Ramos (“Hamilton,” “Into the Heights”) as Noah Diaz, there’s a clash among humans and extreme distrust, despite the fact they’re trying to achieve the same goal. It can be construed as a look into various forms of prejudice, but Caple looked at it from a different viewpoint – immigration.

“This idea that, and you're a foreigner or you're coming from a different place and don't understand a location or its people and vice versa,” he said. “You know what I mean? So, there was a big trust factor in all of this that I wanted to explore.”

Could Steven Caple Jr. set up the future of 'Transformers'?

Box office will ultimately dictate what is explored further in the “Transformers” universe. The second in the series remains the most successful financially while “The Last Knight” is the least successful with “Transformers” in the title.

But a couple of plot points could bode well for the shared universe with another Hasbro property. A shared Hasbro universe is something that's been discussed for years.

“Hasbro has great (intellectual property) and this next one that I'm looking at, I feel like just it, it could be rebranded and told differently,” Caple said. “So, I feel like to be able to dive into that and tell a different side or different story to it would be great.”

George M. Thomas dabbles in movies and television for the Beacon Journal.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Cleveland native Steven Jr. tackles 'Transformers' in latest film