“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” a goofy seventh installment that rattles along well enough until the wheels fall off, ballyhoos an evolution: a biomechanical gorilla who calls himself Optimus Primal. In fairness, these metaphysical questions were explored in the futuristic and bizarrely engaging ’90s cartoon “Beast Wars: Transformers” and its spinoff “Beast Machines: Transformers,” which felt like sipping on a spiked juice box in an ashram. When that Optimus Primal was asked if he was robot or animal, he mystically intoned, “Both … and neither. Only then can you truly say, ‘I am transformed.’”But also in fairness, those shows and this movie share zero DNA. “I don’t get ‘Beast Wars,’” Lorenzo di Bonaventura, one of this film’s producers, once said.

---

Persons: Optimus, mystically intoned, ’ ” Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Caple Jr, Simpson, Peter Cullen, Ron Perlman, Colman Domingo, Peter Dinklage Organizations: Optimus, Machines