Noah Diaz Transformers: Who He Is and Who Plays Him

Noah Diaz is the human lead of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023), directed by Steven Caple Jr., and he is played by Anthony Ramos, who is billed first in the cast. He is a former soldier living in Brooklyn in 1994, and he needs money to help his ill younger brother.

That money problem starts the story. Noah tries to steal a Porsche and discovers the car is the Autobot Mirage, a lucky break (or a very bad night, depending on your view) that drops him into a war he did not know existed. Optimus Prime senses the energy of the Transwarp Key and pulls Noah into the Autobots' mission, so a Brooklyn street hustler becomes the human link between the robots and the rest of the world.

How old is Noah Diaz? No official age is given for him. The film places him in 1994 Brooklyn as a former soldier, and that is as precise as it gets. He is the human lead of the seventh live action film, so if you are working through the saga, our Transformers movies in order guide shows where Rise of the Beasts sits, and the Transformers Rise of the Beasts film page covers the full cast and crew.

Noah is a different kind of human lead from the ones before him. Sam Witwicky bought an old car that turned out to be Bumblebee, Cade Yeager found and repaired the badly hurt Optimus Prime in Texas, and Charlie Watson was given her Beetle by her uncle. Noah is the one who tried to steal his.

Noah's closest bond is with Mirage, the Autobot voiced by Pete Davidson, and the film builds its human story around that pairing. The car Noah tried to steal becomes his partner, and in the finale Mirage becomes an exosuit for Noah.

His second key partnership is with Elena Wallace, played by Dominique Fishback. Elena exposes the Transwarp Key, which draws the Autobots' attention, and she is recognized for her discovery afterward.

At the top of the chain sit Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, and Optimus Primal, voiced by Ron Perlman. Optimus Prime pulls Noah into the mission, and Primal is the Maximal who escaped to Earth with the key after the Maximal leader Apelinq sacrificed himself. The villain on the other side is Scourge, voiced by Peter Dinklage, who kills Bumblebee and later corrupts Airazor, voiced by Michelle Yeoh.

On the family side, Noah's motive is his ill younger brother, and that pressure is the reason he is on the street at the start of the film.

In my opinion, Noah's best moment is the Mirage exosuit in the finale, because it answers the question the whole film raises: what is a human doing in a fight between giant robots? In the earlier films the humans mostly ran, shot or drove near the action. Here, Noah is literally wearing an Autobot, and the human contribution becomes physical and specific.

The opening car theft is a close second. It could be argued that it is the cleanest introduction any human lead has had in the saga, since one scene shows his money trouble, his willingness to cross a line and the fact that the target is alive. Compare Sam Witwicky in Transformers 2007, who buys his Autobot, and Noah's version has more edge.

Third, I would pick the Peru stretch, where the stakes stop being about Brooklyn and Noah has to keep going after Bumblebee has been killed and Airazor has been corrupted. It is the point where he stops being a hustler along for the ride and starts acting like a teammate.

Perhaps the film could have given his brother more screen weight, since the motive is strong and the payoff is lighter than it could be. Even so, I think Noah is a better entry point for newcomers than some of his predecessors. If you want more of the saga's human side, read about Cade Yeager and Sam Witwicky, or start with Optimus Prime, the leader who recruits Noah.