What Michael Bay did to the Transformers film franchise was both glorious and shameful. He made billions for the studio and himself but in the process, between military homages and massive explosions and great CGI, he created horribly lazy story/plot lines that made the franchise go from a visually stunning and fun franchise to the latter films where he contradicted his own franchise canon with jumbled plot points that made more sense if it came out of a five-year-old's sandbox play session.
With that said, Bumblebee is the first Transformers film in recent years to actually tell a coherent, start to finish story, considering how much Michael Bay butchered the stories for effects with no respect for the franchise fan.
-
Bumblebee stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Cena and a bunch others. It was
directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls).
"On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee the Autobot seeks refuge in a junkyard in a small California beach town. Charlie, on the brink of turning 18 years old and trying to find her place in the world, soon discovers the battle-scarred and broken Bumblebee. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns that this is no ordinary yellow Volkswagen."-
It's hard to say what Bumblebee is, a prequel or reboot of the franchise, but considering how Bay effed up his own canon, it would not be a surprise if Hasbro and Paramount went with this as a bit of both. We see how Bumblebee ends up coming to Earth and how he leads Optimus Prime to the planet as they flee their own home planet.
But there are some that wish that this could be a launching point for the Hasbro/Paramount shared film universe but unless they changed their minds, Paramount's shared universe will include G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, Rom and Visionaries.
But there is something I did notice about Bumblebee and that was how this film seemed to show the Transformer bots appearing pretty close to what they look like in the toy line or original cartoons.
The story flowed, we saw a few origin points in the film, and watched Bumblebee develop from a lost and confused Autobot to the radio-infused speaking Bumblebee we now know. The humor wasn't overdone, but just about right, while the bad guys weren't over-the-top, but just about right for what bad guys should be.
The film takes place in 1987 and there are a lot of nods to the era but one of my biggest complaints about the film is just how much the viewer is pummeled with a ton of 80s music. Too much for me, but others may love it.
Over on IMDb, Bumblebee has received a 7.3/10 and I don't disagree with that score at all.
- - -
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Follow Cinema Static on: 
Comments
Post a Comment
Apologies for the moderation mode. I presume you understand...