jakob-berge

You could say that it doesn't have to be a terribly difficult job to please the audience with the newest Transformers spinoff (Bumblebee) compared to the bloated movies before. You could just remove all the things people hate about the previous ones, and then add all the stuff people have always wanted. That is exactly what Bumblebee does though. And it works. I am a defender of 3 of the 5 Bay movies, but it is hard to argue why the last one was the nail in the coffin for most people. The Last Knight was not a change in tone or style, it was exactly what people would expect from a Michael Bay Transformers movie. And to have the next movie, a small-scale character driven story without a bloated runtime, it is easy to see why people would like this.

The movie is a fresh take on the Transformers characters. They have the G-1 design which resonates with the fans. Although they first set it up as a spin-off they rightfully changed as a reboot. Which I am glad for, since it is so much things in this movie that questions all the things Bay set up, so it was best just scratching the past. The movie still know where it comes from, there are still explosions, and fast-paced robot fighting. But it is not excessive. And the action looks slick and creative. Especially the first battle on Cybertron is a plea to the fans. The visuals looks great. The transformers actually look like vehicles that can transform to war machines.

The previous one, The Last Knight had actually a pretty heavy and bloated plot. This one is more grounded and focuses almost entirely on Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld). She seems very much like a main hero from one of Spielbergs 80 movies. And this movie is clearly heavily inspired by E.T and Iron Giant. John Cena plays the military «bad guy» this time and it is fun he doesn't take it too seriously and can come with some bad one-liners. There are no Megatron or Starscream this time, but new decepticons in Shatter and Dropkick. They are perhaps generic but I liked seeing some new antagonists with clear personalities. One thing that also backs up with the new grounded take is the score. It is way more nice and calm, where Jablonsky's score in the Bayformers was apocalyptic and earth shattering.

Weakest points of the movie is that it gets too cheesy and kid friendly at times. I get that they want to answer to Bay's relentless violence and immature humour, but they could still eased down a bit. The soundtrack recollects the 80s to the point of you're getting tired. And Bumblebee has a lot of cute moments when he stumbles in the house and acts like a child, but that too gets too excessive. I didn't find the mother and step-dad relationship with Charlie too necessary really either. Since this is the first of hopefully more in this new entry, we could hope that the next ones offer a bit more tough action and MORE Optimus Prime!