Review of Bumblebee (2018) by Mragusa2 — 21 Jan 2019

Wait a minute... Did this movie actually make me FEEL something? Could it be? A Transformers movie that actually has HEART in it?! I'm as shocked as most of you probably are. Bumblebee feels like a breath of fresh air to this bloated franchise. It in many ways feels like a re-telling of The Iron Giant, which isn't a bad thing. Travis Knight does a great job of dialing down the scale of the movie: it is nowhere near as big as Michael Bay's movies. There aren't really any giant epic battles with dozens of giant robots (in fact there are only about 5 transformers in the entire movie). With less things happening on the screen, you can actually tell what's going on.

For me personally as a Transformers fan, the best thing about this movie is the homage it pays to the original G1 cartoon from the 80's. All the Autobots and Decepticons look like their cartoon iterations now, from Optimus Prime to Shockwave. I hope this is something that they continue to do. This is a golden opportunity to reboot this franchise and finally move away from Michael Bay's dumpster fire of movies.