Author: Matthew Rozsa / Source: Salon
I must confess when I first heard that a “Transformers” spin-off about Bumblebee was in the works, my expectations were subterranean. After five headache inducing “Transformers” movies, all visually incoherent and narratively chaotic, I couldn’t fathom how a sixth would be any better.
My mistake, it seems, was forgetting that the “Transformers” franchise exists separately from Michael Bay, the explosion-happy director who has helmed the previous five entries. As it turns out, when you take the “Transformers” concept and use it to tell a heartfelt story filled with wonder rather than a special effects extravaganza packed with vulgar and offensive jokes, you can create a genuinely good movie.
“Bumblebee” tells the story of how the titular character (briefly voiced by Dylan O’Brien) goes to Earth in 1987 to provide a refuge for his fellow Autobots, most notably Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), as they are being chased by Decepticons led by Shatter (Angela Bassett). After nearly being murdered by Decepticons shortly after his arrival — an event that is witnessed by government agent Jack Burns (John Cena) — Bumblebee, known at this point as B-127, befriends a teenage girl named Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld) and her friend Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), and they have a series of mini-adventures before eventually facing off against the Decepticons and sinister government agents led by scientist Dr. Powell (John Ortiz).
This is more or less what you’d expect from a “Transformers” movie, and yet “Bumblebee” does something that audiences really only got to see at the beginning of the first live-action “Transformers” film in 2007. In the earlier scenes of that film, there was a Steven Spielberg-ian quality to the story (Spielberg is an executive producer of the series), one that tried to focus on the feeling of just how cool it would be for a kid to have their very own Transformer. This idea not only drove the plot of that movie (at first), but imbued it with a sense of wonder; I vividly recall the moment when Optimus Prime first spoke with Peter Cullen’s voice, who had also played the character in the animated series, and half of that 2007 auditorium cheered.
Unfortunately, the sludge that is Michael Bay’s soul couldn’t resist bubbling up to the surface, and when that inevitably happened it drowned out the burgeoning quality of the earlier section of that movie….
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