Movie Discussion Thread

Bumblebee Movie Review

I swore off the Transformers franchise with the Transformers: The Last Knight. I'm sure many of you guys did too. King Arthur, Stonehenge, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Dragon Transformers combos, and Optimus Prime: what the heck? This is utter garbage. Can the Queen un-knight Hopkins for this? Well, I guess people do need to make money. I can't hold it against Anthony Hopkins.

Two weeks ago when I was in NYC, I mumbled to myself "whatever" upon seeing all the billboards and advertisements on the side of buildings for Bumblebee. That is until a few creatives at a post-production facility were urging me to see it - in an earnest and convincing way too.

Bumblebee is what happens when we take elements from The Iron Giant, Breakfast Club / Pretty in Pink, Shape of Water, and Guardians of the Galaxy, and mash them up into the Transformers universe. High cinema, it is not, but Bumblebee is maybe the best live-action Transformers movie yet. The first two-thirds of the movie is rather slow-paced and a bit choppy with the overuse of obvious 80s hits one after the other for seemingly every scene. This does get repetitive and cliche (Guardians of the Galaxy executed this much better with a somewhat more obscure playlist and more seamless scene transitions). I can imagine the slower pace bothering modern film viewers, but it was perfectly fine for me as I got to breathe a little. The film does tighten up considerably in its last third toward the climatic ending. The colors of the film are muted, perhaps a nod to the movies of the late 70s and early 80s or that TV show The Streets of San Francisco. San Francisco does look rather gray most of the year after all. I imagine we don't have Michael Bay telling the colorist: "More saturation! More saturation! Vivid mode 1000%" (BTW, I do love Michael Bay, or at least appreciate his colors and his approach to chaos and destruction.)

Unlike prior Transformers movies, the action scenes with the robots weren't envisioned from a VFX producer high on coffee or Ecstasy. Don't get me wrong, the action is fast-paced; but at least we can follow the action: the roundhouse kicks, the flips, the falling, the wrestling - it's actually MMA like. Hailee Steinfeld, all grown up now since I first saw her in True Grit, was perfect for the role as the oddball chick mocked by the snotty popular girls (one drove a 3 series BMW) at her high school. For those too young: yes, the 80s were actually like this - I was exactly her character's age at the time. John Cena wasn't given much in terms of the script, but he did more than a capable job providing nuance where he could within the constraints of his hard-nosed military character. The film wraps up in a cute and slightly bittersweet way.

Transformers fans, especially those who actually played with the 80s toys and watched the 80s cartoons will really appreciate the homage to the blockier look of the robots of that time. The VFX modelers backed off from the Bionicle look of the prior movies. The kept the good (emotive eyes and facial elements) but got rid of the bad (overly excessive and unnecessary crap). The film starts in Cybertron for a quick introduction on the Autobot vs. Decepticon war. These beginning scenes (and flashbacks) brought quite a few smiles and "oh shit" moments where I could name ("hey, that's XXX") the Transformers based on their 80s appearance: think pink female robot, blue boombox ejecting cassette tapes that transform into attack dogs, or that classic Z stripe on the trailer. One Autobot, who I always found annoying in the cartoons, was executed in a most gruesome way. I won't spoil much more.

87% (B) GOOD, consensus score from my kids and I. My daughter scored one point higher, my son one less, and I was in the middle. I'd love to see this again to see what I missed.

P.S. Go see this and help Paramount out. Paramount blew chunks with the last Trek and Transformers. We don't want to have the number of major studios getting less and less every year.

 

Travis Knight. Coraline, ParaNorman, Boxtrolls, and most recently Kubo. I haven't seen Kubo but absolutely loved the prior three.

There's still some Michael Bay, but I think they asked him to sit in the penalty box for this one. The carnage is actually limited. Hailee Steinfeld's character is similar to the protagonist of Mr. Knight's other films: the odd kid in less than comfortable circumstances who struggles to fit in and who will never fit in. BumbleBee is like the hunted lost dog with special powers that she befriends. They both save the world.

Here you go. I'm helping Paramount with the marketing:


Supposedly this was to be the prior Transformers movie, but the King Arthur script won out. Beats me why stuff like this happens and why no one questioned the script to Last Knight.

 

I am actually a huge Michael Bay fan, but there is truth to this:

 

Travis Knight was right for this. I'm sure the transition to live-action might have been challenging for him, but good pick on the part of Paramount. Unlike the up-and-coming rando that Disney picked for Star Wars who F'd up that franchise big time. To this day, I wonder why no one at Disney stopped Rian Johnson before or in the early stages of pre-production.

Ms. Steinfeld's character is relatable to adolescent girls like my daughter who could give two shits about Rey. She actually liked this movie a little bit more than my son, which is not typical for action movies with robots if you know what I mean.

Yay, girl power! Not fake manufactured girl power in the form of idiotic female characters shoved in my face.

 

So true. On the strength of Hardy, I preferred Venom over Black Panther. I disliked Black Panther. I thought Black Panther's plot was retarded, as opposed to Venom's lack of plot. Just kept my mouth shut at the time because I didn't want to ruin the parade or possibly be seen as racist or something like that.

 

I'm not a Michael Bay fan. I honestly think he sucks. That said, in the Last Knight, my son and I were laughing our butts off at how ridiculous the whole thing was. So it was not a total loss. I poke fun at the whole thing during the "battles" and things went down to the point that we were on the floor LOLing hard.

Given that this movie does not have him, and the description, I feel I will enjoy this one in a more conventional sense.

As far as SW, my daughter probably doesn't remember who the hell Rey is.

She really liked Wonder Woman. Big time. I liked it too.