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More heart than brains, Bumblebee rises far above all other Transformers movies (not hard to do) with less action and more story. More fun as well.
I'll admit when I read a year or two ago that they were making an origin story about Bumblebee, I was thinking this was a terrible idea. Turns out it was pretty decent and very hard not to like. When the movie opens with action scenes, I was worried it was trying to emulate an action movie, like the others, but after seeing and hearing both Shockwave and Soundwave (my favourites from when I was a kid), I was happy.
Lots of 80s throwback given the movie takes place in 87, my favourite being a shot of those mini portable television sets that we all used to make fun of back in the day, "who's going to want to watch TV shows on a handheld device?!"
Hailee Steinfeld is excellent as a far more interesting and compelling Shia Labeouf. Her relationship with Bumblebee comes across as genuine and that's the main thing holding this movie together. I'm very embarrassed to admit how much I liked John Cena in this. I expected to hate this casting choice, but he ends up being way better than The Rock could ever be, while getting all the best lines in the movie, "I mean, they're literally called the Decepticons! That should be a red flag."
Special effects are excellent, I found myself never noticing any obvious CGI even though it's everywhere all the time. I think the biggest piece of science-fiction in this is asking us to believe that Hailee Steinfeld wouldn't be popular in school. I mean, COME ON. I can take walking, talking robots over that leap of faith. At least her lines are wholly-believable, and that’s thanks to screenwriter Christina Hodson who has finally written her first good script. Much more interesting than Megan Fox in many ways, and all it took was a female screenwriter… and of course an actress with chops.
Anyway, they're already talking sequel and I'll probably go. I wonder how close we are to getting a "Logan"-type of Transformers movie. The franchise life-cycle seems to be make as many movies as you can while the money is good, then go to the origin stories, then do a closing piece on whichever character was the fan favourite and have Patrick Stewart swear in it.
