Bumblebee (Transformers)

Are you fucking telling me that we could have had a live-action Transformers movie LIKE THIS ten years ago if Michael Bay wasn't involved? Fuck you, general movie-going audiences, and your shitty tastes for making all those crap-tastic Bay movies global blockbusters. I would have freaked my shit out if THIS movie was our introduction to the Transformers cinematic universe. Honestly, why don't we just pretend that the god awful Bay-formers movies never happened and just have the franchise continue from here?

Come on, Michael Bay's Transformers movies weren't really that bad... Well, except for the second one. And that Last Knight one. Oh, and the Dinobot one. And, I guess that third one where they blew up Chicago, that was pretty terrible. But the first one wasn't that bad.

Yes. It was. The characters were nothing but annoying retards, the plot was stupid as fuck and centered around a lame MacGuffin device, and the action was incomprehensible at the best of times, with "robots" that all looked alike simply smashing and tumbling around together on screen to the point where I couldn't tell who/what was punching, kicking, fucking whom.

Bumblebee fixes ALL of that. The characters are all fun (or at least NOT annoying), the plot was simple but straight forward and interesting, and the action was AMAZING. Seriously, the battle scenes (especially the hand-to-hand fights) were some of the best choreographed and powerful melees I've ever seen put to film. And get this: I could tell exactly what was going on every nano-second in every brawl. And the way they made Bumblebee himself move during his action pieces was really cool! They made his small size an incredible tactical advantage by making him about twice as fast as his adversaries. He jumped, slid, drove, and ran around them like a monkey ninja on crack.

It can't all be good. I mean, John Cena's in it, right?

Yeah, John Cena can't act his way out of a wrestling ring. He's pretty bad, but serviceable enough in this thing. But he did get the best line in the movie, which goes something like, "Can we trust them? For godsake! They introduced themselves as 'DECEPTicons!'"

I am not saying that Bumblebee is high art — far from it, actually. But it's an entertaining movie that won't make you hate the fact that you paid $10 to go see it. It is a really good flick based on a toy line about transforming robots hiding out on Earth, and it's got enough fan service to fill up a Metroplex!

What kind of fan service are we talking about here?

No, not like "anime fan service," with T&A. I mean like old school Transformers fans service. For example, Stan Bush's "The Touch" gets played at one time (which made me very, very happy), not to mention the tsunami of familiar characters and locations from the 1980s' cartoon. This is perhaps Bumblebee's greatest asset: the robots LOOK LIKE, SOUND LIKE, and ACT LIKE their original versions (which is something the Bayformers movies could never claim). You won't need somebody actually screaming out "Ratchet!" to know that you're looking at Ratchet. I clearly saw Wheeljack, Soundwave, Arcee, Shockwave, Starscream, Ironhide, Ravage, Brawn, Ratchet, and of course Optimus Prime in just the first glorious 5-minute battle that opens the story up on Cybertron itself. This opening scene was worth the price of admission alone. Honestly, I'd love to have a full movie in this style, based on Cybertron, and starring Optimus and Megatron that looks this amazing.

Okay, okay, okay... Its the live action Transformers movie that you always wanted. I get it. But what was it about?

The plot, as I said, is very straight forward and simple (ANOTHER distinction from the terribly cluttered Bay movies): Bumblebee is sent to scout out Earth as a staging ground for the Autobots to regroup in their battle for Cybertron.

To get into a bit more detail, the Decepticons have won the civil war on their home world against the Autobots, and badass Autobot leader Optimus Prime and his small army of rebels have to pull back to Teletram One in order to make a tactical retreat. Prime orders his small yellow friend/soldier (known as B-127) to go to Earth as a scout and prepare it for the rest of the Autobots' arrivals, so that they can make the planet their new headquarters from which to plan future strikes against the evil Decepticons.

B-127 was followed by the Decepticon Blitzwing though, and after a brutal skirmish between the two (in front of John Cena and his special forces troops out for some training exercises in the woods), the small Autobot blows his foe the fuck up, but at great cost to his own self. B-127 manages to escape John Cena though, and collapses after scanning a nearby Punch-buggy and disguising himself as a yellow version of the vehicle, 'cause that's what Transformers do.

Meanwhile, human teenager Carly, I mean CHARLIE Watson, is still trying to work past her issues with her dad dying and her mom marrying some goofy goody-goody guy named Ron. Carly's all emo and treated like crap by the cool girls in her town, but she soon finds an old Volkswagon Beetle in the junkyard she visits (looking for parts for the Corvette that she's trying to fix up in honor of her dead dad). This Beetle is of course B-127, but due to his last fight with Blitzwing he's suffering from some memory corruption and doesn't remember his original mission. Because that's how these things always go.

So Charlie, B-127 (whom she names "Bumblebee"), and Charlie's weird neighbor, Memo, tool around town for a bit, acting like your typical teenagers, until two more Decepticons come to Earth looking for the remaining Autobots who escaped their grasp on Cybertron (I just really love typing out "Cybertron"!). These two Decepticons get tracked down by John Cena's special forces team and they decide to temporarily play nice with the humans in order to use their military satellites to hunt down Bumblebee's unique energon signature.

The rest of the movie is about Bumblebee and Charlie trying to avoid the military, and the Decepticons trying to capture and extract information from the yellow one's digital brain, all culminating in a big battle where B and the humans have to stop the bad bots from telling their superiors of Prime's plan.

It sounds like you made that more complicated than it actually is.

I think I did. It's pretty straight forward really. And that's one of the reasons why it's good. There's no overly-convoluted background plot, no stupid and perplexing (and unneeded) story elements making everything head-scratchingly dumb... Just a good old-fashioned 2 hour movie about robot-human friendship and lots of explosions and some kick ass fights and special effects.

And once again, that opening five minute battle on Cybertron is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, and it made my inner 9 year-old weep with joy.

In the end I find that I have to give Bumblebee an enthusiastic thumbs up! It was an honest to goodness GOOD live-action Transformers movie. All you Michael Bay apologists who claim his TF movies "weren't that bad" need to watch this movie to see just how wrong you were. Fuck Michael Bay.

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Finally! A robot movie where the robots aren't lame, and the hu-mans aren't all annoying fleshy twats of annoyingness! All praise Optimus Prime!

Robot Pedro appreciated the fact that they even showed Cybertron, the MotherLand, in all its glory. It was a thing of beauty. Although, Robot Pedro's main issue with this Bumblebee motion picture is the fact that when hu-mans "popped" there wasn't enough red or internal organs. I can assure you that when a robot wants to make a hu-man pop there will be blood. Buckets of it. Stupid PG-13 rating!!! Bah!

Many glorious robot battles wherein robots fight like they actually do — viciously. And the aforementioned "popping" of stupid hu-mans. Two robotic thumbs up from Robot Pedro.