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HuMan's thoughts on: Bumblebee


Bumblebee is a heartfelt movie that shifts the focus of the transformers franchise from being just a compilation of Michael Bay explosions to being a sensitive story of a connection between 2 beings, who have both lost something significant and are having trouble adapting to changing environments.
The movie stars my new celebrity crush Hailee Steinfeld who had recently also been in the marvelous Spiderverse as Spider-woman. Although she is showered in makeup to look like she is 18, she still manages to give a performance which really radiates the feelings of her character. Also, playing the lead role here makes her even more loveable.
The impressive opening consisting of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Cybertron and the beautiful well-choreographed scenes definitely give it the kickstart to keep the audience engaged throughout the remaining runtime of the movie.  Very few scenes which are generally used for exposition are interesting at first but on second viewing feel draggy and well, just “expository”. Many things are left unexplained but they are too minor to even care about and at most times Hailee Steinfeld seems to be stealing the spotlight, so who even cares about what’s going on.
I can grandly appreciate that though this movie is based in 1987. It’s not constantly throwing 1980’s references at you. A bunch of songs do keep playing from those times but they don’t really matter much since most scenes don’t revolve around them. Also, we aren’t bombarded with classic cars from back then (just 3 or 4) and all these limitations to references keeps the movie from making me feel overwhelmed. In reference to Aquaman, which was a CGI-fest and managed to only overwhelm it’s audience. Don’t get me wrong, Aquaman was entertaining as hell but Bumblebee succeeds where it fails, it doesn’t depend on hardcore CGI and bad hair wigs.
However, one aspect keeps Bumblebee from being fully appreciated, the history of its franchise, the fact that we have had so many unforgiving transformers sequels. Though Bumblebee is good, it’s unfortunately as good to compensate for it’s history of insulting transformers sequels. I’m a transformers fan as in I have seen a lot of TV shows and played transformers video games and therefore as a fan I refuse to forgive Hasbro for what they have done to all the transformers. It will take atleast 4 good transformers movies to satisfy me. ;)

TL;DR:
Haunted by a grim past, Bumblebee might just be the comeback transformers fan have been expecting for years. By changing it’s tone and focusing on certain aspects, Bumblebee gives out a satisfying performance while remaining intact. The fact that more sequels are being hinted at in the movie are a sigh of relief rather than despair.

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