Just when you thought Transformers was a lost cause, swoops in Travis Knight, the director of Kubo and the Two Strings and saves it. Bumblebee movie is a delightful spinoff made on the most admired knight of the entire Transformers franchise. Let me put it this way, if Michael Bay was the worst thing that had happened to Transformers, Travis Knight is just the exact opposite.
That being said, there is proper solemnity and decorum maintained in a movie that deserves all of it, even as all the action has been kept alive. You could sense the presence of calculated emotions that is downright eloquent and reminiscent of a lot of people’s childhood. Set in a time reflective of the late 80s and early 90s the flick is an allusion to period cinema where all the Bumblebee movie’s characters once roamed the earth.
Emotional Touch in Bumblebee Movie
Travis and Christian Hodson, the writer, makes sure you enjoy your childhood aplenty by letting you easily roll into a backdrop that takes you back in that period. While the previous Transformers movies were reduced to a lot of
A loss of certain someone is deeply rooted in all the past works of Travis and it shows here as well. There is a lot of missing entailed as the aftermath. The good thing about it is that it is all very palpable unlike some contrived bullshit Hollywood often tries to sell. Emotions are very real and the movie’s soulful direction forces you to get behind the flick’s dramatic elements at once and enjoy it thoroughly as if Transformers were never just all about action.
Apart from the foremost story that is about Decepticons invading earth or Transformers, which is basically every Transformers story ever, Bumblebee movie lets you enjoy a teenager’s tale of finding a strong reason to enjoy life to the maximum. To overcome a grieving past that’s laden with memories of her father. Even the subplot of Charlie and her father working on a Corvette together gets signed off in the end thus completing every open end one could find in the flick.
Little things like jumping into the water where it mattered and not to show off some bunch of kids what she is made of, were some of those well-executed things that make you revere stuff that constitutes its storyline.
Cuteness Overload
As you generally find in movies, where the protagonist’s muse is often turned into an entertainment package, like in Big Hero 6 or How to Train Your Dragon, Bumblebee movie too is turned into a thing that becomes cuteness overload at one point. It is amazing how creators often elicit emotions aplenty from dumb or mute things. Travis does that with Bumblebee too, under the ruse of letting him forget everything, making him a blank slate. The fresh start makes him afraid of everything around him, and Bee feels akin to a dog who is being petted by the protagonist, Charlie (Hailee
That being said, Bumblebee feels adorable trying to fit in a world that he fails to understand. Charlie, even though, has a time of her life trying to help Bee, it ends up turning her life into outright chaos. Despite that Bee serves to be a perfect car she had always wanted, with that adorable dog like innocence that makes her life a little less miserable.
Old School
There are so many things today that have gone lost in time. Right from familial values to what love used to be. Travis makes sure that this ride back to the past isn’t just focused on mere sets or milieu that define a person, but the way we used to think. Like something as simple as holding hands instead of rushing things even though one is dying to get a piece of each other. Or spending plenty of time, and talking, really talking to understand one another before taking things forward.
No matter how hard or bad it gets, not leaving one’s family, in fact, accepting them for who they are and making do with everything that surrounds them, all of it has been ingrained in the flick. The movie is literally a lesson in values. If you really stop to think about it for a while you realize that’s what Travis is all about too. His work shows everything he stands for.
On the downsides, you could say there were a lot of cliched bits in the flick as it ends up being a reflection of E.T. and other similar movies with the same theme dictating it.
You can order Bumblebee movie from here:
The Action Hour
While a world of effort disappears when you are working on the action front, Knight gives it his very best shot. The end result is sheer magnificence. There are plenty of dope fighting scenes for the heat seekers. It is, in fact, in the right amount and makes you truly savor everything that is being offered on the platter.
The sanctity of Optimus Prime is maintained even though it isn’t his movie to begin with. The spin-off of Transformers does Optimus ample justice letting him stand in the forefront as a fortified warrior as the story eventually gets to meet him in the end.
You have to give it to them on how intelligently they have made it, leaving everything untouched, letting the franchise exist in its very own patch of space. It is like going in and going out without harming anything at all.
The Final Verdict
Bumblebee movie has everything that takes to stand tall as a good solid complete movie on its own. You don’t have to look at it as a ladder or anything. People with zero knowledge about Transformers could hop in there too.
Bee is hands down one of the most loved characters of Transformers, standing right next Optimus Prime at all times in terms of heroism. Travis Knight does him absolute justice, making him not only adorable but showing what a warrior he could be when given the chance.
In a universe where we thought we had almost lost this franchise, hid hope in the form of the real knight – Travis Knight who was eyeing this project all this time to revive it and make it into something everyone saw in the 80s. Let’s hope good directors like him, pitch in to help and turn the franchise into something great hereon.
You can check out the trailer of Bumblee movie from here:
Bumblebee
Pros
- Great Plot
- Magnificent Direction
- Brilliant Action
Cons
- A lot of Cliched Bits
