Bumblebee: First Good Transformers Movie?

[Zmeoaice]

So I saw the trailer and I must say I am bought. The first three Transformers didn't get anything right (and the 2nd and 3rd were downright awful). I didn't even bother seeing the 4th or 5th, but they seem to be doing ever worse.

However this film seems to be fixing all the mistakes. The character designs look so much better, like actual robots that transform into machines instead of a massive junkyard all welded together. Starscream looks amazing. And since Bay isn't directing hopefully there will be less explosions and cringy fanservice shots. It feels like this is going to be what the first movie should have been.

I don't want to get my hopes too high, but darn it we need more positive trans representation on the screen!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAIX12F6958

[Aotrs Commander]

Correction - first good live-action Transformers movie.




So I saw the trailer and I must say I am bought. The first three Transformers didn't get anything right (and the 2nd and 3rd were downright awful). I didn't even bother seeing the 4th or 5th, but they seem to be doing ever worse.

However this film seems to be fixing all the mistakes. The character designs look so much better, like actual robots that transform into machines instead of a massive junkyard all welded together. Starscream looks amazing. And since Bay isn't directing hopefully there will be less explosions and cringy fanservice shots. It feels like this is going to be what the first movie should have been.

I don't want to get my hopes too high, but darn it we need more positive trans representation on the screen!

I see what you did there.



I watched the trailer, because your comments were enough to spend a couple of minutes of my time given that up until now I have given no fracks whatsoever. (A bit like Star Wars, Transformers has just lost me.)

I like you, I just nothing'd four and five; I enjoyed the first one and enjoyed the second while watching it, less so thinking about it afterwards and the third... Had me starting to get bored, because the novelty had worn off, and I was really rather tired of watching a film full of humans (and I found the presence of humans intrusive even in the 1980s in the cartoon and One True Continutity Marvel comics...). Despite having all three on DVD, I have never even felt the inclination to watch the latter pair.



Still not hugely sold, since it's not a reboot (well, I suppose it might be a soft-reboot) - and Bumblebee not talking I still find almost as offensive as Wolverine: Origin's Deadpool. And this is sort of a pretty old, recycled plot (I mean, this is like the plot of the first movie only with less Transformers - and most importanly Peter Cullen lending - at the time - a sense of nostalgic continuity to the proceedings).

But perhaps a step in the right direction? They certainly LOOK a bit better, and he does have the right alternate form, thank you very much.

Might play enough attention to the reviews to see if it's worth seeing, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.



Edit: Okay, some of the comments suggest that this IS a reboot of sorts. Not perhaps enough for my liking, but enough that maybe I'll pay very slightly more attention to it than I have been doing.

If the human lass turns out to be not as obnoxious as movie!Spike did (seriously, by movie three, he just made we want to stab him in the soul with lightning blades until he burned away), then that would be all to the good. I mean, you CAN do human characters in Transformers well (Sari from Animated springs to mind, if one never actually got as far as the Big Reveal, and they didn't do too bad a job in Prime, though they could have done with less of them.)

[ben-zayb]

Interesting... looks like John Cena will be featured heavily in this movie, which I'm not sure whether is a good or bad thing to happen (GOTG worked well for Batista, so who knows?)

EDIT: Whoa, this is a Travis Freakin' Knight movie? I'm in!

[Pippa the Pixie]

They made a Bumblebee movie? Bumblebee?

Well, it looks good: Both Bumblebee and Starscream look right.

And guess this will be an '80's movie?

So...is this like a prequel? Like before Transformers 1? Or is it just a stand alone story and don't think about it?

I guess a ''coming of age'' movie is a classic, and every girl has dreamed of finding a car robot...um, right?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Officially, it's a prequel. I have yet to see someone arguing against a reboot, soft or hard.

There's Rick Astley cassettes and Starscream is a F-4 Phantom. This thing is so 80s I was looking for leg warmers.

I hope that by the end of the movie, Starscream finds one of the new F-15 Eagles and finally recovers the right look.

[Narkis]

I'd given up on the franchise after T3, but I watched the trailer thanks to this thread and both Bumblebee and Starscream look quite a bit better here. I'm now mildly interested, with a remote chance of seeing it on cinema.

[Darth Ultron]

There's Rick Astley cassettes and Starscream is a F-4 Phantom. This thing is so 80s I was looking for leg warmers.


As soon as I saw the cassette tape, I was so hopping it would transform into Ravage or Laserbeak.

I really did not know Bumblebee was so popular as to get his own movie.

And I hope they don't do the dumb ''Bumblebee can't talk'' thing.

Lets just hope the movie is not 3/4th all humans, does not have a dumb annoying human and does not...sigh, yet again, have some government conspiracy(what is left? Bumblebee destroyed the Twin Towers? Um...Bumblebee voted for Trump?)

[Cheesegear]

Lets just hope the movie is not 3/4th all humans...

If they're smart, it wont be.
If they centre the movie around two Transformers - BumbleBee and Starscream - that saves massively on budget, which should mean that they get to spend more time on two, individual robots, rather than humans.

But who knows?

[The Fury]

I didn't even like the first live-action Transformers movie, so it's fair to say this movie isn't for me. That said, there's some stuff in the trailer that's pretty cool. Bumblebee's car-disguise is a VW Bug like what it was in the cartoon, and the cartoon's transforming sound effect can be heard when he... uh transforms.

Though in one shot a little after the 2-minute mark his robot form looks a little like he might have a Jeep disguise too. Maybe he'll turn into the junky old Camaro from the first movie too?

[Zevox]

I haven't seen a Transformers movie since the first, personally - way too much awful word-of-mouth around the rest for me to bother.

Watching this trailer, I will agree that they look a hell of a lot better. Bumblebee's decent, and from what little we see of Starscream he looks perfect. But that is just the look, and on the whole, it's just a bog-standard Hollywood action movie trailer, so it's hardly selling me on the movie. Plus it doesn't exactly give me the impression that they're ditching the tendency to put way too much focus on the humans, and it even makes me worry that they might be doing a cringe-worthy attempt at a Human/Transformer romance between Bumblebee and the lead chick, which would suck. So I'm still very much not going to bother unless the word-of-mouth around its release is a lot better than the other films had.

[Zmeoaice]

even makes me worry that they might be doing a cringe-worthy attempt at a Human/Transformer romance between Bumblebee and the lead chick, which would suck.

If they did The Shape of Metal would indeed suck, but from what I heard the relationship is going to be platonic. That shot is hopefully is not as suggestive as it seems.

[Kitten Champion]

I haven't seen a Transformers movie since the first, personally - way too much awful word-of-mouth around the rest for me to bother.

Watching this trailer, I will agree that they look a hell of a lot better. Bumblebee's decent, and from what little we see of Starscream he looks perfect. But that is just the look, and on the whole, it's just a bog-standard Hollywood action movie trailer, so it's hardly selling me on the movie. Plus it doesn't exactly give me the impression that they're ditching the tendency to put way too much focus on the humans, and it even makes me worry that they might be doing a cringe-worthy attempt at a Human/Transformer romance between Bumblebee and the lead chick, which would suck. So I'm still very much not going to bother unless the word-of-mouth around its release is a lot better than the other films had.

While I agree with this, the arc the Transformers movies have been on has bent towards placating the Chinese market in an increasingly hamfisted manner. Abandoning both its core fans and basic tenants of story-telling and characterization to show highly intricate CGI creations referred to as Transformers get into longer and longer fight scenes amid C-tier American sitcom chicanery of the unlikable human leads, while getting largely rewarded for it due to strong trailers and fulfilling the specific tastes of Eastern markets

Until The Last Knight, which didn't tank exactly but still failed to meet the box-office expectations of the series.

At least this fulfills the functional aspect of nostalgia - "I recognize that" - which none of the Transformers movies do outside of Optimus Prime if you close your eyes. I'd like for those people to get a movie even if it's just a generic Iron Giant/E.T. kind of thing, rather than endure more statutory rape jokes, homophobic BS, racist caricatures, or legendary actors being pissed upon literally and figuratively in exchange for gobs of money.

Basically, I'd like to see a new bar established for what these movies could be - and then aim to surpass it with further iterations as has kind of been the arc of Superhero movies - rather than seeing how far they limbo below their previous effort and still get away with it. To the point that I might be interested even as someone who has very little emotional attachment to Transformers in general.