Bumblebee is not a Michael Bay movie. It’s actually good. Surprisingly so.
The action is coherent and really thrilling. It’s got a ton of heart and a three-act character story that doesn’t rely on long exposition heavy Autobot mythology and not a gratuitous ass shot or uncomfortable racist caricature in sight. Not the best movie I’ve seen recently - I’m tired of 80s nostalgia and this movie is loaded with it - but it’s good. This is very much a Wonder Woman type scenario - a really good movie that is going to surprise a lot of people when they see it because the previous movies in the franchise/universe/series/whatever were such garbage and they expected a similar experience.

I saw it on Monday. I hope it doesn’t underperform and kill the franchise.

As far as Transformers movies go, it’s a breath if fresh air. It isn’t sexist or racist and doesn’t openly mock its audience for being more interested in toys than hot girls. The characters are fun and the plot is clean and simple in a good way, compared to the plot hole riddle gibberish from previous movies. It captured the G1 look and translated it to “live action” well, and the transformations look much better than previous movies.

I think it might confuse recurring audiences a little. Its clearly not a soft reboot, it’s pretty much a total reboot and there’s basically nothing of the Bay mythology in it. However, there are a lot of visual elements taken from the Bay movies, like the crash landing transformers and

Pulling back from the Transformers part, the 80s-ness was a little overdone and it felt a few minutes too long. Definitely a good direction for the franchise and I hope they throw Knight a bigger budget and continue with it.

Bottom line: Knight made a nostalgia piece that’s also accessible to kids, whereas Bay made a movie that hates itself and hates you for watching it and wants to jab you in the eye for forcing him to direct a movie about robots when he could be forcing young women to “audition” by rubbing their soapy bodies on his car.

As much as I consider Bay’s entries a work of peculiar genius, Knight’s movie is actually entertaining on its own, and not just amusing to me because I can sit around blathering pretentious bullshit about it.