Bumblebee | Little White Lies

Bum­ble­bee

15 Dec 2018 / Released: 26 Dec 2018

Woman driving vintage car, holding steering wheel
Woman driving vintage car, holding steering wheel
3

Anticipation.

The Transformers films have been disappointing, but they didn’t star Hailee Steinfeld.

4

Enjoyment.

Bee takes a U-turn straight for my heart.

4

In Retrospect.

Tears and thrills for all the family.

There’s a dash of Spiel­ber­gian charm in this thrilling fam­i­ly adven­ture from direc­tor Travis Knight.

Bring­ing the Trans­form­ers fran­chise to the realm of kids movies was a big, dan­ger­ous gam­ble. Although based on a series of toys, the five mil­i­taris­tic Bay­busters pri­or to Bum­ble­bee were all aimed at teenagers and adults, and enjoyed incred­i­ble com­mer­cial suc­cess as a result. But the com­par­a­tive fail­ure of 2017’s The Last Knight – which made less mon­ey world­wide than even the first title of the fran­chise – sig­nalled the end for the Michael Bay era of Trans­form­ers movies.

Although the fate of the world is again at stake in Bum­ble­bee, the film is much sweet­er and soft­er than its pre­de­ces­sors. As a pre­quel to the orig­i­nal movie, it takes place well before Auto­bots and Decep­ti­cons have made of plan­et Earth their bat­tle­ground, and we begin the film in a world still rel­a­tive­ly inno­cent. Direc­tor Travis Knight and screen­writer Christi­na Hod­son lean into this bet­ter days’ sen­ti­ment by set­ting the film in 1987. I wasn’t born then, and nei­ther were the kids who will see this (at last!) child-friend­ly, awe­some-robot-trucks film – but their par­ents def­i­nite­ly were.

From the sound­track to our heroine’s band t‑shirts, posters, VHS tapes, and even her mother’s fur­ni­ture, the film’s entire look and sen­si­bil­i­ty screams the 80s. No doubt a result of the Stranger Things phe­nom­e­non, the homage thank­ful­ly goes way past the gim­mick. Indeed, the film under­stands what made the orig­i­nal block­busters of the 1980s work, and incor­po­rates their for­mu­la with gen­uine grace.

Woman in green jacket interacting with a large yellow robot with blue glowing eyes.

When our hero­ine Char­lie Wat­son (Hailee Ste­in­feld) finds Bum­ble­bee – years after the alien’s arrival on Earth, mute and with its mem­o­ry wiped out – she attempts to hide the clum­sy, pup­py-eyed fel­low in her garage, and warns it of the dan­gers of the out­side world. The dynam­ic is strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that of Elliott and E.T. from Steven Spielberg’s 1982 clas­sic. Grief-strick­en and rebel­lious since her father died, unable to con­nect with her new step-father, the teenag­er Char­lie falls in line with Spielberg’s characters.

Like them, she nav­i­gates a bro­ken fam­i­ly unit, and looks for the com­pan­ion­ship and val­i­da­tion she craves in a vis­it­ing alien and sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly mem­ber. The com­par­i­son with E.T. extends to the way in which the mil­i­tary, led by John Cena as a car­toon­ish vil­lain, seeks to both kill Bum­ble­bee and to gain alien tech­nol­o­gy from the Decep­ti­cons who are after the friend­ly robot.

The blue­print for this sim­ple yet effi­cient nar­ra­tive was always present with­in the Trans­form­ers fran­chise. At the incep­tion of the first film, it was exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Steven Spielberg’s idea to focus the film on a boy and his car’. Con­sid­er­ing the anthro­po­mor­phic and alien sta­tus of said car, the sim­i­lar­i­ty to E.T. becomes obvi­ous. The boy was Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, but he was replaced with Mark Wahlberg in film four, and the fol­low-up titles have each brought dimin­ish­ing returns.

The boy is now a girl, and what a girl she is. As played by ris­ing star Hailee Ste­in­feld, Char­lie is the most believ­able angry teenag­er com­mit­ted to the big screen since, well, the actor’s own turn in 2016’s The Edge of Sev­en­teen. Although our heroine’s sad­ness this time comes from grief, her arc here involves sim­i­lar ideas of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, sup­port and acceptance.

Aside from these major changes, Bum­ble­bee nat­u­ral­ly retains the gigan­tic fight­ing robots that define the fran­chise. With only the epony­mous Auto­bot in sight and only a few Decep­ti­cons after him, the com­bats are small­er in scale here. And yet, their effect is much more intense: our emo­tion­al invest­ment in Bum­ble­bee rais­es the stakes to ver­tig­i­nous heights, and the film’s visu­al style – much calmer, more spa­tial­ly coher­ent than Bay’s – allows each painful blow to sink in.

As in an old-school kids’ film, there is no blood in sight. The few human deaths are framed as mon­strous and shock­ing, but they’re nev­er trau­mat­ic: indi­vid­u­als explode into translu­cent goo. But do not think that you are safe: Bum­ble­bee swaps the envi­ron­men­tal chaos and destruc­tion of the orig­i­nal films for absolute emo­tion­al dev­as­ta­tion. Read­er, I wept at a Trans­form­ers film. And for the right rea­sons this time.

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