The world of cinema is full of reboots, spin-offs and chapters of various kinds, with more or less decent results. This year the robots are back on the big screen: Bumblebee looks like a prequel spin-off of what happened in the Michael Bay films, but will it really be able to entertain us? Did the absence of the historical director have lifted or ditched the brand? Our discussion is up to you.
Stranger Robots
The war between the Autobots and the Decepticons rages on Cybertron and our heroes are tragically losing. Once the planet has fallen, the task of our robo-heroes will be to divide up and then find each other again. On earth, meanwhile, a nearly 18-year-old Charlie who has lost her father tries to live with an extended family: the mother has found love with another man, a new younger brother at home and the desire to find her own identity and place in the world. The girl proves to be a real landslide in interpersonal relationships, while she is a phenomenon as a mechanic: this will lead her, while trying to repair an old Corvette, to come across the most famous Volkswagen Beetle ever. The owner of the wreckage where it is stored Bumblebee gives Charlie the car as a gift, as long as she can get the "old burglar" going again. Meanwhile, the threat of the Decepticon is about to loom over the earth. The film unfolds in just over two hours with far fewer explosions than its predecessors, alternating action scenes with decidedly slower moments. No, it did not convince us: the absence of the marked fighting of the explosions and the frenzied action makes everything much slower and more dense, boring in different situations. Once again we go back to the 80s, which honestly got bored: if Stranger Things has been able to revive such an important decade in the eyes of the masses, to date everything seems somewhat redundant, with a sort of forced quotationism and a choice of the soundtrack that by now begins to become redundant and repetitive.
Old Autobots, new kids
The change of gear on the "human" actors fails to convince us: mind you, the actors are not wrong on the set but they are unable to step into the shoes required by the film, giving the feeling of a hybrid between a sit-com for families and an action movie with robottoni. John Cena looks out of context as the high-ranking military man, whose only response to possible alien contact is "shoot down the enemy". Hailee Steinfeld (Charlie) is not very credible in the shoes of the XNUMX-year-old neo and the relationship with Jorge Lendeborg Jr (Memo) is slow to excite the public, thanks to a relationship with Bumblebee which replaces the paternal one and which is out of context for the type of film that one would expect. Decepticon useless: the two enemies of our Bumblebee do nothing but show themselves invincible and superior to the human race when they fail to be credible, especially in the action scenes that concern them. The choice to sexualize the two Decepticons in a man and woman couple with the predominance of women in the choice of the action plan and the "dirty work" left to the counterpart, it seemed excessively stereotyped and even here out of context. The film is in all its parts with the "brake on", you always have the perception that it is about to explode and instead it does not happen.
Camaro and Corvette
Yet another flop does the production: if on the one hand you could have ventured to something new, the film is a shadow of Bay's first feature film, dampening the spark that fails to shine and making everything fall into the "already lived". The characteristic features of the gods are missing Transformers, it lacks the action and exaggerated scenes that have distinguished them, in favor of a film that leads to comedy for children, devoid of that "American ignorance" that appealed to fans. The growth of the character of Charlie overcoming the trauma of his father's death is almost as obvious as the rivalry between the Camaro (cinematically speaking, Bumblebee) and the Corvette that he manages to fix precisely to underline the acceptance of his father's demise. In essence, the film fails to convince those who already know the previous feature films, in general, the absence of the robotic protagonists is felt, which will make fans of the saga turn up their noses. Ultimately it is a film without too many pretensions, not comparable to the glories of the past.
