
WARNING: This Review May Contain Spoilers
In order to watch this article, I watched Bumblebee for the first time, but I had to make myself suffer through Transformers for the second time. I put it this way because the film was just as bad as I remembered. Now, that’s not saying that Bumblebee was a masterpiece because it wasn’t – especially as the Autobots and Decepticons actually looked better back in 2007 than they did 11 years later! How that’s possible with the development of technology in that timeframe I have no idea – but somehow they pulled it off…
Becoming Bumblebee
It is very common for prequel films to be origin stories of specific characters – which is slightly the case here. Obviously, it doesn’t dig into Bumblebee’s past but there are things that are discovered about certain characteristics of the much beloved character. For example Bumblebee isn’t his original name, which I actually found to be a little bizarre, throughout the film Optimus Prime refers to him as B127, but why does Optimus Prime have a proper name but Bumblebee is just assigned a number? B127 only receives the name Bumblebee when he meets Charlie on Earth.
I also want to talk about Bumblebee’s voice. In Transformers, Optimus Prime says ‘his vocal process was damaged in battle’. I couldn’t decide if this was correct or not, after I watched Bumblebee. Yes, there’s fight that causes Bumblebee to have his ‘vocal process’ damaged but it’s not actually part of the fight. It seems that Blitzwing, the Decepticon that destroys it, does so because Bumblebee refuses to reveal the location of other Autobots – ‘I’ll never talk!’, ‘Is that so? Then let’s make it official’
Size Matters
This actually bugged me a little bit when watching Bumblebee and Transformers back to back. From the moment we see Blitzwing and Bumblebee in the same scene, it is clear that Bumblebee is much smaller than his Decepticon counterparts and I thought maybe this was how they wanted to differentiate the two factions. However, when we meet Optimus Prime in the end credit scene (a scene I felt was unnecessary but I’ll get to that later), it’s clear that Bumblebee is small in stature compared to everyone. Now, here’s my issue – in the original Transformers film, Bumblebee shares the screen with Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Jazz and Ironhide but instead of being smaller than them, he’s the same size! So this really does beg the question…why make that change?
The Autobot that Fell to Earth
I think I’ve mentioned this previously in other prequel articles, that it is a common issue for the films to change certain parts of the plot and sometimes it is an integral piece of the story. Like the reason the Autobots are on Earth in the first place, as well as whether they even got there first. Let me explain. The original film opens with a voiceover by Optimus Prime, telling the story of the hunt for the All Spark, a cube that gave life to their world – and it is this that leads Megatron, leader of the Decepticons, to Earth. Now, in Bumblebee we are led to believe that B127 is the first of the Cybertron dwellers to come to Earth, as a scout for a new home as their planet is being destroyed by war.
What would have made more sense to me, would have been that Bumblebee actually follows Megatron to Earth, in order to protect the All Spark from the Decepticons and as a consequence becomes protector of Earth but that wouldn’t have been able to be set in it the 1980s, if that was the case, as Megatron crash landed in the 1800s.
Unnecessary Scene
This is probably going to sound really odd, but I found the bonus credit scene to be a little unnecessary. I actually felt that ruined the final clip of Bumblebee driving away as a Camaro (the very same Camaro that he is disguised as in Transformers) and meeting a truck on the bridge that looks like it could be Optimus Prime. I think the credits scene destroys that mystery.
In Conclusion
As I mentioned before, the original franchise was never perfect – it was only really improved by replacing Shia LaBeouf with Mark Wahlberg as the new lead character. I definitely don’t think a prequel film needed to be made. If Michael Bay had at least been involved somewhere along the line, it may have made more sense for the film to be made as it would possibly have related to the original arc instead of seeming to change certain things.