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Bumblebee is the Perfect Transformers Reboot (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2020-01-29 21:01:00 +0000 UTC
What makes Bumblebee the perfect movie to reboot the Transformers franchise? How much time do you have?
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Readers, we’ve been in the post Michael Bay era of Transformers movies for a little over a year, and we have 2018’s Bumblebee to thank for that
/It was a movie that I was pleasantly surprised was as good as it was when I went to go see it in theaters, and I feel that a lot of that has to do with the one-two combination of Travis Knight’s direction and Christina Hodson’s heart-felt script. Along with that, the phenomenal acting by Hailee Steinfield, Jorge Lendeborg, Pamela Adlon and John Cena of all people, this was the movie that initially told me that not only was this spinoff a good idea, but it’s still possible to save this franchise./
Yet while it was able to prove those points to me, I also noticed that it was a movie that was able to stand on its own two feet away from what the franchise installments before it established over the course of 5 movies
/And that’s mostly because Bumblebee was a movie that was in a way a prequel to the five Bay films before it -- specifically the 2007 original. It explained how Bumblebee got to earth and prepared for the Autobots arrival, how he lost his voicebox and acted as the Human race’s first exposure to Cybertronians. Thus retroactively establishing said two feet for what we’ve seen in the past instead of the other way around./
But just like it explained a lot of things that Michael Bay’s first 2007 Transformers movie helped establish, Paramount Pictures also used it as an opportunity to give the franchise a fresh start.
/Because during the New York Toy Fair of 2019, Hasbro announced Bumblebee as the start of “a new storytelling universe,” officially declaring it a reboot of the franchise just as much as it is a prequel of the previous one./
That Readers is what people call a “soft reboot.”
It’s an installment of an already established franchise that’s so far removed from the original installments that it might as well be a new jumping point and acts as a reintroduction to it unless you’re a die-hard fan.
/That’s what Ghostbusters: Afterlife is, and that’s what Mad Max: Fury Road is./
One can argue that’s also what the Jurassic World series is, but there’s still an element of the original Jurassic Park trilogy that heavily plays a factor to the DNA of Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, and even the eventual third film.
And no, the X-Men movies from First Class onward ISN’T a softly rebooted series. It’s just trash.
What makes Bumblebee a soft reboot however, is that it properly sets up why certain things were the way they were in the 2007 Transformers movie, and it does it by having it take place in the late 1980s.
/Not only do we see how Bumblebee learned to use radio stations as his main way of establishing verbal communication, but we also see how he lost his voice box in the first place
We also see the reason why he traded in his original Volkswagen Beetle form for the Camaro form we see him in over the course of the original movie series
And the reason why the military had prior knowledge of Cybertronians -- specifically the Decepticons -- before their initial invasion in the early 2000’s is because of their initial encounter with Bumblebee and being bamboozled by the two Decepticons that were after him./
But the brilliance about Bumblebee being the movie that it is, is that while it has all of the answers and explanations as to why the Michael Bay series is the way it is, it’s simultaneously so far away from it that it can branch off and be its own thing
/One of the ways we’ve seen that happen is in the form of how a lot of the Cybertronians look in the movie, with the Autobots and Decepticons we see on screen pretty much better resembling their toy and animated series counterparts compared to how they look in the Michael Bay films./
Not only was this an extremely welcomed sight when images of Soundwave and Optimus Prime first showed up online -- despite the knowledge of Bumblebee being in his Beetle form already being made known and confirmed by multiple accredited sources
/But the vastly different art style and direction of the scenes regarding the Cybertronian civil war in comparison to what we’ve seen in the Bay films just OOZED with possibility of rebranding and steering away from the direction the first five movies made overall./
It took directions in establishing a connection with the movies that came before it in a way that could still properly fit with what’s been previously established if things didn’t work out, but also give them the courage to take the franchise in a new and better direction if it did.
There’s also the fact that despite how Paramount used the movie to explain certain elements from the Bay movies, that they can easily go on and use the story Bumblebee had to tell as the stepping stone to tell brand new stories without having to actually worry about them
Despite the events of Bumblebee taking place almost 2 decades before Michael Bay’s first movie, there’s still an ample amount of time in-universe between the two movies for the franchise to explore and grow before its timeline catches up with the 2007 movie
Hell, depending on the choices it makes in its storytelling going forward, it could even ignore the events of the Michael Bay movies all-together
/And considering that one of the two Transformers film projects that Paramount is currently trying to develop is possibly going to be based in “the Bumblebee universe,” it’s looking like it’s gonna be a case of “one or the other”/
Although I REALLY hope the one the go with is the other, because that movie is...it’s...it’s just too good to be associated with the Bay ones.
Readers, Bumblebee as a movie not only made a lot of good decisions, but also positioned itself in pretty much the perfect spot.
/Not only can it serve as a prequel to what’s already established, but because of what it’s done both visually and in the ways of storytelling, it can pretty much breathe new life into the Transformers franchise and have it go in a completely new direction than the ones the Bay films went toward/
And considering that one of the other Transformers movie projects Paramount is working on is Beast Wars, using Bumblebee to completely reboot the Transformers franchise as we know it and ignore the five films we’ve had before, isn’t that far fetched.
As far as I’m concerned, it's...a very welcomed decision.
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day: Write in the comment section below, which direction YOU think the current state of Transformers movies should go with Bumblebee.
Do you think it should continue to serve as prequels leading up to the Bay films? Do you think it should be a completely fresh start to the franchise? I’d love to know your thoughts.
