By Travis Johnson
Look, we get it: after a long string of terrible Transformers films, you’re probably a bit gun-shy. But Bumblebee director Travis Knight is saying a lot of things here specifically designed to quell those feelings of trepidation: he namechecks Spielberg, calls himself a child of the ’80s, professes his love of Transformers (as does John Cena, which is a bit discombobulating) and so on. Plus they take pains to point out his sterling work with his animation house, Laika, a pedigree that will certainly stand him in good stead calling the shots on a CGI-heavy SF actioner like this.
If you are a current or former Transformers fan, you’re almost certainly getting a Pavlovian response to the design work on display here, too – we were all pretty disappointed when Bumblebee was “re-imagined” as a Mustang, so it’s cool to see him in his yellow VW configuration. And yeah, that is absolutely the Decepticon jet Starscream, original colour scheme and all – the robots here look more like their toy and cartoon predecessors than ever before.
So, it’s all looking pretty cool. So far. Look, we’ve been hurt before.
Bumblebee is in cinemas from December 20, 2018.
