The Best Transformers Movie of All Time Deserved So Much Better (& Paramount Should Still Revisit It)

Michael Bay’s Transformers movies started out as a pretty substantial success story. The first film has a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, but it did far better with fans, becoming one of the biggest hits of 2007. It attracted attention from those who had never played with one of the IP’s toys or watched the television shows. And, while it isn’t perfect, that 57% represents critics begrudgingly admitting that it was fun, if not particularly well-written. Then, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made even more money, but it was so narratively jumbled and, often, racist, that it remains the definitive example of why Bay’s time with the franchise is its worst, as far as the big screen goes.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon was a bit of a rebound, but then the subsequent slogs Transformers: Age of Extinction and Transformers: The Last Knight seemingly put this era down for good. And, in its wake, came an example of just how good one of these movies could be: Travis Knight’s Bumblebee.

Why Wasn’t Bumblebee the Future of the Franchise?

The Bay Transformers movies have no heart. They’re lame gags, indecipherable action sequences, lame gags, indecipherable action sequences, and then two and a half hours (or more) is up. Bumblebee is the total opposite. It’s all heart and a far more digestible 114-minute runtime.

The scope is far more intimate. Instead of Megatron and his newest ensemble of Decepticons, one of whom can worm its way through a skyscraper as spaceships come into the city and blast it apart, with dozens of missiles flying through the air from both Earthlings and their attacker, we get just a pair of Decepticons. Instead of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and a whole crew of good guys, we get just Bumblebee (outside the opening scene).

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But even that opening scene, which is as bombastic as the movie gets, shows an improvement over the Bay films. It’s a big battle scene, but we can follow it, and from moment one we’re also sold on the film’s more retro-inclined visual tone. All of the Autobots and Decepticons look a little more like their cartoon counterpart, which has a nostalgia appeal even to those who never watched the cartoon because, on the whole, they were the product of the ’80s, and no decade has a specific vibe like the ’80s. It was a time when movies were filled with hope, even when said movie was also prone to its moments of despair, e.g. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist.

Speaking of E.T. and Poltergeist and the overall ’80s vibe, Steven Spielberg has served as an executive producer on all the live action Transformers movies. Bumblebee is the first one that actually feels as such. That Amblin touch is all over it, even if it itself is not technically an Amblin movie. Spielberg came up with the concept that makes it work, even, which is the razor-sharp focus on a coming-of-age story featuring a teenage girl establishing a friendship with a robot from outer space.

This was the dynamic that should have continued. Bumblebee ends with Hailee Steinfeld’s Charlie Watson and the title character besting Shatter (Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (Justin Theroux), escape the army, and stand side by side on a cliff looking out at a beautiful California vista. They then part ways, with Charlie returning to her family and Bumblebee returning to his Autobot family. That’s a great ending and makes it work as a one-off, but it’s not as if they couldn’t have gotten two more movies out of the Charlie-Bumblebee dynamic. Their bond is infinitely more believable and charming than the Sam-Bumblebee dynamic that occupied three movies.

Bumblebee takes place in 1987 and Transformers takes place in 2007. Who’s to say another threat couldn’t have come to Earth directly tied into the first adventure and Bumblebee realizes he has to step in and save his buddy? The structure of the house was already built, so why not make a siding and insulation of a second movie and an appliances of a third movie. It would have been a much more interesting and endearing house than the Witwicky trilogy.

Granted, the subsequent Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (which feels somewhere between Bay’s films and Bumblebee) and Transformers One (which feels like neither) are also better than the Bay era. But they still don’t work as well as Bumblebee. It’s been almost 10 years, so we could still perhaps get a legacy sequel of sorts that features the return of Bumblebee with an older Charlie. But it doesn’t seem particularly likely. Between her personal life as an expectant mother and consistent film work, Steinfeld is quite busy. Either way, especially with the announcement that, sigh, Bay is returning, it’s as clear now as it was in 2018 that Bumblebee was the true apex of the franchise and should have been just the start of something wonderful.

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