MeToo for Bee too?
Shape-shifters face major transformation
HAS the #MeToo furore changed Hollywood?
It’s probably too early to tell, but it seems to have had quite an impact on the Transformers movies.
In the five deafening and barely coherent instalments of Michael Bay’s toy-flogging franchise, I was never sure what they wanted us to leer at more – the flash cars or the scantily-clad sidekicks.
In a surprisingly gentle prequel, not only is Hailee Steinfeld NOT dressed like a Vegas stripper but she’s firmly in the driving seat.
Bumblebee, the yellow and black shape-shifting robot has also toned down his act.
Instead of a Chevrolet Camero muscle car, his alter ego is now a battered Beetle.
It’s a good look – with this movie it seems less is definitely more.
The story begins in a deceptively familiar way. We’re on the planet Cybertron and bad bots the Decepticons are knocking lumps out of their good cousins the Autocons.
Then Autocon general Optimus Prime (again voiced by Peter Cullen) sounds the retreat and orders his yellow sidekick
B-127 to head to earth and wait for some further instructions.
Damage to his memory cells and his “voice synthesiser” have left
B-127 mute and confused. Instinct tells him to hide, so when he lands in California he finds the nearest scrapyard and transforms into a Volkswagen. With Decepticons Dropkick (Justin Theroux) and Shatter (Angela Bassett) tracking him down, he is found by Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a lonely 18-year-old who sells hotdogs at a fairground. It’s 1987, which explains why she is listening to a Walkman and the soundtrack seems to be running through Now That’s What I Call Music Volumes 1 to 7. Charlie, who was taught to fix cars by her recently deceased dad, takes what she thinks is an abandoned rust-bucket home before watching it turn into a klutzy, giant robot.
After he tries to communicate through a series of adorable bleeps and buzzes, Charlie names him Bumblebee and the pair become best friends.
The alien/robot/car gets a crash course on human life by watching Charlie’s video collection, (he is especially taken with The Breakfast Club) and learns to speak a version of English by scanning stations on his radio to select lyrics from 1980s pop songs.
Realising that he will be made to suffer all sorts of diabolical experiments if he is caught by macho Agent Burns (a funny John Cena), Charlie teaches her friend to belt up whenever a stranger approaches.
If this movie had been released in 1987, I would have probably kicked off my review by lumping it in with other E.T. rip-offs like 1986’s Short Circuit, where Ally Sheedy befriended another robot obsessed with pop-culture.
But what would have seemed crushingly derivative in 1987, now feels like a breath of fresh air. For the first time in the franchise, we have a CGI robot that has an inner life. Director Travis Knight’s previous film was the lovely stop-motion