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Scorecard Weekly—'Bumblebee'

It's time to roll out again!

By Donovan BarlowPublished 5 years ago 6 min read
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Guess what day it is? HUMP DAYYYYY! And the gang’s all here, we’re back again LIVE! From the city that never sleeps, Gotham. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, we’ve gone and done it. We’re about to do numbers when we get back from this trip. If we get back that is.

But don’t worry about us because come hell or high water, we’re dedicated to bringing you guys what you've come here for, so without further ado—

WELCOME TO SCORECARD WEEKLY! The place where you come to get honest, uncut, and uncensored reviews of the newest and oldest, TV series and movies. Before we begin today’s card, let’s recap on what we are grading shall we? Please turn your attention to the invisible, non-existent whiteboard codename JARVIS—

Using our state-of-the-art scorecard, we grade:

  1. Setting/Characters
  2. Obstacles/Conflict
  3. Tone
  4. Concept

The minimum score for a section and card is one. The maximum score is five. Finally, we decide if it’s a recommend or pass.

We continue our trend today by bringing yet, another member of the 2018 family into the new year with us. Help us welcome the latest addition into the series with a warm round of applause, BUMBLEBEE, based on the Transformers characters, brought to us by Paramount Pictures.

1. Setting/Characters

Ohhhh! The sweet nostalgia of 1987, not that I recall anything from the year though—It was before my time but that’s not important. Here’s what we know, this film is set in California in the 80s around the time our protagonist and his race find their way to Earth for the first time. During a civil war, our brightly colored protagonist is sent to our world to set up shop and he must succeed for the resistance to live on. There really isn’t much to say about this guy, honestly, if you’ve seen all the other films within this franchise, he’s the same through and through.

As for our human protagonist, well here’s a change of pace for once, our teenage heroine seems to be a mixture of previous characters within the franchise (We can see a hint of Cade and a dash of Sam). She’s a great pick for this stand alone, her character blossoms when needed but most importantly, she’s relatable. Often in movies, we’re given these characters—who none of us share similarities with or we find ourselves thinking, “who acts like that in real life?” Granted, her character isn’t perfect, and she’s dragged through the clichés of character development several times throughout the film—You should probably prepare now, there’s no stopping it.

Finally, we had to save the best for last. Please tell us you can sense the sarcasm in that. Our antagonists, both human and machine. BORING! Look, we get it, they wanted to try something new in the hopes that we’d fall in love with a franchise that’s been a shit show. However, giving us the same misunderstanding government antagonists is PLAYED OUT! We don’t want that anymore! Why can’t we just get a movie with Autobots and Decepticons? Where can we petition to take the human aspect out of the franchise? At this point, it’s like drinking watered down soda. And no one enjoys that.

Score: 3

2. Obstacles/Conflict

Almost all the characters within this film must face some sort of obstacle or challenge along the way. I think that presenting our protagonists and antagonists with these challenges would have helped build the suspense leading into the climax of things if they hadn’t been so predictable. In one hand, you’ve got a childlike alien car with partial amnesia being assisted by a teenage girl and her crush (We’ve seen this before). In the other, you’ve got idiotic and underdeveloped government officials being manipulated by more aliens. (Seeing the pattern yet?)

Again, the conflict here… The reason why shit is so real is because these alien robots are AT WAR! No conflict gets bigger than that and we shouldn’t even be involved…. The real obstacle is finding a way to stop fucking these movies up with human involvement. There’s so much story to be told outside of Earth and at some point, they need to give us what we’ve been longing for.

Score: 2.5

3. Tone

Playful. Comforting. Even with an ongoing war headed for our world, the film doesn’t do well in showing just how high the stakes are. Aliens land on the planet and nothing seems to change. It’s almost like they were making this film and thought to themselves, “Let’s focus on a family movie and just put the transformers in the background” and you find yourself sitting there wondering “When’s shit going to pop off?” Honestly, it was a little hard to watch at times because it was dull. There was no progression. No threats. No obstacles to overcome. The children including our yellow toddler were the only positives here, only because the mood of the movie meshed perfectly with their characters.

Score: 3

4. Concept

The idea behind this was well crafted. We’re pretty much given a prequel to the entire franchise with this film and it all started with the idea. Quite possibly the best thing going for this film besides our protagonists of course. I think they played it a little safe with this concept, I stated above that this film seems a little bit familiar and that’s because it is. The same idea keeps getting recycled throughout Hollywood, the premise being the same, the characters are virtually the same and no one seems to give a damn about this repetitive nature. Seriously, what do we need to do? Who should we talk to? If they’re going to continue rebooting this, they will need to change the formula at some point because it becomes less entertaining each time around.

Score: 3.5

Overall Score: 3/5

Final Verdict: Recommend

Final Thoughts

It’s hard for us to recommend this but we’d be lying if we say that we didn’t enjoy it just a little. The action scenes were great. Cybertron looked AMAZING! We just feel that this franchise keeps getting the short end of the stick. Take the story away from Earth, this series is in desperate need of rejuvenation and not with the same basic fucking storyline. At some point, the fan-base will have had enough and these movies aren’t going to be successful… It won’t matter who you cast. Overall, this film deserves a watch but don’t fall into the hype of this being the best Transformers movie or that it’s a wonderful film because it isn’t. It’s a meh type of movie that doesn’t really connect on all cylinders. Go watch it but don’t get your hopes up with this because you’ll walk out of the theater in disappointment.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for stopping by!

If you’d like to make any suggestions and/or comments, please head over and LIKE our page. There you will get the latest and greatest news about our series.

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About the Creator

Donovan Barlow

Screenwriter, Father, King of the pirates, Demogorgon Killer, and The People’s Champion (Sorry Rock)

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