Okay, now I'd like to focus on what I liked about Bumblebee. I'm not going to list every moment that I enjoyed or we'd be here forever. Instead I'm going to focus on what I think is the general crux of what I think makes Bumblebee such an enjoyable movie.

Basically Travis Knight has done the opposite of what Michael Bay has done.
Bayformers = the story and its characters serves the action and effects
Knightformers = the action and effects serve the story and its characters
This shift in focus alone makes a world of difference. We finally have a Transformers film that elicits the audience to become emotionally invested in these characters. We end up actually caring about what happens to them.

Connectedness and the search for identity



One thing I'd like to focus on in this post is the relationship between Charlie and Bumblebee and how it's completely different from Bumblebee's relationship with Sam Witwicky or Cade Yeager. One important difference: there is no MacGuffin. There's no extrinsic motivator that compels Bumblebee and Charlie to be with each other. In the 2007 movie Bumblebee was drawn to Sam because of the glasses. He wasn't necessarily looking to befriend Sam, he needed to obtain the glasses in order to find the MacGuffin. Bumblebee ended up befriending Sam was an incidental by-product of his mission. In Age of Extinction, Bumblebee only allied himself with Cade Yeager because he had already found Optimus Prime and rebuilt him. And this was done because Cade the inventor wanted to become rich by making more inventions because he's an inventor. He was motivated by self-interest, and Optimus Prime and the other Autobots similarly allied themselves with Cade out of self-preservation. In other words, each of these relationships had extrinsic motivations; there were compelling needs for them to be with each other.

When Charlie and Bumblebee first meet, there is no compelling need. Charlie didn't possess any MacGuffin that he was seeking. Bumblebee wasn't being hunted at the time. He could've just driven off and left Charlie alone - there was no reason to stay. And Charlie could've told her mum and called the authorities, there was no reason for her to protect Bumblebee. She wasn't going to "patent the crap" out of Bumblebee. But Charlie and Bumblebee ended up bonding and staying with each other because they wanted to, not because they had to. Their relationship is stronger and deeper because it was more of a conscious choice rather than something that happened out of absolute necessity.

Both Charlie and Bumblebee fulfilled a higher level of need; their emotional needs. A sense of security, belonging and love. Bumblebee was obviously suffering from memory loss and he had lost his voice. He was frightened and utterly alone. Charlie was still traumatised by the loss of her father; something that even her own family were unable to really help her with because they had emotionally moved on but she hadn't.



Charlie's relationship with her father provides the basis for her bonding with Bumblebee, and in turn this helps Charlie to come to terms with the loss of her father as everything comes full circle. We know that Charlie's dad shared his passion for automotive mechanics with her, and that they were building a car together before he passed away. He was her mentor, teacher and friend - passing on everything he knew through the love that they had. So when he passed away Charlie felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest. She felt empty inside. But seeing the derelict Beetle made her want to restore it; for this was not only an important part of her personal identity, but a way for her to maintain her father's legacy as she had hit a wall with the other car. Perhaps she could succeed with the Beetle where she had failed with the Corvette. She was determined to bring Bumblebee back to life. And indeed she ends up triggering his reactivation. And of course her father was also an avid supporter of her diving, a skill which she would use to rescue Bumblebee. So again, another legacy of her father leading to Charlie's connection with Bumblebee. There's a very emotionally powerful moment towards the end of the film where we see a Polaroid of Charlie with Bumblebee next to a Polaroid of Charlie and her late father; showing us that everything has come full circle. Charlie and Bumblebee connect at a far deeper emotional level than we've ever seen before in Transformers.

Everyone is useful



Aside from background extras, there are very few if any wasted characters. Everyone serves a purpose. You remember what all of the main and supporting characters do because they actually do stuff that contributes to the plot. Even Charlie's family prove useful! And when a character's usefulness came to a draw, that character was set aside rather than just tagging along being a nuisance -- e.g. Memo didn't have a role to play in the final battle, so we see him volunteering to stay behind to buy Charlie and Bumblebee time (and his plan hilariously fails as S7 vehicles just drive around him ). But this is so different from Bayformers where secondary human characters just tag along and don't do much other than screaming.

All the cringe-worthy Bayisms are gone

As others and I have already pointed out, a lot of the stuff that we have come to dislike about Bayformers and embarrassed us as TF fans are now gone in Bumblebee. Nobody gets peed on. Nobody gets humped. Nobody gets objectified. There is no enemy scrotum. No tasered scrotum. No Romeo & Juliet. No farting of parachutes. No close up of anyone's behinds. Very little coarse language; as in the S-word is only used twice. And you notice it more because it's used rarely. It makes Bumblebee far more family friendly and accessible to children.

It's given us something new (for Transformers)

We all know that Bayformers had become super formulaic. Nostalgia Critic's Non-Review of The Last Knight brilliantly pointed out just how ridiculously formulaic and predictable Transformers had become under Michael Bay as each movie just lathers, rinses and repeats the same plot over and over again ad nauseum. As I mentioned before, it's not a completely original plot being obviously inspired by E.T., but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's not a remake of E.T.; as I said, it's inspired by E.T. There are plenty of things that happen in Bumblebee that never happened in E.T. such as the backdrop of an intergalactic civil war. It's still giving us a much needed big breath of fresh air from the stifling repetition of Bayformers. Watching a Transformers film no longer needs to be a guilty pleasure. Because with previous films you'd often say, "Yeah, The Last Knight was stupid, but I liked it anyway." Here you can proudly say that you enjoyed Bumblebee without the accompanying sense of embarrassment.

There are many more qualities in this film, but these are the main ones that stick out to me.