Bumblebee

Now this is what the first Transformers movie should've been!! Since seeing this film back in 2018, I was adamant that this was the best in the Transformers franchise, and rewatching all the films in this franchise cemented that statement. This is leagues better than any of the Bay Transformers (even the first one, which many tend to say is a solid film; so much so that it had me questioning my opinions of it). The comparisons between this entry and the other 5 films are as simple as how I'd assume both Michael Bay and Travis Knight think of audiences and their viewing of these films: Bay - "Audiences don't care about human stories or narratives in general. They just wanna see Giant Robots fight, and explosions!" Knight - "Audiences do want to see giant robots fighting, but they also want good human stories and narratives to go along with that.." As I mentioned previously, I didn't grow up on Transformers, so I was never the biggest fan of the IP, nor did I have any interest in going back and looking up any older media involving these characters. In watching (and rewatching) this film, that interest in checking out the older stuff is peaked! Also, as if having great human characters, dialogue, story, and cinematogaphy (for goodness sakes, this looks different and better than the 5 previous installments; like, this feels like a real movie, whereas the others feel like student films...) wasn't enough, we're given good, colorful character designs for our transformer robots. In the other films, while the good guys tended to be different color schemes, the bad guys all blended together in colors of grey or black with similar looking features, so it was impossible to tell who our good guys were fighting or destroying at any given time. Here, everyone gets some color! I was never confused about who was fighting, who was talking or anything, it was great. Here's hoping all these characters can be revisited at some point in the future in some kind of potential crossover/major event....