Christmas is my favourite time of year, and it looks like Paramount already has a great big present with my name on it.
I have never made a secret of the mad nerd love I have for Transformers. Growing up, nothing else ever came close to either captivating or commanding my imagination nearly as much. How couldn’t I love the story of an ancient race of sentient robots locked in an ancient civil war with the forces of chaos and destruction on one side and those of noble selflessness and good on the other? A story that would weave a surprisingly complex and rich mythology to support it’s constantly changing and evolving characters, especially for a toy line/after school cartoon/comic book. It might as well have been Shakespeare with laser canons and aliens.
And I ate it up like there was no tomorrow, learning names, personalities, profiles, strengths, powers and every other detail I could glean from whatever source I could get my hands on. I collected Transformers facts and tidbits the way my grade school contemporaries collected trading cards. While they could recite the starting roster of the last ten World Series champions, I could recite every Decepticon combiner, tell you what respective sub-group they belonged to and their psychological profile (making friends was a little tough during those years).
From the toys (which came with the absolute best packaging), to the daily cartoon (which looks much better coated in reckless nostalgia) to the animated feature length movie (which still kicks ass), the Robots in Disguise were my very favourite thing growing up.
If there was any one piece of my childhood I wish I could have preserved, it would have been my modest collection of Transformers merchandise. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a genuine absence when the Transformers bubble burst and the franchise was shelved.
My love for Optimus and company was also the only reason I was able to tolerate Michael Bay’s Transformer movies for as long as I did. Like millions of other fans, I was more excited than a five-year old on Christmas Eve when I heard they were coming to the big screen, granted cinematic life by the same technology that gave us Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 and Independence Day.
I didn’t even mind the new look of the cinematic robots. Plenty of other Generation One fans screamed in outrage at the new looks, irate that Optimus and Megatron and Starscream weren’t the spitting images of their original cartoon incarnations. But I embraced the new aesthetic. Optimus looked strong and regal while Bumblebee was scrappy and agile. Megatron meanwhile, was downright terrifying, sporting a nightmarish look befitting one of the greatest villains in toy and animation history.
But it didn’t last forever and by the time the final credits rolled on the The Last Knight, I knew I couldn’t pretend any longer. The Bayverse had worn out its welcome in my Transformers loving heart. I had run out of both excuses and delusions. The first time I said goodbye to my beloved Transformers was because it was exiled into a marketing hibernation by the merciless boom and bust toy market. But this time I was choosing to wave the white flag because it had become clear it was no longer worth fighting for.
I received the news earlier this year that Hasbro and Paramount may be rebooting the Transformers with as much interest as I would a fender bender on my way to work; I knew something was happening but it was none of my concern and it wasn’t worth much of my time.
And I planned to pay little to no attention to the Bumblebee solo movie, which had been announced before everyone involved realized that the current Transformers movie universe deserved a much needed mercy killing.
But the first few glimpses of Bumblebee piqued my interest enough for me to slot it at number seven on my most anticipated titles of 2018’s Fall and Christmas season. And then came the most recent railer.
Video: Paramount Studios
Seeing Optimus, Soundwave and Ravage in their original G1 forms tickled my inner 12 year old to absolutely no end. It was like stepping into a time machine and travelling to a reality where I got to see some of my favourite childhood heroes (and villains) in a vibrant, powerful new light.
And it brought the world’s biggest nerd smile to both my face and my heart.
I’m not deluding myself. There is a very good chance Bumblebee will suck. Transformers fans have been burned by this franchise before. Bad. Especially those of us who gave it chance after chance (after chance). The fact is that outside of the brief glimpses of a handful of golden oldies in their original forms, I’ve seen nothing to convince me that Bumblebee won’t be another exercise in frustrated nostalgia and lazy storytelling.
But those few images (and the original transforming sound effect from the Generation One cartoon) also give me hope that Bumblebee could turn out to be a pleasant surprise.
Either way, suffice to say that between this movie and Hasbro’s decision to release a handful of Generation One Transformers in their original molds earlier this Fall, I’m enjoying a pleasant little Cybertronian renaissance. This movie could turn out to be the nicest stocking stuffer I’ve had for a while.
But you know what, even if Bumblebee does stink up the theatre, I think that will be OK. Christmas has always reminded me of the wonder and imagination I enjoyed as a child, and since Transformers stoked the creative fires of my imagination more than anything before or since, I have a funny feeling Bumblebee’s solo adventure will, at the very worst, be a guilty pleasure.
While I think it will likely get buried at the box office regardless of how good it may nor may not be (it’s coming out a week after Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse and Mortal Engines, two days after Mary Poppins Returns and the same weekend as Aquaman, Welcome To Marwen, Holmes and Watson and Elita: Battle Angel), it could very well turn out to be the the best gift I find under the tree this Christmas season.
Now if I could just figure out how to put a bow on a movie . . .
Picture Paramount Studios
