Bumblebee

Travis Knight’s 2018 film pulls the series back to 1987, where Charlie works out the Volkswagen in the scrapyard is a robot. The directing choice shows in every frame. Knight came out of stop motion at Laika, and on his first live action feature he built the robot scenes like animated ones, storyboarded throughout. The crew also built a full size head, chest and upper arms for Bumblebee, used whenever Charlie touches him, which gave the cinematographer real light bouncing onto Hailee Steinfeld. That is the technical reason the two hander plays. The designs went back to the 1980s G1 line with a cleaner face, and the opening Cybertron fight brings out Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Shockwave and Starscream in cartoon colours. Dylan O’Brien, who voices Bumblebee, was announced weeks before release and is heard only in the opening minutes, since Blitzwing tears the voice box out and leaves the robot with beeps and radio clips. A good fit if you notice robot acting planned with animation discipline and want the thing touched to be an object on set. Not for you if you came for the city wide destruction of the earlier films, since the widest scene here is a prologue that ends before the story starts. It took 468 million dollars worldwide against 605 million for The Last Knight.