Michael Bay oversaw the Transformers franchise for about a decade. While those films weren’t critical darlings, they were huge box office successes and Bay and Paramount executives became even more wealthy each time a new Transformers film hit theaters. But when 2017’s Transformers: The Last Knight came out, most fans hated it and the box office numbers were not as big as the previous films. The big wigs Paramount decided that it was time for a reboot and they decided to make a prequel. 2018’s Bumblebee didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, but it cost a lot less than any of the Bay’s Transformers films and it was successful enough that Paramount decided to churn out another prequel of the franchise.

It’s 1994 in NYC, and Noah (Anthony Ramos) is an ex-military man trying to get a job to help his mom and pay for his brother’s cancer treatments, coming up short when it comes to employment opportunities. After another unsuccessful job interview, Noah decided to turn to car theft to make money. Partnered up with his friend Reek (Tobe Nwigwe), they decided to go steal cars at a fancy hotel. Noah manages to break into Mirage (voiced by Pete Davidson), an Autobot newly contacted by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) when the leader spots a TransWarp Key signal in the sky.

The device is capable of opening time and space, offering the Autobots a chance to return to their home world. Also, after the Key is Terrorcon Scourge (Peter Dinklage), who’s working for Unicron (Colman Domingo), a massive machine that’s hungry for planets, needing the Key to feed once again. The person who opened the TransWarp Key is Elena (Dominique Fishback) an artifact research intern. Prime and his teammates were able to locate the Key but Scourge and his team were already there. A battle ensues and Prime found out that Scourge is a more powerful robot and he’s getting butt whoop. Fortunately, Maximal Falcon Airazor (Michelle Yeoh) came to the rescue and they’re able to evade Scourge and his gang. But Scourge has the key, so Prime and everyone, including the two humans, Noah and Elena, must travel to Peru to retrieve another key in order to save the world.

Five writers were credited for the screenplay and sadly the story they came up with was very generic. It’s very similar to the previous Transformers films, except Bumblebee. I like the fact that they tried to establish the human characters first, but the human leads were so clichéd that I had to roll my eyes a few times. Noah and Elena are the typical non-white characters who have a lot of struggles in the world, and they must overcome a lot but still face prejudices and so on. Not much has changed when it comes to the Transformers, they do get more screen time than any of the Michael Bay’s films.

Director Steven Caple Jr. didn’t really elevate the generic screenplay that much. I was surprised since he directed the highly entertaining but generic sequel, Creed 2. One thing he did that I appreciated was how he shot the action scenes, instead of the headache-inducing chaos from Bay’s films, we’re able to see what’s going on during the action set pieces.

2018’s Bumblebee was a huge surprise to me, it was refreshing, entertaining, and full of heart. It’s what the first Transformers film should’ve been. I was hoping for the same type of film in this second prequel, but the story was too cliché and everything else was too generic for me. There’s a little tidbit at the end of this film that will make some fans of the franchise very excited. It was kind of surprising to me but it’s not something that I would get excited about. Considering Hollywood film franchises are creating this whole shared or multiverses, it’s only a matter of time before this franchise will do the same.

Have you seen the latest Transformers movie? Let us know what you think!

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