If you need more evidence that the change of director for the next installment in the Transformers franchise could make all the difference, look no further than this new clip from the upcoming Bumblebee, which shows the titular Autobot on the run from John Cena’s Agent Burns and his team.
Granted, there’s only so much you can glean from less than thirty seconds of action footage, but after five movies of confusing and overblown spectacle courtesy of Michael Bay, this relatively coherent and clutter-free chase sequence suggests that Travis Knight won’t be bringing us more of the same wearying onslaught of visual noise. You can watch the clip below in full confidence that you’ll have zero trouble working out which CGI robot is which.
To be fair, it probably helps that the Kubo and the Two Strings helmsman isn’t having to juggle quite so many lumbering metal goliaths in his set pieces, with the Paramount spinoff offering a story on a smaller scale than its bigger-is-better predecessors.
While previous trailers have already seen appearances from Optimus Prime and a few villainous Decepticons, the emotional core of this flick looks to be the bond between Bumblebee and Charlie, the latter of whom is played by Edge of Seventeen star Hailee Steinfeld. Though fans of the Bay movies may be showing up to this one hoping for more bot-on-bot action, the E.T.-style friendship between the feature’s central pair is what’s really piquing the curiosity of filmgoers who’d long given up on the main Transformers series.
For many of us, the bar has been set pretty low for Bumblebee, but here’s hoping that “it’s better than the Bay films” isn’t the nicest thing we can say about this release when it hits theaters on December 21st.