Back in the mid-2000s Michael Bay was handed the keys to the live action Transformers movie(s). It was co-produced by Steven Spielberg, who was interested in the idea of one boy and his car for a film. Bay wanted to do a film with a lot of explosions, where the military were the real heroes and the Transformers just happened to be there.
He had no real love for the franchise, and seemed to be more intersted with making it look awesome than things like crafting good characters, cohisive plots and being well written. I nthe end it was a sucessful generic action film franchise, but not for those of us that loved the original show and it's successors.
Bumblebee, while still produced by Bay, is effectively a reboot. Going back to Spielberg's notes while replacing the boy with a girl, and being done by people that not only know but respect the source matrial. This time round the chracters are developed, both human and Transformer. There's some clever dialoge but still some creative action and above all a much brighter colour set up. The Transformers look more solid, rugged even.
It's not perfect, the plot is anything but original and there are parts where it just devolves into a visual CGI soup but unlike the more recent of Bay's universe of films it's never crass or offensive.
Well deserving of a watch