Bumblebee: 8 Reasons Why It Will Be The Best Transformers Film Ever

The Transformers films have never been particularly talented at crafting compelling or even likable human protagonists.

The first three films revolved around Sam Witwicky, as played by the artist formerly known as Shia Labeouf, who was a hyper-aggressive man-child at best and an absolutely awful human being at worst. To follow this up, Bay recruited Mark Wahlberg for the next two films to play Cade Yeager (yes, that is his actual name in those movies). Much like Witwicky and pretty much all of the male characters in Bay's films, Yeager was an abusive, constantly angry character who was also insanely unlikable.

But with Bumblebee, the franchise finally looks to have a human protagonist who actually likable and matters to the film. Hailee Steinfeld's Charlie has shown no signs of being the over-the-top caricature that the previous leads were constantly and thankfully, with Bay out of the director's chair, there's no sign of her being objectified by the camera as all of the other females in the franchise (including the extremely underage Izabella in The Last Knight) have been.

Audiences may finally get a human lead in these films who isn't immediately off-putting.