• Composed by Dario Marianelli
• Paramount / 57m

A prequel to the Transformers film series, Bumblebee is also the first in the series not to be directed by Michael Bay, and has attracted a far more positive critical response than any of the previous five; perhaps not surprisingly, it’s also not attracted anywhere near the sort of box office these films usually do. It’s only the second film directed by Travis Knight, and is nothing like his previous one (Kubo and the Two Strings) – in one of the most unlikely composer assignments I can ever remember, his Kubo composer Dario Marianelli signed on to do the film (and managed to not get replaced late on, which had always seemed like a possibility – c.f. Mychael Danna on Hulk or Carter Burwell on Thor 2). It’s not often that you hear a new blockbuster Hollywood film score and genuinely don’t know what to expect – but given Marianelli has never scored anything remotely similar to this before, that was indeed the case here. In fact, he’s written a pretty big action score which is very much in keeping with the modern sound, albeit one with a greater sheen of class over the top than has been heard in this franchise previously.