What’s old is new again. Of the many things to complain about with Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, one is that it barely resembles the toys we grew up on. Well that looks to change with the upcoming Bumblebee spinoff, a film that brings with it a couple of firsts. A new image from Empire’s upcoming issue (via HeroicHollywood) reveals Bumblebee, not as a slick Camaro, but as an old school yellow Volkswagon Bug just as he was in the cartoons and toys we loved in the ’80s.
So this is not only the first Transformers live-action spinoff, it’s also the first time we’re seeing Bumblebee in this form on the big screen. The image also shows star Hailee Steinfeld as mechanic Charlie Watson, another human who comes to befriend the Autobots’ smallest, loyalest, quietest, and yellowest hero. Bumblebee has a habit of picking up human strays, doesn’t he?
The film does take place in the 1980s so the look makes sense. We know he’s actually been around much longer than that, even battling Nazis in WWII. Based on the synopsis it sounds like his decades of fighting have taken a toll…
On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug.
Directed by Travis Knight with John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg, Jason Drucker, Abby Quinn, Rachel Crow, Ricardo Hoyos, Kenneth Choi and Gracie Dzienny, Bumblebee opens December 21st 2018.
