It’s still too early to tell whether the Transformer spin-off, Bumblebee will be any good, but we got our first look at a trailer today and it looks like it will, at the very least, be a lot of fun for kids. Helping to add a little bit of faith that this film could be better than the last several Michael Bay TF movies, is the fact that the director of Laika’s Kubo and The Two Strings, Travis Knight, is helming this movie.
While we still aren’t, and probably never will, getting a live-action generation 1 Transformer, the 80’s set movie is at least giving us the vehicles. Bumblebee is a classic VW beetle, and we even get a look at what definitely seems like it could be Starscream beginning to transform out of his classic jet mode. If there’s something that leaves us aggravated is that they are still refusing to give Bumblebee his own voice and they are making him look like some sort of wounded dog instead of the strong character he was known to be in the original cartoons.
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.