Bumblebee
Short description
Set in 1987, this science fiction adventure follows Bumblebee, an Autobot who flees his war-torn home planet and lands on Earth. After a confrontation on arrival, he loses his voice and his ability to speak, and his damaged memory, and takes the form of an old yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He ends up in a junkyard in a small Californian coastal town, where Charlie Watson, a teenager approaching her eighteenth birthday and struggling to work out her place in the world, finds him battered and broken. She has a talent for mechanical work, and she takes on the task of repairing the car she was given, only to discover it is far more than an ordinary vehicle.
The film is a spin-off of the Transformers series, directed by Travis Knight. It followed his animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings and sits second in the four titles he has directed, ahead of Masters of the Universe and Wildwood. Christina Hodson wrote the screenplay, Michael Bay, Don Murphy and Lorenzo di Bonaventura produced, and Hailee Steinfeld plays Charlie, with John Cena as Jack Burns, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Memo Gutierrez and Dylan O'Brien voicing Bumblebee. Made for 135 million dollars, it took 468 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.7 from 207,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7 from 6,843, while critics gave it 6.9 from 251 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film features several scenes with references to Steven Spielberg’s films. A poster in the cinema advertises ‘Gremlins’ (1984), which was produced by Spielberg. The letters ‘BFG’ can be seen on Charlie’s overalls, which stands for ‘The BFG’ (Steven Spielberg, 2016). A poster for Spielberg’s adventure film ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (1981) hangs in the room of the character played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr. The tunnel in which the heroes are chased by the police is the same one used in the films ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988) and ‘Back to the Future Part II’ (1989), both of which Spielberg produced.
- The first film in the Transformers franchise not directed by Michael Bay. He served as a producer here.
- The special effects team built a life-size Bumblebee model to make it easier for Hailee Steinfeld to interact with him in some scenes. A full-scale model of Bumblebee’s head, chest, and arms was also created, fully painted and with illuminated eyes.
- Peter Cullen said in 2020 that he didn't particularly enjoy working on this film. The reason was that the filmmakers decided to use a different voice actor to avoid paying Cullen, and he was only invited at the very end to quickly record his lines. Therefore, Cullen had to 'adjust' his voice acting to match the other actor, as the animation of Optimus Prime was already complete.
- Hailee Steinfeld was born nine years after the events of the film took place, so she had to be introduced to some things typical of the 1980s and completely unfamiliar to young people – for example, Sony ‘Walkman’ players.
- Some scenes were filmed in Vallejo, California, simultaneously with the filming of the series '13 Reasons Why' (2017-2020). Considering the noise from explosions and helicopters in certain scenes, the '13 Reasons Why' crew had to pause between takes to avoid filming at the same time as the noise from the neighboring set.
- Bumblebee transforms into a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle with bumpers that were only installed on the export version of the car. Cars were also painted yellow only for export, and cars for the domestic market were not painted yellow until 1990.
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