Why the ‘Bumblebee’ Buzz Is Real

When the first Transformers film hit theaters in 2007, we were met with unforgiving amounts of director Michael Bay’s signature explosions, and robots plagued by unusually large amounts of pointy metal. For those who grew up with the original show, it had seemed to have taken a radically different direction from the source material. It became fairly commonplace for a Transformers fan proclaiming their love for the franchise to add, “I’m talking about Gen 1, not Bayformers.”

Even though the show was really just an episodic commercial to help bring the Japanese toy line Diaclone to the West, it still heavily resonates with those who grew up with it. If you ask a fan which of the films is their favorite, you’re probably going to be told “the 1986 animated one.” Indeed, that movie was an action-packed, rock-and-roll adventure, packed with memorable songs from Stan Bush, and voices from the legendary Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles.

While some people really seemed to take to the new designs, plenty of others longed for something reminiscent of their old, blocky forms, a charming side effect of how the original toys had to be prototyped with wooden carvings. Modern takes upon these designs had been present within other media that cared about the source material, like the video games War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. By contrast, the film franchise always seemed as if they were pulling from random wiki articles and just mashing them together. Case in point: Hound’s film design being clearly taken from Bulkhead in Transformers: Animated, which ran on TV from 2007 to 2009.

So I don’t think anyone would have expected the next installment in the film franchise to not only be directed by Travis Knight, of Kubo and the Two Strings fame, but to also finally return to the aesthetic of the original designs. When the second trailer for Bumblebee dropped this week, starring Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena, it was met with a lot of excitement from the hardcore fan base. The plot seems to play out like a beautiful homage to Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, with a young girl discovering her new car is secretly a space robot, which she must hide from the pesky government at all costs. But most importantly, this trailer really shows fans that it actually cares.

The film franchise always seemed as if they were pulling from random wiki articles and just mashing them together.

This sentiment is strongly felt by Josh Perez, Bumblebee toy collector and colorist on the Transformers comics from IDW Publishing. “From the Cybertronian tetrajet alt modes, to Prime and Soundwave looking incredibly G1 with detailed flourishes, to Bumblebee being a classic Volkswagen Beetle—just on a visual level, this new Bumblebee movie is offering so much clean and colorful eye candy,” Perez tells Playboy. “The Transformers movie universe beforehand has had colorful Autobots, but the designs have mostly been everywhere and, especially for the Decepticons—incredibly gray and spiky, to the point where sometimes it takes a moment to even really see what you’re looking at.”

It’s clear that there’s a very different—and welcome—tone to Bumblebee, exemplified by the bond between Steinfeld’s Charlie and the film’s title character, meaning you’re not alone if you’re suddenly excited for the December 21 release to roll around. “There’s a focus on Charlie and Bee’s connection, a friendship we didn’t really get to feel since the first Transformers movie—and even that one was kinda ‘eh,'” Perez continues about the trailer. “You want to root for the pair and see how they help each other along throughout the movie. This film puts the current Transformers movie universe through a lens that hits the nostalgia notes you’d want hit as a fan of the original 80’s cartoon, but still feels like it’s within this movie’s universe.”