Few artifacts can evoke the golden, kaleidoscopic wonderland of childhood like a beloved plaything. The mere sight of a threadbare doll or a well-worn, well-loved action figure can transport us back to a time when life was new and boundless and filled with beauty and magic and discovery beckoning at every turn. A child’s toy isn’t merely a lifeless assemblage of metal and plastic and molded polycarbonate. A child’s toy is a vessel for creativity and joy and imagination. A child’s toy is something that’s deeply loved, and that which we deeply love becomes a part of us.
That’s what the Transformers meant to me. I was nine years old when the Autobots and Decepticons thundered into my world. An ancient race of enormous sentient space robots brought their age-old conflict raging down to Earth and into my imagination. They were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. And they were awesome. I spent countless hours playing with my Optimus Prime action figure, trying and failing to conjure Peter Cullen’s fixture-rattling voice as I’d lead a noble charge of Autobots across my cluttered bedroom floor. I’d collapse and reshape Megatron’s forbidding form into a deadly Walther P38 handgun, laying waste to the traitorous Autobots and looking over my shoulder for that scheming Starscream (and occasionally pretending I was James Bond). But no Transformer captivated my interest as much as Bumblebee.
Bumblebee was a humble yellow Autobot scout who took the alt form of a VW Beetle, of all things. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t striking. By Transformers standards he was small and callow and not particularly powerful. But he was the Transformer with the greatest affinity for humanity. He was the one who was most like us. He was the one who was most like me.
At home, nestled in my room, surrounded by teetering stacks of tattered paperbacks, splashy comic books, and warped VHS tapes, I would lose myself creating Bumblebee’s stories. Together we wandered through faraway lands, grappling with the evil Decepticons, running high-wire reconnaissance missions, and racing through canyons of disused cardboard boxes. For a lonely child of the ’80s, Bumblebee wasn’t just an overworked, scuffed up plastic toy. He was fully alive. And he was a part of me.
Thirty years later, I have the amazing opportunity to breathe life into Bumblebee once more. Only this time, I get to share our story with the world. But our story is going to be a little different.
Five films into the TRANSFORMERS series, audiences have come to expect a certain kind of cinematic experience from the franchise: expansive, muscular storytelling with jaw-dropping spectacle, high-octane action, cutting-edge visual effects, and giant rock ’em sock ’em robot battles. And explosions. Lots and lots of explosions. BUMBLEBEE represents a dramatic shift from that template. This film is an intimate, deeply personal, character-driven love story that plays out like a classic Amblin movie from the ’80s. With explosions Lots and lots of explosions.
Well, maybe not that many. Because while BUMBLEBEE has plenty of white-knuckle thrills, sci-fi insanity, and pulse-quickening feats of derring-do, this film evokes and pays tribute to those indelible qualities of the Transformers of my childhood. And for me, that meant magic. Wonder. Imagination. And love.
And it all began with a child’s plaything.
I hope the enclosed toys shine a light into the darkened, cobwebbed corners of your youth, evoking beloved memories of your own. And I can’t wait to share some of mine with you when BUMBLEBEE races into theaters this Christmas. It’s a story thirty years in the making.
Cheers,
Travis Knight
Director, BUMBLEBEE
I HAVE GREAT HOPE THIS MAN SOUNDS LIKE HE ACTUALLY LOVE TRANSFORMERS
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 