Bumblebee Cast at SDCC Reveals Triple Changers

On Friday the cast of the upcoming Bumblebee movie appeared at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con to promote the movie. Director Travis Knight was on hand with Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. Below are the few details that were revealed during the panel.

- Yep the panel opened with a live performance from Stan Bush of "The Touch" from Transformers: The Movie.

- Travis Knight: “It’s an origin story. ...We find out who he was before he met us, why he becomes the character he becomes — it gives the opportunity what he’s about. It’s a way to look at Transformers like we never have before.”

- Knight: His animation experience of world building helped when making the movie. He also looked to G1 designs of the character for inspiration more then the Bay designs while looking to provide each Transformer with a unique silhouette and color palettes to make them easy to tell apart in fight scenes. If didn't do that then it could look like “two Radio Shacks reenacting the Karma Sutra" according to Knight.

- For Knight, Steven Spielberg's coming of age films from the 80s were a source of inspiration for the story which is a "a beautiful love story between these two characters.” (referring to 'Bee and Charlie).

- Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) is suffering from a major loss when she meets 'Bee who will help her find "her voice".

- John Cena is playing Agent Burns who according to the actor "He knows that he’s right, and that’s the reason that he does, sometimes, the naughty things that he does."

- Decepticons Shatter (voice by Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (voice by Justin Theroux) are triple changers. So red Shatter's alt modes is a Plymouth Satellite and a plane. The blue Dropkick's alt modes is a AMC Javelin and a helicopter.

- There will be a look at Cybertron (hopefully not the beehive Bay version).

- Knight said the jet from the first teaser trailer is Starscream. It is Blitzwing (not confirmed if he is a triple changer too but traditionally he is).

- The US Army, with John Cena's character are hunting Bumblebee with the Decepticons providing help (not clear if the Army is aware of the assistance or not).

- Optimus Prime makes an appearance in hologram form, not clear if Peter Cullen does any voice work.

Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena Comment on Bumblebee: The Movie

Bumblebee: The Movie stars Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena briefly commented on the movie. Steinfeld spoke about acting against a CGI character for the first time with IGN while Cena spoke about the project in general with Digital Spy. Cena does call the movie a "reboot" but it is not. It is more of a prequel to the Michael Bay movies with its 1987 setting. It could be argued its a "reboot" of approach for the franchise with a ~$70 million budget (compared to ~$200M on average) and by virtue of being the first film not directed by Michael Bay.

Hailee Steinfeld
“It's very character-driven and storyline-driven, which is good. I think will be interesting to see it play out because you still get the action and the Transformers themselves. There's a whole lot in it for the Transformers fans that I think they'll love, but it's definitely about storyline and characters.”

“It was definitely a process [acting against non-existent Bumblebee]. With his background in animation, [director Travis Knight] was able to see, visually, a final product. It was nice to have somebody that could verbally translate what that was. But it was difficult. It was hard, I think, for both of us to sort of maneuver,” she explained. “Not only was this something completely new to me but it was something completely new to him and a different, you know, a different way. It was definitely a work in progress but I think we got a good thing going and hopefully, we'll see what happens.”

John Cena
"It was awesome to be involved with that franchise, and a pleasure to be asked to be part of the movie, but I took the part because it was a challenge for me," he reiterated. "It's something that I haven't been able to showcase, and that I wanted to."

John Cena as Sector 7 Agent on Bumblebee Set

To left is an image of John Cena in his likely Sector 7 uniform along with Bumblebee movie lead Hailee Steinfeld in her own "uniform" for the movie. Its not enough to suss out any story elements except to confirm the usual military prescence all Transformers movies have had, you can find the rest of the set at AllSpark.com.