'Bumblebee' Trailer: Everyone's Favorite Autobot Gets An Origin Story

The Transformers franchise gets a new lease on life with Bumblebee, an adventure that looks to inject some humanity into the bombastic series. The prequel takes Bumblebee back to the 1980s, where the Autobot teams up with Hailee Steinfeld to help save the world. Yet another Bumblebee trailer has just rolled up online, and you can watch it below.

The Transformers franchise quickly descended into maximum chaos, with Michael Bay's unique brand of Bayhem turning the popular toy line and cartoon characters into blurry CGI monstrosities, smashing and obliterating everything in sight while hapless humans run around shouting. I know these movies have their defenders, but in my humble opinion, none of them are good. Not even the first one, which I often see defended.

But Bumblebee might change things. The prequel has Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight at the helm, and from the looks of things, Knight's style is considerably different than Bay's. Sure, there's still explosions and chases here, but the visuals are much clearer – we can see what's happening. It's not all a blur of metal and fire with no discernible coherency. Then there's the indication that the script, from Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, is drawing on E.T. to tell a more grounded, more emotional story.

Our own Hoai-Tran Bui loved the movie, saying in her review:

Bumblebee feels like the first Transformers movie to understand what the franchise is. No matter how militaristic, and bombastic, and oddly violent the Transformers movies get, at their core, they're still based on a toy line. Unburdened by the convoluted mythology of the Transformers universe, Bumblebee taps into that core and makes a movie for the child in all of us who just wants to know what it's like to become friends with one of the robot action figures we smashed together.

"Honestly, I want to tell a pretty timeless story with this one," Hodson said. "I grew up on Amblin movies. I always loved the way those movies did kind of feel timeless. They felt like they could exist anytime, anyone in this small town that felt almost like a bubble. And the 80's felt like a natural fit. I grew up in the 80's. It's when Transformers became a big thing. It's when a lot of people fell in love with Bumblebee, so it made sense to do it then."

I'm cautiously optimistic. Of course, as irony would have it, the first Transformers movie I've ever been interested in is tracking to have the lowest opening in the franchise's history. I sure can pick 'em!

In addition to Hailee Steinfeld, Bumblebee stars John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, and the voices of Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, David Sobolov, and Jess Harnell as various Decepticons. And of course, Peter Cullen is back once again as the voice of Optimus Prime.

Bumblebee opens December 21, 2018.

On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee the Autobot seeks refuge in a junkyard in a small California beach town. Charlie, on the brink of turning 18 years old and trying to find her place in the world, soon discovers the battle-scarred and broken Bumblebee. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns that this is no ordinary yellow Volkswagen.