Bumblebee wipes out 65 million years of Transformers history

5 years ago, the Transformers franchise dared an experiment: It was supposed to be an end to Michael Bay’s expensive material battles, which had brought Paramount billions but eventually weakened at the box office. The warm-hearted Bumblebee was the result of these considerations. You can stream the film on Netflix since Thursday.

But it wasn’t just the style that changed: Travis Knight’s film takes place in the old Transformers universe – and yet restarted it. With the consequence that tons of mythology thrown out the window became. We explain what exactly happened in this article.

Bumblebee has (almost) nothing to do with Michael Bay’s Transformers films

The Transformers story in the cinema series began in 2007 with Shia LaBeouf. The timeline of the Transformers films looks like this:

We learn in the first five films how the Autobots and Decepticons changed world history. We see one alternative version of the moon landing (in Dark of the Moon), experience the Crusades and even the extinction of the dinosaurs (in Age of Exitinction).

Bumblebee jumps to 1987 and tells the story actually the backstory of the same Autobots that Sam Witwicky and Mikaela (Megan Fox) encounter. But it is not that simple. Bumblebee doesn’t care about Shia LaBeouf or Dinobots. None of this seems to exist in his universe.

Why Bumblebee had to wipe out the old Transformers history

After escaping the planet Cybertron, the Autobot Bumblebee befriends the young woman Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld): a retelling of the story starring Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky. Both origin stories are mutually exclusive.

Sam Witwicky and the 65 million years of Transformers history up to the dinosaurs Bumblebee just burns away. And there’s a good reason for that, as director Travis Knight admitted to Digital Spy:

We wanted the audience Don’t scare off with too much mythology. I wanted everyone to be able to go to this film and understand it, like it and enjoy it. I didn’t want to assume any familiarity with the franchise.

However, Bumblebee clearly takes place in the familiar Transformers world. You can recognize it by these features:

A desired compromise: “It’s always been a tightrope act. Are we taking away too much of what fans of the franchise love? It was important […] that we respect the fans.”

More on the subject:

So Bumblebee didn’t want to reboot the entire Transformers story so as not to alienate core fans. On the other hand, the pent-up Michael Bay mythology weighed on Bumblebee’s light-hearted approach. The victim: 65 million years of Transformers history that no longer exists in film reality.

You can stream Bumblebee on Netflix now. In addition to the spin-off, all other parts of the Transformers series are available on the streaming service. You can rent the latest film Transformers 7 from Amazon, among others.