B-127 (Bumblebee)

B-127 is the same character as the Bumblebee of the earlier films and almost nothing like him. Travis Knight's Bumblebee (2018) is a soft reboot: it moves the story to 1987, drops the Bay films' hyperkinetic design language for the boxy G1-derived look designed by Ken Christiansen, and, most importantly, is a film about a scared teenager and a scared robot rather than about the military.

He arrives on Earth as a scout sent by Optimus to prepare a refuge, is ambushed by the Decepticon Blitzwing, and has his voice box torn out and his memory core badly damaged. He hides as a battered Volkswagen Beetle in a California junkyard and is found by Charlie Watson, a grieving eighteen-year-old played by Hailee Steinfeld. Dylan O'Brien voices him in the opening sequence and, briefly, at the end; for the bulk of the film he communicates through the car radio, which is a device the Bay films used as a gag and this one uses as characterisation.

The difference from the Bay films is structural, not cosmetic. Bumblebee is small, frightened and physically outmatched. The action is comprehensible, the robots are legible on screen, and the emotional stakes are two damaged individuals finding each other rather than a global extinction event. The Decepticons Shatter and Dropkick are hunting him specifically, and the human military under Agent Burns is a complication rather than a co-lead.

At the end he recovers enough of himself to send Optimus the signal, takes the Camaro alt mode the earlier films use, and drives away. The film was received as the best in the series by a wide margin, and its continuity relationship to the Bay films has never been formally resolved.

Volkswagen Beetle Type 1 alt mode for most of the film, switching to a Chevrolet Camaro at the end; arm-mounted plasma cannon and a compact stinger weapon. He is fast and agile but, in this film specifically, small and physically outmatched by every Decepticon he meets. Limits: his voice box is destroyed by Blitzwing and never repaired in the film, his memory core is damaged so he does not know who he is or why he came, and he loses most of the fights he is in.

• Charlie Watson: the film's centre, a grieving teenager and a damaged scout repairing each other; the closest the franchise has come to a two-hander.
• Optimus Prime: the commander who sends him to Earth, present only in the prologue and the closing minutes.
• Blitzwing: the Decepticon who tears out his voice box, the injury that defines every subsequent film appearance.
• Shatter and Dropkick: the Decepticon hunters sent after him, and the film's principal antagonists.

The 2018 film's version is closest to G1's Bumblebee in design and to IDW's in temperament, particularly the mute-scout characterisation IDW explored in Bumblebee-focused miniseries. The Bay films' Bumblebee is louder, more capable and more comic; B-127 is deliberately smaller in every sense.

Survives Bumblebee (2018), recovers partial memory, adopts the Camaro alt mode and signals Optimus to bring the Autobots to Earth. He appears again in Rise of the Beasts (2023), where he is destroyed and subsequently revived.

• Directed by Travis Knight, of Laika, in his first live-action film; the shift in tone from Michael Bay's five films was widely credited to that change.
• Character designs by Ken Christiansen returned to the boxy, G1-derived proportions of the 1984 toys, abandoning the shard-heavy ILM design language of the Bay films.
• Voiced by Dylan O'Brien, who speaks only in the opening Cybertron sequence and at the very end; the rest of the performance is radio clips and physical animation.
• The Volkswagen Beetle alt mode restores the character's original 1984 vehicle mode, which the 2007 film had replaced with a Camaro for licensing reasons; the film ends by switching him to the Camaro to bridge the two.
• The film's continuity relationship to the Bay films is unresolved: it contradicts Dark of the Moon's account of Autobot arrivals on Earth, and Paramount has never formally stated whether it is a prequel or a reboot.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• Whether Bumblebee (2018) is a prequel to the Bay films or a full reboot has never been settled; it directly contradicts Dark of the Moon on when and how the Autobots reached Earth.