Michael Bay Made a Major Change to This Transformer For a Bizarre Reason

Ask any long-time Transformers fan how and what director Michael Bay changed for the live-action movies of these characters and you may hear hours upon hours of grievances concerning the drastic differences. Everything about the Transformers was overhauled for the big screen, partially because of Bay’s outspoken long-time agnosticism to the larger Transformers brand. Megatron was no longer a gun, Optimus Prime was more bloodthirsty than any other incarnation of the character, the Dinobots weren’t created by the Autobots. The changes go on and on. They also appeared to not bother audiences too much, as the five Michael Bay Transformers movies made over $4.3 billion at the global box office.

Clearly, these deviations from the source material worked in Bay’s favor since, for many years, the Transformers movies were a license to print money that general audiences could easily hop into at any time without worrying about understanding extensive mythos. Among the many changes Bay incorporated, though, was ditching Bumblebee’s original alternate vehicle mode. The filmmaker decided to do this not because he thought the car was bad but instead to avoid comparisons with another car-centric film franchise.

Why Wasn’t Bumblebee Initially a VW Bug in Live-Action?

In the Generation 1 (G1) Transformers cartoon from the 1980s, Bumblebee’s Earthbound alternate vehicle form was a VW Beetle. Given that new Volkswagen Beetle’s were already no longer being produced by the time Transformers started airing in 1984, this vehicle choice was always a very specific and anachronistic one. However, this pick ensured that Bumblebee was always the plucky, smaller underdog compared to his bigger Autobot brethren with their more towering alternate vehicle forms. This alternate form became so popularly associated with Bumblebee that it even reappeared in other media like the first issues of the IDW Transformers comics in the 2000s.

However, when it came time for Bay to bring Bumblebee to the world of live-action cinema with 2007’s Transformers, he immediately knew he wanted a more striking automobile form for the character. In the feature-length Making of Transformers, Bay revealed that he was “never” going to make Bumblebee a Volkswagon Beetle because it reminded him too much of Herbie: The Love Bug, the famous Disney car that got into all kinds of wacky antics in the 60s and 70s. Wanting to carve out a more distinctive visual appearance for the character, not to mention instill a more towering and threatening look for a robot that would be engaging in massive action sequences, the decision was made to change Bumblebee into a Chevrolet Camaro.

[RELATED: Michael Bay’s Transformers Movies Were Almost Derailed After the First Film]

Of course, this change also allowed the initial Transformers movie to make a lucrative promotional deal with Chevrolet to promote its newest automobile model. However, to give Bay the benefit of the doubt, Herbie might’ve been on his mind as he first began tackling Transformers in the mid-2000s thanks to the 2005 film Herbie: Fully Loaded. A Lindsay Lohan star vehicle from D.E.B.S. mastermind Angela Robinson, Fully Loaded did decent numbers at the worldwide box office. Perhaps wanting to make sure general audiences meeting Bumblebee for the first time didn’t immediately dismiss the Autobot as a Herbie clone, Bay opted to go in a different direction.

The Return of Bumblebee’s Classic Vehicle Mode in Live-Action

For the various Michael Bay Transformers movies, Bumblebee would keep shifting vehicle modes to more modern Chevy Camaro models. With that first Transformers movie being such a success, there was no reason to change the character’s vehicle mode back to his G1 roots. For the longest time, it looked like Bumblebee’s rusty initial form being parked next to a Volkswagon Beetle at Bobby Bolivia’s used car dealership was as far as audiences would see this robot and automobile mingle on the big screen.

Then 2018’s Bumblebee rolled around with new director Travis Knight steering the creative ship. The movie’s 1980s setting, and aim to closely emulate the G1 roots of the franchise (as seen by a Cybertronian prologue depicting G1-accurate Transformers duking it out), meant the time had finally come for long-time Bumblebee fans. This character finally took on a Volkswagon Beetle alternate form for an entire feature film. To boot, this form appeared in what’s by far the best-reviewed live-action Transformers movie to date.

For the Bumblebee follow-up Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Bumblebee went back to embracing Chevy cars by transforming into a 1977 Chevrolet Camaro. Given that Herbie’s been MIA from the big screens for two decades now, there can’t be any lingering concerns of this character’s classic vehicle mode reminding viewers of a Disney character. Instead, whether classic Transformers like it or not, Bumblebee’s Chevy vehicle mode is entrenched as “normal” to a generation of Autobot fans. Nearly two decades after Bay’s first Transformers movie, the filmmaker’s changes to Transformers lore have become ingrained as norms in this franchise.

Transformers is now streaming on Paramount+.