This past December, every Generation One fan’s childhood was brought to life on the big screen by director Travis Knight in the all-too-brief Cybertron battle sequence in Paramount Pictures’ Transformers spinoff Bumblebee.
The sequence featured cameo appearances from some of the franchise’s most beloved characters in their classic 80s designs. Unfortunately, the film’s ties to Michael Bay continuity meant we never got to see the most feared Transformer of all, the mighty Megatron, and Knight has been speaking to Entertainment Weekly about his original plan to include the Decepticon leader.
“I had this whole thing that I boarded out myself where I had Megatron in there,” said Knight. “He comes into the scene just absolutely levelling shit, just laying waste to everything in his path like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. We had a [new] design and a partial build and everything. I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to do it, but then as we started going through, it was going to be too expensive and really did fly in the face of continuity with the [Michael] Bay films. But let’s be honest, I’m sure they have a fleeting sense of continuity themselves. [It] created issues for people who were unfamiliar with the franchise. I wanted to make sure this film was a tribute to the live-action films as well as the cartoon, that there were layers of enjoyment for fans of both.”
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It’s certainly a shame that Megatron’s whereabouts in the Bay continuity prevented him from making an appearance as part of the Battle for Cyberton – particularly as Bumblebee has now been confirmed as rebooting the franchise. Hopefully it’s now only a matter of time before we do get to see him in all of his G1 glory.
Bumblebee is directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings), and stars Hailee Steinfeld (Edge of Seventeen), Pamela Adlon (Better Things), John Cena (Daddy’s Home 2), Stephen Schneider (Broad City), Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Jason Drucker (Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul), Kenneth Choi (American Crime Story), Ricardo Hoyos (Degrassi: Next Class), Abby Quinn (Landline), Rachel Crow (Deidra & Laney Rob a Train), Grace Dzienny (Zoo) and John Ortiz (Kong: Skull Island).
