Why Megatron Isn’t in Bumblebee

Director Travis Knight (Kubo And The Two Strings) looks set to reinvigorate the Transformers franchise with his ’80s-set prequel/spin-off, Bumblebee. A fan of the original, “Generation 1” animated series, Knight has also taken the opportunity to take the film series back to basics, “streamlining” his robots-in-disguise designs and including cameos for some of the cartoon’s classic characters.

But while Autobot legend Optimus Prime puts in an appearance, there is one particular robot who’s conspicuous by his absence – the villainous Decepticon leader Megatron. According to Knight, though, he was originally intended to be in the film.

read more: How Bumblebee Changes the Transformers Franchise

“There was an iteration earlier on, where we actually did see Megatron in a scene that is no longer in the film, frozen in the Hoover dam,” the director tells Den of Geek UK when we catch up to talk all things Bumblebee.

“Because our film is so self-contained and essentially it presupposes no knowledge of the Transformers, one of the things I was trying to do was leave little things for the fans that didn’t get in the way of someone coming in and not knowing anything about the Transformers, that would get in the way of their appreciation and understanding of the film.”

read more: The Most Important Musical Moments on the Bumblebee Soundtrack

“Sometimes you push your own little fetishistic thing a little too far and people will be like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on? What the hell is that thing? Who’s that?’ and that was the case with the Megatron scene, where we see him frozen in the dam,” Knight continues. “People just didn’t get it – people who weren’t Transformers fans, they just didn’t understand what was going on. So we had this awesome G1 Megatron frozen in hoover dam that, alas, didn’t make the cut!”

Bumblebee is in theaters now. You can read our review here.