Bumblebee: Transformers Spin-Off Gets A Throwback Poster

Bumblebee has a new poster — and, like the spin-off film itself, it appears to be set squarely in the '80s. 

Revealing the tagline "Every hero has a beginning," the colorful new poster features the visage of the titular Transformer, along with those of cast members Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena, superimposed over the backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge along with the Transformers logo. Collider was the first to give us a sneak peek.

The poster is in the classic "floating heads" style, which came into vogue in the '80s and has also been heavily relied upon by Marvel Studios. Of course, the posters for recent mega-crossovers such as Avengers: Infinity War have struggled to give real estate to each cast member, leading to a look which can politely be described as "busy." By contrast, the Bumblebee poster looks much cleaner, and instantly evokes the film's San Francisco setting by prominently including the city's most famous landmark.

Bumblebee promises to give us a different experience from previous Transformers movies, which just seemed to get bigger and more explosion-y with each successive entry. Perhaps not coincidentally, the flick will be the first in the series not to be directed by Michael Bay. Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight helmed the picture in his first live-action effort.

The spin-off has been pitched to the public as an all-ages adventure in the vein of Steven Spielberg's beloved '80s output, so the new poster is nothing if not appropriate. The plot synopsis, too, might sound a wee bit familiar to fans of Amblin-style family entertainment: "On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug."

All we need now is a nefarious government agency intent on capturing the Autobot for its own shady purposes, and we'll have a classic Spielbergian plot. Of course, the filmmakers could not have foreseen the dismal failure of this year's A.X.L., which boasted the same basic structure in a story centered upon a military-designed, weaponized robot dog. That film, however, didn't have the benefit of an attachment to a popular franchise.

With a scaled-back budget and storyline, studio Paramount seems to hoping for a bit of a course correction from Transformers: The Last Knight. The 2017 film had the largest budget and smallest worldwide gross of any Transformers movie. As the first spin-off from the main series, Bumblebee looks to be testing the viability of smaller, more character-driven Transformers flicks. Leaning on Spielberg as a major influence could be a winning strategy, and if this poster is any indication, we'll all be in for a totally radical romp through the '80s when the flick hits screens.

Bumblebee is slated for release on December 21.