Hacker Cinema
Bumblebee
2018 · Film · 114 min
Directed by Travis Knight
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, 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.
3 positive4 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
If data integrity is assured, and thus there is no change in the data to store/transfer, then that's the opposite of computationally transforming the data?
How do we see robot and AI and helping interactions in film and tv and games?
A curated list of films for consideration:
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or "The Modern Prometheus" (1818), Metropolis (1927), I\, Robot (1940-1950; Three Laws of Robotics, robopsychology), Macy Conferences (1941-1960; Cybernetics), Tobor the Great (1954), Here Comes Tobor (1956), Jetsons' maid's name: Rosie (1962), Lost in Space (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Star Wars (1977), Terminator (1984), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Flubber (1997, 1961), Futurama (TV, 1999-), Star Wars: Phantom Menace (1999), The Iron Giant (1999), Bicentennial Man (1999), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2003), I\, Robot (2004), Team America: World Police (2004), Wall-E (2008), Iron Man (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Moon (2009), Surrogates (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Hugo (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Wild Robot (2016, 2024), Ghost in the Shell (2017),
Giant f robots: Gundam (1979), Transformers (TV: 1984-1987, 2007-), Voltron (1984-1985), MechWarrior (1989), Matrix II: Revolutions (2003), Avatar (2009, 2022, 2025), Pacific Rim (2013-), RoboCop (1987, 2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014),
~AI vehicle: Herbie, The Love Bug (1968-), Knight Rider (TV, 1982-1986), Thunder in Paradise (TV, 1993-95), Heat Vision and Jack (1999), Transformers (2007), Bumblebee (2018)
Games: Portal (2007), LEGO Bricktales (2022), While True: learn() (2018), "NPC" Non-Player Character
Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence
List of artificial intelligence films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films
Category:Films_about_robots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_robots
Category:American_robot_films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_robot_films
There are several Transformers successors and spinoffs across various media. Animated series like Beast Wars: Transformers (1996) introduced a new generation of transforming robots, shifting from vehicles to animals. Later, Transformers: Prime (2010) and Transformers: Cyberverse (2018) continued evolving the story and animation style. The live-action film series, starting in 2007, led to spinoffs like Bumblebee (2018) and an expanding cinematic universe. Beyond official media, franchises like Go-Bots (a competitor turned subsidiary) and Voltron (though distinct, often compared) reflect Transformers’ legacy in robot-focused storytelling.
1. Recapitulation of our childhood is particularly strong in my generation. For example, even after the Transformers movies, we obviously thought it wasn't enough like our memories, so we made Bumblebee.
2. Software for some 80s systems is ubiquitous.
3. Sound blaster hell/IRQ hell is a real thing and DOS is frustrating more than fun.
4. Prior generation computers were made for work and fun was a rare side effect of letting off steam.
5. Since Windows 2000 modern computers run the same software, so your retro is limited to beige boxes with flaky capacitors.
6. Non-wintel 90s+ computers are interesting and are indeed becoming a focus of retro computing. Power PC Macintosh, Acorn, BeBoxes, NeXT, SGI, even HP and DEC RISC computers are finding enthusiasm.
He also directed Bumblebee, perhaps the only great film in the Transformers universe.
The last SF or fantasy movie I've liked was, I believe, Interstellar. Everything since has either been a superhero movie, Star Wars (please make it stop), or a massive flop. Actually, Bumblebee was pretty entertaining now that I remember.
The TV has kinda become the new medium for SF/fantasy, but it too has started to become flooded with superhero shows, superhero deconstruction and more Star Wars.
> writing code, and dreaming of a decent Transformers movie before I die
Have you seen Bumblebee? I don't know what your idea of a "decent" Transformers movie is, but if you still like the original series there's a lot to like about Bumblebee, including character designs, voices, and dialogue that are close to the 1980s originals.
I am ok with multiple competing standards or two projects merging into one. The difference is, despite licensing, the dvd and blu ray specs are published standards.
What Im less ok with is this completely proprietary vudu, ultraviolet, moviesanywhere, fandango, itunes, googleplay, amazon digital locker tangled web mess. I should have ONE master account at ANY platform that tracks my ownership of digital keys, and it should grant me access to play it back on any platform that chooses to serve me the video file. If I decide to move from google to itunes I should be able to export or transfer my key library. If I have a google account, paid for Bumblebee in Play Movies, Apple should choose to honor my request for playback on my Apple TV, and cover the bandwidth. It would be in the best interest of making their product Just Work. And if Apple only wants to offer files for keys I have stored in their service, it should seamlessly fall back to grabbing the file from google without the user having to do a damn thing. It should just silently work. As a movie watcher I dont need or shouldnt need to care if the file is streaming from Apple or Google. (but if i were apple I would want full control of the video quality on an apple tv.)
None of this "you can load it into moviesanywhere and see it in vudu, but then you cant see it in intues or ultraviolet." Permanently locking the keys to proprietary temporal services seems explicity designed to have these services ebb and flow into new services and magicaly lose my keys from time to time, or make them nearly inaccessable if they can only flow into one specific other site.
Do they want my business? I am willing to pay, if it means not balancing full price access to nyt, wsj, foreign policy, bloomberg, wired, ars, etc etc etc. I cant just sign up for every single one of those, and they cant expect me to. Im not going to devote myself to just reading one or two of them. So either they can cater to people who are willing to spread money around, little bits to each of them, or they can ignore that market and lose potential business. Ive paid for those products in the past, but now I'll just go read something else.