Charlie Bumblebee: Charlie Watson, Played by Hailee Steinfeld

Charlie Watson is the human lead of the Bumblebee movie, a grieving teenager who finds and befriends the Autobot scout B-127, and Hailee Steinfeld plays her. Bumblebee (2018) was directed by Travis Knight and opened in the US on December 21, 2018. Fans who search for "Charlie Bumblebee" want her, since she is the person who gives the yellow Autobot his name.

We meet her in 1987 California, still mourning her father and distant from her mother and stepfather. Her uncle gives her a Volkswagen Beetle, and that car is B-127, who has just survived an ambush by the Decepticon Blitzwing. Blitzwing rips out his voice box and damages his memory before B-127 destroys him, so the scout arrives mute, hurt and confused. That setup makes Charlie the emotional anchor of the film, rather than a soldier or a scientist.

Is Bumblebee a Transformers movie? Yes. It is one of the live action main films, seventh in release order and second in chronological order. A quick naming note: in this series "Bumblebee" can mean the 2018 film or the character, and for the character you want the Bumblebee Transformer page.

Charlie should not be confused with Sam Witwicky, the human who owns Bumblebee in Transformers (2007). Sam buys an old car that turns out to be an Autobot, while Charlie is handed one by family, a small but telling difference in how each story starts.

Charlie's most important relationship is with Bumblebee, voiced as B-127 by Dylan O'Brien, who is billed first in the cast ahead of Hailee Steinfeld. She is the one who gives the scout his name, and later she revives him with a jolt of electricity that restores his memories.

Memo Gutierrez, played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr., is her neighbor and the first person to learn the secret. He keeps it, and he is there when she goes after Bumblebee after the capture. Her brother Otis Watson, played by Jason Ian Drucker, joins that rescue as well, and her mother, Sally Watson, played by Pamela Adlon, is the person she clashes with hardest at home.

On the other side stands Colonel Jack Burns, played by John Cena, who leads the Sector 7 hunt and eventually learns that the Decepticons are the real threat. Shatter and Dropkick, voiced by Angela Bassett and Justin Theroux, are the Decepticons she ends up fighting. Optimus Prime, voiced by Peter Cullen, is the leader who sends B-127 to Earth while he stays behind to fight on Cybertron.

For the wider cast, see the Transformers cast page.

In my opinion, Charlie's best scene is the revival, when she shocks Bumblebee back to life with a jolt of electricity and his memories come flooding back. It works as a hands-on rescue, and it is the point where the film stops being about a girl and a car and becomes about two people who have repaired each other.

The cliff goodbye above the Golden Gate Bridge is a close second. It could be argued that it earns its sentiment because the film spends so long showing Charlie rebuilding the car she once worked on with her father, so letting Bumblebee go reads as growth rather than loss. Perhaps the nicest touch is that she finishes that repair after he leaves, which gives the ending a concrete image instead of a speech.

The harbor tower stand against Dropkick and Shatter is the action pick. Compared with the large scale city fights of the earlier Michael Bay films, Bumblebee (2018) keeps the stakes personal, and Charlie is in the middle of the fight rather than watching it.

If you want to see how the 2018 film compares with the rest of the saga, the Transformers movies ranked page has the full list, and the Transformers movies in order page shows where to place it on a rewatch.