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Bumblebee movie trailer: Even Transformers get Rickrolled

Transformers fans are never gonna give up their love for the Autobot scout, who's now landed his own feature film.

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Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
CNET freelancer Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

The first trailer for Bumblebee: The Movie, a spin-off from the popular Transformers series, was posted online on Tuesday. The main character, the yellow-and-black Autobot scout Bumblebee, has a lot in common with plenty of other gentle giants or aliens in movie history. He may be startling at first, but proves not to be that scary in the end, like E.T. or even King Kong.

Bumblebee even transforms from a gentle, goofy-looking car, a yellow original-model Volkswagen Beetle. From the second he turns those puppy-dog eyes on teenage girl Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), it's love at first sight. But that doesn't stop her from Rickrolling him in a sassy scene that's downright adorable, and timely too: The film is set in 1987, the year Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up came out. (Does that mean she invented Rickrolling?)

The movie also stars John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Jason Drucker, Kenneth Choi, Gracie Dzienny, Rachel Crow and Pamela Adlon. Travis Knight, of Kubo and Two Strings fame, directs, making this the first Transformers movie not to be directed by Michael Bay. We will now pause for the cheering to die down.

Bumblebee: The Movie opens Dec. 21 in the US and Dec. 26 in the UK, with no Australia release date yet.

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