Interview: Christina Hodson

A conversation with the screenwriter of Bumblebee.

A /film interview with Christina Hodson, former development executive turned screenwriter. Her movie credits include Shut In, Unforgettable, and the latest in the Transformers franchise Bumblebee. Projects she has in development include Batgirl and Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).

During that writers room, when there was the idea of giving Bumblebee his own movie, were you raising your hand to volunteer?

I went into the room knowing that I wanted to do the story of a girl and her car. I, of course, would have loved to have done Bumblebee but I wasn’t sure if that was going to be available. Then when it all lined up and I was able to make the story of a girl and her car and that car turns out to be Bumblebee, I was over the moon because he was always my favorite.

That’s so interesting because Spielberg’s note on the first movie was “a boy and his car.”

I would love to take credit but that was what connected me to it. I remember reading in 2007 because I remember people being like, “Oh, Spielberg, this doesn’t feel that much like your other movies.” And I remember him saying, “I was always drawn to the idea of the story of a boy and his car because it’s such a simple, clean bond.” I think all of us remember our relationship with our first car. A car does represent freedom and responsibility and adulthood. That’s such a strong connection that that was the thing I always tapped into and was excited about.

Are there different themes to explore when a teenage girl gets her first car?

I mean, yes, but I also just think for me there were two things. One is I just wanted to really have the canvas, which I did in this movie thankfully, to be able to really focus on one human and one robot and give them the room to have real depth and explore all the different nuance of that dynamic and to have their two arcs going together. Then separately, I just like generally having more female characters like this. So often in these movies, not the Transformers movies, but just generally in Hollywood, the girl is along for the ride. She’s literally in the passenger seat and she’s lucky if she comes along and maybe she’ll get kissed at the end. I don’t think that is right. I don’t think that’s how it should be. I think girls love car chases and explosions as much as boys. I think it’s sort of a misconception that these movies are for boys and men and girls and women just want to see rom-com. Boys and men want to see emotional stuff too and girls and women want to see explosions and car chases. I’m trying to just blur it all a bit.

Were there any autobiographical elements in Charlie?

Yeah, so Charlie’s actually based on my two nieces. My British niece who at the time was very young, she’s only three or four, but already at that young age just based on the toys she would gravitate towards and the things she would draw and things she was interested in, she didn’t fit into one neat box. She was neither a tomboy nor a girly girl. She was kind of athletic, kind of mathematic, kind of arty. She was all of these different things and that’s honestly how I was as a kid. I was never easily definable. I think so often the female characters we see on screen are just in a box. They are one thing or the other and there isn’t that much nuance to them. So what I wanted to do was create a character who, like Jeanie, was many things so that Jeanie would grow up in a world where she’s watching characters save the world and kick ass and drive the car and do all the big fun stuff who are a bit more realistically nuanced like her. And then also based on my niece Sylvie who is now 12. She’d recently lost her mother but her bond with her father because of that very much inspired Charlie’s relationship with her father. She’s kind of adopted his love of cars, his love of Sam Cooke. That was a real nod to that so they really were the emotional North Star for me as I was writing this, heading towards that.

Here is a trailer for the movie Bumblebee:

I was struck by these additional comments from Christina in the interview: “The only thing I really care about is the character stuff… I’ve always wanted to write big, fun spectacle that has real heart and real character at the center of it.” Bumblebee has a 93% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes making it by far the best reviewed movie in the Transformers series in large part due to the depth of the characters in the movie. And so I say, “Well done, Christina!”

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