THE BUG-CATCHER
John Cena talks up his role as Bumblebee badass Agent Burns
Agent Burns works for Sector 7, the shadowy organisation we’ve seen before in Transformers films. Is he friend or foe to Bumblebee?
You’re going to find out very quickly that this is a secretive interview! The folks who have made the movie have let me know they’d like to keep things intriguing, so I’ll let people continue to debate that.
You’ve not done a big blockbuster movie before. Why this one?
I try to not only work with good people, but also projects I’m comfortable with, and this was no exception. Travis [Knight] was a wonderful director. And I truly love the story of this movie. This is a new take on the Transformers series; a much more intimate look at the Bumblebee origin story. Not only that, but I could do a little something different with my character, which I hope will be surprising for folks to see when they watch the movie.
Did you have a Transformers toy as a kid?
Of course! As a kid, watching commercials for cereal and toys on a Saturday morning, when you saw you could get two kick-ass toys for one, that became the holy grail. Optimus was the only one we could have. I’d like to say we kept him in good shape, but with five boys he got beat up pretty quick.
At Comic-con, you dressed up as Bumblebee to promote the movie. What was that like?
It was really cool. I was walking down the street in a cardboard-andplastic Bumblebee costume, and because it’s Comic-con, nobody cares. It was just, “Hey, nice costume.” We had to find people to stop and ask questions and it was a cool reveal after we asked them who would win in a fight: John Cena or Bumblebee? Everyone chose Bumblebee, because he was right there.
In the first Transformers film, John Turturro’s Agent Simmons got urinated on by Bumblebee. Was that something you were concerned might be added to the script? I was not concerned about that! I’m pretty strong in my tolerance level. I’ll leave you with a quote from Steve Austin: “It’s much better to be pissed off than pissed on.” JAMES WHITE