A 4-meter-high sculpture of a bee was displayed at a promotional event in Beijing on Dec 14 for Bumblebee, a spinoff from the Transformers series to be released in China on Friday.

The film is set in 1987, when its other protagonist, Charlie Watson, saves a robotic bumblebee that has lost its memory. They join forces to fight the Decepticons, a common enemy.

"This is a story about the relationship between Bumblebee and Watson-these two lost, lonely, broken souls who find each other, heal each other and make each other complete. It's about how they define each other, and how Bumblebee grows and evolves-physically and emotionally," says Travis Knight, the film's director.

Speaking about why to Bumblebee was chosen instead of other Transformers as the hero, Knight says, "Bumblebee was always the Transformer who had the greatest affinity for humanity, the one who had the deepest connection to people."

Knight and his design team put many details into the character but also tried to make sure every detail was meaningful.

"Our version of Bumblebee became a bridge between what Michael Bay (Transformers' director) did in his five previous films and the original version of Bumblebee from the 1980s TV show," Knight adds.

Even before the films directed by Bay, Bumblebee was known to audiences from earlier TV shows. This film is set in the 1980s since it "made sense" to Knight.

"As we were telling an original story, we should go to the era that these characters were born in. And that's also when I was first exposed to them."

As someone who grew up in that era, Knight thought about what influenced him at the time.

"Bumblebee was a way for me to try to weave together these things that I've loved-Transformers, Spielberg and the Amblin films of the 1980s."

Knight, who is also the CEO of Laika Entertainment, a US animation studio best known for its stop-motion feature films, such as Coraline, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings, also talks about his general approach to storytelling.

"We try to tell stories that are an artful balance of darkness and light, intensity and warmth, humor and heart, spectacle and emotion. We always try to find a fusion of those things."

Actress Hailee Steinfeld plays Charlie Watson in 2018's Bumblebee. She shot scenes with nothing in front of her, pretending to interact with the robotic bee.

"The idea that all of these objects around us could have inner life, that finding a car, making a discovery that it is actually a robot-a terrifying but completely innocent one-the whole idea and my understanding of Charlie's relationship with Bumblebee are enough to create an emotion or something to play to," says Steinfeld.

According to producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who also coproduced previous Transformers films: "This film shares some similarities with the Transformers series before, like big action. But it is a more emotional and intimate story set in 1987, so it's quite different from the former ones."

The character Bumblebee will turn 35 this year, but he is still loved by people all over the world.

"In many ways, he's nothing like us. And yet, in some other ways, he's as human as we are. That's why millions of people around the world love him. We see ourselves in Bumblebee. That's his real magic," says Knight. "That's what art does in its finest form. It allows us to see the world in a different way and from a different point of view."