9 Major Retcons That Saved Iconic Movie Franchises

1. Restarting The Franchise - Bumblebee

After five Transformers movies, it's perhaps unsurprising that the series' mythology ended up a little... messy. By the time it got to the last Michael Bay-helmed flick, the Transformers themselves were shown to be part of humanity's most significant historical moments, helping construct the pyramids and even being involved in World War 2. What started out as a (relatively) simple story about two warring robot factions who could transform into sick cars and jets eventually became about grand inter-galactic wars and secret government conspiracies.

By that point, the mythology had become so bloated it was hard to keep track of, something which the recent Bumblebee attempted to resolve. Focusing on a single Autobot this time around, the spin-off effectively worked as a soft reboot of the mess Bay had made by the end of his run, re-establishing a timeline where Bumblebee was the first contact humans ever had with these otherworldly beings.

It wrote out the weird alternate history the last movie revelled in, bringing the story back to Earth and thus making the Transformers themselves feel personal again for the first time in over a decade. From the tone to the story to the action, it's clear Travis Knight and co. were trying to distance themselves as much as possible from the mainline flicks, and taking the post-credit scenes into account, clearly establish a new timeline that the franchise can build from.