Well, not the original series, no. But the Cube is the Allspark, which actually came out of the Beast Wars/Machines series. The concept of a Spark was introed in Beast Wars and "the Matrix" became the Allspark in Beast Machines. The idea was further refined later. I have no idea how they got from an entire dimension to a cube, but meh. I'm fine with a little Tetris homage.
And still, the new movie had character development, and Megatron didn't transform into a friggen pistol, and Rodimus Prime wasn't in it. That's gold, in my book.
It isn't the best movie ever, true, but it wasn't bad.