The sil­hou­et­ted key­chain we men­tioned today and saw a cou­ple weeks back at Toy fair ’09 has been unveiled through a French mar­ket­ing sheet, sup­ple­ment­ing the Leg­ends toy com­bi­na­tion we saw earlier.

Prime con­tin­ues to look badass with gun in right hand and illus­trat­ing a more inter-mingled com­bi­na­tion of Opti­mus Prime and Jet­fire, the two char­ac­ters now appear seamless.

We’ve seen the leg­ends class toys com­bine as well as rumors of a more com­plex com­bi­na­tion via blacked out sil­hou­ettes on key chains and boxes. This is our first proper look, albeit a small one, at Jet­fire and Opti­mus prime leader class toys com­bin­ing to form “Power up” Opti­mus Prime:

Iron Man 2 direc­tor Jon Favreau has kept up his twit­ter­ing despite his now hec­tic sched­ule and odd work­ing hours, here are some of the high­lights over the last week:

Sit­ting in Stark’s foyer wait­ing for the next set up.

Woke up sore from doing stunt work last night. I shoulda known it was com­ing when the stunt­woman said good­bye by say­ing “Take some Advil.”

13 hour work days are pretty much the norm. Film crews are a spe­cial breed.They bust their ass and take a great deal of pride in their work.

Head­ing home. Week 2 com­plete. I’m exhausted.

Just got out of a pre-call mar­ket­ing meet­ing dis­cussing Comi­con. On set get­ting ready to shoot as Happy.

Scarlett’s first day. Very exciting.

Wrapped. Head­ing home. Robert was on fire. We’re hit­ting our stride.

In the work­shop. Explor­ing new Stark tech.

Back from lunch. More Tony and Pep­per in the workshop.

Sit­ting next to Pep­per Potts.

Stand­ing in Tony’s workshop.

Com­plet­ing work in one set today with Mickey, then into Tony’s work­shop tomor­row with RDJ.

Day four begins. More Mickey.

Robert Downey Jr. says that he is tak­ing Iron Man 2, his first ever sequel, more seri­ously that any film pre­vi­ous (which is “appro­pri­ately ridicu­lous”). The movie itself shall be more artis­tic and dar­ing com­pared to other films in the same genre whilst the Iron Man suit will be bet­ter fit­ted and more ergonomic. The open­ing day’s film­ing (with Garry Shan­dling) was a Sen­ate hear­ing wherein the unnamed Sen­a­tor, played by Shan­dling, wishes that the Iron Man tech­nol­ogy be turned over to the government.

Excerpts from Collider’s interview:

Remem­ber when film­ing began and word leaked that Gary Shan­dling was in the film and no one was really sure what part he played? Robert told us about the first day of film­ing and how Gary plays a Sen­a­tor:
Robert: Day one I’m doing a Sen­ate hear­ing where the gov­ern­ment is say­ing the Iron Man tech needs to be turned over to the Sen­a­tor and the Sen­a­tor is Gary Shan­dling. And we had this fan­tas­tic day that was some­how this con­trolled chaos of a Sen­ate hear­ing where I keep inter­rupt­ing them and dah dah dah.

Another bit that Robert told us was how he is tak­ing “Iron Man 2” more seri­ously than any movie he has ever done:
Robert: And I’ve never been in a sequel and it’s very daunt­ing because I feel the expec­ta­tion of the mil­lions of peo­ple who watched it and enjoyed it and told me that it was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than your usual genre pic­ture and that they expected us to not screw it up. So I actu­ally have taken “Iron Man 2” prob­a­bly more seri­ously than any movie I’ve ever done, which is appro­pri­ately ridicu­lous for Hollywood.

On Jon Favreau post­ing Twit­ter updates from the set:
Jon is my brother and he is the keeper of the “Iron Man” flame and what­ever he wants to do, within rea­son, to keep his anx­i­eties at bay is absolutely fine with me.

On the way the suit has been improved from the first film:
Every­thing has been improved. Every­thing is ergonomic and the story is incred­i­bly risky and artis­tic for a big genre movie.

In which way risky?
The set pieces have to do with things that aren’t your typ­i­cal like bad guy con­flict. The rela­tion­ships are very com­plex and hilar­i­ous. The moti­va­tions Tony has and why he turns around and does things has com­pletely to do with his own inter­nal processes and it really is, I think, as much as we tried to in the first one really see behind the façade of this kind of sto­ry­telling. We really, I think, leav­ing our­selves open to…we’re kind of try­ing to tell a story about how a dys­func­tional fam­ily saves life on Earth as we know it.

For this film you have Mickey Rourke, Sam Rock­well. You have an insane cast.
It’s huge.

Could you talk about work­ing with Mickey?
I could if we shot together. I’ve seen his stuff and it is lit­er­ally remark­able. Lit­er­ally remark­able. He’s so good. And he’s for­mi­da­ble and he’s very much remind­ing me of that kind of charm­ing, con­fi­dent guy that we know. Sam Rock­well, on the first day of shoot­ing I was like “if this guy thinks he’s going to be fun­nier and cooler than me (laugh­ter) and it was a photo-finish. Scar­lett Johans­son, amaz­ing. Don Chea­dle is just rock­ing it.

Michael Bay has today com­mented on the ShoW­est footage that briefly appeared on his per­sonal site, and has since been pulled from there and every­where else.

The Show­est footage was pulled down because it was just a 12-hour thing.

I just wanted the fans to get a taste of what we have been mak­ing for a year and a half because we have been so quiet. The piece was cut about a month ago for this Show­est thing I accepted this past month — so as you can see many of the shots were far from being fin­ished ren­ders. This dinky lit­tle site received over 1,500,000 hits and 550,000 down­loads in this short time. Any­way the trailer is being printed today and com­ing out on Wolver­ine and Star Trek. 64 days left!

Michael

This post con­tains spoil­ers, beware. The May edi­tion of EW con­tains a Trans­form­ers 2 arti­cle with excerpts from Michael Bay, it’s main focus is on Shia’s hand injury and the trou­bles of incor­po­rat­ing it into the movie.

To sum­marise the piece:

- To build Shia’s injury into the movie the screen­writ­ers added a scene show­ing Sam Witwicky being injured by a “Space Bridge“
– Shia was given a cus­tom made pro­tec­tive and pho­to­genic cast after delay­ing surgery
– The Pyra­mids in Egypt are the set­ting for the final bat­tle
– Bay likes to blow things up, noth­ing has changed: “A fish tank, a heli­copter, con­crete tubes. We blew up a library. This set you’re look­ing at? This will all be gone.“
– Using CGI to cover up Shia’s injury was too expen­sive and “a pain in the neck”.

Space Bridge

The bridge is from the G1 car­toons and was built by the constructicons:

The space bridge appears in sev­eral uni­verses. The exact prop­er­ties of the space bridge vary, but typ­i­cally they serve as a more con­ve­nient means of mov­ing Trans­form­ers from one planet to another than the tra­di­tional means of space travel. [e.g. Cyber­ton to earth]

Scans after the break…
Read the rest of this entry »

TF08 gives us another look at some Revenge of the Fallen toys; this time its The Fallen in his box, com­plete with biog­ra­phy, as well as the leader class Jet­fire toy.

The Fallen

For mil­len­nia, he has waited. Thou­sands of years have dragged by as he recruited prox­ies, one by one, to scour the cos­mos for the arti­fact he required. Now he finds he must return to the prim­i­tive, flesh-slug infected planet on which his quest began. Noth­ing will stand in his way this time. If need be, he will scour the sur­face of this dis­gust­ing world clean in the fire of his rage, and search through the blasted rub­ble for that which he seeks.

Jet­fire

UPDATE: Final Trans­form­ers 2 Trailer released in HD (30th April 2009)
See also our in depth analy­sis of the trailer with high qual­ity screen­shots of all the key scenes, robots and Megan Fox.

Update: New Trans­form­ers 2 trailer leaked early (29th April 2009)

The footage from the Las Vegas ShoW­est 2009 is now online for all to see, pub­lished to Michael​Bay​.com. As pre­vi­ously described, the footage opens with Bum­ble­bee and Sam dis­cussing his leav­ing for col­lege and the already infa­mous cry­ing with washer fluid, before jump­ing into a mon­tage of robot awe­some­ness. Typ­i­cally this mas­sive news appears on the week­end I am out in the coun­try with­out inter­net access.

We get to see Dev­as­ta­tor, Jet­fire, Wheels, Chro­mia, Mega­tron smash­ing Opti­mus Prime across a field, The Fallen, Skids, Mud­flaps, Side­swipe, pos­si­bly Black­out, Scalpel, Bum­ble­bee and more.

Watch the ShoW­est Trans­form­ers 2 Trailer/Footage

The YouTube and Vimeo videos got pulled.

The Robots

Dev­as­ta­tor

Con­struc­ti­con

Chro­mia

Jet­fire

Jet­fire being old and moan­ing at the bone­yard

Side­swipe

Skids & Mudflaps

Note in this first image the paint­ing — back in Decem­ber we reported on a pos­si­ble Fallen scoop that looked to all extents and pur­poses to be a fake (see bot­tom of this post) — the pic­ture matches the one in the screenshot.

Orig­i­nal Fallen scoop images:

Black­out or Springer

Black­out, the first active Decep­ti­con in the first movie looks to now appear in Revenge of the Fallen, but the rotary blades are much smaller, some sug­gest this is instead Springer.

Mega­tron

Images cour­tesy of The Cin­ema Source, show­ing Mega­tron ham­mer­ing Opti­mus Prime, send­ing him air­borne and fly­ing across a field.

Ram­page

This one isn’t so clear but it appears to be Bum­ble­bee and pos­si­bly Ram­page duel­ing — judg­ing by the flail­ing tracks.

Scalpel

Wheelie