Peaugh has pro­vided another toy video review, this time its for the Revenge of the Fallen Opti­mus Prime leader class model. The review points out all the small details of the toy, from the auto­bot logo on the hood to the full trans­for­ma­tion into robot mode — the video is a good 13 minutes.

There is also a short update to the orig­i­nal review that high­lights the noises the truck makes, the but­ton was tucked away out of sight on the grey bat­tery panel. The review also explores the idea of a Jetfire/Optimus Prime merger, as sug­gested by the key chains and Leg­ends toys — there is one con­nec­tion at the rear that doesn’t have an obvi­ous pur­pose and Prime’s hands sug­gest he could hold Jetfire’s weapon eas­ily, but other than that there are no other indi­ca­tions of a pos­si­ble Jet­fire connection.

Looks like Hugo Weaving’s com­ments were the last straw — Michael Bay has pub­licly stated on his forums that Mega­tron shall return in Trans­form­ers 2, although he does play down his role — sug­gest­ing its more of a cameo within a flashback.

“Okay cat is out of the bag. Mega­tron is back —- but you will only get to see him from the long lost past. We go way back in time as this movie explains the mythol­ogy of the Primes. He is not a tank like every­one sug­gests, but an alien vehi­cle. But sadly he does not has much screen time.”

Well it only took toys, images, Orci’s con­fir­ma­tion, Weaving’s con­fir­ma­tion and all the rumors for Bay to make a turn­around on his pre­vi­ous state­ment that Mega­tron would not be return­ing. Sadly, Bay’s new expla­na­tion falls into that pool of poten­tial ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’, oth­er­wise known as lies. We’ve already seen Megatron’s bio from the back of the leader class toy pack­ag­ing. Mega­tron rises and leads an army, et al. Weav­ing also sug­gested that Mega­tron might be res­ur­rected using cube shards.

Rebuilt with parts can­ni­bal­ized from other Decep­ti­cons, Mega­tron rises once again to lead his army. Though the AllSpark destroyed him once, he can now feel its power cours­ing through his cir­cuitry. It calls him to seize his right­ful place as ruler over the puny planet on which he was impris­oned and destroyed, and from which he will launch his con­quest of the uni­verse. Opti­mus Prime is all that stands between him and vic­tory, and the Auto­bot leader has done a poor job of hid­ing him­self. At long last, Mega­tron knows exactly where his enemy is, and he has power enough to destroy him.

Andrew Fen­ton of Aus­tralian pub­li­ca­tion, The Adver­tiser reveals in an inter­view with Hugo Weav­ing that Weav­ing shall return to voice the part of Mega­tron and that Bay asked him to keep it hush hush. He goes on to sug­gest that Mega­tron may be res­ur­rected from shards of the cube.

“Mega Secret
By Andrew Fen­ton
Film Writer, The Advertiser

In town to pro­mote his rather excel­lent new Aussie film, “Last Ride”, Hugo Weav­ing let slip he’ll be return­ing as the voice of Mega­tron in “Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen”.

Fans no doubt will recall that when we last saw Mega­tron, Sam (Shia LaBeouf) had rammed the All Spark cube into his chest, thereby destroy­ing him. Despite this cer­tain death, rumours have been cir­cu­lat­ing the vil­lain was going to make a come­back. Direc­tor Michael Bay went so far as to flatly deny the rumour, telling Empire: “He’s not in the movie”.

Turns out Bay was fib­bing. “I’ve already done it,” Weav­ing says, adding Bay had told him to keep the news hush-hush. “He’s over in LA and we were work­ing on the video split sort of thing and I had this strange con­ver­sa­tion where he seemed to imply it was all a big secret. So there you go — I’ve given you the secret scoop.”

So how is Mega­tron res­ur­rected? Weav­ing is coy about revealling too much, but does give a tiny hint.

“I think in the last one, doesn’t Opti­mus Prime pick up a lit­tle bit of, a shard of the cube, or the thing that’s left, and he takes it with him. Maybe there’s some­thing there… but I don’t know,” he laughs.

We’ll find out on June 25, the film’s Aus­tralian release.”

Via Seib­ertron

TF08 have posted some more image of their unpacked Wheelie toy, show­ing the fully trans­formed robot mode, close up details of his limbs and every­thing else — right down to the Decep­ti­con and Auto­bot logos on his chest and back.

His robot design looks very sim­i­lar to Frenzy’s, with spindly arms, legs and claws for qui­etly creep­ing around.

A new list­ing for “Trans­form­ers: The Art of the Movies” has appeared on Ama­zon, the blurb reads:

Trans­form­ers: The Art of the Movies

The first book about the mak­ing of the movies!

The live-action Trans­form­ers movie finally hit the big screen in 2007, and proved to be well worth the wait: a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial smash hit, it grossed over $700 mil­lion world­wide, and amazed audi­ences with its jaw-dropping spe­cial effects. June 2009 sees the release of an even big­ger sequel: Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen.

But how did Direc­tor Michael Bay and his team pull it off, and make audi­ences believe these giant alien robots were real? Begin­ning with a con­cise his­tory of Trans­form­ers, from toy to movie fran­chise, the book looks in depth at the mak­ing of BOTH movies, with exclu­sive inter­views and over 200 stun­ning images.

Packed with pre­vi­ously unpub­lished con­cept and design art, this is a must for all fans!

TF08 have posted an image of the blue RC truck, Wheelie, in his alt mode:

An indepth look at Megatron’s trans­for­ma­tion from Tank into robot,

I am Megatron!

Mean­while TFW2005 have posted a gallery of shots com­par­ing the first movie’s Mega­tron with the updated design, the toy appears to be far supe­rior. View full gallery.

TF08 have pro­vided a set of 5 videos illus­trat­ing how each of the toys trans­forms from its alt mode to robot mode:

Long Haul Video Review

Bum­ble­bee Video Review

Skids video review

Ram­page video review

Jet­fire video review

There is also a Voy­ager Opti­mus Prime video review from Peaugh: