The TFW insider has returned with another rumor ‘scoop’, propos­ing that Isabel Lucas’ char­ac­ter, Alice, will be a Pretender.

The TFW TF2 Insider has con­firmed that the char­ac­ter of Alice, as played by Isabel Lucas, in Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen, is a Pre­tender. For those not famil­iar with Trans­form­ers sub-lines from the 1980s, Pre­tenders are Trans­form­ers that are hid­den inside a shell that acts as their dis­guise. In the case of Alice, the shell will be an attrac­tive human woman while the inner robot is best described as a hybrid of the Frenzy robot design from the first movie. The Pre­tender Trans­former will have an arm that trans­forms into an energy weapon, a long tongue, and a scan­ning tentacle.

This block of text explains what a Pre­tender is; prin­ci­pally a robot sur­rounded by an organic shell — in this case Isabel Lucas. Wikipedia reveals more details about the fic­tion behind them, their intro­duc­tion in 1988 and so on. We’ve already seen Alice involved with some messy green goo and an angry bum­ble­bee, what does that now sug­gest? Another scene also shows Alice walk­ing calmly away from some sort of panic or destruc­tion sug­gest­ing some­thing sinister.

Thanks for the heads up Miguel!

The Gos­sip Girls ear­lier reported that Shia LaBoeuf had flown back to LA after wrap­ping the film­ing of Trans­form­ers 2 and his role as Sam Witwicky.

Now Michael Bay’s blog has been updated, con­firm­ing that prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy on Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen has wrapped:

Nel­son here..

As of this week, prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy for Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen has ended.

Con­grats to Michael and his team.

Now the edit­ing and final­iz­ing of the FX can begin; most impor­tantly we should begin to see some shots of the com­puter gen­er­ated robots. Still no date on the teaser trailer.

A mem­ber at the Michael Bay forums claims to have seen Michael Bay in and around L’Arc de tri­om­phe in Paris around the end of Octo­ber. This could be fake, but if not, is likely padding or filler footage to build on the French set­ting we ear­lier saw, involv­ing Sam Witwicky’s parents.

For­get the Mid­dle East, he’s in France right now…

… in Paris, more specifically.

And this is what he was shoot­ing: L’Arc de triomphe.

Now that was weird… I was walk­ing home from work, and just hap­pen to see a small group of peo­ple around a cam­era… When I got closer, I saw that Bay was rid­ing it (lit­er­ally). The last thing I would have expected is to see Bay shoot­ing in my neighbor.

The scene was about a news anchor from CNN doing a report… It feels like main pho­tog­ra­phy is get­ting closer to the end.

Pro­ducer Ian Bryce was here as well.

ENI have recently reported a Trans­form­ers themed ride may be mak­ing an appear­ance at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios parks around the world, with the Sin­ga­pore ride set to hit first in 2010, LA fol­low­ing in 2011.

The attrac­tion will fuse 3D-HD media, mega spe­cial effects and stun­ning robot­ics with a ride sys­tem that will trans­form per­cep­tions of theme park expe­ri­ences. The rides are sched­uled to make their debuts in early 2011, first at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Sin­ga­pore and then at Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Hol­ly­wood. In “Trans­form­ers,” Earth’s humans are caught in the mid­dle of an inter­galac­tic war between the friendly Auto­bots and the evil Decep­ti­cons, which are able to change into a vari­ety of objects, includ­ing cars, trucks, planes and other tech­no­log­i­cal creations.

In the media cir­cu­la­tion some sup­port­ive quotes from Michael Bay have been uttered, it seems these are a fal­lacy as Bay him­self has recently come out to rebuke them:

The shoot­ing in the Mid­dle East is ground break­ing — an awe­some time had by all the crew.

The Trans­former Ride at Uni­ver­sal mak­ing all the press rounds — not sure yet — they had me in a press release say­ing I sup­ported it — but Uni­ver­sal has a long way to go in my mind. I don’t sup­port it — I’m not involved and not sure the story of the ride works, and I know Opti­mus is not going to just show up to be directed by some new peo­ple that have never worked with him. I hate when peo­ple bull­shit a quote from me that I never said.

I’ll keep you informed. Maybe the guy mak­ing the rides at Uni­ver­sal will direct Trans­form­ers 3????

Bay

In an inter­view with Jon Voight, MTV have revealed that the actor is very much inter­ested in a quick cameo appear­ance as the pres­i­dent; if some­one lets him that is!

But what about Jon Voight, who played the Sec­re­tary of Defense John Keller? When we caught up with Angelina Jolie’s dad at the pre­mière of his film, “Pride and Glory,” he told us that while he has yet to film any­thing for “Trans­form­ers 2,” there’s still time to get in a quick appearance.

“I should be able to make a cameo,” Voight said. “That’s a good idea. Let’s talk to those guys about that.” And he even has a suggestion.

Voight said doing the first “Trans­form­ers” was “really a lot of fun,” that direc­tor Michael Bay “did a bril­liant job,” and LaBeouf, who he had worked with pre­vi­ously on “Holes,” was “won­der­ful,” so he’d be happy to come back. But how?

“It all depends on the plot, of course,” he said, “and what the plot needs, you know. But the Sec­re­tary of Defense, we want to know what hap­pens to him. Was there a new admin­is­tra­tion that came in? Maybe he ran for pres­i­dent. Maybe he became president.”

Con­sid­er­ing that “Trans­form­ers 2” will be com­ing out fol­low­ing an elec­tion year, it could work. (Voight him­self, as you might guess from his work in “An Amer­i­can Carol,” sup­ports John McCain).

“I don’t know [if they’ll green-light a ‘Trans­form­ers’ cameo],” Voight said. “But I enjoyed being in that movie. It would be fun.”

On the week­end end­ing 23rd Octo­ber Trans­form­ers 2 was spot­ted film­ing around the pyra­mids in Egypt, as reported by Wax­word and TLAMB scooper Dan:

Set report from Wax­Word:

A major mile­stone qui­etly passed last week­end: the first major Hol­ly­wood film in decades filmed in the heart of the Mid­dle East. “Trans­form­ers II” turned its cam­eras at the Pyra­mids in Egypt, and again in the upper Egypt­ian town of Luxor, near the famed Val­ley of the Kings. This is sig­nif­i­cant for many rea­sons but mainly because it rep­re­sents a rare move by two Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, Para­mount and Dream­Works, to con­nect to a coun­try and cul­ture that is per­ceived to be hos­tile the United States.

I say ‘per­ceived’ because my guess is you’d prob­a­bly find no more avid fans else­where in the world than those clus­tered around Shia LeBeouf, the star of the film, in this part of the world. But after years of anti-American images in the Mid­dle East, and years of entrenched mis­trust, this is the kind of inter­ac­tion – and pub­lic­ity — that makes a dif­fer­ence. I hear from sources within the stu­dio that Dream­Works was “pet­ri­fied” when pro­duc­ers got clear­ance to shoot at the pyra­mids and in Luxor, and that LeBeouf was hes­i­tant but decided to take the leap. (I agreed to hold this news until pro­duc­tion had been safely completed.)

In the end, “Trans­form­ers II” shot for sev­eral days, bring­ing together a crew of 150 Amer­i­cans and sev­eral dozen local Egyp­tians for an effort that pro­ducer Lorenzo di Bonaven­tura, who called from a cell­phone while stand­ing beside the pyra­mids, told me was “remark­ably smooth.”

Dan’s report:

Hi there, I’m not a fan of Trans­form­ers but I can con­firm after vis­it­ing the Pyra­mids sec­tion in Cairo last Fri­day (17th oct) that there was indeed a film crew film­ing on the third pyra­mid in the Giza area (can’t remem­ber the name, but for those of you that know, its the Pyra­mid with half of one side that looks like it’s been dug out. They were film­ing some scene late in the after­noon before sun­set (when the heat was less intense) and it was quite amaz­ing because my girl­friend and I sat on some rocks 20 metres away from it all and man­aged not to get sussed out by the secu­rity crew (who were all wear­ing T2 badges…one of the crew was tying up his shoelace behind me and con­firmed to me it was T2)about 40 peo­ple on site, the locals were try­ing to get their camels and don­keys in the scenes, which involved one of the cast climb­ing part of the pyramid.….

YouTube user TSMD has posted a video from the Bone­yard depict­ing the Trax, Beat and Camaro under­cover before switch­ing to some shots of Bum­ble­bee dri­ving around to please the fans.

Rumors are sug­gest­ing that Sound­wave will have two alt modes, in space this will take the form of a satel­lite and on earth it shall be a pickup truck. These reports come via one of TFW2005’s “trusted sources”.