A ter­ri­ble fea­ture made only to exploit the pop­u­lar­ity of Trans­form­ers, in the end reveal­ing very lit­tle whilst lit­ter­ing our heads with movie buzz­words, attempt­ing to cre­ate hype with­out deliv­er­ing the dirt. Watch those F16s… over and over again, be sure to mute that pre­sen­ter though.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Has­bro recently held their licens­ing sum­mit and with it a num­ber of key Trans­form­ers 2 char­ac­ter details emerged.

Side­swipe

The real name for the Chevy Corvette Cen­ten­nial is in fact “Sideswipe”.

Rav­age

The Rav­age char­ac­ter was con­firmed as hav­ing a “very raw beast mode”. Rumors sug­gest that the mech­a­nized crea­ture seen in one of PhillyFilmGirl’s videos is this char­ac­ter, rather than Frenzy. Although I do have some doubts.

Dev­as­ta­tor

“Merg­ing toys” con­firmed the appear­ance of a “super-sized” trans­former that com­bines mul­ti­ple toys, likely to retail for +$50. Is this the rumored Dev­as­ta­tor?

Source: TFW2005

This anony­mous set report from Alam­ogordo comes via TLAMB and reveals details of the film­ing and details of the scenes shot.

Don’t know if you are con­cerned, but they are in fact film­ing here in Alam­ogordo, NM. They’ve been here for some­time now.

Sep­tem­ber 12th — They were film­ing on base from 12:00pm — 10:30pm. They used a large mil­i­tary plane, like a C17. It was parked and they had many of the mil­i­tary extras walk­ing to and from the plane. Some­times load­ing onto the back of the plane and then deplan­ing afterwards.

Josh and Tyrese were there as well. I saw them stand­ing at the end of the stair­well, the land­ing of the C-17. The mil­i­tary extras were walk­ing and in some takes they were running.

Tyrese was try­ing to keep the mood light as I wit­nessed him doing some kind of “chicken dance”. I hear through the grapevine that he was pretty silly that day. I hon­estly think it’s to pre­vent him­self from going crazy from bore­dom. As you prob­a­bly know, there are many, many, many takes just for one shot! And then they want to do the same shot from another angle. So you’re talk­ing, 10 takes each at least! Need­less to say, that could take all night, and some­times it does! There were a few times while every­one waited as they set up the shots, Tyrese would say out loud, “Are we ready yet? What’s the hold up? C’mon lets go!” They were out­side doing this scene all night! The walk­ing scene was done at least 20 times. Rid­ing humvees around the plane was shot in the day and later in the night.

The humvees had gun­ners on top, about 4 of those rid­ing around and around the plane. They were def­i­nitely film­ing a fight scene.

I really don’t want to go into too much detail for fear some­one I know that is work­ing with Dream­Works will get into a lot of trou­ble. I would love to tell you the story line of which I’m sure you’d be sur­prise, but I truly do not want to spoil it for any true Trans­former fan.

They start shoot­ing tomor­row (22nd Sept) at White Sands for the entire week. Unfor­tu­nately I won’t be able to watch any film­ing while they are out there. Only the extras and crew are allowed. I hear they will be shoot­ing here in Alam­ogordo, whether it be on base or at White Sands, they will be here till early October.

Here is what I’ve observed so far at Hol­lo­man. They had men and women and very few chil­dren dressed in Mus­lim cos­tumes. The peo­ple looked very authen­tic I saw them early one morn­ing walk­ing to the trail­ers. Bum­ble­bee was on base; how­ever he was shielded from pry­ing eyes as they cov­ered him up with a car cover. Not a great job because his rear and sides were pok­ing out of the cover and one could tell it was Bumblebee.

Some of the extras are Air Force guys por­tray­ing Army guys and some extra Army guys are por­tray­ing Air Force guys. I hear “some” of the Air Force guys were look­ing “tighter” in dress and hair­cut. The cast­ing dept. thought they looked more of what some­one in Army would look like? I know some Army guys won’t like to hear that, but it’s true.

Some where on base in a hangar, holds Iron­hide, Opti­mus Prime, some of the “pimped” out humvees the pri­mary cast will be dri­ving. (Most likely Tyrese and Josh) The Corvette was there as well, it is sil­ver in color. The peo­ple who were there at the time didn’t want any pho­tos taken of the Corvette, they were adamant about that. Appar­ently GM would have a cow if that photo got out. Now I hear they are going to let [us] take pho­tos of these vehi­cles tomorrow.

Also, the Can Am Spy­der will be in the film too, but they’ve got it all decked out with a more futur­is­tic look to it.

Anony­mous in Alamogordo

ET’s Mark Steines and The Insider’s Vic­to­ria Recano are on set in White Sands, New Mex­ico and Hol­lo­man air force base — to cap­ture an exclu­sive sneak pre­view of Trans­form­ers 2 “with real live F16s” — six of them. Below is a snip­pet video before we get the real thing tomorrow…

More action! More excite­ment! More Trans­form­ers! ‘Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen’ explodes into the­aters June 26 ’09, and only ET’s Mark Steines is blog­ging exclu­sively from his pri­vate jet ride to direc­tor Michael Bay’s top-secret set in New Mex­ico — where he’ll give you an unprece­dented first look behind the scenes of the upcom­ing sum­mer blockbuster!

Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel are reunited once again with the cast of the orig­i­nal block­buster, which saw mankind caught in the mid­dle of bat­tling Auto­bots and Decep­ti­cons from another galaxy. Up until now, the ‘Trans­form­ers’ sequel set has been off-limits, but only ET got com­plete access to the closed set on Hol­lo­man Air Force Base and White Sands Mis­sile Range in New Mexico.

Stay tuned to ET for our all-‘Transformers’ Tuesday!

TForm­ers have posted four images show­ing off what looks like Megatron’s rumored Tank Alt Mode. It’s a rather obscure look­ing tank with large yel­low thrusters at the rear, large cen­tral can­non, pos­si­bly some firearms on the side of the vehi­cle as well, and Megatron’s big ugly head peak­ing out from the Tank’s crotch.

Via TLAMB

Spoil­erTV have posted some pic­tures of Josh Duhamel on the set of Trans­form­ers 2:

As part of Walmart’s (pass­word: AllSpark62609) Trans­form­ers DVD pro­mo­tion they have released two new videos — the first shows some behind the scenes laughs and jest­ing between Shia and Megan Fox on a sunny day, the sec­ond is Megan Fox’s audi­tion tape from the first movie.

A Day in the Shade

Aud­tion Tapes

A full length Trans­form­ers 2 trailer will be aired prior to the upcom­ing Star Trek movie, due May 8th 2009; likely to be the first full length trailer. That’s a pretty long wait, but /Film points out that this is a sim­i­lar time frame to the orig­i­nal, which saw its first full length trailer released with Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Source: AICN