Update: Despite hav­ing this account con­firmed by the Shoot for the Edit web­mas­ter, it seems this account is indeed fake and has been sus­pended! Post­ing on his forum:

“Twit­ter. Never. What a waste of time”

Orig­i­nal post:
For a while a fake Michael bay has been post­ing to twit­ter, it appears that the real Michael Bay has taken this to heart and signed up,

“I am tired of impos­tors on Twit­ter so I fig­ured you could get the real bay direct from now on.”

His lat­est tweets include:

Accepted the Show­est direc­tor of the year award last night. — Mike

Work­ing in the indus­try means even week­ends are apt for mak­ing robots inter­act — Mike

Is excited for what Jackie Earle Haley will bring to the fran­chise. — Mike

“Some big news is com­ing down the pipeline, can’t say what or when but be excited.”

I’m not sure why he signs off each tweet with ‘Mike’, but it’s good to get some reg­u­lar bite-sized news from the man him­self. This account has been con­firmed as offi­cial, althought the Megan Fox and Shia accounts that Bay is fol­low­ing have been con­firmed fake, so be warned.

Fol­low Michael Bay on Twit­ter
Fol­low us on Twitter

The final issue of the Defi­ance comic, a pre­quel to the new movie — bridg­ing the gap between the two, has hit Amer­i­can news stands. The issue goes into some depth about the ori­gins of The Fallen, the power of the AllSpark, how to restore that power and the first cybertro­n­i­ans cre­ated using the AllSpark. Con­tinue read­ing if you are open to the plot spoilers…

As sum­marised by Seibertron:

The Fallen and his “broth­ers” were born on a ter­res­trial world where the Allspark was located. They learned that the ener­gies of the Allspark were lim­ited, and could only be restored through the destruc­tion of a sun. In order to help them, the Allspark cre­ated work­ers who would go out and search for suns that would help to fuel the Allspark. These work­ers were the first Cybertro­n­i­ans. (Among which is Jetfire.)

The Fallen decides he wants the power of the Allspark for him­self, but was trapped in his sar­coph­a­gus (the ancient relic dis­cov­ered by the Trans­form­ers in Defi­ance #1), where he is to remain until the sun har­vester is located and reac­ti­vated once more. [We’ve seen Dev­as­ta­tor do some­thing like this in the col­or­ing book]

Speak­ing with MTV once again, Michael Bay has revealed fur­ther Trans­form­ers 2 details — this time focus­ing on the action scenes,

“There’s no car chase in this movie, […] There’s a lot of dif­fer­ent types of action. In some movies, it’s the same action through­out the entire movie. There’s a lot of dif­fer­ent types of action in this one, and that makes it interesting.”

He went on to con­firm that we would see Dev­as­ta­tor in full IMAX glory before claiming:

“[Sev­eral scenes] are going to be on IMAX, which is awe­some. […] Some of our main scenes were shot with IMAX cam­eras, so the screen will pop wide [if you see the film in an IMAX the­ater]. It’s the first movie to do seri­ous dig­i­tal effects in IMAX quality.”

The open­ing shot of the movie, which should also be in IMAX, will fea­ture Megan Fox and shall beat that ‘flir­ta­tious hood open­ing scene’ from the first movie:

“It’s bet­ter. […] [While film­ing] I was at a gas sta­tion buy­ing ice cream bars, and these 15-year-old boys were look­ing at me. They were like, ‘You’re that dude that directed “Trans­form­ers”!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Do you want to see “Trans­form­ers 2″? They were like, ‘Yeah!’ ” “I said, ‘Why do you want to see it?’ And together, in uni­son, they said, ‘The hot chick!’ […] It will be a good shot for them.”

This story has spoil­ers, if you hadn’t already guessed. Michael Bay has been speak­ing to MTV about Trans­form­ers 2 and reveals a character’s death. Spoiler after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

Quint from AICN was on hand at ShoW­est to see the Trans­form­ers 2 footage that aired as part of Michael Bay’s Van­guard Award accep­tance. Cry­ing Bum­ble­bee with Washer screen fluid?

The full scene was Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox going into Sam’s parent’s garage to talk with Bum­ble­bee, who is, appar­ently, still hav­ing trou­ble with his voice­box. He’s able to cough up a few sta­t­icy words, but still com­mu­ni­cates mostly through pop songs (lame).

Shia tells Bum­ble­bee that he’s going away to col­lege and can’t bring him along. Fresh­men aren’t allowed to have cars at his col­lege, appar­ently, and Sam doesn’t need pro­tec­tion any­more any­way, he says.

As he talks with Bum­ble­bee, Fox is out­side… we see that the Witwicky house is being repaired… so I take it this isn’t too long after the first one or there was a bit of action that hap­pened prior to this clip.

Any­way, Fox stips out of her black leather pants and jacket, reveal­ing a dress… Prom? Some­thing. But Megan Fox strip­ping is a-okay for what­ever reason.

Back in the garage, Bum­ble­bee isn’t tak­ing the news well, dra­mat­i­cally cry­ing (window-washer liq­uid) and wav­ing his arms. This could have actu­ally been fairly emo­tional. LaBeouf is play­ing the scene that way, but the robot is so over the top I don’t know if it was sup­posed to be a comic scene or not.

So, the scene wasn’t all that great, but the mon­tage of action was fuck­ing awe­some, as I’m sure Bay would say. We get a look at the Dev­as­ta­tor (mas­sive and pretty sweet) knock­ing the hell out of Opti­mus. The shot is from far away and Opti­mus is fight­ing in a large, open grass field in bright day­light. He’s hit and sails through the air towards us, hit­ting the ground and rolling to a stop right at the cam­era. He sits up and spits out some­thing metal (robot tooth?).

There were quick flashes of a lot of cool action. There was a Decep­ti­con with giant saw blades that cuts a car in half, split­ting up Shia and Fox. There was a shot of a decep­ti­con bug being forced into Shia’s mouth… another shot was of a trans­former fly that Shia has pinched between his fin­gers… and a lot of quick big action scenes… a trans­former that is two giant wheels, ‘splo­sions, etc, etc.

Looks like more of the same so if you hated the first movie you prob­a­bly won’t like this one much more, but I hear that the action makes the first movie look like DRIVING MISS DAISY… and that Bay learned a few lessons from the first, focus­ing on the robots more than the humans this time out. I hope so.

And from SHH:

A lit­tle later, Michael Bay thrilled the packed ball­room with a scene from the Trans­form­ers sequel which involved Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes and Bum­ble­bee. Sam opens the garage door to see Bum­ble­bee in robot form hit­ting him­self in the head try­ing to get his voice back. Sam tells the robot that he wants to talk about col­lege, to which Bum­ble­bee starts play­ing The Pointer Sis­ters’ “I’m So Excited” and danc­ing around, but Sam tells him that he’s not going to which the robot gives a heavy groan. Sam gives him a long speech why it’s best Bum­ble­bee doesn’t accom­pany him, while Mikaela runs out­side and starts to dis­robe (Yowza!)… no wait, she’s just chang­ing out­fits. Bum­ble­bee isn’t happy and he starts spray­ing water from his head as if he was cry­ing. Sam explains that he wants to go to col­lege and expe­ri­ence it like a nor­mal guy, but that Bum­ble­bee will always be his first car, etc. As he fin­ishes his sen­ti­men­tal speech, Sam turns and opens the garage door and Mikaela is stand­ing there in what appears to be a wed­ding dress hold­ing a pur­ple bou­quet of flowers.

After that dia­logue scene, what fol­lowed was a two minute mon­tage of some of the robot action from the movie giv­ing glimpses of almost all the Auto­bots and Decep­ti­cons we’ll be see­ing as well as The Fallen, most of them on screen slightly longer than the footage seen before. To be hon­est, it was cut together so quickly that only a diehard mega-fan might be able to see it and name every robot or fig­ure out exactly what was going on. Regard­less, it looks like Bay has done it again and any­one who liked the first movie should be suit­ably impressed with the sequel.

Both Yahoo and USA Today have the low­down on the new Trans­form­ers 2 char­ac­ters, each with a dif­fer­ent and new image. This finally con­firms the char­ac­ter names on the toy boxes and their indi­vid­ual bios whilst giv­ings us some dirt on a new Doc­tor char­ac­ter (named Scalpel on toy), shown below.

USA Today

Arti­cle

Rav­age and Soundwave

“In the spirit of ‘more than meets the eye,’ Rav­age isn’t just lethal because of his sharp teeth,” says screen­writer Alex Kurtz­man. “There’s actu­ally another skill set Rav­age has that didn’t exist before, so there’s going to be a sur­prise for fans.” …his role will be sim­i­lar to the 1980s car­toon and Has­bro toy — the ulti­mate spy.

Rav­age doesn’t turn into any­thing. But Sound­wave will appear, again serv­ing as an evil com­mu­ni­ca­tions expert but this time in the form of an orbit­ing space satellite.

And Rav­age, as before, won’t speak like the other Trans­form­ers. “We wanted to stay true to the idea that Decep­ti­cons who take visual clues from beasts main­tain that,” says Orci. “It would be strange to have a talk­ing jaguar, or a scor­pion with an Eng­lish accent.”

Insec­ti­cons

We have big guys, some lit­tle guys. We have a lot of lit­tler ones, too. Lit­tle weirder ones,” Bay says. Like the Insec­ti­cons, which were giant bugs in the orig­i­nal series and Has­bro toy line, but are now tiny creepy-crawly infiltrators.

Jet­fire -

As in the orig­i­nal, this fighter plane crash-landed on Earth a long time ago, and he will become a reformed Decep­ti­con now fight­ing for the humans. His alter­nate form is the SR-71 Black­bird, the out­dated but still-sleek Cold War spy plane.

“He’s old, craggy, for­get­ful … doesn’t work very well. Can’t trans­form very well, because he’s very geri­atric. They get stuck with him a lot,” Bay says. “He knows the plan of the bad guys, but he for­gets all the good parts of the plan.”

- Side­swipe con­firmed as sil­ver Corvette Stingray con­cept car
– Jolt con­firmed as a new foot sol­dier as the Chevy Volt
– Trax and Beat play The Twins, Skids and Mud­flap (“Some of the junior Trans­form­ers are just dumb” — heroic screw-ups)
– Arcee is the ‘only female’ and is Megan Fox’s pink motor­cy­cle — was in draft for first movie but got left out [what about Chro­mia the blue motor­cy­cle and the third bike?]

- The Fallen — holds the key to life on Earth and Cybertron, ancient robot
– The Doc­tor — a spi­der like droid, trans­forms into imple­ments of tor­ture
– Giant Demol­isher
– Wheelie

- Seven con­struc­ti­cons con­firmed as Scav­enger, Scrap­per, High­tower, Long­haul, Ram­page, Over­load and Mix­mas­ter
– Dev­as­ta­tor “one gigan­tic robot stomper”

“He’s made of vehi­cles designed to build, and he turns into is some­one who loves to destroy,” Orci says. “He is an agent of absolute chaos.”

Bay says Dev­as­ta­tor is the crème de la smash and got a unchar­ac­ter­is­tic reac­tion out of the film’s exec­u­tive pro­ducer already.

“Spiel­berg saw it and said, ‘This is (exple­tive) awe­some!’ ” Bay says, and adds: “It’s always nice when you can make him swear.”

Yahoo

Arti­cle

AUTOBOTS
# OPTIMUS PRIME: The Auto­bots’ leader — alter­nate form: Peter­bilt truck
# IRONHIDE: Weapons spe­cial­ist — GMC Top­kick.
# RATCHET: Medic — Hum­mer H2.
# BUMBLEBEE: Friend and mode of trans­porta­tion for Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) — 2010 Chevor­let Camaro.
# ARCEE: A female Auto­bot — motor­cy­cle.
# JETFIRE: An older Decep­ti­con who switches sides — SR71 Black­bird jet.
# JOLT: the orig­i­nal toy was a Decep­ti­con, but in the movie he’s a good guy — Chevro­let Volt plug-in hybrid.
# SKID & MUDFLAP: a.k.a. “The Twins” — Chevro­let Beat and Trax con­cept cars.

DECEPTICONS
# STARSCREAM: For­merly Megatron’s sec­ond in com­mand, he escaped at the end of the first movie (see photo); F-22 Rap­tor jet.
# SCORPONOK: The mechan­i­cal scor­pion that attacked the Amer­i­can troops in the desert.
# THE FALLEN: One of the orig­i­nal Trans­form­ers, he’s called “the most ele­men­tal bad guy” by the screen­writ­ers.
# SIDEWAYS: The Audi R8 seen crash­ing through a build­ing in the trailer.
# SOUNDWAVE: A cas­sette player in the orig­i­nal toys; his alter­nate mode will fly.
# RAVAGE: A four-legged, cat-like robot (see photo).
# THE DOCTOR: Alter­nate form has not been announced.
# WHEELIE: A small, radio-controlled truck.
# DEMOLISHER: One of the Con­struc­ti­cons that trans­form into con­struc­tion vehi­cles.
# DEVASTATOR: A giant robot formed by the Con­struc­ti­cons join­ing together; indi­vid­u­ally, they are: Scav­enger, Scrap­per, High­tower, Long­haul, Ram­page, Over­load and Mixmaster.

Up to this point a rumored total of 40 has been touted, how­ever a new Vari­ety arti­cles ups that to a good 60 after speak­ing with TF2 VFX lead Scott Far­rar. The char­ac­ters will also see much more inter­ac­tion and have human like prop­er­ties such as sweating.

“Michael took the pro­duc­tion value up many, many notches,” [ILM’s lead VFX super­vi­sor for TF2 Scott Far­rar] says. “Just the back­grounds alone are huge. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of ‘Apoc­a­lypse Now’ and ‘Ben-Hur,’ in regards to fan­tas­tic back­grounds and the unbe­liev­able sets we worked at around the world.”

Every­one involved in “Revenge of the Fallen” is keep­ing the details under wraps, but Far­rar says there are some 60 robot char­ac­ters, and they play in set­tings around the world. Some, like refiner­ies at night, were cho­sen to boost the visual drama and show off the scale of the giant ‘bots.

What’s more, this time the Trans­form­ers will inter­act much more with the world around them. Far­rar high­lights “the splashes and the hits and the fight­ing on dirt or mov­ing, bang­ing into trees,” explain­ing, “Things splin­ter and break, they spit, they out­gas, they sweat, they snort.”

One new chal­lenge is that sev­eral sequences will be shown in Imax for­mat, approx­i­mately 16 times larger than 35mm, which means the CG work must be fin­ished at much higher res­o­lu­tion. At that scale, it can take sev­eral days to ren­der a final frame.

All this is on top of cre­at­ing a new fam­ily of giant robots. “(Bay) had to learn a whole litany of new things by get­ting into this robot cul­ture on the first film,” Far­rar says. “I don’t think he’d ever worked on a film where he’d done so much direct­ing of ani­mated char­ac­ters. So he’s really taken it to heart, and I think not every­body does, but he actu­ally enjoys the process.”

This news seems to have hit a cou­ple of sta­tions in the last 24 hours, orig­i­nally miss-reported as Blink-182 writ­ing a track for Revenge of the Fallen. Blink-182 drum­mer is a twit­terer, and he did tweet:

Lis­ten­ing to a new ver­sion of a track I’m play­ing on for Busta Rhymes for the Trans­form­ers 2 sound­track. Shit is jammin’.

Not hugely news­wor­thy, we should get the film’s full sound­track track list­ing shortly, pos­si­bly in April.