Wreck­ers

Until now, the weaponized Nascars have been dubbed stun­ti­cons, omni­bots and rally­bots, all three names have been rejected by MichaelBay.com’s Nel­son. Nel­son has since con­firmed that they are actu­ally called Wreck­ers. Wikipedia pro­vides some back­ground on the characters:

The Wreck­ers are a sub-team of Auto­bots in the fic­tional Trans­form­ers Uni­verse, func­tion­ing essen­tially as a com­mando unit.

Red Faced

Film­ing last week on Michi­gan Avenue, Chicago, the Trans­form­ers 3 crew were using more card­board head cut outs. This time, lowfatoreo’s YouTube video has high­lighted a new char­ac­ter, red faced and angry look­ing this could be the robot mode of the Fer­rari, Roll­bar or a Wrecker, my per­sonal guess is that it’s the red Wrecker. Hat tip to Trans­form­ers Live for pick­ing this one out.

Ein­stein, Mercedes

Until now it’s been pre­sumed that the Mer­cedes was the lat­est incar­na­tion of Jolt, how­ever Nel­son has dis­pelled these rumors on the offi­cial Michael Bay site, point­ing out instead that the Mer­cedes E550 is the alt mode of the Ein­stein looka­like robot, that is called Q (“like in James Bond”).

Dur­ing the Bot­Con awards Michael Bay pre­sented some new footage of the Trans­form­ers sequel. Seib­ertron described the new footage:

With our antic­i­pa­tion at its high­est level, the atten­dees of Bot­con roared into cheer as the first clip of the movie started. The footage started with John Tur­turro and Sam’s roo­mate in the mid­dle of a con­struc­tion zone look­ing on to a group of con­struc­tion vehi­cles sur­round them. The con­struc­ti­cons were revealed when Mix­mas­ters Decep­ti­con sym­bol is shown and Scav­enger begins to trans­form. At the same time the other con­struc­ti­cons move closer to form Devastator!!!

Scav­enger lit­er­ally forces all the other con­struc­ti­cons into the gestalt ala Scor­pion in Mor­tal Kom­bat [I think he means that “Come Here!” with chain grab move — ed]. Tuturro then runs with Sam’s roo­mate when the scene cuts to Sam and Mikaela run­ning from Rampage.

Ram­page begins chas­ing Sam’s father when Sam jumps in front of him to draw his atten­tion. Sam then says “Wait, it’s not them you want. It’s this, the MATRIX!” He then holds up an item and con­tin­ues to coax Ram­page when Bum­ble­bee arrives. The bat­tle begins.

Ram­page and Bum­ble­bee fight fero­ciously with Bum­ble­bee get­ting the bet­ter of Ram­page when Rav­age enters the fray. Using his hip can­nons he blasts Bee and jumps on his back. Bum­ble­bee then forces Ram­page to the ground when Ram­page lunges for Sam and takes Rav­age and tears him apart piece by piece.

Bum­ble­bee then rips Rampage’s arm off and decap­i­tates him.

The biog­ra­phy for Rav­age states that he enters the earth’s atmos­phere and sug­gests that he takes the form of ‘soft’ crea­tures that inhabit the planet. Per­haps this implies Alice (Isabel Lucas)? We also get to see con­fir­ma­tion of the toy’s rather weak ‘re-entry’ mode which doesn’t resem­ble much of any­thing, I per­son­ally pre­fer the bird like trans­for­ma­tion that TF08 concocted.

Rav­age

Bul­let­ing down through the atmos­phere at bet­ter than 15 times the speed of sound, Rav­age con­sid­ers the data he has already amassed, on the small, soft crea­tures that inhabit this planet. They seem weak and frag­ile, yet they are the ones that destroyed Mega­tron, that is a fact he will keep in mind as he pen­e­trates their most sen­si­tive instal­la­tion, against such an unpre­dictable enemy, stealth will be his watchword.

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

A grainy in-theater ver­sion has leaked early, given the qual­ity of these things, this one is pretty watch­able. Lots of new footage and a lot more of the sto­ry­line in this trailer. Includ­ing a shot of Dev­as­ta­tor climb­ing up a pyra­mid.

Down­load the trailer

UPDATE: Chang­ing video source to one that works, though sound is out of sync:

or alter­na­tively:

Trailer descrip­tion

- Opens with Sam telling Bum­ble­bee he’s not com­ing to col­lege
– “Look at this place, I feel smarter already”, Sam’s par­ents at col­lege
– Sexy pan­ning shot of Megan Fox strad­dling a bike
– Sam has a ‘men­tal melt­down’ in the mid­dle of his class (as reported from the Prince­ton film­ing), see­ing sym­bols, mark­ing them into the ground
– Sam meets Opti­mus in a ceme­tery (cemetary film­ing set report)
– More of Bum­ble­bee and the Twins in the dessert, some of that GM promo footage too
– Find­ing the sym­bols on some­thing ancient, pre­sum­ably behind that paint­ing
– Mega­tron returns! We see him ris­ing from the depths of the ocean and ris­ing up behind Mega nFox
– “Mega­tron wants what’s in my mind“
– “Fate rarely calls on us at a moment of our choos­ing“
– We see Sam and Mikaela jump­ing rooftops
– Bum­ble­bee ducks a swing­ing arm from Demol­isher
– Explo­sions in a library
– Sil­ver Sat­urn Astra (as seen at Prince­ton) fly­ing through the air with pre­sum­ably Shia falling out and Megan Fox call­ing after him
– Opti­mus Prime attack­ing the char­ac­ter with rotor blades on his back, pos­si­bly Black­out
– Prime fly­ing through the air after Mega­tron attacks him
– Bricks float­ing in cir­cles around one of the pyra­mids, F-16s fly past, Dev­as­ta­tor climbs up the side of the pyra­mid (same angle on the pyra­mid as seen in the offi­cial shots)
– Jet­fire stoops down
– Dev­as­ta­tor crushes a vehi­cle before he starts suck­ing up sand with his giant vor­tex mouth
– We see a robot, pos­si­bly Mud­flaps being sucked towards the vortex

A Japan­ese blog, Eiga, has posted details sug­gest­ing that the World Pre­mière of Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen may be in Tokyo on June 8th, four days prior to the US, at TOHO Cin­e­mas, Rop­pongi Hills. Michael Bay, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox will all be in attendance.

The rather jum­bled translation:

[Eiga​.com Movie News] 07 to the hit record pub­lished in the SF block­buster, “Trans­form­ers” sequel, and four days ear­lier than the United States will be pub­lished June 20 in Japan, the world’s fastest “Trans­form­ers / Revenge” . The world pre­mière will be at the unveil­ing of the world’s first film, in Tokyo June 8 TOHO was decided at the Rop­pongi Hills SHINEMAZU. Accord­ing to this, direc­tor Michael Bay, Shire of RABUFU star, Megan Fox, who plans to visit Japan.

July 3 is the orig­i­nal 1907 open­ing date is in 1900 North Amer­ica 300 mil­lion dol­lars, all in world record 700,000,000 grossed 800 mil­lion dol­lars. In the same year in Japan was pub­lished in the August 4 date, fun rev­enue and 41 bil­lion yen was a big hit, DVD has sold 64 mil­lion copies.

“Trans­form­ers”, was released TAKARATOMI 85 years, the orig­i­nal toy robot that trans­forms into var­i­ous vehi­cles, such as. The lat­est “Trans­form­ers / revenge” of the Trans­form­ers toys come from TAKARATOMI May 30 will be released on Sunday.

Steven Spielberg’s and accom­plished, fol­low­ing the orig­i­nal recently, and coach bay is said to have seen a rush of peo­ple in this film, in doing so, to fur­ther scale-up from the orig­i­nal con­tent, “if this SUGO it! “divulging that excla­ma­tion. The pre­vi­ous total of 12 trans­form­ers of the body appeared in the film is more than five times over 60 new and orig­i­nal from 5000 and cost 100 mil­lion dol­lars, twice the num­ber reported three bil­lion dollars.

The block­buster that sort of “place of birth” will be unveiled the first in Japan, but is likely to receive atten­tion from around the world.

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 »

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]

Yes­ter­day Para­mount and Dream­works offi­cially announced that Trans­form­ers 3 shall be land­ing in cin­e­mas come Fri­day July 1st 2011, Vari­ety:

Para­mount and Dream­Works are forg­ing ahead with “Trans­form­ers 3,” dat­ing the movie for release on July 1, 2011.
It’s the first word of the three-quel, although Para­mount insid­ers down­played the impor­tance of the move.
They said the stu­dio wanted to claim the date before a com­peti­tor did, con­sid­er­ing that the 2011 sum­mer release cal­en­dar is fill­ing up.
No deals have been inked with direc­tor Michael Bay or fran­chise stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. Nor has a writer been hired for the third installment.

In response, Michael Bay has posted on his forums:

I said I was tak­ing off a year from Trans­form­ers. Para­mount made a mis­take in dat­ing Trans­form­ers 3 — they asked me on the phone — I said yes to July 4 — but for 2012 — whoops! Not 2011!!! That would mean I would have to start prep in Sep­tem­ber. No way. My brain needs a break from fight­ing robots.

Michael

Looks like some­one messed up here. No date set for now — but we know Trans­form­ers 3 is def­i­nitely planned.