TFG2 have released another con­cept image, this time of the pur­ple Arcee motor­cy­cle in a great pose. The text on the left arm reads ‘Agusta’ along with a brand image — aka its based on an Agusta motorcycle.

Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, Madrid and Lon­don. Trans­form­ers 2 is trav­el­ing the world and cre­at­ing tons of press in the process. Here are some videos and pho­tos from the big events, each one reveal­ing a dif­fer­ent Megan Fox out­fit, the Berlin one being par­tic­u­larly odd.

Playlist of Pre­mière videos

A small selec­tion of pro­fes­sional and fan filmed shots from a selec­tion of pre­mieres, for those that couldn’t be there:

Lon­don Première

Berlin Pre­mière

Madrid Pre­mière

Here’s another quick round up of some Trans­form­ers 2 arti­cles that are hit­ting the press at the moment.

Michael Bay’s earn­ings from first Trans­form­ers movie

via Yahoo,

Shia LaBeouf received an upfront sum of $500,000 for his role in the first “Trans­form­ers.” How­ever, Bay’s deal passed on a fee for direct­ing and exec­u­tive pro­duc­ing in exchange for a slice of the prof­its from all the film’s rev­enue sources. The film, which cost the stu­dio an esti­mated $155 mil­lion to make, earned over $700 mil­lion world­wide and was a top-selling DVD. Bay’s final take from the movie: some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of $75 million.

LaBeouf is get­ting a raise for the sequel, “Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen.” His pay­check is esti­mated at about $5 mil­lion. Bay will once again get a cut of the prof­its, which could take longer to accu­mu­late since the bud­get for the sec­ond movie approached $200 million.

ROVE inter­view Isabel Lucas

Matthew Mars­den injured in Heli­copter stunt

The Sun­day Mer­cury caught up with Matthew Mars­den to find out about his near death encounter with a heli­copter on the set of Trans­form­ers 2:

“It was a night­mare,” recalls Matthew, speak­ing from his home in Los Ange­les. “I had a very close shave when a heli­copter crashed and missed me by a foot. I stepped out of the way a sec­ond before it hit the ground. The stunt went off too early, I should have been some con­sid­er­able way away. I didn’t seri­ously injure myself, apart from shear­ing off one of my bot­tom teeth. There was a bit of blood, but my adren­a­line kicked in so I didn’t feel it.

“I just remem­ber the direc­tor, Michael Bay, shout­ing, ‘Oh my God! Every­one look at Matt!’. One of the crew rushed up and said, ‘Dude, do you have any idea how close that was?’. I said ‘As long as I look cool, I don’t care!’. Peo­ple will prob­a­bly think that it’s a computer-generated spe­cial effect, but I can assure you it was very real. It’s fine, I’m still here with all my fin­gers and toes, though not all my teeth.”

Insider inter­view Shia

Isabel Lucas interview

Sky News inter­viewed Isabel Lucas at the Tokyo world première:

It is Lucas’ first [press con­fer­ence] and admits it’s over­whelm­ing. ‘It’s been a whirl­wind,’ she says. ‘I’ve worked on five pro­duc­tions since Home and Away and this is the first one to be released, so I haven’t ever expe­ri­enced doing a press jun­ket or a pre­mière, so this is like really being thrown right into the midst of it, into the deep end.’

Spiel­berg, who is an exec­u­tive pro­ducer on the new Trans­form­ers movie, sug­gested her to direc­tor Michael Bay for the role of Alice after work­ing with her on the HBO mini-series The Pacific, which he also pro­duced. One suc­cess­ful audi­tion later and Lucas had landed the biggest movie role of her career.

‘I was really intrigued by the char­ac­ter because there is more than meets the eye — lit­er­ally,’ she says. ‘She’s a lay­ered char­ac­ter, and that’s inter­est­ing for any actor to play really some­thing dif­fer­ent from your­self and to under­stand and relate to her even though she might have darker inten­tions. She’s fun to play.’

She describes one par­tic­u­lar scene with LaBeouf which required an atten­tion to detail that she’d never expe­ri­enced before. The shot was so spe­cific for a cer­tain CGI effect that they were try­ing to achieve and the cam­era was about 30cm away and he (Bay) was like yelling at me so specif­i­cally to tilt my head down! Tilt it to the right! Tilt it down again! Now lift it slightly! But he really is an amaz­ing visual genius, and the fin­ished prod­uct you under­stand why he was being so spe­cific with details.’

‘They know that this genre of film is not really what I’m drawn to, I’m drawn to scripts that are unique and have mean­ing. But that’s what is so won­der­ful about being an actor, is the diver­sity of the kind of films you can be a part of. I’m just hon­oured for the oppor­tu­nity, and if it opens other doors career-wise I’ll be very fortunate.’

A new TV spot for Revenge of the Fallen is air­ing, this one fea­tures the mini kitchen robots we’ve heard about (such as a trans­form­ing toaster) and seem­ingly Bumblebee’s response. The video embed­ded below actu­ally includes another TV spot at the start, this is “Fate” and one we have already seen.

We had a cou­ple of sneak pre­views from fans that shared their thoughts about Trans­form­ers 2, now it’s time to get onto the seri­ous stuff. Spoil­ers within.

Seems like the first half is great — a fan­tas­tic whirl­wind of action, com­edy and big robots all at a good pace. How­ever there are many neg­a­tive opin­ions on the sec­ond half and the inevitable build up to the finale feels labored and boring.

IGN UK (3/5)

View full review

It’s a fine set-up that is force­fully estab­lished in the movie’s superb open­ing hour. Bay mas­ter­fully zips between events at Cybertron (the Trans­form­ers’ home­world), Sam’s open­ing day at col­lege, the drama on a vari­ety of mil­i­tary bases, and throws in sev­eral robot-on-robot bat­tles for good mea­sure, all at a break­neck pace that leaves you breathless.

“The film reaches its pin­na­cle with one such action set-piece that takes place in a for­est — a bril­liantly crafted sequence that is kinetic, emo­tional and gen­uinely thrilling. Unfor­tu­nately how­ever, it is a cli­max that comes only an hour or so into the movie — the remain­ing 80 or so min­utes just never quite scale the same heights.”

That’s the one BIG prob­lem with ROTF; the movie stops dead halfway through, and then spends the rest of its over­long run-time build­ing up a head of steam again, painstak­ingly set­ting up the even­tual climax.

Bay takes an age metic­u­lously manoeu­vring all the film’s pro­tag­o­nists into place for a vast, epic con­fronta­tion in the mid­dle of the Egypt­ian desert. But by the time this all-in royal rum­ble between the Auto­bots, Decep­ti­cons and US Army finally arrives, you are too numbed, exhausted and inured to actu­ally give a damn about the outcome.

It is just kind of inex­cus­able that with such a ridicu­lously enjoy­able for­mula, view­ers of ROTF still spend the movie’s final half hour nurs­ing a numb head and arse, and will­ing the noise to stop. Trans­form­ers 2 proves that some­times less is more.

Total Film (4/5)

View full review

Fallen so fre­quently approaches the first pic’s all-out awe­some­ness, and even occa­sion­ally sur­passes it — notably in an open­ing blitzkrieg in Shang­hai and a for­est face-off between Opti­mus Prime and three Decep­ti­cons impres­sive enough to merit com­par­i­son with King Kong’s mul­ti­ple T-Rex smack­down — that it’s this close to being the per­fect sum­mer flick.

The prob­lem is, it’s the parts you remem­ber, not the whole.

Bay may have upped the ante, tak­ing his ’bots on the road (New York, Paris, the Pyra­mids), into space and even back in time (cour­tesy of an Apocalypto-like pro­logue set in 17,000 BC), but he hasn’t man­aged to assem­ble his com­po­nents into a coher­ent mechanism.

Nor does his inabil­ity to keep his cam­era still or go two min­utes with­out blow­ing shit up help, the hyper­ac­tiv­ity reach­ing its nadir dur­ing a drawn-out cli­max in the Egypt­ian desert.

[…]

For all its faults, Fallen is gen­uinely more enjoy­able than the summer’s other giant-robot pic­ture Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion. In con­trast to McG’s por­ten­tous, po-faced tone, Bay works in a like­able strain of know­ing humour that makes the two hour-plus run­ning time fly by.

SciFi­Now (2/5)

View full review. This review is heav­ily crit­i­cal of the feature.

The Fallen is as big and burly as fans of loud, fre­netic block­busters will want it to be. It shouts, it screams, it explodes, it screams some more and then it explodes again; it is more than sim­ple cin­e­matic fod­der for the pre­teen Sat­ur­day mobs, it is the next stage in the evo­lu­tion of cin­e­matic fod­der, stripped down and stream­lined to fea­ture only mar­ketable, trailer-friendly, toy shelf-conscious moments. Junk, then.

Trou­blingly, like so many other recent block­busters (Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion to name but one) there is so lit­tle that feels like a real threat: explo­sions are noth­ing more than dec­o­ra­tion; all Trans­form­ers, both Auto­bot and Decep­ti­con, are in dire need of an inten­sive train­ing course in how to shoot; the much talked about Fallen comes across as lit­tle more than a computer-generated slouch; even Sam and Mikaela appear to be made of an inde­struc­tible, alien rub­ber alloy. How is an audi­ence sup­posed to care when it doesn’t ever believe that any­thing bad will hap­pen? Ulti­mately, for all its obvi­ous expense (with Bay at least, the money is always on the screen), the action is tediously unen­gag­ing and totally ster­ile, and nowhere near enough of a reward for the 40 minute bout of noth­ing­ness that pre­cedes the final act.

The Mir­ror

View full review

In terms of explo­sions, fire­power and sheer shrill, all-action, pop­corn enter­tain­ment it is hard to see how this big’n’bold sequel can be topped this year.

Star Trek might have had more space­ships and aliens and Ter­mi­na­tor: Sal­va­tion more grim-faced robots, but this Michael Bay sum­mer block­buster is pure mind­less adven­ture may­hem that sticks firm and hard to its win­ning for­mula. In truth, it is a film for teen boys — and a bloomin’ long one at that — but is also a guar­an­teed mul­ti­plex crowd pleaser.

Say­ing that, for the most part it is also a com­plex lum­ber­ing mess of a movie that is long on turgid back­story and short on ten­sion, laughs and sub­tle acting.

The Ger­man NEST video that shows the army swoop­ing in on Scavenger’s (or Demol­ishor) posi­tion at Beth­le­hem Steel is now avail­able in it’s orig­i­nal Eng­lish form, for all to enjoy (although this time there are Japan­ese subtitles):

Thanks Kyle and Rumah!

As expected, the cast of Trans­form­ers 2 are appear­ing left, right and cen­ter as part of the Revenge of the Fallen press explo­sion. Here’s a quick round up of the arti­cles and fea­tures we know about.

Megan Fox and Opti­mus Prime in EW

”If I’m still mak­ing Trans­form­ers five years from now, I might not be so überex­cited. But there’s noth­ing spe­cific that I need to accom­plish. I just want to still be working.”

Warn­ing: do not try get­ting your hair caught up in barbed wire at home.

”Peo­ple are well aware that [Trans­form­ers] is not a movie about act­ing. And once you real­ize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ‘All right, I know that when he calls Action! I’m either going to be run­ning or scream­ing, or both.”’

Trans­form­ers turned you into an overnight star. Look­ing back, how do you feel about the movie?
I’m ter­ri­ble in it. It’s my first real movie and it’s not hon­est and not real­is­tic. The movie wasn’t bad, I just wasn’t proud about what I did.

What was it like the first time you worked with him?
I was actu­ally an extra on Bad Boys II [in 2003]. There’s a club scene, and I was one of the club kids. I was in a stars-and-stripes bikini and a cow­boy hat, danc­ing under a waterfall.

You’re a big­ger star now than when you did the first Trans­form­ers. Did they beef up your role in the sequel?
The humans are still sec­ondary to the robots because it’s a movie about robots. I feel like the part is ade­quate. I feel like we do some­thing that’s watch­able on our end and then ILM makes it phenomenal.

You don’t sound con­vinced that this is the great­est movie on earth.
It’s not try­ing to be the great­est movie on earth. It’s going to be the best action movie of the sum­mer. Hands down, it will win that. But it’s not try­ing to be a Golden Globe-nominated film. It’s a badass pop­corn sum­mer movie.

You up for a third Trans­form­ers?
Sure. I mean, I can’t s— on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s ass. Peo­ple are well aware that this is not a movie about act­ing. And once you real­ize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ”All right, I know that when he calls Action! I’m either going to be run­ning or scream­ing, or both.”

Shia and Megan talk tril­ogy with MTV

Megan Fox on Trans­form­ers 3

“I’m really happy to have been a part of these films, obvi­ously, and if they wanted me to come back for a third one, I would. I owe them,” she laughed. “I owe them my career, really.”

Roberto Orci on Trans­form­ers 3

“I’d like to see some ver­sion of Gal­va­tron,” said Roberto Orci.. “I would like to see Uni­cron, too, and really any­thing that ends in the word ‘ron.’ Dinobots! I think, even­tu­ally, the Dinobots are going to have to happen.”

“It’s totally pos­si­ble that, just for the ben­e­fit of ‘Trans­form­ers’ to stay cool and awe­some, we should have to let new peo­ple come in and do it,” Kurtz­man said.

Shia on Trans­form­ers 3

“I don’t think [we’ll make ‘Trans­form­ers 3′] right away, but I wouldn’t kill it either,” LaBeouf explained, say­ing that just like Michael Bay, all the stars need a break from the giant robot fran­chise. “I don’t think we’re going to do one any­time soon. I think we all need a break from each other and a break from the project. We just need to col­lect our­selves and come back to it. They’re hard to make, man.”

Shia talks Revenge of the Fallen video game

“I’m a gamer. Always have been — always will be. This one looks a-w-e-s-o-m-e! ”

Read the rest of this entry »

TFG2 have released another set of Trans­form­ers 2 con­cept art, this time we have the Audi R8, “Side­ways” and the bull­dozer “Rampage”.

Ram­page

Side­ways