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.
“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 His alternate form is the SR-71 Blackbird, the outdated but still-sleek Cold War spy plane.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.”
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.
Folks over at The Arker have posted images of two previously unseen Revenge of the Fallen toys in their packages, Dune Runner and Scalpel (deluxe class).
Scalpel
A very small Decepticon ‘medic’ with a microscope alt mode
Scalpel has a massive database of anatomical data for millions of creatures across the universe. He can unassemble anything that doesn’t struggle to much in a matter of minutes, and usually puts it back together with only a few parts in the wrong place. He serves as medic to the Decepticon army, but most Decepticons prefer to suffer in silence rather than allow Scalpel to work on them.
Dune Runner
An autobot that roams the deserts and mountains
Back on Cybertron, most rolling surfaces are flat, lightly textured roads — perfect for speed and traction. It wasn’t until he got to Earth that Dune Runner experienced anything like […]. He can’t say he enjoyed the new vehicle mode, but he appreciates that it lets him patrol the deserts and mountains where many Decepticons have taken to hiding.
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.”
In order to reach the May 6th 2011 deadline release date for Spider-man 4, as much as possible must be ready in time for the first production day, as per usual, this means that the David Lindsay-Abaire penned script should be completed by the end of summer 2009, ‘about three months’ to be more precise. SciFi wire also quizzed Raimi about potential villains for the fourth movie, but he declined to comment.
“We have to make the release date, and on all of these pictures, the ‘Spider-Man’ films–and I’m sure it’s the same as with many of the other bigger-budgeted films–they have release dates far in advance of a screenplay/ […] So it’s about getting it ready the best you can in time for the first day of production. That’s what we’ve always done, and that’s what we’ll try to do again.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the villains yet. […] I think I have to wait till the finished screenplay, and then it’d really be up to Sony Pictures and the producers to determine when they want to release that information. To them, it’s usually a big, a big, big thing, a big moment where they want to present the villain with the proper respect or fear that he or she deserves.”
Raimi has also spoken out about the creative power he would like to wield for the next movie. This comes after the third movie whereby presumably the studio took over some of the creative decisions (is that perhaps what lead to the crazy dancing Peter Parker scene?), via Empire:
“They really gave me a tremendous amount of control on the first two films, actually. […] But then there were different opinions on the third film and I didn’t really have creative control, so to speak.
The best way for me to move forward on films, is that I’ve got to be the singular voice that makes the creative choices on the film. I love Spider-Man so much that I’d like to continue telling Spider-Man stories. But only under those circumstances where I think I can honour him.”
The Chevy Camaro, Beat and Trax have each made an appearance at this year’s ShoWest in Las Vegas, alongside the enormous robot Bumblebee figure. Flickr user deltaMike has been on hand to captures some shots of the event, view gallery.
Transformers and ROTF writers Orci and Kurtzman have spoken with Scifi Wire about their work on Transformers 2. I have taken the liberty of summarizing the interview with some bullet points below:
- Both Sam and Optimus Prime are “tested in a very fundamental way”.
– The theme is based on Sam leaving home two years later and his new responsibilities.
– In searching for villains they went back to the source material; comics and cartoons — “and just started looking for kind of the most elemental bad guy that kind of jumped off the material, and we found one in the Fallen.“
– Some characters were chosen by Hasbro and Bay during writer’s strikes as discussion between the film makers and the film writers was prohibited. Others were taken from a brief 20 page treatment. This was necessary to get the designs rolling.
– Orci says “Jolt” (as seen on the toy) should be named “Volt”.
– Jetfire was in the treatment, whilst the goofy sure to be annoying Mudflap (Chevy Trax) was added later.
– “You’re not going to get to know them all”, with respect to piling new characters into the second movie.
– Some discussion about Nimoy and Frank Welker voicing characters.
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.
