The Trans­form­ers Collector’s Club have tran­scribed (read: para­phrased) the Q&A ses­sion at Toy Fair 2009 where Michael Bay and oth­ers were quizzed about Revenge of the Fallen.

WC: Michael, the first movie was such an amaz­ing suc­cess how is Revenge of the Fallen going to be different?

MB: From learn­ing the mythos, to fig­ur­ing out how to make the robots trans­form on the big screen, the first movie involved a lot of dis­cov­ery. In addi­tion, it was a story about a boy get­ting his first car and find­ing his first girl friend. The sec­ond movie is a com­ing of age story, encom­pass­ing global issues, and bring­ing the robots to a new level. If every boy in the world didn’t want a Bum­ble­bee in his garage from the first movie, they will from the sec­ond. All of the robots in this film are super­hero tough. I’ll tell you I am very pas­sion­ate about this film.

LdB: Yes, in the first movie, boy gets car, boy finds girl, but this one really explores the idea of respon­si­bil­ity as Sam leaves for col­lege. He thinks he wants to lead a nor­mal col­lege life but finds out some of his deci­sions don’t work out so well for not only him, but also the whole world.

WC: Brian, can you tell us a lit­tle about your jour­ney mak­ing the new film?

BG: What I dis­cov­ered is what a great part­ner we have in Para­mount with this rich fran­chise. We have been blessed with a great set of team play­ers from both sides as this mythol­ogy is very diverse and only with a great team can you explore all these dif­fer­ent lay­ers. For exam­ple in one of the early pro­duc­tion meet­ings Alex and Bob (writ­ers) were won­der­ing if the robots would take an earthly form and what we all agreed that we wanted, was for kids to be look­ing at the cars in the park­ing lot, after they left the movie, won­der­ing if one of these cars just might be a robot in disguise.

WC: Tyrese, how does your char­ac­ter evolve in the new film?

TG: Well, I’ll be call­ing in more air strikes, and I am now a Mas­ter Sgt. There was a ton of pres­sure from the first movie to get it right but now the pres­sure in the sec­ond movie was to get it right, but with a sense of urgency, to get this back out to the fans.

WC: Michael, the first movie was such an amaz­ing suc­cess how is Revenge of the Fallen going to be different?

LdB: Yes, there was a lot of urgency. You know some stu­dios would have wanted Michael to shoot more than one movie at the same time, but that’s just not right for Trans­form­ers. Trans­form­ers has really evolved from movie to movie and is now on a much big­ger scale, but with more intimacy.

MB: For this fran­chise, you’re right, pro­duc­ing mul­ti­ple movies at the same time is not the way to do it. We lis­tened to feed­back from the fans, and were able to put a lot of that into the sec­ond film. This is a big­ger film with a great sto­ry­line.
WC: Brian, how does this film evolve the mythology?

BG: We all know that every­one is hun­gry for the next level of mythos, so we really want every­one to won­der what Revenge of the Fallen means.

LdB: It is a very deep mythol­ogy and most peo­ple just don’t know how deep it is.
MB: Yes, this film will sat­isfy all types of fans as I have included my trade­mark humor, more inti­macy with the humans and robots, and Moms will think it is safe enough to bring the kids back out to the movies.

TG: The humor often times is cre­ated on the spot. Some­thing hap­pens on the set and Michael lets us keep it in the film. I know I still get com­ments from kids about my “left cheek”. I don’t know if that will ever go away and that was a spon­ta­neous com­ment that just came out when we were film­ing the first film.

I’ll tell you what has really meant the most to me, are the com­ments I got from real Mas­ter Sgts in the mil­i­tary. Some of the guys that were in Afghanistan told me that when they explained to their kids that their job was just like what they saw me do in Trans­form­ers, it made “them cool to their kids”.

WC: Brian, tell us what this brand has meant out­side of the US.

BG: In my trav­els all over the world, I have found that the expe­ri­ence has been the same. Retail­ers have said that their response was incred­i­ble with the movie prod­ucts. In China alone in 2008, the brand grew in dou­ble dig­its. We found that the Trans­form­ers story con­tains uni­ver­sal truths that peo­ple all over the world regard­less of cul­ture seem to get .

After the pre­view was shown, Direc­tor Michael Bay spoke exclu­sively with Rik Alvarez of the Trans­form­ers Col­lec­tors’ Club.

RA: How did mak­ing this film com­pare to the first? How did the fans reac­tion to the first film change what you did in the sec­ond film?

MB: The fans are very vocal and we lis­tened. I worked very closely with the writ­ers in order to dive more deeply into the mythol­ogy. We really looked for ele­ments that have never been explored and we dis­cov­ered some story lines that we wanted to elab­o­rate. This is a com­ing of age story for Sam but we also wanted to delve much deeper into the per­son­al­i­ties of the robots. There is much, much more robot inter­ac­tion in this film. This film has many more per­sonal moments but will also appeal to the hard­core fans as it can be wicked at times.

RA: Spe­cial effects soft­ware and cam­era tech­nol­ogy have made advance­ments since the first film. How has this empow­ered you to fur­ther real­ize your vision for Revenge?

MB: The devel­op­ments in tech­nol­ogy have allowed us to have the robots show emo­tion. This is a robot movie and this new tech­nol­ogy allows us to explore a greater depth of per­son­al­ity from these characters.

RA: No other direc­tor has the kind of rela­tion­ship that you have devel­oped with the US Mil­i­tary. What piece of hard­ware did you get access to that are you most excited about for this com­ing film?

MB: It’s like I have a direct line to the Pen­ta­gon. This is the first movie where actual F16’s have made a bomb­ing run on a movie set and coör­di­nated with spe­cial effects explo­sions. We were on a work­ing nuclear sub­ma­rine and work­ing air­craft car­rier. The mil­i­tary loved the first movie. It really helped with recruit­ing and pro­mot­ing a pos­i­tive image for them. Now they are happy to do just about any­thing they can for my films. We also found out that in Afghanistan the Buffalo(s) (Bonecrusher vehi­cle from the first movie) have all been nick­named dif­fer­ent Trans­form­ers char­ac­ters by their per­son­nel. We also worked with tanks fir­ing real rounds and you have not lived until you have heard an actual tank fir­ing. We have so much access — I am appre­cia­tive and excited about all the mil­i­tary vehi­cles we use.

RA: Film­ing at the pyra­mids must have been amaz­ing! What were the great­est chal­lenges you faced?

MB: This is the first time in 30 years that any­one has filmed at the pyra­mids and the first time ever any­one has filmed from the top of Petra. Steven filmed Indi­ana Jones and The Last Cru­sade from the base of Petra. It took 21 very heavy heli­copter loads to get all our gear to the top. We had all the access we wanted in Egypt as we found out that the head of Egypt­ian Antiq­ui­ties Dr. Zahi Hawass is a big Trans­form­ers fan and was very help­ful. We also filmed in the desert where Lawrence of Ara­bia was filmed. Very chal­leng­ing conditions.

RA: We know you love to blow things up in your movies, what is your favorite thing to blow up or demolish?

MB: Well, I don’t have a favorite, as I like to blow up a lot of things. The most expen­sive thing I’ve blown us was a $50 mil­lion dol­lar house that no one would buy in Bad Boys II.

RA: Is there any­thing else you would like to tell the fans about this great new movie?

MB: Fans should know that I really want to sat­isfy them by mak­ing an even bet­ter movie than the first one. Tonight was just a taste of what is to come. Not a scene shown was a “money shot” from the film. I really want to keep them a secret to give every­one a great sur­prise this sum­mer. Oh yes, and all the pre­views you have seen so far, you won’t get a bit of the final story from the trail­ers. The final movie will be so much more than what you “think” you have seen in the previews.

Thanks to Has­bro and Para­mount for allow­ing us the oppor­tu­nity for this sneak peek into the pro­duc­tion of Revenge of the Fallen! Watch for this movie com­ing to a the­atre near you June 24, 2009!