Transformers (film)/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Actor Allusion:
  • Backed by the Pentagon: Somewhat odd, considering almost every Decepticon from the first film was a military machine, and the Pentagon typically doesn't support scripts that make the military look bad. The fact that the US Armed Forces kick a considerable amount of ass in all three movies, and the movie producers pointing out that the Decepticons picked US military machinery because it kicked the most ass, is what convinced them to sign on.
  • The Danza: Glenn Morshower as General Morshower in ROTF and DOTM.
  • Dawson Casting: Shia LaBeouf was 19-20 while filming and Megan Fox was 19, both playing high school juniors. The only thing that makes this worthy of note is that Bay mentioned that he was initially not interested in LaBeouf because in his movies immediately prior he had grown a goatee, making him look too old to play a teenager. Seeing him clean shaven convinced him otherwise.
  • Doing It for the Art: The movies exist to sell toys, GM vehicles, and many other products, but Michael Bay didn't want to do it at first. Yes, Mr. Flash Cuts & Explosions had to be talked into doing this. Bay explained that the only thing that made him even bother to consider the job is that you don't just ignore an offer from Steven Spielberg. Once he went through "Transformers School" at Hasbro, he had a wave of inspiration that was about showing something no one has ever attempted to do before. Once convinced, he made sure the CGI was some of the most detailed ever made. Industrial Light & Magic actually said they hadn't done work this groundbreaking since Jurassic Park.
    • Devastator is likely ILM's greatest accomplishment to date. The scenes with him had such a massive level of detail that rendering him took the ILM equipment to its limits. "Took the ILM equipment to its limits" as in smoking and melting one of the motherboards. Also prior series just made a blur of motion between the transformations, sort of "cheating" the process. Here no two transformations are identical (same basic components go to the right place but how it does that changes) and each one is appropriate to the scene, sometimes done in slow motion for dramatic effect.
    • Bay insists on doing as many shots for real as possible, instead of doing everything in CGI. He rarely uses a blue screen. That really was the Hoover Dam, that was a real bus splitting in half, those are the real pyramids, that was a real sand explosion, there is a real life-size Bumblebee prop, the entire city of Chicago represents itself, etc.
    • All of this can be evident in the scene in the first film where Sam is searching for his glasses and the robots are in the backyard. The visual effects were not cheap and that entire sequence was comedic in tone (Steven Spielberg even mentioned, while laughing, that he had never seen something like that before). But it also provided some of the most characterization for the robot heroes and helped to make them more than the killer robots everyone were afraid of, so that when they come to Sam's rescue we are rooting for them.
    • Bay had to be coaxed into making the third one in 3D, because he said it was "gimmicky". Seriously.
  • Enforced Method Acting: Most of the stunts were performed live, with no CGI. While safety measures were put in place, Shia LaBeouf was really holding onto a statue 20 stories up and the actors were fully briefed on what kind of explosives were used to create the Scorponok sand explosion.
  • Money, Dear Boy:
    • Apparently, the only reason Megan Fox didn't quit after the first movie.
    • Similarly, Hugo Weaving freely admits to phoning in his performance.
  • The Other Darrin: In Dark of The Moon, Sideswipe is voiced by James Remar instead of André Sogliuzzo. Likewise, Megan Fox is replaced by former Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley; going so far as to replace the character of Mikaela.
    • The video games based upon the films often have different voice actors for several characters for cost reasons or due to the movie's casting of a character for the movie proper not being revealed until it's close to release or already released.
  • Reality Subtext: Bumblebee vs. Barricade: Chevy Camaro vs. Ford Mustang.
  • The Red Stapler: There has been an increase in the popularity of twin black racing stripes for custom paint jobs, whether or not they are yellow, Camaro's or even sports cars.
  • Throw It In: Michael Bay is a fan of playing around with the script. Shia was hired based on how well he could improv. Also, the reason Sam's friend Miles starts climbing a tree at the lake party is because the actor started doing it in between takes and Bay thought it was a goofy thing the character would do.
    • DOTM is introducing a "third" form for the Transformers, a battle-ready vehicle mode reminiscent of M.A.S.K.. The reason seems to be because Michael Bay saw the sub-line of the previous movie toy-line called "Stealth Force" that presented a very similar mode and liked the look. The Wreckers' NASCAR altmodes appear to have this form as their only vehicle mode (specifically, armored versions of the #42 of Juan Pablo Montoya, the #48 of Jimmie Johnson, and the #88 of Dale Earnhardt, Jr.).
  • Word of God: Various information such as Barricade's disappearance from the movie and how much Sam's parents knew at the end credits were explained by the screenwriters and tie-in comics.
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