Headscratchers / Transformers (2007)

New entries on the bottom.

The Trip to Earth

• How come the transformers crashing to Earth never set off any satellites or early warning systems?
  • Who says they didn't? Those Sector 7 guys showed up in town pretty darn soon after the Autobots arrived, but never reacted to any Decepticon activity. Presumably the Decepticons knew how to make a subtler arrival.
  • Also, a rock the size of New York could be heading right towards us and unless it was in the 3% of the sky watched at any given time, no one would now about it until it hit the atmosphere.
    • No, that's another Micheal Bay movie.
    • That doesn't mean he's wrong.
    • The Asteroid from armageddon wasn't the size of new york, it was the size of texas!
• If the Transformers could travel between Earth and Cybertron so fast, and they were on Mars in 2003 to destroy the Beagle 2 probe and even human technology can reach Mars within six months... why didn't they get to Earth until 2007?
  • It was the Decepticons that were on Mars in 2003. If I'm not mistaken, the prequel comic shows Blackout landing on Earth in 2003. They just couldn't find the All Spark until Sam Witwicky decided to put his great granddad's glasses on eBay.
    • The prequel novel also has both sides flying around the galaxy, looking for the Allspark and Megatron. They didn't know it was on Earth until they encounter the crew of the Ghost-1 in 1969. While they still don't know where Earth is because Starscream destroyed the human ship, they have a starting point. It can be reasonably assumed that they managed to find the wormhole that took the Ghost-1 to the remote part of the galaxy and trace it back to Earth, but it took them nearly 40 years. Considering they've been looking for millennia, 40 years is nothing to them. Also, around this time, Megs woke up for a few minutes. He could've sent a signal into space that lured the others.
  • Dark of the Moon confirms that the Decepticons have been near or around Earth since at least 1963. A small army was hiding on the moon waiting for Sentinel to open the gate, which pretty handily explains where all the Decepticons keep coming from.

Kibble and Bits: Alt Forms, Scanning, and other Transformation-Related Questions

• If the transformers need to scan other machines to disguise themselves, how come the Autobots that crash to Earth to help out Bumblebee already have alternate forms? And where were they all this time? Floating around in orbit? Waiting on spaceships?
  • You may notice that, at least in a couple cases, we specifically see them examine identical vehicles before transforming for the first time. Presumably the others did the same off-screen?
    • Actually, this is made pretty explicit. When they arrive, you see the scenes where each landed. Ironhide climbs out of the pool, walks to the front of the house and sees the pick-up truck. Cut to the family, then cut back, and there's two pick-up trucks, one of which is driving away. You see Jazz, in his protoform, walking up to a car dealership, and seeing a sports car. Cut away, then cut back, and look, he's a sports car! Optimus Prime you see on top of a hill, in protoform, watching a semi truck drive by, and the camera pans up to him to see him transforming into the semi. Ratchet's the only one you don't see walking around in his protoform. How could you have missed this scene?
    • Point of fact, they do have a spaceship waiting. The Ark still exists in this continuity, except it's just a transport ship this time with limited weapons. As is the Nemesis. Of course, the prequel novel and the Defiance comic differ on the purpose of the Nemesis (in the comic, it was built for the Fallen to find the Matrix, while the prequel novel simply has Starscream et al. use it to look for Megatron).
• So Sam gets his first car, a beat-up old Camaro, turns out to be an alien robot. Robot scans in a shiny new concept camaro a little later and starts turning into that instead. Sam's parents don't know about his car being an alien robot. How does he explain why he has a new car?
  • They didn't have time to notice before Section Seven carried them off.
  • And the writers explained that by the end of the movie, Sam's parents are in on the whole thing.
  • "Mom, Dad, we need more product placement, so I acquired a newer model Camaro out of nowhere. The best part is, it was free!"
  • Easier explanation even if the parents weren't in on it. The government confiscated his old camaro and then wrecked it while it was in their possession. As compensation, the government replaced it with a newer model.
• Where do the seats, leather, and upholstery inside the car-type Transformers go when they transform?
  • a very compressed ball in the center?
  • the same place most of The Cube went when it was in football-size-mode.
    • I'm guessing the Cube when in huge-mode was paper thin.
    • Hammerspace is a confirmed canon in Transformers. Why ask?
    • I always considered that the cloth generated by a Transformer for interior decor/upholstery would be reconfigured into parts of their inner workings, or folded and stored inside their panelling. For example, possible airbags in Optimus's hands (which is why Sam didn't break anything but his dignity when Optimus broke his fall).
    • This is the most likely answer. We've seen a robot that looks and feels like a college girl. We've also seen parts, like a hood, that should be one piece, break apart.
• Didn't anybody on the design team notice the potential problems and failures that could arise from exposing that many of the Transformers' gears? I mean, by the second movie, they're fighting in a desert. Under any sort of reasonable logic, those exposed gears would seize up with sand blockages long before the Transformers could do anything.
  • Force fields, cybertronian alloy metals that don't have those problems, Rule of Cool, self-repair functions that work faster than the damage does, medi-bots like Rachet. Pick your justification.
  • Jetfire mentions that without energon, the transformers will eventually rust away, meaning that energon does something to keep them functioning properly. Just look at the shape Jetfire was in.
  • In the first movie, Epps caught a picture of the attacking Decepticon, and he said that the thermal was weird, like there was an 'invisible forcefield around it or something (sic).'
• Did NEST just, like, happen to have a bunch of Chevy compacts lying around for the Twins or what?
  • They didn't need "a bunch". They had two of them that they presumably bought for the Twins to copy, then gave to someone as a company car or something.
• No mention of that classroom scene? The professor is not only the most pretentious and arrogant character ever, but he's also blatantly hitting on the students, in front of the Dean! And why are all the girls in the class buying into his disgusting chauvinist act? Are we to believe he's the Professor Jones of the Astronomy department? It doesn't work. He just comes off as a creepy pervert who shouldn't be allowed near children.
  • Behold, the magic of tenure, the one force in the cosmos stronger than Primus and Unicron combined.
  • The girls may have heard he swaps good grades for, shall we say, "favors". That gleam in their eyes may signify the thrill of anticipating a really easy "A".
  • As for "disgusting chauvinist act", it's called Game. Many girls, especially younger ones, respond very well to somewhat over-the-top masculine behavior - I had great success using it. His version is a little cartoonish, but so's the rest of the movie.
• Rule of Cool aside, Why would Jetfire transform into a SR-71 Blackbird, a plane which has been grounded for some 20 years? Anyone who knew anything about planes would find it rather suspicious.
  • Given that he was in a museum and didn't move until the fragment powered him up I'd assume he just ran out of Energon and locked up in that form.
  • And being old, he didn't want to get involved in any battle, so it's safe to assume that he just love that form, and sleeping with it.
  • He came to earth in 70's. That's kinda settle it down.
  • The Blackbird is an old, obsolete, retired machine that looks evil. Jetfire is an old, obsolete, retired machine that used to be evil. It's a very good match.
  • The canon timeline establishes that one literally crashed on top of him at one point, long after the Fallen had thrown him out of the Decepticons. It was a good way to hide.
  • The Transformers live for literally millions of years, so the Blackbird hasn't flown for a couple of decades. That is less than a blink of an eye to them. He may not even have noticed that his alt mode no longer flies.
• Devastator's balls. The worst thing is that, if you pay attention, you'll notice that none of the construction vehicles that make him up are wrecking balls, and even if one of them was there wouldn't be two balls. So they added those robo-testicles completely arbitrarily.
  • What part of "Michael Bay" did you not understand?

Wacky Hijinks

• What was with the robot perving in that last scene?
  • It's to keep the movie family-friendly while still being titillating. It sure looks like Sam's about to score, but, let me tell you: I collect Optimus Primes. The biggest one I have is about ten inches tall. And I have to avert its eyes when I have intimate company. There is no way in hell that Shia LaBeouf is man enough to lose his virginity to an incredibly hot woman on the hood of a sentient car while a bunch of other sentient cars watch.
    • But wouldn't that immediately make you the most inherently awesome guy in history? I would try it if I could. Cracked.com would basically worship you if you did it! 5 people who had fucking sex with a hot woman on a transforming war machine in front of all its mates; All five are you.
    • If he could, yes. But he can't pull it off.
  • It may also be problematic if Bumblebee asks him to return the favour.
  • Fanservice. (warning for significant doses of Rules 34 and 36)
    • Speaking of the Rules, seeing as how the Autobots learned everything about Earth from the internet... if they ever cared about human sexuality, they probably don't anymore.
    • Regarding the two fleshies on Bumblebee's hood, it could be interpreted as Bumblebee, Sam, and Mikaela all considering themselves to be in a relationship together (a menage-a-trois, if you will). This is somewhat logical considering how much of the work Bumblebee did in order to get Mikaela's attention. Therefore, it is not so much Sam and Mikela on an observing Bumblebee, but rather her sandwiched between her two new lovers.
• Sam's mother was rather blunt about asking him if he jacked off, and seemed a bit bothered by it. Yet she has no qualms about him hiding the hottie in his room where they'd most likely be having sex?
  • She seemed more bothered by the fact that he was hiding it than whether it actually happening.
  • Also note that Sam's dad initiated a terrorist fist jab fist-bump with Sam, indicating that they're just happy that Sam might have a girlfriend.
    • And who wants to bet that, off-screen(since we didn't see her much until she stood up), Mikaela was trying so hard not to just burst with laughter?
  • Sam's mother doesn't seem too concerned about anything Sam does sexually. It's more like she's happy he gets some action. During her THC-induced escapades in RotF, she outright states that she heard Sam and Mikaela going at it when they thought she wasn't home.
• Why the hell did Bumblebee take the all-powerful live-giving Allspark and give it to Sam after his legs got blown off, instead of using it on himself? Frenzy used the Allspark to give himself new body after he found it. Bumblebee was able to shrink the thing, so its clear he knows his way around it. And it was able to give life to some nearby Product Placement technology, which means it can still function in its compressed form. There was no reason why he couldn't have used it to heal his legs.
  • I essentially agree with you, but I have an idea. Granted it is in a different continuity, but Transformers: Animated makes it pretty clear that their Allspark has certain limitations. It doesn't necessarily have an On/Off switch and power level dials to use whenever they want. In the movie, to use the Allspark to repair Bumblebee at the level of damage he had taken, the Transformers themselves may need to use some sort of funneling device like Sector Seven was using in order to properly use it. The random drones seemed to be a product of Unpredictable Results.
  • There's no guarantee that Bumblebee knows how to operate the cube outside of shrinking it. Possession does not imply mastery. Also, we don't know how long the cube would take to repair Bumblebee at his size, nor do we have any guarantee that repairing Bumblebee wouldn't release a giant spike of energy that tells all the Decepticons "We're over here, come kill us!"
• Why were there pig carcasses in the meat locker of Tova Simmons' Kosher Deli?
  • For the obligatory Swine Flu joke?
  • Not all kosher delis are really kosher. I know, I know, but it happens. Some people who open a deli call it a "Kosher Deli" because to a lot of people that phrase just means "Jews must run this place, Jews have the best delis, this place must be good!"
    • Only problem with this is, the owner's maiden name is Tova Fischer, which is about as Jewish a name as you can get without having the last name Cohen. Particularly the first name, which is hebrew.
    • What's your point? Jews don't have to serve nothing but kosher stuff, there's no law of the universe generating a forcefield keeping anyone with a penchant for brisket from touching ham. Again, the point is that a lot of people don't know what "kosher" really means, and a lot of people who own businesses don't care. In fact consider it an example of Hypocritical Humor.

Aliens Speak English

• How does Megatron know English and why does he bother to speak it? All the other Decepticons speak "Cybertronian" to each other.
  • Barricade also knows English, as shown during his attempted interrogation of Sam. And hey, if Optimus Prime can speak fluent English within five minutes of his arrival on Earth, why not Megatron speaking fluent English within five minutes after being unfrozen?
  • It's also possible Megatron, while immobile, has been intently listening to his captors for some time now, which would explain his knowledge of English and also why his first words upon being thawed were "I.. AM... MEGATRON!" Because after almost a century of puny fleshlings calling you "NBE 1", wouldn't YOU want to correct them?
    • This is the only thing that makes any semblance of sense since it was established that the only reason the Autobots (and presumably the other Decepticons) know English is because they took the time to study it before coming to earth. Except of course where he would've gotten the English translation for his own name or the term "fleshling" meaning his first sentence still makes no sense. Frankly me and a friend just assumed he had some sort of special Tourettes Syndrome that makes you say your own name in a language you don't understand.
    • He probably figured out an English equivalent from listening to the people around him, having heard "mega" to mean "something really large" and "tron" to be something usually associated with machines and computers. Maybe his Cybertronian name translates to "The Great Machine" if you take it literally, and he decided "Megatron" was a decent English equivalent.
  • Also, it's been established that both the Autobots and Decepticons have access to human mass media and communication networks like the radio and the internets, and would have undoubtedly managed to translate English in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
• Also, just how could the Autobots learn English from the Internet? Do they have web browsers installed? Do they know ASCII code? Do they have the necessary codecs? Simply put, just how do they know how to interpret long strings of ones and zeroes?
  • The very first scene in the movie has Blackout physically plugging himself into a primary server node for the US military's computer network. We can reasonably presume that he pulled a full drive image of the server, and then flew away to analyze the ones and zeros at his leisure. Voila, all their protocols now belong to the Decepticons.
  • Yes, but the question was actually about the Autobots. They had no access to any server, and the Decepticons would certainly not share their findings with them. Are we really supposed to believe that they learned everything from the 'Net while plummeting to the Earth?
    • Radio signals from Earth travel far, far into space. They could've picked up those signals, figured out how to decode them, and improvised some sort of wireless when they reached Earth.
    • Also, human computer technology is based on Megatron, so most of the logic would still be similar. The software, though...
    • According to the prequel novel, Megatron has woken up before. In 1969, while being transported from the Arctic Circle to the Hoover Dam, the convoy was attacked by Russians. This resulted in Megs thawing before he was put on ice again a few minutes later. In that time, he could've heard enough English to extrapolate at least some of the language. How he knew how to say "Megatron" is still a question (because it sounds completely different in Cybertronian).
  • Megatron might just have a simular meaning to his Cybertron name, since the Autobots use his earth name as well. As for why the Decepticons communicated in Cybertronian, they couldn't outright talk to each other, so presumibly, they used a language humans were incapable of understanding in radio communcations so anyone who managed to pick it up wouldn't know what was being said.
• If Barricade and Frenzy can track down Sam Witwicky through his eBay account, why do they refer to him by his eBay user name? Even a novice hacker would be able to get a full real name out of that, especially since a full name is REQUIRED for sending money orders to the seller.
  • Maybe Barricade doesn't realise that one name is any more 'real' than the other? I mean, "Barricade" probably isn't any less of a pseudonym.
  • Also, demanding from Sam his eBay is more intimidating. Well, anything said by a twenty foot robot would be intimidating, but asking his real name could mean anything. Asking his eBay account irl would illicit the response, at least in his head "How did you get that information and why are you asking?" Also, considering they want something from his eBay account, it makes more sense. Of course, being uber hackers, why they didn't just forge money and buy the damn thing inconspicuously is a mystery. But then I guess it wouldn't be much of a movie watching Decepticons and Autobots trying to outbid each other over eBay.
    • Why didn't eBay use that scene with a dub of You have not shipped the items you sold yet! as part of a security-themed advertising campaign?
    • To answer your "outbid-on-eBay" question, because the only Decepticons with a working knowledge of economics are comics-Ratbat and Swindle.
    • The decepticons are direct, they probably didn't think of simply buying it, they may not even have fully understood what Ebay is for, all they know is that Sam has something they need, and they are used to using force to acquire that which they need, not money.

Whither Barricade?

• Where the hell did Barricade go during that last fight scene? Was he off destroying a donut shop or something?
  • The writers were asked this recently in a web interview, and say it's a setup for something truly great in the sequel. Which I choose to translate as "holy shit, we completely forgot about one of the bad guys".
    • Given that Barricade's death scene was actually filmed, it doesn't really seem to be something that can be forgotten.
    • More like a "We had to cut it for time, so let's just keep him for the sequel."
    • Great thinking on their part. Cut the death of one of the most recognisable bad guys, but leave in the fifteen-minute lame comedy sequence with the Transformers walking around the house? Actually, about two hours of that film should have been cut/written out.
    • Yes. Including all the parts featuring non-military, non-Witwicky characters. The college Scooby-Gang computer geeks, their principle blonde, and that one fat pimple living in his grandmother's house were wastes of time. Nothing they did couldn't have been done (better) by some nameless government or military character. Though I'm willing to be lenient about the teen romance, if only because I can't imagine a Hollywood production without a romance subplot.
  • My personal opinion is that Barricade's return is going to have something to do with Prowl. He's either going to be Prowl's brother, or he's going to be Prowl himself. After all, he's the reason Prowl didn't make it into the first movie.
  • Incidentally, it's Bonecrusher that hates donut shops.
    • Yeah, but Bonecrusher hates everything
  • In the comic book adaptation of the movie, Barricade and Bonecrusher attack Optimus Prime together and Prime destroys them both. However, in the Reign of Starscream comics set after the movie, Barricade is shown just randomly crashing into a bridge during the freeway chase and later being recruited by Starscream.
    • Ironhide rammed him off the road, causing him to crash. Wasn't too 'random'. Barricade's utterly absent from ROTF, though.
    • That's simple, Barricade said "Fuck this" and went to Miami, where he hangs with the Sisters.
  • Barricade didn't appear at all in Revenge of the Fallen. So really, what does Michael Bay want to do with him?
    • Saved him for Dark of the Moon.

Allspark

• Is there any plausible reason why they take the deadly cube, which can turn any electronic machine into a murderous robot, into a heavily populated area instead of out into the desert?
  • Because there's a phrase for people who drive out into the middle of very flat, open country while being chased by Starscream in his F-22 form. "Sitting duck." Cities have cover, and enough people coming and going that they can have at least a faint hope of getting the cube away from the pursuing Decepticons.
    • They were in the Hoover Dam. It's on the Colorado river, upstream from the Grand Canyon. Natural cover, very few wayward machines to infect, and if they wanted civilian extras to threaten, donkey tours.
    • 'Natural cover' against regular planes. Not against planes that can stop in mid-air, hover, and turn back into a giant killbot and step on your car or rip open a cliff face and drop a landslide on you while you're trying to navigate down a ravine. Also, in the boonies, there is no one to hand the hot potato off to. The entire point of going into a city is to break contact with the Decepticons... which requires them to have more potential Cube-carriers to follow than they have Decepticons available to pursue. Of course, its then the height of stupidity to try and make the hand-off to a helicopter, instead of someone going down a subway tunnel.
    • Also, the air support that our heroes called for — via improvised telegraph — has to know where to find them. Without the ability to radio the incoming friendly planes directly, that means you have to set up a rendezvous in advance at someplace already on the map, so you can just say "Meet me here". Which means no 'go hide in the wilderness' and lots of 'go to a recognizable landmark'.
    • I also vaguely remembers that the heroes took the cube to the city in hopes of confusing the Decepticons by masking the cube's energy signature among all the energy a modern city outputs. This shouldn't be too surprising, because the only reason why the Decepticons never found the cube earlier was because its energy signature was hidden by all the rock and concrete as it sat under Hoover Dam.
    • There's also the problem that they needed to get the Cube away from Megatron at the Hoover Dam, where he was merrily waking up at the time and all the Decepticons were closing in, and get to the only reinforcements they know of that can fight the Decepticons on their own terms. Even then, they're outnumbered, and it makes sense to get to an area that can provide cover and even the odds. Basic military tactics.
    • This doesn't explain why they didn't just shoot Megatron in the head before he fully thawed out.
    • Shoot him with what, exactly? The only weapons that could seriously harm Decepticons are either heavy human munitions or Autobot weapons, neither of which they had in the room with Megatron.
    • Which is a WTF all by itself. Huge robot from space inactive but not dead in your facilities, and you don't keep a battery of heavy penetrator artillery constantly aimed straight at its head?
    • Bumblebee. Cannons. Place against head, fire repeatedly. Then again Optimus Prime was completely against offing Megs anyways, even sacrificing himself to do it. Consider his reaction when Spike goes and shoves the Allspark in. (Stop that, you Freudian lechers.)
    • Optimus was not "completely against" killing Megatron. "Sacrificing himself" was the last ditch plan in case Megatron was winning and Prime couldn't beat him. Optimus was trying his damnedest to kill Megatron during that fight, and he yelled "No!" because he didn't really know whether pushing the Allspark into his chest would kill him or give him superpowers.
    • The same cannons that bounced off Megatron when Jazz shot him? Bumblebee's only a bit bigger than him. All it'd probably do is wake him up.
    • Also, what does Bumblebee do the moment he has the All Spark? Run the fuck away. he knows there's no way in hell he's going to be able to hurt Megatron.
    • Megatron is effectively The Dreaded in the first film, and he earned it. And look what happened the last time Bumblebee fought Megatron, the guy tore out his vocal circuits. Jazz did nothing to Megatron and got ripped in two. Simply put, Bumblebee is probably scared to death of Megatron and rightfully so. Even in the other films, the only one who can stand up to Megatron is Optimus.
• Why does everything brought to life by the Allspark become instantly evil? I mean, do vending machines and my computer harbor a secret desire to kill all humans?
  • Possible Answer #1: They're not 'instantly evil', they're just 'infants throwing a screaming temper tantrum'.
    • So, this makes the Allspark the Cybertronian equivalent of the Cloverfield monster?
  • Possible Answer #2: Since in the Transformers movie continuity, Earth 'invented' integrated circuits and computers by reverse-engineering bits of Megatron, using the Allspark on any Earth technology gets you a brand-new Decepticon... as, technically, Earth technology is Decepticon technology.
  • Possible Answer #3: Since we can assume that Earth technology is much less advanced than Cybertron technology, the mechanical life would be much less intelligent, probably to the point of non-sentience. They're just frightened animals acting on instinct.
  • Secret desire? I gets bitten by so many CD drives, vending machines, and doors that he's pretty damn positive that all technology hates humans.
  • Possible Answer #4: The Allspark hadn't really been touched since it was lost during the Cybertronian civil wars when it was used as an arms factory - maybe it's still stuck on that setting?
  • I am more concerned of why everything made by the Cube was heavily armed; confusion and hostility I can understand, but gatling guns?
    • The Transformers in the Movie-verse are implied (if not outright depicted) as being able to generate new bits more or less on the fly. There's no reason a poor, defenceless little Nokia-bot wouldn't generate weapons with this ability in its situation.
  • Another Possible Answer: Maybe the fact that the only uses of the All-Spark were by humans who had no idea how to control it, Transformers set to attack everything indiscriminately were created. There also was no attempt made by Autobot or Decepticon to speak to them to calm them down when they come into consciousness around a bunch of freaky squishy aliens.
  • Possible Answer #Whatever: The Cube didn't really start creating life until after Sam dropped it, and its not unusual for things to not work right after being dropped onto concrete. It could be that the crazy/violent Baby Transformers were a result of the cube just being generically damaged. Doesn't explain the Nokia-bot though...
  • If the new-made robot doesn't inherit a memory of being on Earth from the first moment, it's probable that to born in a glass box, with organic aliens looking at you, would make him a LITTLE confused and scared. About weapons, I can't remember a single Transformer that is not.
  • An idea is that when Sam dropped the cube it reacted in a defensive manner, trying to create bodyguard drones. Which explains how aggressive and why they are heavily armed. I think ultimately it is supposed to be about Unpredictable Results, even the Transformers can't switch the cube on/off whenever they want to and the resulting transformer life is not guaranteed good or bad.
  • Have you ever owned a Nokia? Or a 360? Or drank Mountain Dew? They're actively hostile even before they're turned into robots.
  • It's also mentioned in the first movie that Nokia's are particularly nasty, implying it might depend on what kind of technology it is. Most of the machines brought to life were cheap, mass-produced products like phones or kitchen appliances. If you used the All-Spark on sophisticated, cutting-edge technology, things might be a little different.
    • Then You got Rot F, where the machines created from kitchen appliances in Sam's home by the Allspark shard don't just randomly start acting violent. No, they sneak into Sam's room and start attacking him. This is clearly intelligent, hostile behavior. Perhaps the standard Cybertronian model is Decepticon, but Autobots have learned to be different. This goes against the prequel comic where even Megatron was a decent guy before his corruption, but still...
  • I tend to think it has to do with programming. Most kitchen appliances have little programing, but most of the other things we saw were programmed with a great deal of data. The sentience combined with the programming ended up being a little...crazy, like it was conflicting with it. Where the realitively more low tech devices in Sam's kitchen had little to no actual programming, so they became more sentient, but still violent as they were more 'primitive' than Cybertronians, so they went on more instinctual behavior, namely "hunt and kill."
• Why was Optimus Prime being all "Sam, no!" when he loaded the Allspark into Megatron's chest, instead of his own? What, did he think without the Allspark, Megatron would just give up? There's still a whole planet with inferior technology, and many more people would die if Megatron survived and Sam actually did what Optimus said, that is, load it into him and kill Prime.
  • Every Optimus has that "self-sacrifice" thing.
  • Perhaps the Allspark has some other properties that Optimus guessed at, but didn't tell Sam.
  • I believe it was Jazz who said "But that could kill you!" when Optimus first suggested the plan. Prime may have believed that the Cube would act as a power-up when combined with a Spark.
  • The issue was more of what the chances were that Sam could push the thing into the chest of a 30 foot tall robot? Any other circumstance and Megatron would have squished him and taken the allspark no problem. Prime's words "I owe you my life" explains it. Sam didn't really save him from Megatron, he took a great personal risk so that he wouldn't have to kill his new friend.
  • There is, of course, also the fan-interpretation of Optimus still being emotionally attached to Megatron, despite everything that'd happened. They were brothers, after all... (And, to the OP/Megs fangirls, lovers.)
  • They didn't actually know for sure that combining the Allspark with a spark would kill the combinee, just that it would remove the Allspark from the equation. And judging by the second movie, those fears were well-founded.
  • Optimus didn't want to kill Megatron because he was his brother; he wanted to sacrifice himself instead (to quote Megatron from Beast Wars "You Optimuses do love to sacrifice yourselves, don't you?") in order to destroy the allspark. As for Megatron still being able to conquer Earth without it, I doubt it. Once the military gets its act together regarding communications, they can hunt down and kill any remaining Decepticons (unless they decided to use their disguises and lay low, in which case, there is still no Earth conquering).
  • How the hell did Sam make the fantastic leap of judgment from "The Allspark 'could' kill Optimus" to "The Allspark WILL kill Megatron"?
    • Well, for one, Sam wasn't around for the Autobots' discussion about it. All he knew was that Prime told him to stick the cube in his chest if things were going badly. This implies to Sam that this was a last resort to keep the cube from Megatron, which in turn implies bad things will happen to Prime if the cube is stuck in his chest, otherwise why wouldn't he have done it already?
  • One of the video games where you're pro-Decepticon shows Megatron beating Optimus, absorbing the Allspark anyway, and reaping all the benfits with no downside. He converts Earth-tech into his new army and conquers the planet, all thanks to the immense power he got from the Allspark cube.
    • In this case, it would seem it could go either way, but Sam forcing it into his Spark killed Megatron instead.
• Speaking as someone who hasn't seen any of the cartoons, I wonder why exactly Optimus Prime feels that the All-Spark has to be destroyed. Megatron wants to use it to create an army to fight the Autobots. When the Autobots finally get ahold of it, why don't they even consider using it to create their own army to fight the Decepticons?
  • Optimus didn't necessarily want All-Spark to be destroyed, he considers it as an option, including letting Megatron get his hand of it.
  • Several reason: First, Honor Before Reason -thing. Optimus, being Optimus, won't likely to build a group of mindless robotic armies just to detroy Decepticon. If you think, "so let's create some robots with intelligence", well, that's including training, long philosophy gibberish, yadda-yadda, while they are busy fighting Decepticons and protecting humans at the same time. Second: If you close with the movie-verse (see it at http://tfwiki.net/ ) you can see that All-Spark is not only act as energy storage; it's activation is directed to the Harvester, which can resulted in... well... the sun going nova.
  • Prime's originally intention was explicitly not to destroy the Allspark. He wanted to use it to restore Cybertron, which had been apparently rendered uninhabitable by the war. He was simply willing to destroy it (and himself) rather than let Megatron use it for evil.
  • Even if the Autobots had wanted to use the Allspark to make their army bigger, they would only have Earth-tech to work with, and since all Earth-tech is reverse-engineered from Megatron, aany and all electronic devices granted life by the Allspark would be Decepticons by default. Or did you not notice the steering wheel, X-Box, and Mountain Dew vending machine monsters?
• If, as The Fallen put it, the power and knowledge of the Allspark cannot be destroyed, only transformed, does this mean that Sam now has the ability to bring life to machinery and knowledge of ancient cybertronian history and transformer biology and stuff? If not, where did all that data and power go?
  • I don't know where the power went (presumably it was transformed into something else; Sam just got the data), but I interpreted it that the information is still in Sam's head. The only reason that he started going crazy was that the information "knew" (maybe a bit of the Primes working through him?) that something needed to happen, that the data was necessary for the survival of the planet. You'll note that when he started working out the riddle, he started settling down. I assume it's just dormant.
  • Explained in the novelization. The knowledge of the Allspark (and presumably the energy) has been absorbed into the Matrix of Leadership, which is now permanently attached to Optimus' hip.
    • Confirmed in DOTM, where Optimus uses it to revive Sentinel. Though he keeps it in his chest.
• Why was the Allspark trying to tell Sam about the location of a solar harvester (which predated its arrival to Earth) and the location of the Matrix?
  • It wasn't. Sam was just compelled to write down the symbols because of all the knowledge in his head. Jetfire is the one who told them about both of those, and brought them to Egypt to look for the Matrix. Also, it doesn't matter if the Harvester's arrival on Earth predated the Allspark's. The Transformers clearly went back to Cybertron, and brought that knowledge with them, which went into the Allspark.
• Why does Megatron explode after he gets the Allspark? Wasn't the entire point of retrieving this item to make him more powerful? It seems like the Transformers would be better off avoiding it instead of heading to the planet that contains a powerful item that would mean their death wish.
  • Furthermore, Optimus himself said that jamming it into his chest would cause him to explode. The entire trip to Earth was a big waste of time. They could've avoided the whole mess and let Megatron willingly commit suicide.
    • What. Megatron didn't want to stick the Allspark into himself. He wanted it to make a Decepticon army.
    • Both sides wanted to use the Allspark to rebuild Cybertron. They say this several times. Also, Prime doesn't say it would "cause him to explode" and Megatron doesn't "explode." Seriously, did you even watch the movie?

So Apparently the Sham Wow! was reverse-engineered from Megatron, too.

• The movie talks about how virtually all modern inventions were reverse engineered from Megatron. Just a few obvious problems with this: 1) Transistors, integrated circuits, lasers, etc. were all invented by different groups of people, with no apparent connections to the top-secret Hoover group holding Megatron. 2) It is easy to track the evolution of technology spawned from derived scientific concepts; there is nowhere Megatron could have fit into the scheme. 3) It's hard to swallow 1920's era scientists being able to reverse engineer 21st century technology from a hyperadvanced robot... but 21st century scientists appear to have hit a wall in reverse engineering Megatron, instead of the vastly accelerating returns they should be capable of with their modern knowledge and equipment.
  • 1) Operative word being apparent.
  • 2) Who said they hit a wall? Technology is, if anything, advancing even faster than it used to.
    • Only information technology is. We still don't have personal VTOL crafts, direct energy weapons, jetpacks, moon bases, the option to use non-fossil energy sources whenever we want, manned interplanetary spacecrafts, practical bionic body parts...
    • WRT jetpacks, we actually developed working models of those back in the 60s. Control, cost, safety, and practicality were serious issues, though, as well as the fact that we can't trust humans to wield simple, easily-controlled wheeled vehicles moving on a two-dimensional plane along narrow, pre-set paths without inflicting grievous harm. Imagine how much damage we'd do with jetpacks....
    • People can't even keep their act together on the ground, you think they can fly responsibly (as the above troper said, but this works with personal Jetsons cars as well as jet packs.)? And the reason there's no base on the moon is because we've had other shit to concentrate on. The only reason the space program got so much attention and money was because we had to beat the Soviets. Since there are no terrorist satellites, we don't have anything pushing us to get back up there.
    • We actually have the technology to build moon bases, manned interplanetary spacecraft, and personal VTOL craft. Its just that they're all too expensive to be practical and it takes years to certifiably train someone to use VTOL craft. Non-fossil fuels has more to do with infrastructure than technological development. We're close to achieving practical bionic body parts now, and we already have basic directed energy weapons in the form of microwaves and lasers - they just need more power and to be miniaturized.
    • It's possible people invented them on their on, but they were refined using Megatron's data.
• There's a simpler explanation for all of this: our only source for this claim is Agent Simmons-a guy who thinks Nokia is Japanese. So, needless, we don't have to take what he says at face value.

The Efficacy of Cybertronian Construction in relation to Human Weaponry, or Tonka Tough Steel!

• Megatron is in a friggin military base. They have more option to one shot him before he thaw than you can possibly imagine. My favorite would be to behead him with a cute collar...made of a good amount of C4. Or, hell, just shove a hand grenade in his spark. Devastator was killed with far less powerful.
  • C4? When direct hits from a Spooky's 105mm cannon barely damaged a tiny, weak Decepticon? A Decepticon that previously shrugged off a strafing run from an A-10 Warthog? Yeah, that's going to work on the single most powerful Decepticon of all. And shoving a grenade in his Spark....how would they even know the Spark is a vulnerable point in the first place? Also, Brawl's vulnerability is not a good measure of Megatron's, especially considering that Brawl had three Autobots and two squads of entrenched, heavily armed soldiers with grenade launchers pounding away at him, and he held out for a long time. Considering Megatron was able to shrug off direct hits from Prime's own energy rifle, any weapon in the American military arsenal is going to do little more than scratch the paintwork.
    • WRT Grenade in spark: Because to the human mind, shoving an explosive in the chest of a humanoid target is an autokill, so it'd be amongst the first things they'd try, and, "Hey look, that was a huge explosion! Wow, I wonder what critical energy rich part we just hit?"
    • Not ANY weapon. I think you're underestimating a few weapons in our arsenal.
    • Please, tell me what kind of weapon they would be able to bring to bear on Megatron in a couple of minutes inside a secret military research base whose heaviest arms appeared to a couple of armored dune buggies with Mark-19 grenade launchers.
    • Nope, I was referring to the American Military arsenal as a whole, just like you (I'm guessing it was you) did: "any weapon in the American military arsenal is going to do little more than scratch the paintwork". However, your point about the weapons available to them in the Dam seems to be correct.
    • Megatron survived two bombs that wiped out the rest of his troops in ROTF, then took several tank rounds right after that without significant damage.
    • He could have avoided those bombs. He was right behind Sam after all, who was unaffected by the air strike. Also, Megs was getting thrown around even by the 7.62mm rounds from the M240's. He must have sustained some pretty serious damage, because he flew outta there pretty quick like a dog with its tail between its legs.
    • You don't "avoid" a carpet bombing. And he wasn't "right behind" Sam, considering he came sprinting out of the fireball at speeds well in excess of what a human could manage. He could easily have been fifty meters behind Sam and was obviously inside the blast when the explosion hit his force.
  • And this is assuming that they already knew that he was a serious threat. The spinoff novels have Megs becoming active briefly, but they don't gel completely with the movie into a proper canon. In the movie itself, he's just a big man-shaped metal popsicle. The Allspark was a serious threat - it could turn machines into killing machines - but Megatron wasn't assumed to be as deadly as he turned out to be.
    • They knew what kind of weapons he carried and how strong his armor was. They studied him for decades, after all.
• How is it believable that you have giant space robots that can effortlessly shrug off: the heat and pressure of atmospheric re-entry, the subsequent impact with the ground, casually tumbling off 100+ foot California freeways, casually crashing through buildings, or even the enormous mechanical stresses of simply moving around like they do, at their size. Oh, and the smallest of them is hammered by air to surface missiles, an A-10's huge GAU-8 30mm anti-tank cannon, an AC-130U's 40mm Bofors guns and 105mm howitzer, and barely loses a small piece of his tail. Then at the end of the movie, they're damaged and defeated by dumbfired air to air missiles, and 40mm grenades. This is by no means a case of Ruleof Cool calling the shots, as here, realism would necessitate significantly higher doses of Stuff Blowing Up - Michael Bay's signature. It's most likely that even a Michael Bay Summer Blockbuster lacks the funds and military cooperation to portray the rain of bombs and PG Ms, artillery strikes, swarms of cruise missiles, and tactical nuclear attacks realistically necessary to defeat the Transformers.
  • Because most of them were taken down by other Transformers. All the missiles did was push them around and all the SABOT rounds did was punch piddly little holes in their armour. The only reason Blackout was defeated so easily was because of a lucky shot into his spark chamber from a crazy guy under him. Megatron lost his leg not because of the missiles, but because of Prime, Devastator got his head blown off by Bumblebee, and Bonecrusher got his face ventilated by Prime's sword.
  • The Transformers of this continuity are able to convert energy and matter into other matter on their own, they were able to take on their alternate form without the use of a stasis pod or other similar chambers. I would think that they can also get tired because of depleting energy reserves, so just because they are capable of taking on a form to survive atmospheric entry doesn't mean they can't be damaged by stinger missiles near the end of a long battle.
  • Having re-watched that particular scene of the film... Those are 40mm Sabot Rounds. The kind used to take out lighter armoured vehicles, and the main reason they aren't bigger and used against tanks is that missiles are cheaper. And the missiles fired by the jets are Air to Ground tank busters. Even so, I'd say in the case of against Megatron, most of what they do is sheer impact. After all, even if you're invulnerable to them, those things have a big kinetic kick, and Megs doesn't have the ability to negate that completely.
    • Personally, I'd like to know why no-one equipped those troops with a Javelin Launcher. Those forcefields are heat emissions, as we saw from the first image of Blackout. Thus, a Javelin launcher should achieve a decent lock on one, and the missiles those use have enough explosive in them to vaporise a modern MBT on a direct heaviest armour hit, so even if the forcefield does block all of the damage, that's a lot of kinetic energy to knock a transformer down with.
    • Because the Javelin is big and heavy. You try lugging one of those giant bastards around in the desert and see how mobile you are. Not to mention that they barely managed to escape, let alone raid an armory in the middle of the ten-minute curbstomp battle to recover a Javelin while giant sections of the base were disappearing in waves of sonic destruction.
    • Presumably if the military had more than an hour or two's preparation, or the battle had gone on for longer, they could've come up with these ideas. As it stands, they managed to stop the alien robots with readily-available tools.
    • All of which, of course, ignores the fact that this is a military fantasy designed to ensure the US Army doesn't come off looking bad (in order to use their toys in the movie). Every other continuity Transformers is in, humans do not pose a serious threat to them!
    • I agree, in all of the other continuities the Decepticons should have dropped the robots in diguise thing and just rampage across the planet destroying cities at will, unchecked save by the Autobots because humans pose no threat to them. See why they chose to make it so we could hurt them in the films? It's just silly for them to sneak around with their frontline infantry otherwise.
• In Revenge of the Fallen, Simmons contacts a US battleship and has an experimental railgun shoot Devastator while the big lug tries to dig a sun harvester out of a pyramid; the weapon takes out Devvy in a single shot. Ignoring how the four-year wait for a gestalt has been wasted, why didn't Simmons just request the railgun fire again when Megatron and The Fallen began to activate the sun harvester? They were standing in the same place Devastator was some time earlier, so why not just blast them? Considering that the fate of the entire planet was at risk and how quickly Prime took down The Fallen this seemed like a pretty obvious thing to do.
  • It's unclear how long it takes for the railgun to be recharged/reloaded; it's entirely possible Bay didn't know, and didn't want any military-savvy people to say "Wait, it can't fire again this soon!" Also, Megatron and the Fallen were much smaller targets than Devastator. If I recall correctly, when they showed the POV from the railgun, you could actually see Devastator with the naked eye. Again, the railgun's capabilities are unclear, and it might not be that accurate. Finally, the Fallen is immortal (or something) and can't be killed by anyone but a Prime.
    • So what if they were smaller targets? Just take off the top part of the pyramid to destroy the harvester and save the planet. The reloading/recharging point's a good one, and since its a fictional weapon I guess it's the only excuse they can give for not using it more than once.
  • As a matter of fact, railguns are not fictional. The U.S. navy is experimenting with them, and the railguns that have been tested can pierce tank aromor.
    • Railguns may not be fictional, but that particular one was. As I recall, the gun itself glowed blue, a definite sign of fictional super-weaponry- possibly based on Transformer tech (they did have Megatron lying around to base stuff off of, so it only makes sense that they'd be at least a bit more advanced than us with weapons).
  • Forget that, someone just tell me how Simmons got the railgun to fire at all. There's no plausible way that the captain is going to fire his super-secret experimental weapon just because some random guy calls him up and says so. Firing a weapon that powerful would require cross-check authorization codes from known authority figures; some nut on a cell phone doesn't even rate.
    • He is a former MIB. Maybe they did a quick background check, and decided its better to be reprimanded than killed by alien robots because you disobeyed the authority.
    • There is also that Devastator is an extremely large and obvious target, and in addition to his grotesquely obnoxious visual signature he probably also has a hellacious radar return. So they did not have to take Agent Simmons' unsupported word for it — there's at least two ways they could have seen for themselves (once alerted) that yes, there really is a giant alien death robot standing where the crazy guy on the radio says its standing, and maybe we should pop a cap in its ass.
    • You said it yourself: "super-secret experimental weapon". The very fact that Simmons knows about it probably suggested to Captain Wilder he was talking to someone he needed to listen to. I also believe that when Simmons said he'd be saving a bajillion lives he knew he was serious.
  • The Navy has been advised that there is a major Decepticon incursion and are launching a full amphibious assault on the area. Simmons calls in and warns them of a Decepticon on the pyramids and provides coordinates. They check it, confirm it, and kablam.

The Deception Invasion of Earth - The Bay of Pigs of Interstellar Warfare

• How exactly were the Decepticons ever a threat to the Autobots or...anyone? They have no sense of tactics whatsoever! Scorponok deserved to be destroyed for taking on a superior number of opponents without even thinking of seeking cover or herding his enemies to one area where he can get as many of them as he can in one attack. Still, he's one of the few who survive due to pure dumb luck. The rest somehow manage to be even stupider. Stand out where everyone can see you, don't dodge, don't use shields and most importantly, don't make a tactical withdrawal after receiving critical injuries. Surrendering was never an option, I guess. What was the point of being 'Robots in Disguise'? Then again, the fact that Optimus Prime didn't just use the Cube to crank out some Cannon Fodder makes him pretty dim, too.
  • Scorponok was effectively immune to small arms fire and knew it. Why shouldn't he just bum-rush the village? The Spectre gunship arriving was not expected, at least, not by him.
    • Furthermore, he was taking hits from a GAU-8 Avenger before that Spectre showed up. That thing can shred a modern tank. It wasn't until they started making weapons specifically designed to hurt Transformers that the humans became a real threat.
  • Average car: 10 feet long. F-22 Raptor: Sixty feet long. Blackout was even bigger than that. And Brawl was a freaking tank. The only Decepticon without a military altmode (who wasn't Frenzy) pretty much got mauled by the first Autobot he ran into (who wasn't Optimus friggin' Prime). But the rest of them were threats based on simply being gigantic compared to most of the Autobots.
  • As to Prime not making cannon fodder with the cube? "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" ring a bell? He's not going to go around creating new cybertronian life just to casually throw it away on the battlefield. Unless all the new robots are of whatever underprivileged minority Jazz was, then he can.
    • ...You Know I'm Black, Right?? ^_^ Seriously though, There's also the most likely fact that both creating(and calming down) enough robots to make a difference would have taken too long, created too much damage, and drawn too much attention.
  • I think the main problem the Decepticons ran into was they were all main/The Berserker, they rushed into battle ready for a fight, although only Starscream and Megatron showed any real skill against the Autobots. Brawl/Devastator took two rounds to kill, Barricade was defeated by Bumblebee, Bonecrusher was killed by Optimus, and Blackout had his Crowning Moment at the beginning, but didn't really fight the Autobots. The whole point of having more Decepticons then Autobots was to show that the Autobots needed to use teamwork instead of raw firepower.
    • "Brawl/Devastator took two rounds to kill"? Are you insane?! Did you miss three Autobots and the entirety of the US Army presence in the area hammering on him with heavy weaponry for the better part of half an hour before he bought the house?! He had lost a friggin' arm long before he went down, and he was full of holes!
    • That's what he meant by two rounds, it took forever to kill him, but his personal kill count was fairly small.
  • I think it's safe to assume the Decepticons are desperate, and relying on fear tactics. After all, it is show that human weapons can hurt them, and when there is a couple hundred robots to 6 billion humans, there only hope is to scare the shit out of their opponents.
• So Ravage's plan is to vomit some evil Bakugan into the NEST vault and have them assemble into a semi-2D extremely sharp duplicate version of Ravage. Neat plan... except that they set off the alarm anyway! They didn't even try to be stealthy—they just scratched the glass and set it off. Maybe Ravage was just aching for a fight... and if that was the case, then why didn't he just assault the vault directly? I know Rule of Cool probably covers a lot of this, but it (along with Wheelie vanishing and the ridiculously short drive from Petra to the Red Sea) was one of the stand-out problems I had.
  • Securing the Allspark fragment then wading through a pitched firefight was presumably seen as the more pragmatic approach than wading through layers of security, cracking open the vault while under fire and then hauling arse out again. Easier to stealth in and fight out, then slug through everything at once, really.
  • This is how a lot of extractions tend to work out. You can sneak in, but once you've got the package, you have to get back out with the package, which is a lot harder. Countless real-life infiltrations intended to extract high-value targets have ended the same way: the team gets in, reaches the HVT, something goes wrong before, at, or after grabbing the HVT, and hilarity ensues.

TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

• One of the two lines that really bugged me was, "Can you jury-rig this computer to send morse code?" I was seriously hoping for the response of, "No, but give me an f*ing battery, two wires and a transmitter and I can make a telagraph." That and that there was no mention about FDR's involvment in the construction of the Hoover Dam. President Hoover was out of office for more than half the time it was being built...what? FDR never noticed?
  • It also bugged the hell out of me that there wasn't a morse code station there already. You'd think that every military base in the nation would have a few morse code stations built into it in the dire case that everything else went down just like in the movie. Especially when you have a massive alien robot stored there!
  • Everyone Knows Morse is not Truth in Television, as Morse's been obsolete in reality for years. Not to mention that it was a computer room. The Internet was created as a backup for the US communications network in the event of a nuke. Having a telegraph would be redundant.
• To bust Megs out of captivity, Starscream blows up some transformers/power lines outside, cutting the power to the cryo chamber. At Hoover Dam. A giant friggin hydroelectric plant. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe all the turbines, generators, and whatnot are inside the structure. Given that the dam was more or less constructed specifically to hold the Allspark and a giant killer robot, shouldn't there be some dedicated generators? You know, directly from the dam to the cryo hold?
  • Uh, Frenzy had already started to defrost Megatron. Starscream cut the power to the rest of the building.
    • By destroying the lines that carry power out of the generating plant and off to the rest of civilisation?
• My father noticed this, so here goes: in the first movie, the Decepticons hack into Earth computer systems with very little effort. The military uses satellites in space, which is where the alien robots are coming from. And yet, despite making an alliance with the Autobots and knowing the Decepticons are out still there, they do nothing to protect their military satellites from Deception infiltration again. While Optimus refused to give out weapons technology, there's no reason why he couldn't give technology that would have protected human communications! Massive chunks of the movie could have been averted with a simple Autobot firewall.
  • First, such radical change to a satellite's system would probably require more than a simple software upgrade. It's entirely possible that the government looked at the security costs of a spacewalk/hardware upgrade and simply opted to build better security into the next generation of satellites. Second, Optimus might have refused to hand over that kind of communication technology after reading up on human psyops and information warfare.

Musical Musings

• Why does the movie end with "What I've Done" by Linkin Park? How does that have anything to do with anything that happens in the movie?
  • Maybe it connected to Sam's "nice job shoving All-Spark into Meg's spark"?
  • Or to Sam's refusal to go with the Autobots near the beginning, which led to his getting captured, which led to Prime's death, which caused most of the problems in the movie (if he hadn't died Sam wouldn't have restored the Matrix, and then it couldn't have been used to reactivate the sun destroyer).
  • I feels "What I've Done" would be better for the second movie, and "New Divide" for the first.
  • Maybe they just wanted a bunch of Linkin Park fans to check out the movie. It worked for me.
  • I always assumed it referred to Optimus calling all Autobots (and by extension, all Decepticons) to Earth, especially because it starts up after Optimus gives his ending monologue. It's a musical Sequel Hook, making the audience wonder just what Optimus has done bringing the entire war to Earth.

The Designated Hero status of the Autobots

• I've always been a little bugged by the fact that in the first movie, Prime keeps going on about how horrible and aggressive the Decepticons are... when apparently the only one of his own team that he could trust to scout out the planet without wrecking havock was the guy with the busted voice box.
  • They've been at war for thousands of years. He who fights monsters and all that.
  • Ironhide is really the only one he had around who he couldn't trust not to wreak havoc. Jazz he needed by his side (plus Jazz is too egotistical and flashy to be undercover for a kid very well), and Rachet he needs in case of medical emergencies. That leaves Bumblebee.
    • They aren't assholes. They're just idiots. Ironhide would blow up the first car that dented him.
    • The Defiance comic also reveals that Ironhide used to be a soldier in Megatron's army. He just didn't like Megatron's newfound tyranny, so he left to join Optimus's La Résistance. Otherwise, he's still a Decepticon (i.e. built for combat).
  • Bumblebee is silent by nature, since he can't talk well, and as we've seen, he proved to be quite stealthy. On top of that, he was Sam's guardian, that was his role. He was probably the one best serving the role.
• Is it just me, or did Demolisher (white excavator 'Con from the opening scene) not actually do anything wrong? As far as we know, he was just hiding, trying not to get blasted by some Autobots that want to kill him, minding his own business. His toy bio even states that he watches out for the smaller weaker 'cons "out of the goodness of his spark". Did NEST really have any reason to attack him other than Rule of Cool/Fantastic Racism?
  • I think he killed three members of NEST during his initial transformation, but that was largely down to collateral damage, and as you said wouldn't have caused their going after him in the first place. The same could be said for Sideways who simply fled the scene and made no attempt whatsoever to fight, except in a deleted scene and the novelisation, and even then he was fighting BACK against Autobots who were trying to kill him. It's not as though the 'Cons are Always Chaotic Evil either as later proved by Jetfire and Wheelie. Apparently freedom is only the right of all non-Decepticon sentient beings.
  • They're armed members of a faction that is engaged in open hostilities with both the Autobots and the human species as a whole, who have engaged in five previous incursions in the last year alone, and they do not surrender when the NEST/Autobot forces arrive. That makes them legitimate targets. If they don't want to get shot at, they should have surrendered instead of running away.
    • It doesn't help the poor, defenseless Decepticons' case when we know that their primary objective includes the genocide of the human species. Preemptive violence against heavily-armed invaders who intend to wipe out the human species is sort of justified.
  • As Jetfire's defection and Wheelie's reaction to it indicates, most Decepticons don't even know that NOT being a Decepticon is an option. They were created Decepticons whether they like it or not, and are then killed for trying to hide and avoid conflict. I mean, Demolisher was mostly a murder-machine but what if a Decepticon didn't want anything to do with the war? NEST seems to have a "kill on sight" order for all Decepticons.
  • Did Demolisher or Sideways surrender when confronted? No. It was an option. Sideways was up against a Blood Knight after all, but Demolisher pretty much went on the warpath in his escape. And we only know what was in the movie, perhaps they did do something offscreen that was bad enough to warrent this that we didn't see.
    • Read the comment just above. Going, as mentioned, only by what was in the movies, Decepticons in general don't seem to know one can defect—and given everything seen about Megatron and the other Decepticon higher-ups, it's also entirely plausible they don't know they can surrender. Everything about the Decepticons seems they think there are only two options—fighting or death. Further, while I very much agree that there might have been something off-screen and not explicitly mentioned as to warrant going after them, I believe the point also needs to be mentioned again that both Sideways and Demolisher ran. No matter what they did off-screen, they—Demolisher especially—took no aggressive action that wasn't directly related to an obvious attempt at fleeing, which seems like it should have mattered to someone like Optimus "Peace Above All" Prime.
    • Considering Wheelie was spared and accepted into the Autobots, I think it's safe to say the Autobots have no issue with surrendering and defecting Decepticons. Ironhide and Sideways even offer some Decepticons a chance at surrender in Dark of the Moon.
• Okay, I know Galloway was kind of a jerk, but did that really justify Lennox throwing him out of a fucking plane? Oh sure, he was nice enough to slap a parachute on the guy, but throwing him out without a decent lesson on how to parachute properly, it was a miracle that the guy didn't die. And worse, the guy was mainly just following orders. Sure he was a jerk about it, put to make up a story about the plane crashing just so you can throw the guy out of it? Jesus.
  • If they hadn't gotten him out of the picture, he would have been in mortal danger (not being trained for combat and all), and would have obstructed the mission to revive Optimus. They definitely saved his life (and definitely knew it at the time) by sending him off before they went into a possible combat zone, and may have even saved the world by removing the obstacle to Messiah-revivification.
    • Except they dropped an American official alone, allowing him to be potentially kidnapped by any radical group that happens to be in the area.
    • Still, better than him going into a warzone with gigantic, weapon loaded robots who will most certainly try to kill him.
• The group's idea in the final battle is a bad one. Why didn't Simmons/Leo try and draw fire with only one of the twins, have Bumblebee serve as a decoy, and Mikaela/Sam take the other twin to the NEST team?
  • And who in that group was going to suggest the plan? Simmons is a loony, neither Sam nor Mikaela are exactly military geniuses, and Leo spent half the time freaking out. It sure as heck wasn't going to be the Twins, since they'd likely prefer to stay together, and Bumblebee likewise would've prefered to stick with Sam.

It already IS called Planet Dirt

• At one point, one of the robots comments that "Earth" is a silly name for a planet, and they might as well call it "dirt." Well, duh. You don't have to go around saying that they might as well have called everything a synonym for it's current name. You might if it just occurred to you how absurd the name is, and you want to get around the connotation (for want of a better word), but whoever commented on it presumably just found out.
  • It was Jetfire who said it might as well be Planet Dirt, but this is forgivable, as he's a stereotypical cranky old man character. On top of that, he probably doesn't get that "dirt" is synonymous to "earth", or he wouldn't have said anything.
    • It's a joke.
    • Define funny...
    • Funny, adj.: That quality that people on Headscratchers page seem to hate with a passion, if they even comprehend its existence, from my experience. (In other words, you don't have to personally find it funny for it to have been intended as a joke.)
  • In something often missed that undermines the joke, "dirt" actually isn't a synonym of the "Earth" in Earth's name — "ground" or "land" would be closer, as the "earth" in question isn't soil but rather what you contrast Heaven/the sky with.

The all-spark laser thingy's alive!

• From the first movie, the Allspark-channeling laser thingy they use to create the Nokia-bot. It's a machine itself, so why hasn't the Allspark turned it into a Transformer?
  • It's just biding its time...
  • There may be a certain minimum complexity involved for something to be considered capable of being "awakened" by the Allspark. The channeling "laser" may just be a series of wires and cables and whatnot and not really count.

That wasn't a robot battle, it was a... pigeon!

• How did the government cover up the battle in Mission City Los Angeles from the first film? Not only thousands of civilians witnessed the battle, but millions of dollars-worth of damage was done to the city.
  • "Robotic army drones went haywire" was one of the official cover stories, as I recall, so they didn't cover it up so much as deny that the robots were sapient or alien and claim full responsibility.
    • And the people were okay with this?
    • Of course not. Chances are the government paid out massive, massive, massive amounts of money to foot repair bills and damages, it ended up overtaking Iraq as the "unpopular military debacle that cost Republicans the 2008 election" in that universe, and conspiracy theorists started complaining about logical holes and possible explanations for what really happened like it was the next Kennedy assassination.
    • I doubt the cover story would have lasted. Especially given that it came on the heels of the SOCCENT attack and Air Force One infiltration. People are going to connect the dots.

Megatron-sacrifice >> Self-sacrifice

• In the first film, Optimus Prime states that if Megatron was prevalent, he would put the Allspark into his chest thus destroying the Allspark along with himself. Instead of putting the Allspark into Optimus' chest, Sam puts the Allspark into Megatron's chest, destroying it and obliterating Megatron in the process. Why doesn't this occur to Optimus?
  • The thing is, if Megatron's close enough to the Allspark for that to work, then he's also close enough to just grab it from Optimus and claim it for himself. Sam lucked out in winding up close enough to do that, and being in a position to take Megatron by surprise. Optimus couldn't risk relying that kind of good luck: he'd have played it safe and destroyed the Allspark before Megatron could get within reach of it.

The mystery of the missing train

• In the scene where Bumblebee 'lubricates' Simmons, why are the level crossing lights flashing if the crossing gates are not lowering, and why did the train never turn up? Even if the driver had attempted to stop upon seeing giant robots, a train would not be able to stop that quickly. Plus that still doesn't explain the lack of lowering gates.
  • Sometimes crossings just malfunction like that. Truth in Television.

Decepticon = Deceptive cons?

• If "Autobot" is short for "Autonomous Robotic Organism" in the movie, what is "Decepticon" short for?
  • In the cartoon (or possibly the comics - one of the original canon sources at least), it's short for "Deceptive Converters".
  • The Wall Banger here is that since they're all members of the same species - from the same planet, they're all "Autonomous Robotic Organisms". "Decepticon" is a faction name. Why wouldn't the good guys have a name that goes beyond the equivalent of "The Human beings"?
    • Could be the equivalent of calling an operation "humanitarian," or how during the American Civil War, the north referred to itself as "the union" and went into battle with a fully-starred flag to show that they were fighting for their entire country, not just the states that wanted to stay; perhaps a little pretentious on the Autobot's part, but what're you gonna do?

Psychic battle plans?

• So after Lennox and co get S7 to stop being paranoid about the Autobots and ally with Bumblebee they get him to shrink the cube and join forces, forming a military convoy with him. Ok. But when Prime and co run into them on the road they just turn around and join the convoy in perfect formation without any kind of communication from anyone aside from Sam saying "There's Optimus" and he has no way of talking to Lennox without screaming out the window which he doesn't. Instant allies. Prime last saw the human forces (the "bad" human forces but he doesn't know that) they were enemies. Likewise Lennox and co aren't told that any other Transformers other than Bee are on their side. They should be wary of each other if not hostile without stating their businesses. Likewise Prime later backs out of the convoy to fight Bonecrusher and the other Bots and soldiers just go on without him, again without a word. And Prime is able to find them later on without trouble despite them having lost contact with him. Do the Autobots have some kind of secret communication method? Because they're working perfectly in sync with people they just met without saying a word to anyone.
  • Being machines, it's pretty likely they have some kind of short range non-verbal communications, just like your computer can probably wirelessly communicate with the internet.

Maggie's heels

• Seems minor compared to the other issues discussed on this page, but when Maggie and Glen are transported by helicopter to the dam where Megatron is being kept, in the interim Maggie has switched from her professional work-wear to a short-sleeved t-shit and cut-off jeans. This seems initially to be in the interests of practicality. However, she's kept her professional-looking black high heels on. Aside from the impracticality of running from giant-robots in heels (which can be sort of explained by Fanservice reasons, because after all it's a Michael Bay movie), this really doesn't match the informal style of the rest of her outfit. So she had cut-off jeans to hand, but not more practical/ informal shoes that won't get her killed/clash with the rest of her outfit?

Evil Robots

• How come every robot that was created with Allspark energy became evil? Did the Allspark just decide, "Fuck it, more Decepticons."?
  • The generally accepted fan explanation was that, dropped into a world totally unfamiliar to them, surrounded by strange creatures, and armed with weapons they instinctively knew how to use, they simply lashed out like cornered rats. In the comic follow-up though, the Autobots kill the new bots without hesitation, which is kind of a dick move.
  • A theory I came up with (as well as an above poster) is that every transformer is very different framework wise,and every piece of earth tech is reverse engineered from goddamn Megatron if earth tech was engineered from say Bumblebee or Optimus, maybe when the allspark activates they would of been Autobots, its even a factor in their looks, in the cartoons apart from a few deviations due to vehicle parts or distinctive features, all the robots looked generally the same, but in the films Decepticons look distinctly more animalistic and demonic, whereas autobots are more humanistic, so reverse engineering from a Decepticon is a kind of Techno In the Blood kind of thing

(its the same theoretical reason why trying to use Megatrons head in AoE only made a decepticon looking body, that is also why Stinger looks like a Decepticon version of bumblebee.)

North Korea blamed for the base attack

• Seems to me that everyone in the Pentagon thinks North Korea is behind the base attack. Question is: why? Sure, they seem the most likely suspect on the surface. But here's the thing: North Korea's Army, despite all it's bluster, is third rate, equipped with obsolete weapons and made up of dirt poor conscripts who mostly just joined for the extra rations. Even their so called special forces would be considered regular soldiers anywhere else. Does anyone realistically think the North Koreans could have taken out an entire US military based staffed with well trained soldiers (including Lennox and his special forces team) without leaving any evidence behind (I.E dead bodies of the attackers). More likely suspects would be either Russia or China (who have special forces units who could feasibly pull off the attack). Honestly, I'd think it'd be more readily believable that giant alien robots massacred the base than North Korean soldiers.

Covering up the other Decepticon attacks

• So the government explanation for the Mission City battle (haywire military robots) could work. But how did they coverup the Qatar attack and Air Force One infiltration? In the former, a military base was razed, and all but six (maybe seven if Fig's deleted death scene isn't canon) soldiers stationed there are killed, and in the latter, someone managed to infiltrate Air Force One-the most secure plane on the planet-hack into the US Military mainframe, and kill three Secret Service Agents. The only way I can see the government covering it up would be to blame terrorists-but I doubt people would believe that al Qaeda wiped out a large military base and came within a hair's breath of POTUS.

Why not take the Cube to Nellis AFB?

• How is it that Mission City is the best place to take the cube? If I recall, Nellis Air Force Base is a couple dozen miles away from Hoover Dam. Why not take it there? It's more secure, there'd be plenty of troops there to help fight off the Decepticons, and if worse comes to worse, they can load the cube onto a plane and fly it out to literally anywhere else. And more importantly, there's no chance for any civilian casualties.

What happens in Mission City...stays in Mission City

• Does Las Vegas not exist in the Bay Verse? It's minor I know, but I find it quite jarring they make up this entirely fictional city to set the final battle in, especially given that LV is right next to Hoover Dam. Did they not have the money to film in Vegas?
  • "Mission City" is pretty clearly just Los Angeles, it may just be some kind of code name for the city or something.
    • How the hell did they get from Hoover Dam to California?

Holding Megatron

• In the first film, while you can understand why the American Government would want Megatron on US soil to keep him out of any foreign nation's hands, why the hell didn't they build a base to hold him in the Arctic? That way, Megatron would remain frozen without needing the power of an entire dam to keep him that way!
  • Keep in mind, they could still have built Hoover Dam to house the Allspark! Overall, what in the name of sanity made them think that keeping an artifact that can animate technology into hostile alien robots, right next to a known hostile giant robot, was ever going to be a good idea?
    • They didn't KNOW Megatron was evil. They found him already frozen and knew nothing about him at all. They didn't find out he was evil until he unfroze and went on a rampage. That said, I agree that keeping him and the Cube in the same facility was not the brightest idea.