Line #34 Headscratchers/TransformersAgeOfExtinction


1	Please add new entries to the bottom.
2
3	[[foldercontrol]]
4
5	[[folder:Hitching a ride to another galaxy]]
6	* At the end, [[spoiler:Optimus flies away]]. How exactly will he get to his final destination?
7	** Probably hoping to find an alien ship somewhere else in the solar system. Quite possibly starting with the Fallen's base from [=RotF=].
8	** The teaser/banner to The Last Knight suggest that he might have returned to Cybertron. He likely considered it a good place to start the search, while checking the amount of damage the place suffered during Dark of the Moon.
9	** He must go. His planet needs him.
10	[[/folder]]
11
12	[[folder:Why do the Autobots hide?]]
13	* Why are Autobots in hiding? Why not fight back? Why not bounce to any other place in the universe? Why not trade with humans? (see energy tech question)
14	** Because fighting back results in Cemetery Wind saying "See? Unprovoked attack! Kill them all!" Like what happened with KSI. At least now they have to pretend they're hunting Decepticons. As for leaving, until the ambush, Optimus still believes in protecting the humans from the Decepticons. Can't do that if they leave. Even so, it's still implied that most Autobots left, and it was a relatively small number who were killed.
15	[[/folder]]
16
17	[[folder:Groups]]
18	* Why are some Autobots hiding out solo? Why not use strength in numbers and stay in a clan? Send the same sort of "calling all autobots" message that was sent later in the movie.
19	** Easier to stay in hiding that way, simple as that.
20	** A group of cars traveling together is more questionable then a car or two.
21	** The Autobots may have preferred to stay as a group, but they're automatons, they need electronic communication to talk to each other but Cemetery Wind was tapping all audio signals to track them down. Therefore, there was no way the Autobots could have communicated with each other without being detected by humans or Lockdown.
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Energy revolution]]
25	* Why don't humans learn from the energy technology that powers Transformers?
26	** They ''barely'' understand Transformium, and that was spoon-fed to them by Galvatron. Even if he knew anything about how the Spark works, he wouldn't tell them.
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder: The Dinobots]]
30	* In the beginning of the film, [[spoiler: the Quintessons drop bombs to cyberform Earth]]. In the modern day, in the Arctic. We see what a [[spoiler: cybeformed T-rex]] looks like. The problem is, It looks identical to Grimlock's beast form? There's no reason it shouldn't look like a [[spoiler: hodgepodge of metal and bone, like Lucas' corpse after cyberformation]]. I understand that it was probably cheaper to simply use Grimlock's CGI model, but since the Dinobots were [[spoiler: apparently alien in origin, rather than cyberformed Dinosaurs]], it makes no sense.
31	** The specimen from the Arctic was 65 millions years old whereas [[spoiler: Lucas]] was a fresh sample. It stands to reason that any biological matter that remained would have long ago decayed, resulting in the two matching.
32	** Also, though they use the same base technology, the grenade and the Seed have different intended effects, and therefore their results would also be different: the Seed is a terraforming device, designed to transform most nearby matter (including living bodies) into Transformium, with the death of anything caught in its blast radius as a side-effect; the grenade is a weapon designed to kill everything within its blast radius, with the resulting Transformium as a luckily useful by-product.
33	[[/folder]]
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35	[[folder: Humans betray Autobots, again]]
36	* The Autobots saved all of humanity, for the third time! LET'S KILL THEM ALL! Really? I know Attinger runs on ForTheEvulz, but why the hell did all humanity agree to kill them when it was clearly the Decepticons who were at fault for all of the deaths? Savoy even complains to Ratchet about having lost his sister because of the events in Dark of the Moon, but why would Savoy blame Ratchet who is clearly an Autobot and not a Decepticon?
37	** 'All humanity' didn't, as shown when the Chief of Staff expresses genuine surprise when he learns the Autobots are on the hit list. It's just that with Lockdown's assistance, the black ops CIA groups were able to locate and eliminate the Autobots before other government groups could be involved.
38	** The human villains later reveal that they were sending dead Autobot corpses, such as Ratchet's and Leadfoot's, all to KSI (Kinetic Solutions Incorporated) in order to melt them down and study them in order to build their own robot army, so they weren't really attacking Autobots out of spite, it was out of science.
39	** Savoy may have become psychotic and insane from his sister's death, which impaired him from listening to reason and logic.
40	[[/folder]]
41
42	[[folder:Legitimate government]]
43	* Also, why didn't Optimus contact the government and say: "We are being attacked by humans, what the fuck, guys?"
44	** The people attacking him were, as far as he knew, under government orders. Do you think it would be wise for Optimus to try and make contact with the ones ordering the attacks and risk giving them his location and new disguise?
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder: Lockdown vs Earth]]
48	* Why would Lockdown strike deals with some rogue group from a single country instead of demanding from Earth in general to deliver Optimus to him?
49	** Last time someone did a similar demand and humans complied, Chicago became a warzone. Lockdown probably thought we wouldn't be so willing to go along the second time.
50	** And? What would the humans do against him when he starts to bombard the planet from the orbit?
51	** Call on the Autobots, ask for forgiveness and help hand Lockdown his ass.
52	[[/folder]]
53
54	[[folder:Human-sized weapons]]
55	* Why would Lockdown's ship, when all its inhabitants are ''much'' larger than humans, have weapons perfectly suited for humans?
56	** We don't see ALL its inhabitants, and it's quite possible that some of the prisoners can be roughly human-sized (like the one with the overly long tongue whose cell Tessa hides in, for example)
57	** He said something about the ship being a Knight's Sanctum he stole and repurposed ("defiled", in Optimus' words). Those weapons probably belonged to Mini-Cons or other human-sized Tranformers Knights.
58	** It's not like we're given a neat list of what all the weapons are supposed to be. The gun that Cade grabbed might be the Transformer's equivalent of a small handgun, especially for a slightly smaller 'bot like Bumblebee. (Think along the lines of a revolver in the hands of a human.) Size-wise, the Cybertronian gun is more like a bazooka when held by a human. Note how Cade can almost fit his whole hand on the trigger, rather than being able to use a single finger.
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Security]]
62	* For a mobile prison, Lockdown's ship is ridiculously low on security. He only has a few mechanical wolves and some low-level humanoid robots that can be easily destroyed by small-caliber alien weaponry. And somehow the Autobots can disconnect a large part of his ship (the one containing the Dinobots) without him noticing until he has gone into Warp? On the same note, how can the ship automatically dispatch small crafts after Bumblebee and Drift hijacks one, but not alert Lockdown at all?
63	** As I said above, wasn't the ship one of the Knight's Sanctum he stole and defiled? Maybe he's not familiar with everything about the ship.
64	[[/folder]]
65
66	[[folder: Optimus can fly]]
67	* So. Optimus Prime can fly. By himself. ''Into space'' if necessary. And he never used that ability in any of the previous movies because...? Or even in '''this''' movie, when they need to get a nuclear bomb away from the population?
68	** He didn't gain that ability until '''after''' he picked up the sword prior to freeing the Dinobots. [[https://youtu.be/QZLgiwYP5to Watch here.]] Notice how in the start of the clip, he's rather slender, but when he grabs the hilt of the sword, plates slide into view and he's a bit buffer? That's when he gained the thrusters enabling space flight. It's a call back to ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' when Optimus Primal took prime's Spark and became Optimal Optimus, and in ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformersTheMovie'' when Hot Rod took Prime's Spark and became Rodimus Prime.
69	[[/folder]]
70
71	[[folder:Lockdown's ship]]
72	* Why didn't Optimus Prime use Lockdown's ship to get to the creator? It is apparently capable of FTL travel, and it's logical to expect there to be some sort of flight log that contains the Creator's location (Lockdown plans to go back there to deliver Optimus and collect the bounty). It's like stubbornly walking half way around the world to an unknown location, when you could have used a plane with a map in it.
73	** Lockdown's ship is seen being under fire from Chinese warplanes toward the end of the movie; we don't see it getting fully destroyed on-screen, but it probably was.
74	*** It reappeared in the next movie
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder: Holding the line]]
78	* The heroes take the Seed out of the city, and the Autobots take stand on the bridge against... whom? Lockdown's guys all seem to be airborne so they won't be deterred, new Decepticons were apparently all killed by that moment, so why exactly did they sit there instead of helping Optimus fight Lockdown?
79	** They weren't all airborne, it's just some of Lockdown's mercenaries had ships at their disposal. It's very likely Lockdown had his hounds, drones and any remaining mercenaries join the fight.
80	[[/folder]]
81
82	[[folder:Seed exploding]]
83	* Why didn't the Seed explode? It was probably deactivated by an Autobot, but it's never mentioned onscreen.
84	** Because it wasn't going to detonate. It was a locator beacon.
85	** "He wants to detonate that seed in the biggest city and kill millions".
86	** That still requires activating it. The beeping part in the car was a locator beacon, not a countdown, and the bomb was never armed.
87	[[/folder]]
88
89	[[folder: Airborne alt-modes]]
90	* Seriously, is there ANY in-universe reason why the Autobots can't have airborne alt-modes? This is the fourth movie, and Drift is the only one who changes into a helicopter, while still having a car alt-mode.
91	** Drift was a former Decepticon. Maybe self-powered flight is a Decepticon-exclusive technology?
92	** Drift being able to fold his carparts into a nonexistent helicopter aside, the only reason Autobots are limited to cars is because none of the ones that show up in the films have frames that are compatible with aircraft. The only movie Transformers that did was Starscream who had a weird triangular dorito shape that's implied to be unusual, and Blackout/Grindor who had propellers in their body and were usually tall and slender, where as Megatron still retained his cybertronian mode (and once he had to take an earth form, he too was forced to be a ground vehicle)
93	[[/folder]]
94
95	[[folder: The Case of the Missing Autobots]]
96	* Where were the rest of the Autobots while Optimus was fighting Galvatron and confronted by Lockdown? They were right behind him, and there's no way Stinger could've held his own against four Autobots.
97	** Two or three Autobots were keeping the humans from the battle, while the one(s) not evacuating fought Stinger offscreen.
98	[[/folder]]
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100	[[folder: Why only Chicago?]]
101	* Why do they keep mentioning Chicago battle as the only Autobots vs. Decepticons war that costed human lives? Why don't they mention what happened in Los Angeles and Giza?
102	** The battle of Chicago is the most prominent example since it got fucked up much worse than LA and Giza did. But I'm pretty sure that it was also mentioned at some point in time.
103	** Chicago was the worst since Decepticons basically rolled in and started shooting up humans wholesale for a solid day before anyone stopped them. Mission City was relatively short and less destructive, to the point where with enough bribes and damage control the entire incident was covered up, and Giza happened out in the middle of nowhere.
104	[[/folder]]
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106	[[folder: Optimus acting like a jerk]]
107	* Why does Optimus act revengeful, angry and like a jerk in this movie? First he has never acted like that even brawling Megatron, and second I know his friends were killed by humans and they betrayed the Autobots, but Humans have been trying to kick them off the Earth in the previous movies and Decepticons have killed more Autobots than humans if we count wars in Cybertron and Earth, so what made his behavior change?
108	** Trust. Not everyone was on board with kicking them out of Earth, but after Optimus sees his friends getting blown the fuck up, I would hold my breath and let him angst. Besides, revengeful he may be but Prime still didn't blow off Joshua's face during their meeting at KSI, he's still too noble until Attinger really goes all out, at which point Optimus kills.
109	** There's no reason to expect Optimus to have an emotional reaction so different from ours. Decepticons are his enemies and he's been fighting them for millions of years. So Optimus already knows where they stand. Humans however are a species he had built bonds and trust with, had allied with, and had protected. He thought that they were going to be accepted here and even told his Autobots that they could come to Earth for a new home. Instead they systematically murdered the Autobots and began harvesting their corpses. Another different thing, this time the humans weren't being manipulated by Megatron and Sentinel, this time they simply did it on their own because they didn't assign Autobots the same status of being alive or the rights of a sentient.
110	[[/folder]]
111
112	[[folder: Why blow up Hong Kong?]]
113	* Why is Megatron/Galvatron's plan to use the seed to blow up Hong Kong? The movie seems to indicate that the seed will convert nonbiological matter into transformium, so it's not necessary to use it on a city. While it seems obvious that Megatron would want maximum damage, if he plans to actually use the transformium created, wouldn't he prefer to let humans start harvesting more, building more robots for him to control to establish a reasonable foothold before declaring war on the entire planet and attempting to hold a gigantic open pit mine and control advanced factories for creating his army? Is there something I missed or is he just an impatient idiot?
114	** Megatron wasn't planning on blowing up Hong Kong, the humans went there because Yueming knew the commander of the army garrison on the island and thought she could get help protecting the seed from him. Megatron did want to detonate it in the largest city he could find (Shanghai would've been a good candidate) as a pure terror attack, in addition, since Transformium also converts organic matter detonating it in a city also converts every human into Transformium for him to build his army out of. It is true that he could probably get more raw matter out of the conversion if he say detonated it in the Amazon rainforest, that wouldn't scare the crap out of the world. The humans haven't mastered the material yet, so Megatron is better off building his new army himself without giving them too many chances to subvert his plans.
115	[[/folder]]
116
117	[[folder: Transformium]]
118	* Where did this nonsense about Transformium come from? How is that what the transformers are made from? In the first movie, we see random bits of machinery, like kitchen appliances, vending machines, and cell phones, become fully alive transformers because of a shot from the Allspark. Were these supposed to be things that humans accidentally made out of transformium?
119	[[/folder]]
120
121	[[folder:Which one gave life to the Transformers?]]
122	* At the start of the film, we see a fleet of alien ships terra-forming a part of the Earth landscape. So many viewers were wondering which one created the Transformers: The Allspark or the Creators?
123	** It seems that while Transformium can form new transformers when coded right, Allspark can turn any metal sentient. My guess is that the (Originally built, yet unaware of their beginning) Transformers themselves didn't know about rewriting their DNA and used the cube to keep their race going. Heck, for all we know, the allspark could ''be'' Transformium enfused with the Matrix.
124	** The Creators. The [=AllSpark=] may have simply been made by the Creators themselves.
125	[[/folder]]
126
127	[[folder: Galvatron's "intended" design.]]
128	* We can see a diagram of the Optimus Clone that KSI intended Galvaron to look like in the background of the scene where he's introduced. That diagram appears to be based on the Evasion design Optimus sports at the start of the film. Shouldn't it look like DOTM design, given that the Evasion design was only adopted by Optimus ''after'' escaping Cemetery Wind, and thus should have first been seen by humans when he transformed in Cade's Garage?
129	[[/folder]]
130
131	[[folder:That elevator]]
132	* They go down this elevator, 4 people and a bomb. The elevator says that it can take 680 kgs. I'd say at most the 4 people weigh a total of 320-330. Joshua is easily able to carry the bomb. Why's this elevator so faulty?
133	[[/folder]]
134
135	[[folder: Cemetery Wind's lack of oversight]]
136	* Was no one at the CIA making sure CW stayed in line? For that matter, how did no one in the US government, or even world governments (CW has been operating outside the US) figure out Cemetery Wind was hunting down Autobots. You'd think the largest intelligence agency in the world would be able to tell when it's own agents have gone rouge.
137	[[/folder]]
138
139	[[folder: Not seeking asylum]]
140	* Why don't any of the Autobots to flee to somewhere far out of Cemetery Wind's jurisdiction? Doubt a CIA paramilitary would be able to get the hardware required to take down an Autobot into say, Cuba or Switzerland. In fact, in the next movie, the Cuban government is more than willing to give refuge to some of the surviving Transformers-and this is after most of the world has turned on them after Hong Kong. I'm sure the Autobots could find some refuge from Cemetery Wind.
141	[[/folder]]
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143	[[folder:Was Optimus telling Sam to run? Does that imply Sam was killed in between Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction? Was Cemetery Wind responsible?]]
144	* Here is a big elephant in the room? During the first scene where Optimus was transforming after being revived by Cade and Lucas, during his freakout at the humans, he goes on to say "Sam... Run" but we can barely make note of what he was saying at that moment, but if you hear it very closely, you can hear something about Sam, That does raise some clues to what happened, and from how Optimus was reacting, it could be implied that Sam Witwicky was killed by Cemetery Wind sometime after Dark of the Moon, as apparently he was with Optimus when they were ambushed. Was Sam a fugutive that know too much about the Autobots? It also then raises questions on others who had close ties with them in the past before, did Cemetery Wind get to them as well? We would never know.
145	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / TransformersAgeOfExtinction