TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Just watched the DVD last night and raised couple questions that became errors. Let's just share some.

1. When Laserbeak pushed Wang off the window, there is clearly nothing underneath when camera is on the top view. But after he fell, it sounded like he landed on a car and triggered the car alarm system.

2. In the final battle,Sideswipe got a shot by Sentinel on the chest/shoulder area in a fairly close range. Later he appeared again after the battle ended and he was perfectly fine. No rust. Did Sentinel forget to use his rust gun or Sideswipe is super "rust prove"?

RE Sideswipe, maybe Sentinel used a different bullet?

Post your errors here, peeps, so you do your work for me when I get down and give the commentary on the thing.

Yeh, seems Sentinel switched ammo - he only uses the rust gun in the traitor scene. Dunno, no time/facilities to cook up more magic rust bullets? He's also multi-tasking at the time, to be fair. Also, I'm fairly sure Sentinel shoots Ironhide at roughly the point Crowbar skewers him - the rust might only work on exposed areas. It seems a bit of a coincidence that Ironhide's hit twice in rapid succession in more-or-less the same place, so could well have been an intentional touch.

My main ones: -

- The prisoners scene. There's nothing precisely wrong, but it feels wildly out of character for all involved, especially as the four 'Deluxes' are rounded up, then a scene later we see Ratchet simply being herded towards them, while they all just sit there watching. Looking at the geography of it all, Sentinel seems to be addressing them, so they might be being rounded up for a gloat, but they're all fully armed and just sitting there. And if Sentinel's got them as prisoners, why does Soundwave order executions after seemingly getting the idea from Dylan (as said elsewhere, the 'Cons clearly have no moral problem - the scene just makes it look like they hadn't thought of it)? Are the Autobots even outnumbered down there?

- Wheelie and Brains just don't seem to exist. It's poooosible Simmons doesn't know they're being exiled when he mentions nine Autobots, but aside from Team Sam and those NEST troopers, no-one else acknowledges them at any point, right down to Leadfoot just driving off and leaving them. It's more weird than an error, though. You've got to wonder why the little buggers are caged up while the rest are allowed to drive to the Xanthium unrestrained.

- On Ironhide, one can only hope those buildings around the 'Sanitation building' are known to be empty, as there's absolutely no reason for him to kick Crankcase's corpse into a petrol station...

- Unless he's got some sort of crazy sprint engine fitted to his fire truck mode, the highway battle should catch and overtake Sentinel. Instead, he seems to disappear from roughly the point the Autobots hit Stealth Mode - he should at least be visible ahead, even with them all getting their show-off bits.

- While the government being morons is a get-out, the human reaction to Sentinel's demands is just a bit too silly. Considering what they have ready to throw at Chicago, it's clear responding to Sentinel and the Decepticons with force rather than standing by is the plan. So why comply with exiling the Autobots? While there are hints (e.g. O'Reilly's dialogue) that the Autobots are a bit of a political hot potato, there's a time and place.

- During the "We will kill them all" scene, there's surely no time for Leadfoot to transform between his prop car pulling up and him smacking the protoform in the jaw.

- Sideswipe (and maybe Dino, I can't remember if we see the Ferrari darting in; the Stingray certainly does) completely disappear once inside Nest HQ when Sentinel turns.

- I could go on and on about Sentinel's muddy motives, needlessly risky choices and so on in various places, but the bottom line is that he seems to be a hypocritical prick who comes up with noble-sounding explanations and justifications for his actions that don't stand up to much scrutiny. There are all sorts of less twatty options open to him throughout the film that he simply opts not to take, so it's fairly consistent that he's just an evil moron.

Agree on most of those errors.

Dino did go into the facility at around the same time Ironhide came out. Yet he and Sideswipe are nowhere to be seen during his entire rampage.

The entire hostage subplot was beyond silly, it's just put there to make a few girls at the cinema cringe at Bumblebee almost dying. Two proved badasses [Sideswipe and Bumblebee], along with Ratchet, who's not too shabby, suddenly SURRENDER?

Cliffjumper wrote:- Wheelie and Brains just don't seem to exist. It's poooosible Simmons doesn't know they're being exiled when he mentions nine Autobots, but aside from Team Sam and those NEST troopers, no-one else acknowledges them at any point, right down to Leadfoot just driving off and leaving them. It's more weird than an error, though. You've got to wonder why the little buggers are caged up while the rest are allowed to drive to the Xanthium unrestrained.

I dunno, I've always thought for Wheelie and Brains to civilians who consider themselves part of the Autobot army, but guys like Optimus and Bumblebee probably consider them just tagalong kids.

And they seem less compliant to follow orders, hence the caging. Unlike Bumblebee and the rest who seem quite more mature and liable to listen to orders Brains and Wheelie are tiny and if they wanted to they could've snuck away.

Leadfoot driving off and leaving them... well, they're tiny and the Wreckers are kind of assholes...

Yeh, I could see Ye Olde G1 mob giving up, but the screen Autobots are nutters. The Decepticons are pretty mental too - to my mind, this is why we don't see a capture scene; someone sat down and looked at it and couldn't find a believable way to do it.

If Sentinel wants them taken prisoner to fit in with his occasional desire to preserve the Transformers race, there's no need for the executions. If the Decepticons are going to do executions, there's no reason to take the Autobots prisoner.

I did get a bit worried when Bumblebee was on the block, though

I've seen a bit of debate about Leadfoot claiming the rocket booster detaches from the ship; it's true that it doesn't seem to break off in the traditonal shuttle launch way, but it is there falling away from the rest of the ship as soon as it explodes.

With Sentinel, I think it's fair to go with him being completely and utterly a fruit and nut bar to explain all his odd choices, all that time on the moon has completely unhinged him.

In general character motivation terms, Megatron not just waiting five seconds for Sentinel to kill Optimus before making his own move is pretty daft.

The Apollo 11 Luna Module is shown on the moon when it's the craft Buzz and Neil returned to the orbiter in (I know, I know, it's a CONSPIRACY. Still they could have at least got the most basic of basic facts about how the Saturn 5 worked right, especially after going to the effort of rolling the real Buzz out to give it authenticity).

inflatable dalek wrote:In general character motivation terms, Megatron not just waiting five seconds for Sentinel to kill Optimus before making his own move is pretty daft.

Megatron's head is falling apart and it's questionable how aware he is of what's going on for much of the film, I'd say.

Few issues I've noticed:

1) When Apollo 11 is going to the moon, the first shot we see is of Columbus with no Eagle attached to it (only Apollo 8 went to the moon in such a fashion).

2) When next we see Apollo "11" it is clearly Odyssey and Aquarius. You can see the panel blown off the side of the Command Module, and there is debris flying around the vehicle.

I'm not sure what's with these two above...old stock footage from Apollo 13 or From the Earth to the Moon, perhaps? And they just figured no one would notice?

3) There's a shot of Sam holding on to Wheelie and trying to put him in a cage, the camera looks away and we get a far shot of Sam struggling with absolutely nothing. Wheelie was left out of the shot.

4) The boosters on the shuttle are no where near big enough to hold any of the Autobots, let alone all of them. So maybe they're talking about something other than the SRBs of the shuttle, but as has already been pointed out, there is no booster stage separation seen during the launch.

Lastly...I'll have to see that shot again of when the Autobots get to the moon. I don't recall of they show the entire Eagle there. Do you maybe only see the footpads? The lower half of the Lunar Modules were left behind on the moon and only the top half launched off the surface.

Huh. Never realised the guy who voiced Dino was a) the feller in Platoon who was Charlie Sheen's mate and b) dead.

Similar to Leadfoot transforming, on the highway there's no time for Bumblebee's weaponry to deploy - we get the slow-mo of his wheels popping, next frame he's got guns everywhere.

There's a line of dialogue among the humans that implies that the Autobot prisoners are on the building. This, I think, is the remnants of an early version of the scene that made it into the novelization where the Autobots are captured, herded into the main building where Sentinel gloats over them.

Also, if Decepticon ships shoot down anything that so much as passes by, why doesn't Lennox's Ospreys get shot down until they are smack dab inside of Chicago?

When the other Autobots arrive as Shockwave is being pummeled by concentrated fire from the humans and Wreckers, Dino, Ratchet and Sideswipe transform. In the very next scene Dino seems to transform again alongside Bumblebee.

About Sentinel's rust bullets: after rewatching the scenes where he uses his guns about three times, I have to note that he visibly switches bullets as early as his betrayal scene. He shoots Ironhide and at the crates with rust bullets, but switches to normal explosives when shooting at the humans. He later uses rust bullets again when shooting at Optimus (a powdery effect instead of a big BOOM), and presumably back to normal bullets when shooting at Sideswipe.

Blackjack wrote:Also, if Decepticon ships shoot down anything that so much as passes by, why doesn't Lennox's Ospreys get shot down until they are smack dab inside of Chicago?

Lennox asks Morshower to run diversionary raids to the other side of the city (south, I think), and one of the Ospreys is shot down (it crashes into another).

Mind, the fighters do bother me a bit - they go down very easily to the Tomahawks; I know a Tomahawk is a big, big weapon, but you have to wonder how the Decepticon fighters would fare against, say, 50-odd F-22s with Sidewinders or whatever they use now. Morshower references long-range bombers being knocked out, and Epps' team see a flight of three planes shot down (seemingly because they just fly past the thing's cannon without making any attempt to engage or evade), but there never seems to be any attempt to directly engage them with massed fighter aircraft.

There aren't any Indenpendence Day shields, and Prime shoots one down with relative ease; the situation isn't like the first two films where the military want recon proof of Decepticon involvement before rolling out the heavy metal (indeed, Morshower's line about bombers seems to indicate they're even prepared to write off civilians as collateral damage in order to stop Sentinel).

You also have to wonder why Epps' little gang seem to be acting unofficially - surely there's no reason why they can't get some sort of official support (an extra couple of rockets, for instance) considering US forces are actively attacking (or trying to attack) Chicago at the time.

The human governments are thick as pig shit in this film. They exile the Autobots to appease Sentinel, then begin military operations against him. The military operations are then stupid beyond words, and tactically they have to be bailed out by a former spook and Team Epps. I mean, if they're waiting for news of where the device is, why are they sending in other stuff anyway?

Cliffjumper wrote:Mind, the fighters do bother me a bit - they go down very easily to the Tomahawks; I know a Tomahawk is a big, big weapon, but you have to wonder how the Decepticon fighters would fare against, say, 50-odd F-22s with Sidewinders or whatever they use now. Morshower references long-range bombers being knocked out, and Epps' team see a flight of three planes shot down (seemingly because they just fly past the thing's cannon without making any attempt to engage or evade), but there never seems to be any attempt to directly engage them with massed fighter aircraft.

There aren't any Indenpendence Day shields, and Prime shoots one down with relative ease; the situation isn't like the first two films where the military want recon proof of Decepticon involvement before rolling out the heavy metal (indeed, Morshower's line about bombers seems to indicate they're even prepared to write off civilians as collateral damage in order to stop Sentinel).

This thing puzzled me for all three films. It just always seems like humans never want to throw full force in to fight with Decepticons. Yeah, why sacrifice our lives when there are Autobots to fight them first. First movie is somewhat reasonable since humans had not much time to prepare. Second one only threw in few bombers and few tanks. The entire fleet did pretty much nothing. Third one, while had a lot of time to prepare, why not throw them all in like the Independence Day style (Bay proved he could do it). Even with all 200 Decepticons, Decepticons are still out numbered.

Here's another one. The window pieces on Sentinel Prime's chest are made of the fire truck's windows. But on the Ark, he already has them.

Why can't Optimus Prime deploy the blades in his arms to cut off the wires he'd tangled up in? It can't be that he didn't have the deployable blades, he uses at least one (alongside the hand-held sword) in the two-mile rampage. And it can't be because he couldn't reach, he has at least one arm free.

About the rocket booster thing, well, maybe Starscream shot the Xantium up before they had any chance to separate the boosters, and Leadfoot just went all 'oh, it's just as planned' to look tough. I mean, why deflate morale with a 'good god, we barely survived the crash landing in the Atlantic'?

Cliffjumper wrote:Lennox asks Morshower to run diversionary raids to the other side of the city (south, I think), and one of the Ospreys is shot down (it crashes into another).

Ah, yes. I stand corrected.

Rewatching the movie, there seems to be a dogfight going on when the Ospreys first approach the city...

Speaking about the military not mustering anything, where did the USS Stennis and the magic railgun disappear off to in this huge mess?

You also have to wonder why Epps' little gang seem to be acting unofficially - surely there's no reason why they can't get some sort of official support (an extra couple of rockets, for instance) considering US forces are actively attacking (or trying to attack) Chicago at the time.

No time, maybe? They seem to just go immediately on their merry way to Chicago, picking up Epps' conveniently-in-the-way mercenary friends. Plus, with what happened with Sam prior to this, he might be wary of stepping into a sea of red tape.

The human governments are thick as pig shit in this film. They exile the Autobots to appease Sentinel, then begin military operations against him.

This.

This is the biggest plot hole in the movie, moreso than the prisoner scene, or Sentinel being a dick. I mean, the humans know that the Decepticons are the bad guys, why would they even believe that they would honour their part of the deal? Genre blindness, I tell you.

It's like those people who pity Demolishor's death in the second movie. The Decepticons are basically known terrorists and murderers, the **** will they spare our planet when we can't fight back.

To be fair, the railgun would be pretty unsuitable - it's a line of sight weapon that we've only seen fired once from a ship at a large, slow-moving land-based target. Tracking and targetting the things would be a bitch - railguns aren't any more precise than revolvers, their main strength is the astonishing speed and force they hurl projectiles at; the projectiles are unguided. Even if the US wrote off Chicago and just started firing at Trump Tower, it would take even a railgun a fair few shots to knock everything else out of the way first

The Kidd would also be hugely exposed to those fighters - Hell, a ship would be to conventional forces moving that close to what's effectively an enemy fortress. Even with all the modern anti-aircraft tech, ships are still hugely vulnerable to air attack because you only need a couple of hits on the things. It's also worth considering that the Decepticons hold sway in Chicago for, what, a couple of days? The Kidd and/or any other railgun destroyers could be steaming in from the Gulf or somewhere.

Regarding Epps' pick-ups, it would seem logical to collect the guys on the way to Chicago - no point in detouring to Mexico to pick up Fig or to the UK to pick up Graham when another couple of guys with assault rifles aren't going to make a big difference.


One odd thing regarding the Autobot ship being destroyed... None of those in NEST HQ show the remotest surprise when the Autobots then turn up in Chicago (only the unofficial gang - Sam, Epps etc.). IIRC the first time they notice them is noting that the Autobots have been captured - there's no "Where the Hell did they come from?". It's loose writing more than anything, but I wonder if you could have some wriggle-room there - were NEST & co (or at least the upper echelons) in on the planned escape?

Why can't Optimus Prime deploy the blades in his arms to cut off the wires he'd tangled up in? It can't be that he didn't have the deployable blades, he uses at least one (alongside the hand-held sword) in the two-mile rampage. And it can't be because he couldn't reach, he has at least one arm free.

He does take a swing with one - he just doesn't quite seem to be able to reach. Another thing worth pondering is that the rocket pack seems to take a hit from Shockwave - you could speculate the Wreckers provide a quick patch while they're up there as well.

About the rocket booster thing, well, maybe Starscream shot the Xantium up before they had any chance to separate the boosters, and Leadfoot just went all 'oh, it's just as planned' to look tough. I mean, why deflate morale with a 'good god, we barely survived the crash landing in the Atlantic'?

Yeh - I am kind-of curious as to how exactly they got back so quickly. There's all sorts of possible explanations (like the booster still being usable), but I just can't shake the mental image of them swimming for it.

Dino and Sideswipe being absent -- Dino, at least, moves into a different area of the NEST base, some sort of... entrance to a parking lot reserved for sleek sword-wielding sports cars? At least Dino didn't go into the same courtyard Sentinel, Bumblebee and Ironhide ended up in.

Not exactly the place for this, but does that big four-legged Decepticon that blows up a chunk of Chicago, menaces the Autobots from a building and finally gets torn apart by the Wreckers have a name?

Cliffjumper wrote:I wonder if you could have some wriggle-room there - were NEST & co (or at least the upper echelons) in on the planned escape?

I think it's implied, yeah, that at least Lennox and Morshower were aware that the Autobots were planning something, because unlike Team Epps or Team Simmons they aren't particularly surprised at the Autobots showing up.

Cliffjumper wrote:He does take a swing with one - he just doesn't quite seem to be able to reach. Another thing worth pondering is that the rocket pack seems to take a hit from Shockwave - you could speculate the Wreckers provide a quick patch while they're up there as well.

Yeah, if the Wreckers patched up Optimus' jetpack, it does make more sense for his extended absence...

Speaking of the Wreckers, did they ever show up in their original weaponless NASCAR alternate modes, or do their prop cars permanently have those guns attached to them?

Yeh, they're only seen weaponised - taking the film as the only source, it would seem those ARE their alternate modes.

Not seen anything other than vague descriptions for Leggy - I guess the clincher will be if a toy for him comes out at any point; if there is any concept art out there, most of the DotM examples seem to have false or working names on them.

A bit like the Ironhide shoulder thing, Shockwave's shot does very specifically hit the jet-packs even if it's not made outright explicit. Again, though, considering how complex the CGI is, it's a heck of a coincidence.

Did any of you notice that Megatron's last line in ROTF, that 'revaaaunnnrggg' roar as he shoots himself in the face, is reused for his death here... and spoken at one point when Sentinel Prime runs away from Optimus?

A bit like the Ironhide shoulder thing, Shockwave's shot does very specifically hit the jet-packs even if it's not made outright explicit. Again, though, considering how complex the CGI is, it's a heck of a coincidence.

I do like to think it's intentional, made for rewind-loving watchers like us to spot.

Cliffjumper wrote:were NEST & co (or at least the upper echelons) in on the planned escape?

This would also make it a bit more believable that they exiled them at all. They could make Sentinel think they're playing ball, but as soon as his back's turned, the attack begins . . .