Did You Know?

Shooting started the day after Transformers won the MTV Movie Award for Best Movie.

According to Roberto Orci, Jonah Hill was offered the part of Leo Spitz, and even received a copy of the script, but negotiations fell through.

Alex Kurtzman came up with the film's title. His co-writer Roberto Orci jokingly stated he would also like Transformers to be named "Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye."

The Autobot Arcee was originally meant to appear in the first film, but was replaced with Ironhide because the writers thought robot genders would be difficult to explain. Afterward, they decided to include Arcee to please fans, and ignore the gender issue. Arcee's alternate mode was felt to be too small for her to be an effective warrior, so she got two partners, Chromia and Elita-1.

To stage an action scene at White Sands, the buildings built on the sand had explosives inside of them, and six F-16s were flown over the area.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman chose the Fallen as the film's primary antagonist because they felt he was the most elemental villain (he was originally seen in the "Transformer" comics as an apocalyptic god-like robot) and would make a fine master for Megatron.

John Turturro was allowed to climb the pyramids during filming in Egypt. At one point, he simply broke down crying. When Michael Bay questioned him, he said, "You just don't get to do this in movies. You don't get to shoot in a place that's 4000 years old."

The Autobot that transformed into a Chevrolet Corvette (Centennial Concept) sportscar was originally called Hot Rod, but he was later renamed Sideswipe. He is also inspired by the Autobot Drift, who transforms from a sportscar, wields blades in battle, and has a similar headcrest.

From the voice actors in this film, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker and Charles Adler were in the original The Transformers series, while Tom Kenny and Kevin Michael Richardson were in (as of 2009) the most recent feature Transformers: Animated and Tony Todd would go on to star in the next series Transformers Prime.

The college scenes were shot at both the University of Pennsylvania and the Princeton University. Neither school is named in the film, however, as both schools felt that the Judy Witwicky scenes were damaging to their image.

Bumblebee's alternate mode in this film is a 2010 Concept Chevrolet Camaro. This was a redesign of his previous 2009 Chevrolet Camaro mode, carried out to emphasize Bumblebee becoming stronger and sturdier after his injury in the first film. The Chevrolet logo on Bumblebee's grill in the first film is yellow, but in this film it is black with a red outline.

Wheelie was originally an Autobot Cybertronian car in The Transformers: The Movie, but this was revised to a Decepticon radio-controlled truck. His overall personality, a fast-talking, street-smart spy on wheels, is based on the Maximal Rattrap from Beast Machines: Transformers: in a joke and homage, Wheelie gets his foot caught in a mousetrap.

Caterpillar Inc. provided three vehicles to portray Decepticons: the 992D wheel loader (Scrapper), the 773B dump truck (Long Haul), and the D9N bulldozer (Rampage).

The Decepticon Hightower's alternate mode is a Kobelco CK2500 Crawler Crane.

The Autobot Jolt's alternate mode in this film is a Chevrolet Volt, a new vehicle designed by General Motors. The car company wanted to promote their new vehicle, but the writers had been dazzled by the Volt, and wanted it in the film anyway.

The animators modelled Devastator's stooped stature and lumbering movements after a gorilla.

Egyptian government official and archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who loved Transformers, got a personal promise from Michael Bay not to destroy buildings during filming before he granted permission to shoot in Egypt.

The film shot for 4 days in Jordan, at Petra, Wadi Rum and Salt. The Jordanian royal family, who loved Transformers, provided the Royal Jordanian Air Force for assistance.

The Transformers were created with a mix of computer-generated imagery and props, including include a life-scale model of Bumblebee (the same used from the first film), a life-scale model of Optimus Prime, a life-scale puppet of robot-mode Wheelie, a model of the Matrix of Leadership, Jetfire's landing gear/cane, a puppet of Ravage, a puppet of Scalpel, Megatron's claw, and the Fallen's face. CGI was used extensively so scenes could be filmed easily.

Originally there was going to be a massive army of Insecticons (a The Transformers faction of insectoid Decepticons) that would merge to form the Hive, (inspired by the Swarm from the 1980s "Transformers" comics). This was changed as it would have been too expensive, and not as spectacular as the combiner Devastator; in the end, only one Insecticon appears, seen tracking down Sam and Mikaela in Operation Firestorm. The concept was not scrapped though but evolved into the Microcons-Reedman sequence.

Michael Bay wanted Amaury Nolasco to reprise his role as Jorge Figueroa, but Nolasco was unavailable due to schedule conflicts with other films.

The Fallen's face resembles the Decepticon insignia, with an Egyptian crown attached. He also has red magma lines running across his body, a reference to his original aflame appearance in the comics. His features also resemble the multi-faced Quintessons, the god-like bio-mechanical creators of the The Transformers.

While rendering Devastator, one ILM animator's computer reportedly overheated, and its internal circuitry melted.

Michael Bay described the tone of the film as "Ben-Hur fused with Apocalypse Now."

The filmmakers polled Transformers fans to decide which robots to cast in the film. The most popular robots were Soundwave (20% of the vote), the Constructicons and Dinobots (tied with 16%), Jetfire (11%), Ultra Magnus and Shockwave (tied with 9%).

When filming the Operation Firestorm scene where Leo rescues Simmons from Devastator's vortex Ramon Rodriguez endured artificially-generated 100-mph winds, which clogged his eyes with sand and dislocated his shoulder. It took him 45 minutes to clear his eyes.

Steve Jablonsky brought in his mentor Hans Zimmer and the rock band 'Linkin Park' to assist in composing the musical score. The trio collaborated on making a musical score set to the band's song "New Divide."

The Twins were specially designed to reflect each other: Skids has an oversized left arm/eye and Mudflap has an oversized right arm/eye, and Skids's face is the top part of the Autobot face and Mudflap's face is the bottom part.

It took 140 terabytes to process the CGI for all the robots in this film.

The ILM animators studied each others' eyes to get an impression of how to express emotion in the robots' optics (eyes). In the previous film, they'd relied on the light from the optics, in this film, they relied on the optics' movement to express emotion.

In The Transformers the Constructicons transformed into construction vehicles, and could combine into the giant robot Devastator. In this film, there are two fleets of Constructicons: one fleet combines to become Devastator, the other fleet is disguised individual robots. Devastator was made a separate entity because it was not possible for the VFXperts, with the alien multi-segmented design used on the robots, to effectively design combining Transformers. Hasbro faced a very similar situation; they had to release the Constructicons and Devastator in two sets.

According to the ILM animators, Devastator is made of 52,632 pieces (more than 10 times the number of individual parts in an ordinary car), 11,716,127 polygons, and 6,467 textures, and took up 32 gigabytes of computer space. If his components were laid end-to-end they would stretch 13.84 miles. All the gold ever mined in human history could build a little more than half of it.

Casting sheets leaked in early 2008 mention the CEO of a corporation called "Massive Dynamics". The middle-aged male would have testified before Congress about robotic weapons in a short scene. A few months after the leak, Fringe debuted. Co-created and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, it included a mysterious corporation called "Massive Dynamics", later renamed to "Massive Dynamic". Steve Tom noted on his website that he would be playing the CEO of "McClaren Robotics." The novelization says that the government created a fake corporation called "Massive Dynamics" as a cover for the events of Transformers. The cover story stated that Massive Dynamics had developed search-and-rescue robots that malfunctioned during tests and caused the damage seen in the finale.

Simmons' codename "Robo-Warrior" was often used by Transformer fans online and in convention circles.

Michael Bay's pet dog Bonecrusher, adopted during the making of Transformers, can be seen at Mikaela's house.

In The Transformers, Soundwave's distinctive voice was created by Frank Welker using his deep ominous Dr Claw voice from Inspector Gadget, and then filtering the voice through a vocoder. In this film, Welker's voice was not treated with a vocoder, but it was in the video game Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Over 1.25 million feet of film were shot.

Rachael Taylor who starred as the Australian Maggie Madsen in Transformers turned down a chance to reprise her role.

Frank Welker recorded Soundwave's lines in French and Italian for the dubbed versions of the film.

The Decepticon Scalpel (described in the film as the Doctor) takes the alternate mode of a lensmeter, a device used by optometrists to check the various aspects of a prescription lens for eyeglasses (his toy gave him a different alternate mode: a microscope, in tribute to the The Transformers Autobot Perceptor). His bug-like design and sadistic attitude were based on Tarantulas, the twisted Predacon scientist from Beast Wars: Transformers.

The word "transformer" is heard only once in the film, used by Simmons in his bunker ("The Transformers, they've been here a long, long time."). Its derivatives are used by the Fallen and Jetfire.

From the Autobot Sisters, the pink motorcycle is Arcee, the blue bike is Chromia and the purple motorbike is as Flareup; their toys are marketed and sold as such. However, Roberto Orci maintains that the Sisters are all Arcee.

In The Transformers, the Seekers were Decepticons who took the form of jets. In this film, the Seekers are a special class of Transformers who explored the galaxy.

The Decepticon Overload's alternate mode is a Komatsu HD465-7 articulated dump truck.

The VFXperts believe Soundwave is their most interesting robot: "While he doesn't have a transformation, he is a combination of mechanical robotic pieces and these organic space-age tentacles. He will lock onto a satellite and as his tentacles search out, they lay out these very geometrically shaped and patterned tentacles akin to the structure you see on a circuit board. The bigger ones look like metallic rubber; the little ones look more like glass. They creep over the satellite almost like an L-system. You can see a very mathematical pattern as these guys learn where to go."

The animators designed Devastator's first appearance as "a scary transformation, where things are slamming together and getting pulled around. All seven vehicles shove themselves together and click into place as he grows into this giant, scary dude."

According to the writers, there are around ten song titles by Nine Inch Nails (Only, Closer, Last, Hurt, Vessel, The Wretched, Please) in the dialogue.

An establishing shot of the college shows Princeton's Frist Campus Center. Fans of House M.D. will recognize it as the Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

This is the first sequel for writers Roberto Orci-Alex Kurtzman.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in the film is actually the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It is a separate building at Dulles International Airport, administered by the Smithsonian, and home of most of the aircraft exhibited. The exterior of the Museum, an aircraft boneyard in the film, was actually the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in Tuscon, Arizona.

Jetfire was originally envisioned as having an accent like an American Southern preacher.

Bumblebee continues to use his radio to communicate, even though at the end of Transformers he was able to speak briefly. The writers liked Bumblebee's radio ability and wanted to use it again, so the movie comic ''Transformers: Alliance' (#3) explains that Bumblebee's voice processor was damaged again in a battle with Starscream.

The Twins were originally going to have a third member (just as Arcee herself had two twin sisters), whose alternate mode would have been a Mercedes Benz Smart automobile. Unfortunately the filmmakers were unable to acquire the Benz Smart for the film.

Peter Cullen, the original and film voice of Optimus Prime, was originally going to appear in this film as Prime's hologram, but this had to be cut out of the film. The movie comic 'Transformers: Alliance' (#1) features this event occurring.

Optimus Prime was originally going to appear with his iconic truck trailer, and would have combined with it as well; however changes to the script caused this concept to be scrapped. He finally got his trailer in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Jetfire rants about how his father was a wheel, and did not transform at all. He is possibly alluding to the Autobot Scrounge, who appeared in the "Transformers" comics and whose alternate mode was a wheel.

During Operation Firestorm, the Twins grab onto a pipe. For a moment, a newspaper blows onto the pipe, on which a headline ("...STERIOUS ROBOT SIGHTED") and an image of a robot can be seen. The image is of the Decepticon Shockwave, who is seen in his The Transformers appearance. It also hints at his arrival in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Bumblebee has only one spoken line in the film, which was seen in promotional footage; but for that reason it had to be removed from the film (it's where he talks to Sam in his garage). Mark Ryan was disappointed that the line had to be cut from the film.

James Arnold Taylor was originally cast to voice the Fallen, but to his disappointment was replaced with Tony Todd. Taylor would get to voice the Fallen in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Museum set up a shrine near its SR-71 Blackbird exhibit to commemorate their role in the film, which features props from the film, concept artwork/designs of Jetfire and a set of "Transformer" Jetfire toys. Following the release of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the space shuttle orbiter Discovery (which was seen in the film) is kept in the Museum behind the Blackbird exhibit.

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman originally passed on this film due to scheduling conflicts with other films, but the studios returned to them after looking through the other writers' scripts and finding them unsatisfactory. However, they had only three weeks to write the script due to the 2007 Writer's Guild of America strike. Michael Bay and Shia LaBeouf expressed disappointment with the film due to the script's rushed treatment.

Matthew Marsden was a childhood fan of the Transformers comic books, and loved Transformers.

Released on the 25th anniversary of The Transformers.

The aircraft carrier scenes were shot aboard the USS John C. Stennis, which was conducting exercises off the southern California coast. Some of the extras were Navy sailors. Tyrese Gibson gave an impromptu concert in the hangar bay after filming completed.

From the roster of Transformers in this film, Michael Bay's favourite Transformers are the Twins, Shia LaBeouf likes Scalpel, and Megan Fox prefers Devastator.

Judy Witwicky runs out of the house with a waffle iron on her head. The iron was supposed to be a member of the feral Transformers at the Witwicky home; it was too expensive to animate however and was omitted from the film.

The Decepticon that transforms into a Volvo excavator (referred by the Doctor as "ze little one" in the film) is called Scrapmetal.

Sideswipe is the only automobile Transformer to have his chest formed from the back of his car mode (all other automobile Transformers have their chests formed from the front of their car mode). He is also the only Autobot to have his voice actor changed - he is voiced by André Sogliuzzo in this film, and was voiced by James Remar in the sequel.

The Autobot Twins were inspired by Transformers: Animated's Bumblebee (a spirited chatterbox who transformed into a Chevy Beat automobile) and Michael Bay's Bad Boys (a couple of wisecracking law officers, who at one point make a chase in an ice cream truck - Mudflap even says the film tagline "Whatcha gonna do?").

Wheelie calls Mikaela "warrior goddess". "Mikaela" is the feminine form of "Mikael", a Hebrew name roughly meaning "god-like".

Erin Naas:  Arcee's hologram driver.

The Decepticon Alice is classified as a Pretender, a robot that maintains a bio-organic shell.

Despite being referred to by name, and helping bring Optimus Prime back to life, Jolt doesn't have a single line of dialogue.

There are several allusions in the film to The Transformers: The Movie:

• An ancient robot is the primary antagonist
• Megatron is rejuvenated
• Optimus Prime is killed (but appears near the end of the film)
• Both Wheelie and Arcee are introduced
• An elderly robot (Kup, Jetfire) plays a supporting part
• Devastator plays a pivotal part during a battle
• A giant robot unleashes its vortex weapon
• A group of small robots survive a giant robot's attack (Dinobots vs Unicron, Twins vs Devastator)
• And a prophecy and the Matrix of Leadership serve as key factors.

Jetfire is primarily based on his The Transformers incarnation (a former Decepticon), and his body's parts being fused with Optimus Prime is a homage to his Transformers: Armada incarnation, who could combine with Prime to form a stronger robot. His British-accented, bombastic personality is an homage to the Autobot Sky-Lynx The Transformers.

Canonically, Autobots have blue eyes and Decepticons have red eyes. In the movie, the Decepticon spy Alice has blue eyes, the ex-Decepticons Jetfire and Wheelie have red eyes (though Jetfire defected long ago and Wheelie replaced his damaged red eye with a blue eye), and the Decepticon Devastator has green eyes.

Michael Bay was disappointed with the climactic fight with Optimus Prime and the Fallen, because he had to scale it down due to running time purposes.