With the upcoming Bumblebee spin-off in the Transformers series of films, it got me thinking about the behind-the-scenes of it all. There is so much to the trivia tidbits of the Transformers movies that I was in awe. Here are just ten out of the dozens that I found the most fun!
1. While there are female Autobots, they wouldn’t be shown in the original Transformers film. It was said that producers were wanting to introduce the original group of immensely popular bots first and then trickle them in. Concerned it would bring up “Why do Transformers have genders?” conversation, they waited until Revenge of the Fallen to give those bots a chance to shine, albeit briefly.
2. You can thank Megan Fox for the Linkin Park song “What I’ve Done” being written for the Transformers soundtrack. She had met up with them after a concert and told them that she was starting work on the film and they pleaded with her to get them a meeting. Before you knew it, we had a Linkin Park track in the end credits that became a hit during the summer it was released!
3. The tagline for Transformers had actually been written for a different movie in mind. “Their War. Our World.” was originally conceived for AVP: Alien versus Predator.
(Paramount Pictures, Hasbro)
4. The moving computer-generated parts and different debris were so over-the-top in the original Transformers movie that it is the reason for multiple computers crashing and dying out over at Industrial Light and Magic. It got so intense that they demanded time to ‘future-proof’ computers working on the sequel in order to not cut on quality but to save their dang computers!
5. It was actually Steven Spielberg who suggested to Michael Bay that he makes the story about a young man and his car, citing that people found “Everyman” stories to resonate in films being written for younger audiences and adults alike.
6. In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, an insurance company donated 532 cars to the production to be destroyed. These cars were flood damaged and essentially totaled, meaning Paramount Pictures was kind of doing them a favor by taking them off the company’s hands.
(Paramount Pictures, Hasbro)
7. Tanzania is the location of the Decepticon camp in Dark of the Moon as essentially an homage to Beast Wars where it’s shown the Decepticons crashed into Africa upon coming into contact with Earth.
8. Hasbro had Michael Bay come out to their headquarters in order to make sure he had a firm grasp on how heavy the lore for Transformers truly is. He stated he actually had no clue and had just considered it a ‘toy movie’ until visiting with them and discussing the stories within the properties.
9. In Transformers: Age of Extinction, Crosshairs is voiced by John DiMaggio. This could be the reason a clever use of calling humans ‘Meatbags’ was used as DiMaggio also voiced Bender from Futurama. What did Bender like to call Humans? You guessed it: Meatbags.
(Paramount Pictures, Hasbro)
10. Transformers: Age of Extinction has the longest running time of any of the films in the franchise. Even the upcoming Bumblebee film is shorter, clocking in at 1 hour and 54 minutes. Sure, it’s almost 2 hours but is it the 2 hours and 45 minutes that Age of Extinction is? Back to back, you’d need fifteen hours total to get through the cinematic films, Bumblebee included.
