Transformers Film Series/Headscratchers

For Headscratchers about the rest of the franchise, see Transformers.

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 durn 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.
 * 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, 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 - this troper 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.
 * 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.

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.
 * ... Well I'm gonna be thinking about THAT for a while.
 * 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?
 * Maybe it's because me is female, but oh my stars and garters... The humping. And the giant robot balls. And the slimy robot body fluids. And the scary-long-tongue girlie bot that gets more screen time than the mildly interesting but non-stripperific motorcycle fembots. And Megan Fox's character's statement that Wheelie humping her leg "means he's faithful, Sam." Maybe next time they could just have a character extend a middle finger and say, "This is for all the women in the audience." Seriously, I am not paying money to see another version of American Pie: Giant Robot Edition.
 * I feels your pain.
 * I would like to add that when Bumblebee starts smashing Alice's head in, the audience don't know . It's clearly still supposed to be funny and 'what she deserves' for 'making' the guy cheat on his girlfriend. Yeah. Somebody involved in this movie clearly has some kind of issue with women, and it bugs the hell out of me.
 * Depending on your OTP, he didn't want Alice getting in the way of the Sam/Mikaela/'Bee OT 3. Also, I'm sorry.
 * Alternately, that's supposed to be a clue to the audience that something is really off with this girl. Bumblebee is presumably not enough of a jerk to do that to just any human. Of course, one then wonders why he didn't just transform and shoot her right then and there if he knew her true nature.
 * If huge explosions, completely over-the-top action and the fact that the film is based on a cartoon and toy franchise that has been male-oriented from its inception aren't enough to make it clear, Transformers is not meant for female audiences. Complaining about excessive sexism and fanservice in Transformers is like complaining about excessive romanticism in Dirty Dancing.

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.
 * 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.
 * 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 ?
 * 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, This Troper wonders 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.

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 Rule of 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.
 * ...Main/YouKnowImBlackRight? ^_^ 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/TheBerserker, 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.

The Spirit of Jazz!

 * Why does everybody in the goddamn world think in the 2007 movie that killing Jazz off/just Jazz himself was racist? It's quite, quite clearly explained that the Autobots learned Earth languages from the Internet; this is the given reason as to why Jazz talks like that. Later Ironhide quotes Dirty Harry and Optimus says "Oops, my bad." The Autobots have pretty clearly taken aspects of the culture of their new home that they like and adopted them, just like any other immigrants. Jazz is not a black guy, he's a robot acting like a black guy. (Note that this explanation only applies to the movie; in things like G1 Jazz pretty much acted this way all the time.)
 * Most people take it as a joke, and lampshade hang the whole Black Dude Dies First thing. Other people are politically correct to a fault, and will take it upon themselves to be offended for you.
 * Alternatively, most people are just idiots who refuse to flex their brain muscle.
 * I read somewhere that Bay felt that Jazz was the most likable Autobot after Bumblebee and Prime, and that was why he had Megatron rip him in half.
 * This is the impression I got when seeing that scene for the first time as well; a very Anvilicious look! Megatron is evil! He kills! moment that seemed out of place with the rest of the movie. Additionally while killing Jazz isn't necessarily all ZOMG RACISM, it's equally silly to take the he's a robot UR FOOLZ! standpoint since the Movie Jazz (Handwavium aside) is a clear homage to the Jive-talking borderline Blacksploitation G1 character.
 * 'Most likeble Autobot'? I didn't even notice his death scene, much less anything other than 'Huh. He died?' when Optimus was holding his bits.
 * ...Is This Troper the only one who's aware that part of the personality of the character is that he enjoys music greatly(part of the reason for his 'Earth' name), likes to absorb new things about new cultures, and in the original show, was actually voiced by a black Jazz musician who totally had a blast doing the character?(Scatman Crothers, for the record.)
 * The choice of having Megatron kill Jazz quickly also helps to destroy any sympathy for Megatron. Remember, he was essentially kept prisoner by Sector Seven, who spent a great deal of the movie as an antagonist, and exploited for his technology over the past several decades. Some worried that his breakout sequence and rage on Mission City might not so much be viewed as a hostile takeover, but rather revenge towards the species which had enslaved him. This is an incorrect interpretation though, so by killing Jazz, he establishes himself as a Complete Monster.
 * The VA for Jazz in the movie lampshades it in this special at 1:30.
 * I Herd it was because Jazz was one of the few Autobots that havn't died (Not familer to to the other mediums of Trasfomer this Troper can be dead wrong)

TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

 * This was something in Did Not Do the Research, but 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
 * 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.
 * 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...

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...

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.

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"?

Not-so-puny humans

 * Why is one of the main complains I hear about that movie is how the humans actually contributed to the fight between the giant Robots? Isn't it nice to have the "innocent bystanders" actually starting to fight back, and effectively?
 * I'm right there with you. The problem is there's a substantial portion of the TF fandom that thinks that the robots themselves should be the only focus, and that humans shouldn't be present at all.
 * This is actually sort of my problem with the movies, in reverse. I have no problem with the humans fighting back, some of the best scenes in Dot M were human soldiers taking out or helping to take out decepticons. My problem is all of the trivial human angst bullshit in a movie ostensibly about giant robots, where the giant robots get almost no angst or character driven scenes of their own. When they do get one, it's directly related to a human or combat. It's like the script was "Ok, this is a scene about characters and has almost no action, bring in the humans and bad jokes. Now this scene is an action, fight scene, so lets get those CGI computers booted up and bring in the bots."
 * It's not just your problem. That's part of the reason so many people have trouble telling the Transformers apart in these movies, or even keeping their names straight. There are at least a dozen of them in each of the movies, but maybe three or four of them get enough character time to be memorable at all. The whole hacking subplot of the first movie could have bee jettisoned in favor of face time with any Autobot not named Optimus or Bumblebee (Bey's idea to kill off Jazz because was "likable" is weak because we never know him well enough to decide if we like him). We spend a half hour of the second movie dicking around with that idiot Leo, while learning nothing about Sideswipe, Arcee, or Soundwave except from outside sources.

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.

Starscream for Ice Cream

 * What will bug me in Revenge of the Fallen would be if Starscream proves to not be The Starscream, as recent supplementary source material like his toy bio and the trailers seem to show. Creative liberties aside, changing Starscream's character would be a betrayal (no pun intended) to the Starscream personality we all know and love.
 * Furthering that, me is annoyed with, because it really prevents Starscream from having A Day in the Limelight, as well as giving casual and movie-fans a chance to introduce a Transformer they've probably never heard of before (The Fallen).
 * It helps to a degree that Aforementioned character is for all intents and purposes  except in name.

Is it Sam's War?

 * In the latest trailer for ROTF, why is Sam saying "this isn't my war." Dude, you have an alien robot bodyguard that you keep in your garage. If you weren't part of the war when you killed Megatron, you became part of it when you made out with your girlfriend on top of Bumblebee with the Autobots watching.
 * If Fallen really is involved as well as Megatron, he may be referring not to the Autobot-Decepticon civil war, but to the Primus-Unicron holy war. He's probably saying that he's willing to get involved with decepti-creeps, but he draws the line when it comes to demonic minions of an evil god.
 * The Fallen's movie origins utterly contradict his Dreamwave stuff. I think we can safely throw that "Multivertial Singularity" crap out the window.
 * No, its still valid. Somehow. Good luck making heads or tails of the Word of God handwave, but it presumably covers the issue.
 * Sam was just caught up in a situation beyond his control, humans did not have a stake in the war until Earth became an alien battleground. Sam probably hoped that with the Allspark destroyed the Decepticons wouldn't bother with Earth anymore. It could also be a reaction to the knowledge his head is in Decepticon crosshairs, wouldn't you want the violent robots to just leave you alone?
 * Because it isn't his war. He didn't choose to get involved in this conflict, it was dropped on him and he was dragged into it, along with the rest of humanity, when the Autobots and Decepticons brought the war to Earth.
 * Just like the posters for the movie said: "Their war, our world."

Michael Bay is History's Greatest Monster!

 * OK, me is a diehard Transformers fan and maybe takes this too seriously. But I get annoyed when Bay makes a stylistic change and then declares it more realistic or logical when really it's just a narrative choice that is no better or worse than the previous one. So let's take the whole idea of the Transformers turning into spaceships instead of using spaceships. The only reason this makes sense is because this continuity's Transformers are capable of switching alternate modes on the fly without the use of a MacGuffin, arbitrary power up, stasis pod, or rebuilding sequence. However, this itself creates all sorts of Fridge Logic: why don't the Autobots pick better alternate modes for specific situations? This may have been Ret Conned as being a specific ability of Frenzy's, but it's still very annoying how it's considered more realistic for Transformers to be outright shapeshifters instead of being difficult to rebuild and needing ships for transport - especially since the latter more adheres to Rule of Drama and doesn't create Fridge Logic when the Transformers get injured and cannot just pick a new alternate mode to reconfigure/repair themselves. Not a MAJOR complaint (MST3K Mantra applies in spades to this franchise), but an irksome little tidbit.
 * The Ark and The Nemesis exist in Bayformers (You even see the Nemesis in ROTF). The "protoform" modes they use to land on a planet are pretty much just for that purpose, as well as having some short-range space travel ability.
 * Who said the Transformers "turned into" spaceships? The visual appearance of the Transformers indicates they had some manner of exterior shell around their bodies protecting them while in transit.
 * I know that people think American's have no concept of geography, but Micheal Bay is just making us look ridiculous. I mean, most school children know that the Pyramids of Giza aren't anywhere near the Red Sea! And how the hell did Sam and company get through the multiple check points and border crossings it would take for them to go from Petra (in Jordan) to Giza? They'd be going near the Suez Canal, and those guys don't mess around.
 * This is a universe with giant transforming robots. I think some liberties with geography are acceptable.
 * The concept being based in sci-fi is not an excuse for basic geography failure. If the premise is that this is happening on Earth, the locations should geographically resemble Earth. Having giant robots in the film doesn't excuse that.
 * Honestly, this isn't the first time the Transformers metaseries has gotten an F in geography. It simply got the very same F in geography in front of a much bigger, much smarter audience.
 * "Smarter"? I'd like someone to ask a hundred random Americans about that little geography tidbit. See how many of them say "I don't know" or answer wrong. Or heck, a hundred random people, worldwide. I'm not sure the numbers would be much improved if you stuck to the Middle East, or even Egypt. A lot of people don't know that fact, a lot of people probably don't even care, and if anyone extrapolates from that one geography mistake by one filmmaker and his writers to judge an entire nation, they're bigots.
 * Wrong Red Sea. Obviously it's Yam Suph, the "Sea of Reeds," which has to be somewhere near the pyramids if Hebrew slaves built them, then escaped by parting it.
 * At the end of the first movie, why didn't they melt Megatron down or do something more to destroy his body? While to the Autobots he would be dead, one would think the humans would be worried that he could be repaired.
 * The government actually wanted to study the remains more after the Autobots left and placed it there for future recovery?
 * Besides, 6000 C only merely allowed it to be destroyed, not melted. What kind of explosives you'd like to use to melt it? Nukes?
 * Easy - throw him into an active volcano. Alien metal alloys or not, if that doesn't destroy him outright, it would at least make it incredibly hard for the Decepticons to get to him.
 * Galvatron spent the time between The Transformers: The Movie and Five Faces of Darkness elbow-deep in lava on the planet Thrull. Cyclonus pulled him out and the only damage was to his mind. If the US government thought dropping Megs into a volcano would be the be-all end-all, they would be sadly mistaken.

Alice: They call me the great pretender...

 * The Alice Pretender was sent to track down Sam, right? And based on what Sam says and her own determined pursuit of Sam, Mikaela and Leo she's clearly far stronger than her disguise template. So why did she keep trying to 'seduce' Sam in order to restrain him? I suppose you could argue it's to make him let down his guard, but if she's so much stronger than him why didn't she just drag him into a restroom, knock him unconscious then take him to Megatron?
 * She wasn't sure they needed him until he went crazy in class; before that, she was just preparing for a possibility. Also, she wasn't that strong; yes, she was stronger than she looked, but Sam was still able to break free and chase after Mikaela--until the tongue thing.
 * Doesn't work for me; the film Decepticons aren't known for their subtlety, and Alice's "seduction" routine was blatant Fan Service. It'd have been more plausible if she had just stabbed him and then dump the body/drag Sam to Megatron/whatever instead.
 * They aren't known for their subtlety? They were on Earth years before the events of the first movie, without anyone learning about them. They were doing the same thing then: Hiding in plain sight as they gathered information, and they moved to strike when they either knew where they had to go, or they knew they couldn't avoid it to get to their objective.
 * Speaking of Alice, according to the novel (which has much more detail than the movie), she isn't actually a Pretender per se, just a 'con that scanned an animatron from an Alice and Wonderland theme park. It also mentions that she has a metal plate bearing the "Honda" logo on screwed into her neck. How the hell has everyone she encountered missed that?
 * She had long hair, which would have easily hidden it. And there's no indication of how long she's actually been around. If it's been a couple days or so, who would have noticed?
 * I thinks Alice should have been left on the cutting room floor, because she raises a whole slew of questions such as why the Decepticons don't impersonate humans more often. They could have set their sights way higher than just seducing Sam. Especially if they're able to fool Autobots as well. Why else would Bumblebee only humiliate her like some sorority tramp trying to tempt Sam into cheating instead of killing her on sight like the Decepticon tramp she was?
 * I'm guessing they can't properly scan a disguise from organics in this continuity and need a humanlike robot as said above to have something to adjust into a proper disguise. Also most Deceptions tend to be freaking huge or small ala Frenzy and the Insecticons. Maybe there are more human sized ones running around in disguises but Sam only crossed paths with her.
 * It does bring up the question of why Sam immediately trusts the parents he's presented with by the Decepticons, now that he knows they can impersonate humans. The animatronic thing clears that up, but that scene got cut so what's its canon status?
 * Its in the novelization, at least. That's gotta count for something.
 * Not really a rant, but just as the first Terminator Salvation teasers started to show up, Michael Bay ironised on the fact there would be giant Terminators in it. First reaction : yeah, sure, you invented giant robots, Michael. But more importantly, in Return of The Fallen, we meet a Decepticon which alternate mode is the form of a pretty girl. A robot taking a human appearance for infiltrating human society and killing a specific target ? I wonder where I've seen this before ?
 * Alice is a Decepticon Pretender, a transformer hidden inside an organic (not always human) shell. This concept has existed in Transformer canon for at least 20 years.
 * That would mean it postdates the first Terminator movie.
 * My pet theory is that the two films are mutually fictional, and they got the ideas from each other in universe. To elaborate: The Decepticons clearly have access to human networks and information, which includes movies. Like the Terminator series...so some Decepticon mad scientist sees it, and decides, Hey, that's actually a good idea. Hence, Alice.

On the same token, Skynet no doubt has access to archives that survived the nukes, and would've used them to get some more information about their enemies. So some part of the Skynet AI saw giant robots killing humans and thought, Hey, that's actually a good idea. Hence, the Harvesters.

What Makes Primes So Cool?

 * How, exactly, was a Prime the only one capable of killing the Fallen? Are we talking super-regeneration immortality, where you have to kill him with a Prime? Or was Optimus just the only one strong enough to do it? I think the first one is more likely, I just wish they had made more of an effort to explain that.
 * I personally see three different ways of interpreting that. Because Destiny Says So, because only a Prime would be strong enough to do it, or it could simply be that the Fallen is intimidated by the Primes considering they defeated him in the first place.
 * It could also be spoken from experience. The Fallen, being a multiversal singularity who goes through every alternate universe one at a time and gets new bodies from Unicron when need be, has experianced the events of the movie many, many, many times before, and will no doubt experience them several times more, with slight variations of circumstance each time. Its possible that, when he did the general events outlined in the movie before, the only times his body got totaled were when a Prime destroyed it.
 * In TF 07, Optimus calls Megatron his brother. Obviously, Optimus is a Prime and a descendant of the seven/thirteen original Primes. This must mean he is related to the Fallen, further reinforced as the evil chap clearly shouts "Die, like your brothers!" Assuming that this is just a chummy way of acknowledging that Optimus is a Prime (and is not actually a literal brother to the Fallen- it seems more reasonable that he would be a nephew)- that still makes Megatron (as a brother of Optimus) a descendant of the Primes. As such, why can't he defeat the Fallen? More importantly, why isn't Megatron a Prime?
 * As far as I know from listening to other people describe stuff that is All There in the Manual, its the standard "royalty raised by commoners to hide from the evil uncle" scenario. Megatron was his adopted brother, a commoner in this analogy, who got really, really, really jealous when Optimus turned out to be a Prime and he didn't. He got the position of Lord Protector through hard work, and then met The Fallen, who convinced him that if he helped Fallen, he too could become a Prime, something he felt he deserved more than Optimus. The Fallen was lying, but Megs doesn't learn this until Revenge Of The Fallen, by which point he's completely Axe Crazy and its too late to turn back.
 * Which actually and brilliantly does make a lot of sense- except I do recall a source which states that "[Optimus and Megatron] were twin brothers of the Prime dynasty" and then continues with the idea that Megsy killed their father. This is then completely confused by the graphic novel series, which has Optimus unaware of his heritage until Megsy goes rampant in the first place. Hopefully this will cleared up in TF3.

Questions that perhaps could be best answered by "the characters are kind of dumb."

 * The backstory of Revenge of the Fallen is that the Transformers produce energon by blowing stars up. Weird, but ok. Their only rule was that they would not drain any star that supported life. The Fallen got into trouble with the Primes, because he insisted on draining our sun. Now why in the unholy name of ass was he so stubborn about that??? There are plenty of other, not to mention larger, stars out there. Did our sun taste just a little more like chicken?
 * The Fallen just hates humans that much. He talks about his disgust with the human race a few times, and seems to consider developing Energon a bonus compared to the opportunity to wipe us out. He's just that big of a dick.
 * Even if i buy that one, it still just bugs me. Why would he just hate humans so much, that he is willing to piss off his own people for it? Surely, the primitive stone age people he met can't have been more than a minor nuisance.
 * I guess he's just a robot supremicist, and figures us lower lifeforms don't deserve to live.
 * I can to a certain extend accept that he hates humans, but not to such a degree that he's willing to risk everything he has to extinguish us.
 * Well, when you think about it, he enacted his plan when there wasn't much risk to him, at least from his perspective: He had more Decepticons than Earth had Autobots and they were generally bigger and better armed, and he only ever set foot on Earth after the only Autobot that could kill him was safely dead. His main failing is that he and the other 'cons underestimated the humans.
 * Keep in mind that in all the multiverse there is only one Fallen who ultimately acts towards Unicron's goals of universal destruction; he changes his appearance and origin story around from world to world, but his spark and memories remain, and all he does is to maximize entropy and whatnot. As a result of this, he is really, really, really Genre Savvy, and plans things out far in advance. In almost every timeline he's come across, the humans proved pivotal in helping the Autobots destroy the decepticons. As such, he thought it would be best to try and destroy the humans before they could become a problem. There was no way to be at all subtle about this, so he had to break his facade of being a good guy to do so. At least, that's the best I can figure from the contradictory data we have...
 * That could make sense, for someone who is into Transformer lore. I, however, am not. All i have to go by is what the movie tells me. I find it a very weak argument for The Fallen's motivation that he just hates humans for no appearent reason. And that bugs me.
 * Transformers lore aside, the movie seemed to say that the Energon is on Earth and that Energon deposits are incredibly rare. The Sun's destruction is just a necessary byproduct of harvesting it (it looked from the animation like the harvester collects and mixes the Sun's energy and the Energon together, or maybe the energy deposit on Earth only becomes Energon when the Sun's energy is added as well - that whole thing seemed a little convoluted to me too). The Fallen wasn't simply being vindictive; he was arguing that the Energon deposit on Earth is too rare and valuable to pass up just because humans are already living there. Taking the movie as its own continuity, the Fallen's hatred for humans probably only came about after the first harvesting attempt. At first he just saw humans as primitive vermin, but after all the trouble their existence sparked between him and the Primes, he now has a serious grudge against them.
 * Also, I wonder if Earth tested their definitions of life in a way that'd never been done before. Even in other continuities, the transformers have always had a hard time making sense out of organic life forms; they tend to think of themselves as normal life, and us as the weirdos. It might be that their rules about inhabited planets originally only took Cybertronian-like life into account, and when they came across Earth and humans, it started a debate on whether we're really "alive" by their standards. Most of the Primes decided that yes, we are, while the Fallen (for reasons of his own) tried to insist that organic life doesn't count and the rule shouldn't apply to them.
 * When Optimus asks for Sam's help, why didn't he just come out and explain the whole mind-download thing, avoiding much grief all around, rather than let Sam find out the hard way?
 * Optimus didn't know about the mind-download thing. Sam never told him about the second shard, that we know of, and even Megatorn didn't know about it until The Fallen, the only one in the universe who would know, told him directly.
 * The Fallen and the Decepticons plan was to harvest the Sun as energon, destroying the Sun and the Earth. Wouldn't this kill them all as well and destroy the Sun harvester, thus foiling their plan?
 * They can survive in the depths of space. They don't need a sun to survive. The sun isn't going to go nova; that'd be a waste of its potential-energon energy. It'll basically be converted to energon and thereby "shut off"; we fleshy narrow-temperature range carbon-based life forms will die, whereas mechanical life forms will be perfectly fine as long as they get out of areas where they might get encased in frozen water (like Megatron before the first movie) before the sun shutoff (note that they were doing it in a desert, where its less of a risk).

Devastator

 * Minor point: Devs is made of several components, two of which are Mixmaster and Longhaul, a cement truck and dump truck, respectively. How, then, are they each seen fighting the military and the Autobots while Devastator is still climbing the pyramid? The scenes aren't just non-sequential, because the two each get their own death scene, meaning their separate from Devs. I suppose that some of the other random Decipticon cannon fodder could have taken the same altmodes, but why (and when) would they, when none of the others did?
 * Before the film came out we were told we'd get two sets of toys regarding Devastator; larger toys that turned into robots, but didn't combine and smaller vehicles that just combined into the big robot. Everyone assumed this was some sort of cop-out on Hasbro's part. Turns out its an accurate reflection of the film: Devastator is made up of six construction vehicles, not Constructicons. The Constructicons just "happen" to coincidentally turn into the exact same vechiles as Devastator's components.
 * The large Decepticon killed at the start of the movie was the same as the torso part of Devastator. So it's possible there were two of them originally, but one was neutered by lack of torso, and his limbs all went on to fight independently.
 * Word of God states that there were fifteen (down to fourteen after Demolishor bites it) Constructicons, and any number of them can combine into Devastator at one time. So they made a strategic decision to have six or seven Constructicons form Devastator while the remaining Constructicons (Mixmaster, Rampage, and Long Haul) joined in the regular assault.
 * On the subject of Devastator, though: once the Constructicons (however many) form him, they utterly fail to deal with Mudflap and Skids. It seems to be that the large size brings with it a decrease in mobility and manueverabilty, so the two smaller robots are able to pick at the one giant one. But this is an elite combiner squad gifted with abilities most Decepticons don't have... why don't they simply uncombine to be just as mobile as the twins, and outnumber them 3 to 1 as well?
 * Because Devastator wasn't there to deal with the Twins. It was there to rip off the top of the pyramid and uncover the Sun Crusher. It probably attacked them at first just because, hey, they're right there and he figured he could just wipe them out quick. When that proved not to be the case, he shrugged, turned around, and got on with his mission.
 * Also, the Twins failed miserably in the fight. Skids basically managed to rescue Mudflap from Devastator, after which point Mudflap screwed up and they both fell off.

I Saw this Film for the Portrayal of International Relations

 * Okay, so they got through one checkpoint via Simmons' being from NYC. However, given the region they were in and the specific area they were focused in, they would have encountered many more checkpoints, checkpoints ran by people much more professional and on-the-ball than that easily distracted dwarf. So, how did they get past them?
 * Said dwarf was so thrilled he called ahead and gave the all-clear.
 * While it can be understood that Sam and co and Bee were let through due to the dwarf loving New York, how the the heck did the twins get let through? They don't notice 2 cars with no drivers? And if they used holos they'd still have to explain how they're related to Simmons.
 * I wonder how they got into and out of Israel so quickly in unmarked vehicles? Oh that's right, In a World where Israel has been wiped off the map...
 * Why did they call for help from the Jordanians? They were in Egypt, so national sovereignty wasn't being violated, and Jordan has one of the world's weakest militaries.
 * Maybe they called everyone, and the Jordan airbase was closer.

Where is Wheelie?

 * What the hell happened to Wheelie in ROTF? I loved that guy...
 * Assumedly, he stuck around with Mikaela and Sam. He probably wouldn't get involved in the end battle, seeing as the smallest Decepticons there were Ravage and Scorponok.
 * He was staying out of the way because he had enough sensors to tell that the Warrior-Goddess wanted to mate with the boy, and he was afraid of disturbing her and incurring her wrath on his other photoreceptor.

Transformers: Robots In Blackface!

 * Mudflap and Skids. How did someone think that their character designs and mannerisms were a good idea? I mean, just look at them! There's no way you can explain it away with a "looking for something that just isn't there" argument.
 * Apparently, the idea is that they would be parodying wiggers, not caricaturing actual black people. Probably one of those things that seemed like a great idea at the time. That said, yeah, not the brightest idea, especially giving them gold teeth.
 * Don't forget the big ears, the large lips, the simian appearance and the illiteracy. I didn't think it could get any worse, but apparently it just did if those two actually think black people act like that.
 * I would just like to point out that the whole illiteracy thing wasn't "lulz, stupid black robots," but more that none of the the younger generations of transformers could read. Wheelie said so explicitly, and presumably Bumblebee couldn't either (sure, he can't talk, but he could have hooked up to a computer or something and written down a translation).
 * Yeah, people keep forgetting that it wasn't just everyday cybertronian, but ancient glyphs from millions of years ago.
 * Which is something only clarified in the novel, not the movie. Most people will only watch the movie and never read the book, which is why it's sometimes not a good idea to rely on supplementary material for clarification.
 * No, it's said onscreen in the movie, when the Twins and Wheelie explicitly tell Sam that it's "the language of the Primes" and really really old.
 * Even then, "Readin'? We don't do much readin'." Is pretty badly phrased.
 * Yeah, but still. I didn't do much reading back in High School, but that doesn't mean I was illiterate (and my GPA clearly says the opposite). It just means I much preferred to watch TV and play video games.
 * Am I the only black guy who wasn't offended? Skids and Mudflap are clearly portrayed as the team idiots. I didn't see them as black idiots, I saw them as idiot robots who act like wiggers. Emphasis "robots".
 * I've also heard them described as "rednecks".
 * I never bought Michael Bay's robot argument. Since we are the only sentient race that we know of, all of our depictions of fictional alien races, biological or mechanical, will draw from the human experience. It's not just those two. There are a lot of Unfortunate Implications all throughout this movie.
 * This black troper wasn't thrilled. There's one huge problem with the "wiggers" argument: simple logic. If wiggers act like a skewed perception of black people's behavior, and the bots act like wiggers, wouldn't that mean the bots are caricatures of black people as well?
 * "Skewed perception" =/= "caricatures". Tom Kenny, Wheelie's VA, specifically said they were supposed to be acting like wiggers. If it's in-canon, that means that they found out about wiggers and thought they were cool. If it's meta, that means they have more or less the same skewed perception of black culture wiggers do in real life. If they were human and black, they'd be a racist caricature. If they were human and white, they'd be wiggers. Since they're robots, they're not really either. And yet no one complains about Wheelie, the leg-humping horny New York bot.
 * The movie is full of Unfortunate Implications. Skids and Mudflap are just the poster boys for it. If their actions are based on wiggers, then why are their physical features based on ethnic stereotypes? It makes people wonder if it's something else. Furthermore, "It's ok because their robots" isn't getting to the heart of the issue. There's more to it than that. Is it ok to have walking caricatures like that so long as they're not human?
 * Not to mention that across the world, many people have no idea of what a wigger is (me actually had to google it). It's bad enough to base two characters on a cultural thing that became rife with Unfortunate Implications, but also a cultural thing specific to only one country. So not only does the 'they're just robots' justification not really work, neither does the 'wigger' one. (And yes, it's an American-made movie, but they released it in multiple countries on the same day, meaning it's not solely meant for Americans.)
 * Mudflap's voice actor Reno Wilson is sad to learn his way of speaking is apparently offensive to himself.
 * You're acting under the assumption that just because a black dude did the part, it's not racist. Just by looking at film history you'll see many minorities and women playing roles that were racist/sexist. And even if Reno Wilson didn't find it racist, other black people have. Their interpretation isn't invalidated by Reno being black.
 * So your point is...what? That Reno Wilson, a black person, is not qualified to judge whether something is racist but you, presumably a white person, are qualified to make that judgment? That Reno is wrong because some other black people allegedly said so? (I suppose it never occurred to you that perhaps those "offended" black people could be wrong and Reno Wilson might be correct.) As for your "film history" example, puh-lease. Your talking about a time when it was impossible for black actors to get ANY roles that weren't horribly demeaning. Are you seriously arguing that Reno Wilson was somehow forced to take this role? That he had to play his character that way and couldn't possibly have resigned in protest and looked for other work? Really?
 * Let's put it this way: he, as a voice actor, knew the context behind the decision. The audience, some of whom were black and yes, some of whom were incredibly offended (no allegedly about it: there have been an enourmous number of stories, some from people I know, some second hand, of some so offended they walked out) did not. It is not what you meant as an actor. It is what you did. It is what the audience take away. And if you offend a large portion of the black community, you have done something that is taken away as racist. Gay people can come across as homophobic, women as misogynistic, and black people as racist towards other black people.
 * So what you're saying is, the standard for racism is no longer "whether there is actual racist intent", it is now "whether black people are offended". Gotcha.
 * Exactly. Looking at physical harm rather than emotional, does it matter if someone accidentally hits you? You've still been hit. The analogy holds.
 * Of course, what we could do is stop thinking that everything exists only to make people offended and stop being so sensitive about everything. No matter how the Twins would have been portrayed to show them as the Team Goofballs, someone would get upset and offended by it. Of course, they could have been left out completely, but the "Close your eyes and pretend it doesn't exist" tactic doesn't really work and is stupider than what it's trying to get rid of.
 * People also fail to remember that in the beginning of the movie they were white and pink. Granted they weren't that color for very long, but still...

Starscream and Megatron's Muppet Babies

 * Starscream and Megatron make gay decepticon babbys. Really? REALLY?! WHY?! And wasn't he whole children-dormant-without-plot-device thing done in Van Helsing?
 * Dude, just about everything about this film has been done in some other movie. And as for the 'con babies... well, you have to keep the fangirls happy somehow.
 * Also, it has been explained in the novels and comics that Starscream's overall goal is to rebuild the Decepticon race rather than fight a war, hence why he directs his efforts to breeding upon Megatron's defeat in the first film. Megatron is more concerned with defeating Prime and the Autobots, this is why he shows little concern over the death of one of the hatchlings: he has lost his goal of preserving the species, while Starscream still clings to it.
 * So...Is Starscream officialy a girl, then?
 * Only if he self-identifies as one. Its not like transformers have genitalia, so it all comes down to self-image anyway.
 * To which I can only reply: Devastator has two rather prominent wrecking balls which lead a character to report that "I am directly beneath the target's ... scrotum."
 * I'm assuming that the wrecking balls are only unfortunately (read: immaturely) placed pieces of kibble, rather than actual reproductive organs.
 * No way they're kibble. Not even Higtower (the crane) had even one wrecking ball, and it's the only piece that would. There's really no explanation for them to exist, apart from Rule of Funny.

Sector 7

 * So, after the existence of aliens is revealed to the American government as a whole, somebody makes the decision to dissolve Sector Seven, which handled potential extraterrestrial threats. Sure. I can buy Simmons getting canned; somebody's head was going to roll, and he made for an ideal fallguy, but dissolving S7 entirely? That made no sense.
 * I got the impression that it was dissolved so as to divert those resources, funding, and personnel to support of NEST. Why so much S7 resources were tossed out I dunno- stigma against it due to its shameful actions during the Allspark Crisis, no doubt.
 * I assumed a bit of Truth in Television here. When an agency fails spectacularly often the guys in charge will disband them and create a new agency to handle things better... which will mostly be made up of unionized workers shifted over from the now-disbanded agency.
 * Here's one that I don't get. Sam has a fragment of the allspark, which can revive dead transformers. Optimus is dead. Sam revives Jetfire, so that he can go through a long and complicated quest to revive Optimus. I understand this is necessary for plot exposition and a device with which to defeat Fallen, but still. Why, Michael Bay, why?
 * Sam didn't just want the Matrix to revive Optimus, he wanted it because the voices in his head, the voice of the Knowledge formerly stored in the Allspark, was compelling him to, what with telling him over and over and over (albiet in a language he couldn't understand, but some meaning must have gotten across). Put it simply, he wasn't able to think clearly and was being manipulated by the Allspark.
 * Jetfire was offline just due to running out of Energon, Prime got ripped apart as did Megatron. Megatron needed spare parts from another Decepticon who was killed to give those parts. So the Autobots would need to tear apart one of their team members or capture/kill a Decepticon and weld pieces of his body onto Optimus Prime... The only Transformer we've seen onscreen to have his body repaired solely by the Allspark was Frenzy, he wasn't killed and is a freak of... whatever Cybertron has in place of nature.
 * Also the Allspark was, you know, in one piece when Frenzy used it.
 * One: last time Sam used the Allspark on stuff, it either died or turned into murderous little monsters that tried to murder him and anything in their way. Two: Sam did not know a shard of the Allspark could revive a Transformer, and had no way of knowing as Wheelie had to instruct him of what to do with the Allspark shard when they saw Jetfire. Three: Jetfire wasn't dead, just offline. Optimus Prime was pretty goshdarned dead.

The Cover-Up

 * The battle in the first movie took place in a heavily populated area, in which there were bound to be tons of civilians with cameras/camera phones and (likely) newscameras in the vicinity. Plus, I'm sure most of the people in the city were aware of what was going on, especially because of the massive damage to the city that occurred. SO HOW THE HELL WOULD THE GOVERNMENT BE ABLE TO COVER ALL OF THAT UP?!?? That's like saying that the government could've covered up 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the Civil War, and the American Revolution if they wanted to!!
 * This appeared earlier in the page somewhere, apparently the government said that it was very advanced drones gone beserk instead of aliens and pulled as much footage as possible. The battle also raged very quickly and moved from area to area, so there probably wasn't alot of time for many people to pull out their cameras or think about it with all the weapons fire flying around. Most people in the city would simply think it was some kind of terrorist attack and not bother to look at the giant pieces of strange weaponry that are shooting and killing people but instead run for their lives. Newspeople still need to drive to the action after they hear about it to film it so that explains a lack of them, there wasn't even a significant police force around and they are the ones news reporters follow. Also it didn't take a death toll of hundreds so that invalidates the Pearl Harbor comparison, and only one city so no Civil War and American Revolution comparisons. The World Trade Center attack took place over an hour, if the planes had hit the towers at the same time and the impact had utterly destroyed the buildings in minutes they could have claimed there were no planes and it was a faulty whatever, destroying any footage containing the planes. Also which are you going to believe, "Giant robot aliens who transform into vehicles were attacking and destroying buildings! The government took away my footage and put strange alien viruses on my computer destroying my backups and you have to believe me you must!" or "Some defense contracter was testing robots without proper safety protocols and they went and destroyed alot of the city, damn incompetent morons will kill us all one day".
 * The damn incompetent moron comment reminds me of how governments(in movies that is) seems to promote the most ineffective jackasses who couldn't listen and cooperate with their own allies even when their lives depends... Like that government guy from the second movie. It's almost a surprise they managed to get things done with that idiot around. Which is probably why me found the part where he's tricked into jumping out of the plane to be very funny... Not to mention the satisfaction of the leader of those marines calling him "Dumbass".

Optimus Prime Died for Shia's Sins

 * Okay, so I admit that I wasn't paying much attention during this movie, as I was preoccupied with much more interesting things (like counting the hairs on my arm, for example), but I noticed one major plot hole. So, Optimus Prime killed himself... to save Shia La Beouf, right? This is because Shia La Beouf was the chosen one or something, and it was important that he didn't die. But then, at the end of the movie, it was revealed that Shia La Beouf's destiny was to resurrect Optimus Prime, so in turn, he could stop the Fallen. So therefore... Optimus Prime killed himself... in order to resurrect himself. Wtf? Am I the only one who noticed this?
 * You entirely misunderstood why Prime was protecting Sam, and are hung up on the idea of chosen ones and destinies. Optimus wasn't defending Sam because he was some "chosen one", but because protecting people in general is what Prime does. If Megatron had decided to smush some random schlub on the street, and Prime knew about it, Prime would fight just as hard to stop that as he was fighting to protect Sam. And Sam's "destiny" wasn't revealed to be to resurrect Optimus (and if it was, Optimus certainly couldn't have known about it anyway; he was trying not to die in the first place, after all). Reviving Prime was just something Sam found himself having to do so that Optimus could save the day.

Bumblebee's Voicebox

 * How is it that Bumblebee still can't talk during the second movie, even though he was able to speak at the end of the first movie and that he had two years since then to get his voice repaired? Are we really supposed to believe that the giant alien robots are able to transform into different vehicles, hack into satellites, create giant monoliths that can harvest suns for power and can resurrect themselves through ancient technology, but they aren't able to repair themselves?
 * Sam nailed it on the head when he accused Bumblebee of just doing to be endearing. Bumblebee could talk if he wanted to, he just chooses not to, since it would reduce marketability cuteness.
 * I believes that he can talk. But it's difficult for him. If you listened to him in the first film, when he says his two lines, his voice seems kinda scratchy. Not as fluid as how the rest of the Transformers talk. He might have had to go through some therapy to relearn how to talk or something with Ratchet. But Ratchet was called away to work with NEST. Although his scratchy voice may simply be because Bumblebee doesn't have a mouth (unless it's hidden behind that face thingie where his mouth would be). Please forgive me for not being so articulate with his wording.
 * If Bumblebee is able to talk but doesn't because he thik s it's cuter not to, wouldn't he drop the charade when Optimus dies? When Sam thinks Bumblebee is going to blame him for the whole thing, wouldn't this be the time to stop joking around and actually talk to the guy porperly to reassure him? Even if his voice is still damaged, he could have at least tried.
 * This is explained in the prequel comics (as is far too much unexplained stuff in the movies, in fact a great deal of this page can probably be answer with "in the comics." The "Alliance" prequel shows Bumblebee basically getting his voice broken again by Starscream (though no real reason is given as to why Ratchet couldn't fix it again)

Continuity Issues and Obscurely-Motivated Complaints

 * I'm surprised no one's mentioned this one yet. In the first movie there's the scene where Shia La Beouf is running from Bumblebee on his mom's bike and enters some kind of time paradox. So the scene starts out with Shia complaining about how it's "Too early." He then spots Bumblebee and starts chasing him on his bike/running from him on his bike? Now it's suddenly mid-afternoon. The chase scene lasts for about a minute and then it's suddenly late at night. What the hell happened there? The only possible way this scene makes sense is if Shia had slept until about mid-afternoon and then got chased by Bumblebee for about seven hours. He should sign up for a bike marathon.
 * yeah, that bothers me too. The scene starts at day, chase starts in late afternoon, and 2 minutes later it is night.
 * When did Sam get that black glyph on his arm that he shows to the twins? Did I miss a scene?
 * Probably just something he wrote there during one of his spaz-sessions.
 * It bugs me that they cast Isabel Lucas in the second movie and didn't give her character any connection to Rachel Taylor's analyst character from the first movie. Did they not notice the resemblance between them?! There was limitless potential there.
 * There's a part in the second movie (I'm not sure exactly which; I kind of was told about it) where there's a nice little whirlwind sucking up everything and throwing it around. And according to my younger brother, IT WAS SO KEWL. So WHY were there two people running away when everything else is getting sucked up around them? At the very LEAST, they should've gotten impaled by some flying debris.
 * That was when Devastator was sucking up everything with his Vortex Grinder at the start of the climactic battle. And really, outrunning whirlwinds and not being hit by flying debris is a staple in movies ( Twister, anyone?).
 * During the checkpoint scene, did nobody notice that there are two other cars that are driving themselves?
 * All the Transformers seem able to generate a holographic driver.
 * So why weren't they stopped for their passports?
 * If you can make a holographic suit of clothing for your holographic driver, you can also make a holographic passport for him.

That's not Megatron...

 * His appearance...transforms into a jet....obsessed with Matr...I mean, all-spark...that's not Megatron! That's Thunderwing!

Rail gun versus solar harvester

 * Why didn't the Navy use their rail gun against the solar harvester?
 * Shooting the giant robot on the pyramid is one thing. Asking someone to blow a hole in one of the most recognizable landmarks on Earth is something else entirely. It also might not be a rapid fire weapon, so they couldn't fire again after taking Devastator down.
 * Second point is valid, and probably the true explanation (it was an experimental weapon after all), but the first... the military was engaging an alien invasion seeking to destroy OUR SUN, under such circumstances I seriously doubt any of the involved would care much about the pyramid.
 * Blame Simmons then. He's the one providing the intel to Wilder. Simmons never suggests shooting the pyramid.
 * They know how a transformer works well enough to know that shooting a rampaging Decepticon with a rail gun could only help things. The harvester? For all Simmons and the Navy knew, shooting it might simply hit the "on" button.

Mikaela more trustworthy than the Autobots?

 * Why didn't Sam immediately hand out the Allspark shard to either Bumblebee, or later to Optimus? Why hide it with Mikaela? Does he not trust the Autobots or something? Not only that would have saved a lot of grief to all the involve, the shard is, well, Autobot property. It belongs to them, there is no reason to keep it hidden.

Optimus Prime, enemy of transformers everywhere

 * In the films, Optimus Prime has no plan.

His homeworld is lifeless, hence the Cube was needed to restore it, and then Optimus decides to destroy it completely rather than allow for the possibility to be used for evil purposes. Okay, so now what are they going to do?

From what we've seen, the Cube is what creates new Transformers. Optimus, by planning to destroy the Cube, has just condemned his entire race to a slow extinction. And then they decide to stay on Earth to continue to oppose the Decepticons, who at least are actively trying to ensure the survival of their race as a whole (if only as an evil army of conquest). I don't see him actively seeking sources of Energon for himself or his troops.Their only plan is to stay on Earth and protect it until they run out of Energon and die.

This happens again in the second movie when Optimus deliberately destroys the Sun-Eating machine which again could provide Energon, a much needed substance as Jetfire says that without it, the Transformers would rust up and die. I'm not saying Optimus shouldn't have stopped the Fallen from destroying that sun, but again, without that device to harvest more Energon he once again has condemned his species to slow extinction. I'm guessing that such a device is one of a kind or at least rare. He should have captured it and then he could have used it on a distant sun with no inhabited planets to restore his people's Energon.

If I were Optimus I would be just a little bit more loyal to the idea of my own species rather than one that I just encountered (humanity). What exactly does Optimus see in humanity that is worth risking the extinction of his own species for? Now I'm not saying that genocide is a good thing, but if it were a choice between my own species or risking another, I would have to side with my own and I wouldn't be so quick to destroy the only means of survival for my race.

In both movies, I was firmly rooting for Megatron, because at least he has been consistently fighting to keep his species alive, which is more than I can say for Optimus.
 * He's Optimus fucking Prime, king of martyrs and Jesus-type characters. He sentenced his own species to extinction milennia ago when he sent the Cube out with no plan of ever finding it again - he decided all that time ago that if the continuing of the Cybertronian species means that an Ax Crazy Complete Monster like Megatron can keep conquering, it isn't worth it. Everything since then has been perpetuating that decision - to save the rest of the universe at the cost of himself and his own species. The way he figures it, there's no way to strengthen Cybertronians without also strengthening Decepticons - who would not only hurt the rest of the galaxy, but also Autobots and ultimately themselves, given their leader's madness. Its self-destructive, yes, but purposefully so.
 * Megatron doesn't want to continue the species, that's Starscream's goal - he's the one thinking of his own species here. Megatron just wants more cannon fodder to throw at his enemies, "enemies" being defined as "all that live and have not sworn allegiance to him". Even if Megatron succeeded in turning all the machines on Earth into Transformers, he'd just throw them into battle without a care as to if they live or die.
 * Plus, about the Harvester? Those things are built to sit where they are. The one on Earth is just one of many machines built for the purpose. The modern Transformers are more evolved than Jetfire, you might have noticed, so they might be able to subsist. The All Spark, Megatron desired to create troops from any convenient metal... even the cities of Cybertron. Plus, it held the only clue to the Matrix's location. The Transformers could adapt to live elsehow, I am certain.
 * Finally, Optimus' decision to blow up the harvester is not as badly thought out as you make it. The harvester was armed, powering up, and would have started draining the sun inside a minute. Tack on to that two Decepticons who can and will make every possible effort to keep that thing running. Destroying it was the only option. He could not have possibly captured it before the entire human race died.
 * Also also, in the first movie, Optimus did want to find the Allspark to help restore Cybertron. He didn't want to destroy it, he just decided destroying it was a better option than letting Megatron have it.

Ice cream trucks, roll out!

 * The ice cream truck in the second movie. Yes, it's Crazy Awesome, but where did the Twins find and scan a workable van that's over 70 years old? In addition to that, why would you send a slow, ungainly vehicle that has a good chance of breaking in half into a combat and pursuit situation?
 * Its not that it was an ice cream truck that made it vulnerable to breaking, its the fact that the twins aren't very good at transforming due to their incredibly young age. According to info All There in the Manual, they can't stay transformed for very long, so they combine into one vehicle mode to make it last longer; presumably that combined vehicle mode can't really hold up as sturdy as a one-bot vehicle mode. As for why? They're kids. They probably saw it in either the street somewhere or a picture online, and decided "hey, know what would be awesome? If we could kick ass looking like an ICE CREAM TRUCK! Yeah, man!". They're not exactly known for their maturity, tactical reasoning, or overall inteligence. Lord only knows why Optimus didn't put his foot down; he probably thought that, as kids, they needed some youthful high-spiritedness allowed.
 * The Ice Cream truck was for that mission only according to toy bios, sending the twins in in advance undercover, while they regularly used seperate car modes, hence why they changed forms as soon as the mission was over.

No, no, we're the other NEST

 * For some reason this has been bothering me since the second movie: Why is the team called NEST? There already IS a NEST team IRL, and they deal with nuclear threats. Borrowing the acronym just feels like a cop-out to me. Also, while I'm ranting about the NEST team, Why is it even necessary? How can the silly humans even assist the giant robots? From what the movie showed us, they're there to die in the crossfire.
 * Were we watching the same movie? Sure, in the initial firefight they're not too effective, but that's because Demolishor ended up being a much, much bigger robot than they were expecting. In the climax of the first movie, the humans take down some Decepticons themselves, and much of the climax of the second movie has human artillery barrages fighting off the Decepticons. As for why they borrowed the acronym, plausible deniability. The Autobot-Human alliance is a secret, so if anyone lets slip they work for "NEST" or something, it can be waved off as that already existing team. Alternatively, given that nobody seems quite sure just what NEST stands for, maybe it's an offshoot of that nuclear threat division; I'm sure the Decepticons are considered as much a threat as nuclear weapons.
 * Non-biological Entity Strike Team? I think I heard that somewhere.

Bumblebee's voice box

 * Why can't they fix Bumblebee's voice box? He's a frickin' transformer - every bit of him can switch around! Can't he just transform it into one that works?
 * As Sam points out, he probably can if he wanted too, but he just likes playing up the cute factor too much.

No Sound(wave) in space

 * Soundwave. I understand that a cassette player isn't an option anymore, and at first the idea of a communications satellite made a lot of sense. And then I realized... if he's in space, then he cannot use the sonic-based weapons which Movie-verse Soundwave canonically has. Why would you keep your sonic warrior in space? And it kinda renders his name non-sensical.
 * You keep him in space because his ability to hijack any and all communications your enemy makes without them ever catching on is more valuable than putting another gun on the ground. Soundwave is the whole reason the Decepticons are able to do anything in the plot.
 * And a sonic attack doesn't even seem that potent against the Autobots. If you just wanted to wipe out humans, sure, but with the situation as it currently is, Soundwave is much more valuable in orbit. Especially when you factor in Ravage and whatever other symbiotes he has.

Mission City, aka Los Angeles?

 * What bugs me is that throughout the first movie, they kept insisting on saying Mission City. When the second comes around, Leo makes a reference to the battle in L.A.
 * The L.A. battle might have been separate, in-between the two films.

Wheelie versus airport security

 * I can buy that Mikaela could capture Wheelie, him being a simple scrap bot, but how the hell did she manage to get him past airport security? Incompetence just plain doesn't cut it. From the outside, it's a box that shakes on its own power and talks. Not to mention there is a very complex Transformer inside, and Wheelie is not going to be cooperative by going into his truck mode.
 * Wheelie has at least some sense of self preservation. He probably tried to shake the box at first in the hope of getting away, but gave it up and shifted to toy mode once he realized no-one had noticed. If he had gone through an x-ray undisguised he could have ended up captured by humans, specifically, humans who would freeze him and experiment on him for decades like they did to Megatron. And not only would that be unpleasant, but he'd lose his only lead on the Allspark shard, which would not make Soundwave a happy bot.

Optimus Prime's psychic powers

 * In the first movie, Optimus Prime explains through a flashback on how the location of the Allspark were imprinted on Archibald Witwicky's glasses. But how would he know this? He wasn't present at the time. A similar occurrence happens again in the second movie, when the Decepticons chase Sam for the locations of the Matrix of Leadership embeded in his mind. How did the Decepticon's know the locations were in Sam's mind? Are the Transformers psychic?...
 * In the former, Optimus had seen the picture of the glasses on E-bay, and, while the resolution wasn't good enough to actually read them, it was good enough to recognize what was printed on them. In the latter, it was simple extrapolation from the fact that when the Allspark was destroyed the stored knowledge had to go somewhere, and by proximity it must have gone into either him or Megatron. Since it didn't go into Megatron...
 * Optimus stated that the Autobots can exploit the internet for information when he explained how they learned English so fast. Remember Sam's school report at the start of the movie about his great-great grandfather? Sam had an old newspaper talking about how Archibald Witwicky was locked up in a psycho ward for talking about this "giant iceman" and drew these "strange symbols" all the time. A couple of symbols were even on the newspaper and they were clearly Cybertronian. Since Optimus could access the internet, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that he came across a digital copy of that same newspaper, probably in some library archive or something. Since he would recognize the symbols as Cybertronian and knew about Megatron, he probably put 2 and 2 together to figure out that Archibald's "iceman" was in fact a frozen Megatron, thus implying that Archibald had somehow crossed paths with Megatron resulting in the imprint on the glasses.
 * For that matter, Sam might've jotted down some notes for his class report using his laptop, which contained the same information. Upon finding the glasses on eBay, Optimus could've hacked into his laptop to learn more about the human who was offering them for sale.

Only a prime (or Megatron?) can kill a prime

 * In ROTF, The Fallen clearly states that "Only a Prime can kill Prime". But later in the movie, Megatron kills Optimus Prime in the forest battle. Since Megatron isn't a Prime, he shouldn't of been able to kill Optimus. In fact, it's even stated that Optimus is the only living desecendant of the Primes.
 * According to the novelization, he wasn't actually dead per se, but in a coma stasis lock, and barely hanging on by a thread and too badly damaged to recover by conventional repair.
 * In the novelization you say? So basically, it's all there in the manual.
 * He doesn't say that. He says that only a Prime can kill him, The Fallen.
 * Valid point. But what is it about a Prime that can kill The Fallen?
 * Prime was probably immune to those awesome telekinetic powers that The Fallen would have otherwise dominated the fight with.

Autobots off having coffee?
Basically, the bulk of the Autobots are put out of the picture for no adequately explored reason just so that Prime can fight and die.
 * Where were the Autobots when Optimus Prime was fighting Megatron, Starscream, and Blackout Grindor in the forest? I mean, they all busted in the warehouse like Big Damn Heroes to save Sam. But when the fight continued in the forest, the rest of them disappeared. Plus, they couldn't of been busy fighting the Decepticons because all the Decepticons that was present in the warehouse WERE IN THE FOREST.
 * Bumblebee and Prime were first on the scene, and they scattered upon getting the humans to relative safety. That doesn't explain why the rest of the Autobots weren't right on their tails, of course, but it is the general reason why they weren't present.
 * The thing is, the NEST guys tracking the Autobots are shown saying that the Autobots split up before Prime and Bee reach Megatron et al. We're never given a reason for the split up, or where they're going, or anything. Did Prime and Bumblebee decide to take the Turnpike while the others took the Parkway? Did Prime die because Ironhide couldn't put together change for the tolls, or because they got caught in traffic on I-95? I'm sure he'd love that, "Sorry, Prime, but I didn't realize I was out of quarters."
 * There are more Decepticons on Earth than those three, though. Maybe the rest were sent specifically to keep Prime's allies distracted and ensure that he'd be killable.
 * The government is probably uncomfortable with the idea of too many Autobots running around the place and esspecially after the Shanghia assault. It was probably bureaucratic obstruction that meant that by the time they were authorised to leave, it was too late.
 * That's a good theory, but wrong as we see when they send an SOS to NEST that Prime's basically taken the entire Autobot force off with him minus Arcee. This however brings up a good point. Exactly how do the Autobots get permission to leave? Bumblebee gets to stay with Sam so long as he keeps a low profile, but the other Autobots seem confined to base whenever there isn't a mission. Prime being the senior Autobot might have permission to leave base as he wishes, but Prime takes nearly all the Autobots off with him on his rescue Sam mission. And in DOTM Prime takes Sentinel out on a casual drive, which might be acceptable because both are commanding officers but Sideswipe and Mirage later leave base to go help Sam with his idea to find out the link between the space program and the pillars. The same Sam who the director demanded distance himself from the Autobots because they only are allowed to work with Military and Sam is an unimportant civilian. But having two Autobots hang out with him is ok?

The Fallen's English skills

 * It is understandable how the Autobots and the Decepticons are able to speak English upon entry of earth via the World Wide Web. But how was The Fallen able to speak English when he appeared on The Nemesis? The only time he was on earth, before the second film's events, was in 17,000 BC. Back then, the Internet didn't even exist.
 * Either Translation Convention or he got it wirelessly from Megs and/or Starscream.

Sam's lack of gratitude

 * In the second film, when Sam and his father was getting attacked by evil appliance-bots, Sam calls out to Bumblebee for help. Bumblebee then bursts through the garage and takes out the apliance-bots as if they were nothing. Immediately afterwards, Sam scolds Bumblebee like a dog for hitting his house. You'd think he would be a little more thankful for Bumblebee saving his family life...
 * Bumblebee could've done it without shooting his weapons--which, remember, are made to blow holes in hardened, shielded, armored alien robots--at the wood and sheetrock house. Like by grabbing the tiny bots and smushing them, for instance.
 * He went a bit above and beyond the call of duty when he used a charged shot to blow up an entire corner of the house (Sam's room) when his precision shots were doing the job and the Appliancebots were no threat to him.
 * True, but he wasn't shooting because the Appliancebots were a threat to him. He was shooting because they were a threat to his owner/friend and his family. Although he was reckless, Bumblee was just acting quickly to save them.

The U.S. rules the world?

 * Why does Prime agree to leave earth if the US government tells him to? Are there not other country's the autobots can take refuge in? And since when did the US government become capable of banishment from the planet earth....
 * None of the other countries knew about the war. Where would they go? Besides, it'd be a pretty big middle finger if the Autobots just went and signed with Britain. Not to mention the fact that it wouldn't solve any problems. The Decepticons were attacking worldwide.
 * It was a UN decision to exile the Autobots, not a US-only decision.

No respect for Optimus

 * Why do the helicopters disrespectfully drop Prime's body especially considering the other autobots were watching? Are they trying to piss off the only transformers that haven't tried to destroy humanity?
 * They only dropped him like ten feet, and I imagine hauling his multi-ton robot carcass was probably rather difficult in the first place. To set him down gently would be nicer, but a lot harder for the crews to pull off.
 * Not to mention time was a factor. At any given moment they could and would be attacked by Decepticons. Gently handling an alien robot corpse probably scoots down a few notches on the military's priorities at that moment.
 * If anything the whole ordeal was evidence to them that Galloway's theory was correct, the Decepticons just want to hunt the Autobots and kidnapping Sam was just a lure. They also approached the Autobots with weapons drawn, things managed to calm down but it's pretty clear where things were heading.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
Added to that, this version of Prime's lines when they begin the battle in Chicago are "Today, we take the battle to them," and "We will kill them all." He states his intentions pretty clearly, he's had enough of this Decepticon bullshit, and he's not gonna let any of those mofos get away with their lives if he can help it. "Megatron: If you don't [finish activating the Space Bridge] you will be responsible for Cybertron's destruction!
 * Why is it that Decepticons take prisoners (who were apparently not automatically slated for execution, as Soundwave had to be convinced to do this) and the Autobots just execute defeated combatants even if they plead for mercy?
 * You must have missed the part where the 'Cons were going to execute them. And, indeed, did kill one. By shooting him in the head and then ripping him apart so... yeah.
 * Sentinel Prime appeared to be the one giving the orders in this case, up until they were told outright by the human traitor to just kill the Autobot prisoners, at which point they shrugged and agreed.
 * So Sentinel Prime gave them orders to take the Autobots alive if possible and Dylan was the one that convinced the Decepticons otherwise? Does that mean Starscream's attack on the shuttle was not part of Sentinel's plan?
 * Dylan convinced them to kill the Autobots who had surrendered during the battle. The shuttle destruction happened well before that.
 * What I was getting at was I was unclear just how much of a traitor Sentinel really was. If he killed Ironhide because he was in the way and planned to kill the rest of the Autobots during the shuttle launch to prevent further loss of Cybertronian life when they fought back. Or if he just wanted them gone but wanted the Autobots to live and thus wasn't informed of Starscream's attack. Which would then explain why he ordered the Autobots taken alive rather than killing them as soon as they were caught. Did Sentinel know they were alive when they were captured or was he too busy with the Space Bridge to be told of such things?
 * Going by the novels and comics extra explaination Sentinel ordered the attack on the shuttle but expected Optimus and co to find a way to survive anyway. His reaction when he finds out they live isn't shock like Megatron but basically "I figured they would have" He was only dissapointed they attacked, possibly hoping they'd lay low and let his plan carry out without interfering, or joining him in it.
 * Sentinel thinks Transformers are like gods and wants to restore the race to what it once was. Decepticons aren't exactly the honorable type to rebuild the species. Chances are, when he found out some Autobots were captured, he wanted them kept alive in order to try, one last time, to make some of them see his side and do a Face Heel Turn.
 * Sentinel Prime is the only character that had 'surrendered' before getting killed by the Autobots, and he had never extended any sort of courtesy to humans or Transformer alike. The moment you commit to a cause that results in the genocide of an entire planet, it's laughable to think anyone should see the other side as a monster for killing you.
 * Sentinel never had any plans for genocide. I don't know where you got that from. He clearly wants the 6 billion humans alive and healthy enough to be slaves. The Chicago massacre is supposed to break humanity's will, not part of a larger extermination effort. Furthermore, he spares Optimus' life in their first battle, so while he doesn't seem to care for humans he does show mercy to Autobots. And I'm not saying that Sentinel didn't deserve to die for what he did, but surely the Autobots have such a thing as due process. It was something you'd expect from Dirty Harry, not Optimus Prime. And especially when you consider how upset he was at the death of his "brother" Megatron in the first movie, his cavalier attitude in executing Sentinel seems particularly jarring.
 * Oh bollocks. He set into motion plans that would result in countless deaths, had no issue with his subordinates killing everything in sight and was an active combatant who had already maimed and crippled his opponent. Let's not turn this into Tai-Lung esque pity fest where people demonise the Autobots, christ.
 * Yeah, enslaving six billion humans isn't any better than committing genocide, so that hardly gets him off the hook. And whether he "planned" it or not, did you miss the bit where the Decepticons ostensibly under his command were just plain murdering every human they came across in the city?
 * Killing some humans—or even a lot of humans—is not the same as killing all humans. And while people can debate whether slavery or genocide is worse until they're blue in the face, the fact remains that they are two different things. And since Godwin's Law doesn't apply when talking about what to do with people who played an active role in slavery and mass murder, the Nazis got trials so why shouldn't Sentinel? His plan was foiled, he was beaten and pleading for mercy, there was no need to kill him right then and there. I don't intend to demonize the Autobots, but perhaps I am too much of a G1'er in my heart to really accept a Darker and Edgier Optimus Prime.
 * The Nazis got trials because they weren't enormous killer machine life forms threatening the entire planet after they had already crippled individuals equal, if not moreso, powerful than they are. Comparing this to any real world situation is absolutely ridiculous.
 * I missed the memo where fiction can't be compared to reality, and upon reading most of the Headscratchers here I suspect most of the tropers did too. But if you'd rather compare fictional examples, let's try Star Wars: was it wrong for Anakin to execute Dooku? The movie implies that it is and yet Dooku's role in the Clone Wars must have killed more people and ravaged more worlds than what happened in Dark of The Moon. In either case, I don't see what Sentinel being a Transformer has to do with not being tried. I can't imagine how Optimus would have decided, "Sentinel is a robot, he doesn't get a trial!"
 * Also, G1 Optimus wasn't really all that understanding either, especially toward Decepticons. In one episode, his first reaction on being told the Decepticons were being mangled by a giant cat alien was "Good!" rather than a probably-expected Enemy Mine.
 * It's one thing to be glad your enemies are getting the crap kicked out of them, it's another when an Autobot (traitor though he may be) is begging for his life and is executed by his former pupil.
 * Alright then, let's look at the original movie. You know, the bit right at the beginning where Megatron is begging for his life and Optimus would have executed him right then and there if Hotrod hadn't gotten in the way? Hell, remember the themesong? "Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons," as I recall. Not stop, not defeat, destroy them. The Autobots want to wipe the buggers out, even in the original show. Sentinel Prime might have started as an Autobot, but he threw in with the Decepticons, and was a traitor. And had been ready to execute Optimus just moments before.
 * If the Decepticons have been on the Moon since the 60s, why did they wait another 50 years before coming to attack Earth instead of striking when our technology was less advanced? And why did they need a space bridge to get from the Moon to Earth when the tactic of arriving through the atmosphere in protoforms seemed to be a pretty effective tactic in the first two films?
 * The Decepticons appeared to be mostly dormant and looking for Megatron, waiting for him to give them the go-ahead to launch the more complex plans. There's also no outright indication that the Decepticons had always been there; for all we know they landed a few days before the events of the film began. As for using the light bridges, the intro to the movie notes that the human armies were maintaining a careful watch across the globe with energon detectors and long-range scanners to keep an eye out for incoming Decepticons. Any obvious Decepticon landing via the usual method would be met with immediate Autobot/NEST/local military counterstrikes.
 * If Sentinel Prime had already made a pact with the Decepticons to betray the Autobots, why did he refuse to take the Matrix when Optimus Prime offered it to him? Seems like being able to bring soldiers back to life would have come in handy. Plus if he had accepted taking command like Optimus suggested he could have spared Ironhide by having told him to go on patrol or something earlier in the day.
 * Implications are that he let Prime keep the Matrix because if Prime was in charge, he would accept his apparent failure in trust and command more absolutely and thus choose to leave Earth more easily. It was a Batman Gambit, and it seemed to work.
 * Also, the Matrix only activates for a true leader. Sentinel had already prepared his betrayal, so it would have clued Optimus in when it didn't work.
 * Actually I don't see how the matrix wouldn't have worked for Sentinel. In ROTF, right after Optimus was revived with the Matrix of Leadership, The Fallen quickly snatches it and uses it to activate the Sun harvester. Plus, The Fallen was a prime and an evil one at that. So why should it be different for Sentinel?
 * It's different for Sentinel because he still believes that only the worthy and "true leader" should wield the Matrix. Even though he's ending the war, he still did it by betraying the Autobots, making him unworthy of it (in his own opinion).
 * And if Sentinel had took the Matrix and accepted command of the Autobots, much of the horror could of have been avoided. The way I see it, if The Leaders of two warring sides had come to mutual agreement and understanding, the war is pretty much over.
 * Except the plan the leaders had would have resulted in the destruction of the human race. The Autobots would probably have mutinied rather than allow that.
 * I think Sentinel still cares for Optimus, and hopes that Optimus will join him when the plan is completed. (Why else would Sentinel hold back from killing Optimus the first time they fought?) Giving Optimus the Matrix was a way of expressing trust and care. (Though the other listed reasons might have played a role, too.)
 * It's also possible Sentinel was still thinking about whether he wanted to follow through with the betrayal. He seemed to have some appreciation for the beauty of Earth at least in that scene and if the humans willingly became subordinate to the Autobots he might have worked with them. It wasn't until getting fed up with the human government treating the Autobots as an inconvienence and disrespecting them (when he believed the humans to be their inferiors) and Optimus allowing the Autobots to be pushed around, that he decided to go with the plan, at which point it was too late to demand leadership.
 * Why does Optimus Prime not care about Cybertron or Transformer life at all? At the end of the film Is Cybertron populated exclusively by Decepticons at this point? The entire thing is made even more jarring when you look at how G1 Optimus handled this exact same dilemma:

Optimus: Destruction? But there are still many inhabitants—friends—on Cybertron...Very well, Megatron. You win."

Did Optimus just decide to save the most lives and calculated the population of Cybertron as less than Earth and just sided with Earth, or what? I'm bugged by the fact that an 80s kid's show addressed the moral quandary of that choice more than a big budget film (yes, even a Michael Bay one). Sentinel's and Megatron's plan was to bring both the Allspark and the space bridge to Earth so Cybertron could be rebuilt with the material and labor resources (which he knows about thanks to the Fallen, and the Allspark can't do it by itself). Sentinel knows the Autobots wouldn't cooperate, and Megatron saw a chance to have absolute dominion over Cybertron, so they worked together in secret. Sentinel sends the Allspark in a "random" direction, tips off Megatron who goes ahead to secure it, then Sentinel the business with the space bridge and Ark, which ensures that each only has half the plan. But Megatron crashes into the arctic, a delay which allowed the Autobots to catch up with the Allspark, and results in the battle that destroys it. Sometime after being revived, Megatron discovered the wreckage of the Ark and figures the whole plan is shot, so he's okay with serving the Fallen and his zany schemes again. Then he sees the power of the Matrix, and after the Fallen gets whacked, Megatron figures that if he can lead Optimus to Sentinel, they still have some chance of success, Allspark or no, and so the third movie is on, with the Decepticons retrieving most of the pillars then waiting for Optimus to take the bait. "Doctor Arkeville: But the gravity of your planet will create earthquakes, tidal waves! It will devastate my planet!
 * Its established Cybertron is a DEAD world. Most people assume a DEAD world has only DEAD things on it because it is DEAD.
 * Is there any life left on Cybertron at this point? From what the planet showed when it was being teleported in, the planet was dead, with no lifeforms at all on the surface. Besides, if there was anything left on the planet, it would doubtless be Decepticon, considering the Decepticons won the war. And at this point, Optimus seems to have been given up on reviving Cybertron, after the Allspark was consumed and destroyed; the only way that the species is going to be continued is through Megtron's breeding/creation/construction/whatever program. There's also some indication that Optimus has effectively given up on his own species, considering that the majority of them have either been killed or turned to the Decepticon side and want to conquer the universe and enslave humanity. Not to mention that Sentinel's betrayal seems to have deeply affected his mental outlook.
 * It's stated a few times that Cybertron is now a dead planet, so who's left to kill? Corpses that are already dead?
 * I think Optimus hasn't given up on his species, since the Matrix can ignite Sparks, apparently providing Energon to do so, so it seems they can repopulate, but he just gave up on reviving Cybertron. And why not? After all, it's a dead world and now they've got Earth to inhabit.
 * I don't know if it was ever stated outright, but I assumed the Maguffins in the various movies coincidentally were located on or near Earth. But that doesn't seem likely if it happened three times in a row. Let me see if I have the timeline straight: The Fallen randomly shows up on an unremarkable backwater called Earth thousands of years ago and meets humans. He decides then and there he hates them so much he's going to fly back to Cybertron and get the materials and blueprints to build a Harvester here just to kill us (and the added bonus of energon). Around the same time, the Allspark is sent into space in the direction that the Autobots must have known the Decepticons have traveled. A little later the Ark is sent to Earth (no way it randomly crashed right next to the other two artifacts that can determine the future of Cybertron). I guess my question is why was Earth considered so important a destination for Autobots and Decepticons hundreds of thousands of years before we could ever play a part in their conflict?
 * This actually made sense to me... basically, Earth isn't that special, except for the role The Fallen played. When he tried to destroy it, he made it special. In the distant, distant past he came to Earth and was stopped by the other Primes. Simple enough, just chance that he came here. Then the Allspark itself came. Now, the Allspark is implied to be at least somewhat sentient, it would make sense that it came to the ONE planet in the galaxy that already had a Solar Harvester constructed, just in case. The Ark, however, bugged me... until I saw the movie where it's implicitly said that it is transported not just through space, but through time as well (The ship wasn't there in 1959, but was in 1963 according to the Russians, and we saw it land in 1961). The Allspark summoned the Ark (alternatively, the space bridge was meant to home in on the Allspark so it came as close as it could).
 * And here I was thinking that perhaps it was all a massive gambit by Sentinel, after seeing DotM:
 * How is it that a race of sentient hyper-advanced robots with a mastery of space travel don't seem to understand the repercussions of transporting a giant planet right next to another one? Ignoring the simple problem of WHERE it's going to go (not even half the planet was out and it was significantly larger than earth), the fact that there is now a giant planet hovering over earth is going to wreak massive havoc with both the orbit and the gravity of earth. Rule of Cool it is.
 * It could be that's exactly what they're counting on. Once again, G1 thought this one out better than Michael Bay.

Megatron: Ah, but that devastation will create a tremendous flow of energy. Energy which [our] slaves will collect into energon cubes. The cubes will then easily be shipped to Cybertron for our use."

"Sam: We gotta protect Sentinel he's the key to this all.
 * But that still doesn't explain how two planets occupying almost the same basic area of space are going to manage to maintain a stable orbit. Sure, it explains how the terrible things that happen to earth are actually intentional, but you can't expect a planet as massive as Cybertron to manage to maintain Earth's current orbit. It should either fly off into space or plummet into the sun, most likely taking Earth with it.
 * With the sufficiently-advanced tech that the Autobots/Decepticons regularly use, and the implications that Cybertron is an entirely artificial world (unless planets that appear to be made of latticeworks of metal are natural nowadays) it is entirely possible that Cybertron itself could have maintained a stable orbit with Earth through gravity manipulation. What else we've seen of their tech, including gravity manipulation, teleportation technology, implied time travel, and so on indicates to me that Cybertron could have pulled it off.
 * Compensating for the sudden increase/decrease in mass and gravity to an area caused by the arrival/departure of an object through the Space Bridge must be an integral part of how the device functions. Maybe that's exactly why the Decepticons waited for Sentinel to be reactivated rather than try to set up the pieces themselves. Only he could get the calculations right to prevent something going horribly wrong on either end.
 * The Decepticons' Xanatos Roulette. Their plan, which they have apparently been working on since the late 60s/early 70s, is to leave Sentinel Prime and 5 of the space bridge pillars in the Ark, so that when the Autobots find them Optimus will reactivate Sentinel Prime with the Matrix and he can operate the space bridge for the Decepticons. The problem of course being: Optimus didn't get the Matrix until Rot F! As far as I can tell from the 2nd movie, nobody even knew it existed until then!
 * When Starscream was talking with Megatron about their plan after Sentinel had pulled his Face Heal Turn, I don't think they specifically mentioned the Matrix. I think they just said they needed Optimus to revive Sentinel. Probably at the time the Decepticons made their original plan, there were other ways to revive a bot in stasis, but from the dialog it sounds like the other ways to revive Sentinel were Autobot specific technology.
 * The plan with Sentinel wasn't a Xanatos Roulette. It was simply a backup plan. Megatron's previous two plans failed, so he's resorting to his backup plan. Ideally, he never would have needed to resort to Sentinel Prime at all; after all, Sentinel is still an Autobot and only an ally of the Decepticons through convenience. He'd rather not rely on him, and lo and behold, Sentinel beats the crap out of Megatron and leaves him by the wayside once he's no longer useful.
 * There is some Fridge Brilliance here: Had Megatron gotten the All Spark in the first movie, he could have used it to awaken Sentinel himself. Without it, he had no way of doing so. So he serves the Fallen and the Matrix, which can awaken Transformers, is uncovered. Plan A is back on track.
 * At the end of the movie when  is blown up, wouldn't the remains of it
 * It would, if  had actually blown up, instead of apparently collapsing back
 * Why didn't the N.E.S.T. Energon detectors
 * Either nonsapient animaloids like  use small enough amounts of energon to not set off the detectors, or Sam just always sets off the detectors due to all the time spent in proximity to Bumblebee.
 * Or it was mostly in sleep mode at the time.
 * Or it was specifically engineered to emit as little Energon radiation as possible, like a stealth plane has a greatly reduced radar/thermal profile.
 * This has been bothering me ever since I first saw Dot M. There are at least two separate moments where Sentinel Prime says to Optimus "We were gods on Cybertron" or something along those lines. Every time Sentinel said that, I kept wondering...gods of what?!?
 * Well, the Primes specifically seemed to be the ruling class on Cybertron. Plus, he's talking about in comparison to their current status on Earth.
 * Alternatively, he was referring to Movie-verse Minicons or some alien race that worshiped the Primes or Transformers in general. Or maybe he's just off his proverbial rocker and we're not meant to take him seriously.
 * I think he meant the Primes were seen as extremely powerful and important beings, being a dynasty descended from the original primes. I think it was also that he'd lost it and wasn't thinking straight.
 * It's possible he meant Gods in the sense that humans are "Gods" of the planet Earth. Highest on the food chain, civilization spanning the globe, superior technology etc. When Sentinel was in charge Cybertron was one of the greatest planets in the galaxy and the Transformers were dominant species on it with all the perks there of. On Earth they are basically considered by most humans to be high tech war machines, to be rolled out when there's Cons to kill, and confined to military hangars most of the time. Most of the human governments simply want them out of sight and mind except when its convientent so they can go about their day to day human busniess. Combined with the fact that Cybertronians are far superior to humanity as a species, and it's almost understandable why Sentinel is so quick to turn on them.
 * Also, Sentinel's nuts.
 * Sam clearly wants to do something of vital importance, and his area of specialty- and of greatest personal interest and investment- is in working with the Autobots. So, why exactly is he looking for corporate work, rather than enlisting in the army, going through boot camp and basic training, then leveraging his personal history and connections into a transfer to NEST? That way he'd be working a job he's passionate for, enjoys, will be doing anyway, and will this way get proper training and preparation for? Apart from anything else, it'd mean more time with Bumblebee and actual financial compensation for the alien fighting he is, again, going to be doing whether he joins the army or not.
 * Indeed. And worse yet, from the government's position: this is a guy who's in pretty tight with the aliens you're working with, at least a couple of whom LIVE with him, who's been directly involved with saving the world with said aliens, and was well known enough for it for the government to pay for his Ivy League education and the President to award him a medal...and you leave him desperate for employment and idealistically wishing to make a difference in the world again? That's a political and intelligence nightmare just waiting to happen--just put him on the payroll! If for some reason you don't actually trust him with sensitive security matters, just keep him busy moving boxes from one side of the secret warehouse to the other, or detailing Optimus' door art, or doing goodwill tours with one of the useless comic relief autobots in the USO or the Peace Corps. Anything.
 * Yeah but if he signs up for the military he's got no say in where they send him. That and he'd rather not leave his extremely hot girlfriend behind...
 * Girlfriend thing, yeah, but he has far from no say. Apart from anything else, he has the respect General Morshower and Optimus Prime, the latter of whom even considers him a friend, and both of whom would pull strings to make sure he went to NEST if he enlisted, to say nothing of his standing among former sector 7 agents (including the very public Seymour Simmons), Cnl. Lennox, etc. It'd take an incredibly skilled and highly placed conspiracy to get him anywhere besides working with the Autobots- he might end up traveling a lot with NEST, but he WOULD be with NEST for the duration, based in and spending most time in their DC headquarters by the time of TF 3.
 * NEST is military (hence why nobody at NEST but Lennox and Epps respected him, as he was a civilian) so to work for them, he'd need to enlist. Of course that's what he should have done in the first place after college. With a degree he'd make officer easily, and his higher up friends can only help him climb in the ranks. Since Carly disaproved of him getting into any danger at all (because her brother was military and died) presumably she'd give him a hard time about it and that's why he didn't do it.
 * The lady in charge of NEST admits she was wrong about Sam, without coercion. He's probably got a job there for the next movie, if in an intel/investigative role; he's a bit...squishy for frontline work. And now that the Cybertronians are out, thanks to Sentinel, he could easily become a celebrity. And they did have him on the payroll, in a sense; they were paying his rent on his rather nice apartment.
 * The Decepticons having piloted fighters bothers me. I can understand the larger transport ship as being something of a energy saving measure, dropping off troops fresh for battle. But the fighters being piloted craft instead of just a bunch of Decepticons sharing a vehicle mode (which the movie had already done) just seems odd. Heck, even if it had been a Headmaster style set-up it would have come across as making more sense, at least to me.
 * Having separate machines probably allows for much greater firepower, armour, etc, without compromising the 'body' of the pilot.
 * Also, if they get shot down, they're not automatically dead. They can jump out and try to fight.
 * A Headmaster type set-up where a smaller unit plugs into a larger combat frame that they can eject from if its too damaged still makes more sense for a race of mechanical life forms than a piloted craft with physically manipulated controls (which is how Wheelie and Brains got the one they 'borrowed' up to the transport ship).
 * We're discussing mechanical life forms, so I think what makes 'more sense' is rather up in the air.
 * Maybe it's like riding on horseback for them. I will agree that having some Head/Target/Powermaster thing would have made it cooler, though.
 * Cooler, yes, but less efficient. There are lots of 'Cons, and they can't all have the same drivers. It's easier and more resource-efficient to build, maintain, and ensure compatibility with mechanically operated systems than it is with some sort of system link.
 * What was the giant worm with all the tentacles? It shows up for like two scenes and never gets any explanation. Also, who was the one-eyed robot that rides it and looks like it controls the worm? It doesn't look like either one transforms into anything.
 * The giant worm was Driller, and it's controlled by Shockwave, said one-eyed robot...who Optimus explicitly calls "Shockwave" the first time he shows up.
 * Yeah, I just realized it was Shockwave, but I thought he was in the other movies and had two eyes.
 * Nope, this is his first appearance. You might be thinking of Soundwave, though.
 * Also, Driller is a Cybertronian predator, apparently it's apex preadator outside the transformers. Shockwave just demosticated that one.
 * If the Autobot shuttle can carry at least 9 transformers and the Matrix can bring dead transformers back to life, why didn't they load the shuttle with all the other dead Autobots in the Ark? They said Sentinel was in some kind of sleep mode, as though he was only "mostly dead" while the others were dead dead and hence why they only brought him back. I'm pretty sure, though, that in Rot F Optimus Prime wasn't just "sleeping" so if they could revive him, why couldn't they revive the others?
 * Most of the other 'bots on the Ark were shown to be more dead than Sentinel (missing parts, shot up, etc...). Maybe the plan was to wake up him first (being a Prime) and, after dealing with the current Decepticon problem, go back up and see if any others could be saved.
 * Sentinel Prime, on the enslavement of humanity to serve Cybertron: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." There are not seven billion Cybertronians. I suppose he could have meant all future inhabitants of the revived planet, and assumed that the humans would die out sooner rather than later... Or did I mishear, and it was actually said the other way around?
 * ...or perhaps he considered humans a non-entity and was a on a power trip, completely ignoring hard fact in favour of rhetoric? I dunno.
 * Well he was speaking directly to Optimus when he said that, wasn't he? Maybe he meant the needs of the many Transformers and Decepticons who intend to revive Cybertron outweigh the needs of the few Autobots who wish to protect humans rather than revive their home planet. As the above troper said, he probably didn't consider humans among the many whose needs were to be considered, what with all that talk about how Transformers used to be gods before their race was destroyed by war.
 * WHAT HAPPENED TO THE RAIL GUN?!?!
 * It's still on a ship stationed in the middle of an ocean. There wasn't exactly time to get it to  in time to do any good.
 * During his speech before the battle for Chicago, Optimus explains that the Autobots held back in order to prove to the world that Decepticons are crazy and you can't negotiate with them. So if I'm understanding this right, Optimus let who-knows-how-many-people in Chicago be killed in order to prove a point.
 * No, he said they faked their leaving Earth for that. They landed out somewhere in the pacific ocean and were declared dead. Thus, to get to Chicago without losing the element of suprise, which they seriously needed given the situation, they probably had to move from wherever they came ashore at to Chicago without getting detected, which would take awhile, especially with the Wreckers.
 * Optimus faked leaving because he knew the Decepticons would not keep their promise. Most likely, he thought the Autobots would just stay hidden until they could track down Decepticons. He had no idea where the attack would be (nor its full scope), or else he would have tried to prevent it.
 * Why did the Decepticons stop cutting down the skyscraper the group was in? That seemed like a rather fullproof plan.
 * Maybe because Optimus was...I don't know, shooting at the thing, and by the time he was gone the humans had already gotten to safety.
 * When Chicago was taken, planes were shot down moments after they entered the airspace, and the Army had no vision or long-range targetting due to jamming. So what happened to the former when the choppers came in, and what happened to the latter with the Tomahawks?
 * With the former they mention that they ran a decoy operation on the south side of the city while the choppers came in from the north, so the bulk of the air defenses were on the wrong side of the city. As for the latter you see several soldiers with those aiming lasers, which are used to direct the Tomahawks (the same thing they use in the climax of Battle LA).
 * How come this movie got the lowest Metacritic score, despite being better than the horrible, bad-taste second film? I know that the first third of DOTM has some of ROTF's (bad-taste) humour, but after that, it shapped up, unlike Revenge of the Fallen.
 * Reviews and opinions are subjective, oddly enough.
 * Maybe ROTF just left a very bad taste that tainted the sequel?
 * Probably the answer to this one is "Because the US Military will not assist you with this movie if you don't", but after Optimus Prime proclaims in ROTF that, in effect, he doesn't want Autobot technology used against non-Decepticon targets, he consents to that same Autobot technology being used against human targets? Even if you take the big leap that an "illegal" nuclear reactor in Iraq is an Acceptable Target, this either makes the Autobots out to be liars or cat's paws.
 * He never said he isn't willing to help them himself, he said he won't give them technology. He's perfectly willing to help... on his terms, where he and his advisors can say no at any time, analyze the situation to see if they approve, and so on. What he doesn't want is to give humans the specs for energy weapons or whatever that we can then use without his input.
 * Exactly, and his reason why is very sound. If the ones who invented the weapons couldn't stop themselves from wiping each other out with them, how can a race thousands of years younger be trusted with them?
 * So here's one. After they escort Sentinel to base they order Ironhide to take him inside. It turns out he's a traitor, and he goes on slowly revealing this for about 30 seconds before shooting Ironhide in the back. Sam and Lennox clearly see where it's heading as you can see the wheels turning in their head as Sentinel talks, but Ironhide just stands there with his back to Sentinel motionless for this whole scene, not reacting to Sentinel saying about how he needs to do something horrible to save their race, nor following the order given to get him inside. Is he having a senior moment? He just stands there waiting Sentinel to shoot him like he knew it was coming and didn't care. That seems really poorly portrayed there.
 * He probably was keeping a lookout for Decepticons, and thought he could trust his former leader.
 * He probably realized it, but never suspected Sentinel would shoot him in the back, as Sentinel used to be an honorable person. And he was probably, as mentioned before, looking for Decepticons, which in his mind would be something to keep on the look out for at the time.
 * I just bought the DVD today, and it doesn't take as long as you seem to recall. The scene played out something like this:

Lennox: Ironhide, guard Sentinel.

Ironhide: Consider it done.

Sentinel: *transforms from his altmode* Yes...I am the key to this whole thing. You see, my Autobot brothers, we were never going to win the war. A deal had to be made... *reaches for gun* ...With Megatron. *turns around and shoots Ironhide as soon as he finished talking*"


 * In Chicago, they find that one drone and inform home base that we've got to destroy the control pillar, and they give the pillar's location. Why don't the people back at base just shoot a bunch of missiles at the control pillar? The entire planet is at stake here. Eventually they send a few tomahawk missiles, but even then they seem to be targeting deceptions rather than the all-important objective they were earlier informed about. If I were the president, I'd point every weapon in the country at that pillar. (Heck, if it really comes down to it, even a nuke is preferable to the enslavement of the human race and/or the destruction of Earth due to a new planet suddenly showing up.) Surely they're aren't enough Decepticons to shoot down that many missiles all at once. So why didn't they even try? Why leave everything to the infantry?
 * That being said; it is possible that any attempt to fire anything towards the city would be met with resistance in a similar way to the predator drones and what looks like smaller missiles being blown out of the sky in the final battle. This would also explain why the guy with the rocket launcher drops it, to avoid the extra time taken to explain that this is why it wouldnt work.
 * Aside from the first film, the sequels and comics are inconsistant as to which Autobots are on Earth. In the first film we have Prime Bee Ratchet Ironhide and Jazz, and Jazz dies. Ok fair enough. In Revenge of the Fallen Optimus mentions new Autobots have arrived and joined NEST, but when the group of all the Autobots are shown only Sideswipe, the Twins and the Arcee sisters are shown as the new arrivals. Yet Jolt later appears out of nowhere. Where'd he come from? In Dark of the Moon the Twins are there at the beginning yet disappear, but when the Autobots leave only 9 are mentioned to be leaving (Prime, Bee, Ratchet, Sideswipe,Mirage, Wheeljack, and the 3 Wreckers). Well what about the twins? They were supposed to die with Ironhide, but they didn't, yet are written into oblvion anyway. Not being specific about 9 Autobots could have fixed this. And this isn't even counting all the Bots in the comic tie ins that aren't in the films. A ton of them were killed in Rising Storm, but a few of them survived, yet weren't in DOTM.
 * Not an actual gripe, but something that just bugged me (for once): The sudden change from built-in weapons to everyone carrying their guns in their hands.
 * Prime carries his guns in his hands in both the first and second movie, so it's not a "sudden" change so much.
 * Ironhide and Sideswipe have new handheld guns but that's about it and they've still got their built in weapons too. Bee still uses his built in cannons, and Prime's handheld swords are new weapons. If you look closely you see he still has his flip out swords too as he uses them briefly when charging through the Decepticon forces to Shockwave.
 * Supposedly, like why Bumblebee has his "combat" vehicle mode in this film, is Michael Bay saw some of the tie in toys from ROTF, liked them, and wanted to add what he saw into the film.
 * This is really a very petty meta-gripe, but it's been bugging the hell out of me for God knows how long: Megan Fox's firing. For those of you who aren't up to speed,  That is no fucking reason to have somebody fired! Not only was that comment not anti-Semitic in any way, shape, or form, but it wasn't even directed at Spielberg. But apparently, just because he's directed a few movies about the Holocaust, he thinks he's Jesus Christ.
 * Yeah, how dare a Jewish man who is clearly very affected by the Holocaust be at all offended that someone is treating the subject of his peoples' genocide so lightly.
 * This also happened to be the last straw, rather than the only reason. She was disinterested in the film, didn't bother mingling with her coworkers and was just generally anti-social. To then piss about with Nazi and Holocaust comparisons in earshot of Jewish production staff was what pushed things over the edge.
 * She didn't make any Holocaust comparisons, she just called Michael Bay a tyrant.
 * Pedantic horseshit. She drew comparisons to Hitler, in front of Jewish production staff. There's no defending idiocy like that - it's not as if his actions are a subtle, nuanced and discrete part of history.
 * Far more irritating than the arguably-deserved firing is, in my opinion, the way they chose to explain it. Couldn't they just have switched actress and asked the public to just ignore it? I mean, "this is Mikaela, please concentrate on the character rather than the actress" is a lot better than "yeah, the character who we spent the first two films developing turns out to be a stupid heartless bitch".
 * Does anyone else think it sucks that Sam was effectively Strangled by the Red String in DOTM? I mean, say what you want about Megan Fox, at least her character wasn't completely useless. Mikaela's relationship with Sam was given at least SOME development, with her love for Sam despite the hardships that came with being with him a subplot-point in ROTF. Now, we're supposed to believe that Carly, a girl who does a grand total of ONE thing in the entire film to endear herself to the audience, is Sam's soulmate?
 * Half the time they seemed to forget she was a different character, as her role in the plot as a auto genius that got the museum cars in perfect shape was clearly designed for Mikela and had Carly thrown in despite being a British diplomat. They should have just recast the role, rather than make a new character.
 * Okay, wait a minute - she was a mechanic? I thought she was just a curator for the car museum.
 * She was. The previous troper is mistaken.
 * She was just a curator but it is still a odd thing for someone of political background (according to Carly's intro in the comics and the brief flashback) to have. In addition to her having clearance to know about the Autobots for no apparant reason and being the love of the Sam's life despite him only knowing her for a year or so? It seems pretty obvious her part was intended for Michaela and they later quickly shoehorned Carly in. It would have been much easier to simply recast Michaela rather than introduce a new leading female at the end of the trilogy. Unless the writers just HAD to take the opertunitity to make more like G1.
 * The role was originally meant for Mikeala, but They kicked Megan Fox out. They originally were going to recast the role, but then they decided to re-write her into a new character. As for the clearance thing, its not that she was special, everyone in the world now knows who the Autobots are, its just that the general populace isn't suposed to know about Sam and the 'bots being BFF, likely for his safety. Although, to answer the part about being suddenly in love with her despite not knowing her that long is actually answerable by Fridge Brilliance: Sam's dad made a big deal in ROTF about how Sam's at the point where he'll go through many girlfriends who he might think he's totally in love with. Its not that Sam and carly were forced, its that Sam's dad was right, Sam will likely go through many girlfriends he'll be convinced he's in love with. And, assuming Carly was the first after Mikaela, his massive decloration of love could be atributed to her being the rebound girl, in which case its normal for him to make a big deal over his feelings despite only knowing her for so long.
 * So if Megatron was in league with Sentinel, why order an attack on him on the highway? The other cons would seem to not know he was a traitor which means they'd attack him for real, which would cause serious problems if they'd captured him before he got the other pillars from the NEST base, or worse, killed him. Why not just let him return to the base at his leisure and sneak them out? Or if they wanted the attack to draw other Autobots away, so Sentinel could move freely, why not let him get back to base, then start attacking nearby while Sentinel attacks from inside the base? It's not like a few days would have mattered.
 * Among all the Transformers, Authority Equals Asskicking. It takes both Optimus and Megatron to actually take down Sentinel; Megatron probably thought that three grunt Decepticons weren't going to be able to actually kill Sentinel even if they got past his Autobot guards. And hey, you might be able to kill a couple of those pesky 'bots while you're at it.
 * True, but it also risked killing the Dreads, which is what happened. Although with his forces on the moon they were probably expendable. Still a lucky shot could have ruined everything.
 * They needed to make the Autobots think Sentinel was on their side so no one would suspect the truth. Plus, it seemed only Megatron really knew Sentinel was on the Decepticon's side.
 * Fair enough. Although come to think why was Sentinel not at base to begin with? Why the heck is with he with Sam's group? He could have gone with Sam to investigate the Russian's with Sideswipe and Mirage (of course it's also odd why they go with him) but he's not shown with them before, and it doesn't seem likely he'd go and hang out with a human while he tries to make himself do something important. He could have still been out with his drive with Optimus, but that scene seemed to have hours, if not a day before that. And he was last with Optimus in that scene, and at that point Optimus is so far away he misses on both the chase and the aftermath. So Optimus just left him to drive around by himself on a planet he just arrived on/Sentinel went out driving randomly on his own?
 * Why did Megatron give up his extremely powerful Cybertronian mode for a crappy truck form?
 * Hiding. Both times previously he's only been on Earth during active campaigns, not needing a disguise. As for why such a crappy disguise... he isn't in the best of health, you'll note; he probably isn't up for being disguised as high-end military hardware at this point.
 * The game adapatation explains this. Megatron's refit after the beating Prime gave him in Fallen, removed any vehicle forms he currently possessed. When the Autobots raided their base (and old Nuclear storage facility) and Megatron needed a alternate mode to escape, tanker trucks were his only option. And he immediately went into hiding, where nothing better was available.
 * Also, the alt-mode doesn't determine how powerful they are. Remember that Optimus Prime's alt mode was an entirely unarmed truck, and he trashed three 'Cons who transformed into some of the best military hardware on two planets.
 * Why was Wheelie still with Sam? I mean, through most of ROTF he practically worshipped Mikaela as his "Warrior Goddess," so why wouldn't he side with her when the relationship between her and Sam went sour?
 * The commute to NEST-Autobot HQ, where he WILL probably want to go in the event an attack or other such situation (or he just needs resources, or to see another Cybertronian besides Brains), is considerably more convenient from Sam's DC flat than Mikaela's, which is probably in another state entirely. Location, location, location.
 * It's also possible Mikaela just wanted nothing to do with Transformers anymore and wouldn't take him.
 * Well, Wheelie was less worshiping and more acting out of fear because the woman burned his eye out with a blowtorch. I dunno about you, but I'd kinda want to stay away from someone who did that to me.
 * Isn't the Matrix pretty much the only thing left that can give the Transformers a ready, lasting supply of Energon by the start of DOTM? I'm no expert in Transformers lore, but if there's no other sources of Energon outside of Optimus' control, then it makes sense to me that Wheelie would want to stay near what is basically the only source of food for his kind.
 * Why did Megatron spend most of the film wearing that hood? I mean, what practical purpose could it possibly serve? Don't say that it acted like a bandage, because it CLEARLY did not.
 * Pretty sure those things were doing repairs on him, actually. That's what it looked like to me. Anyway, I imagine he wore the hood because he didn't want people to see how badly he was still wounded.
 * Maybe he was self-conscious of his looks.
 * He was probably hiding the wound. Walking around with a massive wound visable in your head with humans trained to combat your kind is a BAD idea.
 * And it looked cool too.
 * The "maggots" clearly look like Scalpel/The Doctor from Revenge of the Fallen, thus they were repairing him.
 * How the humans were able to bring the Ark back to earth?
 * ...What? They didn't. Where did you get that idea?
 * The Ark remained on the moon. Components from it were retrieved and brought to Earth in order to be analyzed by Sector Seven (or be misused by the Russians, as Chernobyl demonstrated), but the actual ship was still up on the moon. The ship the Autobots used to leave Earth is the Xantium, the same one they used to get to the moon in the first place.
 * Why is Sam completely cut off from NEST? He's been a Decepticon target twice now, so it's likely he could be again. You'd think they'd give him a password or something if his life is in danger to tell to the guards so they let him in immediately instead of laughing him off. I mean they already told him where the secret base was anyway. And the guards. I mean I know classified and all that, but if I was guarding a secret facility that contained the only hope against a massive global threat that was also secret and some weird guy showed up procceding to know exactly what was at the base, the names of both commanders and mention the secret threat precisely the way it is..... Well I wouldn't just let him in but I'd certainly check with higher ups about the guy that apparantly knows everything about the base, he could even be a threat. They just laughed him off.
 * Probably just because he's a civilian and don't want him involved. Furthermore, as above has stated earlier, it seems the only people that respect Sam at Nest is the Autobots, Lennox and Epps...the other guys don't know much about Sam and clearly don't care.
 * Sam's also made it pretty clear many times that he wants a regular life. And really, he's been through so much chaos from being with the 'Bots and getting involved with the government, that it isn't much to imagine that he wants to have little to do with them. Your Mileage May Vary about it, but this Troper feels that it's a nice alternative from the usual convention of the human sidekick always wanting to be involved.
 * One thing I've never understood - how is it that Sentinel can transform into a fire truck? He's never seen scanning one, and as I recall he's already in the right colour scheme and regalia while in stasis aboard the Ark, even though when he crashed he had only just come from Cybertron and, presumably, has never been to Earth before.
 * Him appearing to already have the form before even getting to Earth is either an error, or the staff intentionally not caring about that detail, or alternatively since many of the previous films features on T Fs was changed to be more like G1 in DOTM (space ships instead of comet modes, and handheld weapons instead of built in ones) his alternade mode on Cybertron was just very similar to the fire truck and he looked the same (as were most G1 characters in the first episode). Either way he was presumably provided with the fire truck form by NEST (like the Twins in ROTF) before he went out on his drive with Optimus.
 * Having watched the DVD in better quality his form on the moon is apparantly just whatever he looked like on Cybertron. You'd need to look very very close to see this but he some Rosenbauer (the company that his truck mode is licensed from) emblems on him, and has "07" on his kneecaps, but only after his inital scenes. He first sports them during his chat with Optimus in the outback.
 * Would've been nice to see that. In the first film, they made it a point to show that the Autobots scanned nearby vehicles for camouflage, and showing Sentinel scan a fire truck could be done in a small amount of time and without dragging the narrative down.
 * Would have been nice yes, but we don't always get to see everyone getting their alt mode. Sideswipe and the new DOTM Autobots were never shown, and we only get to see Megatron acquire his truck mode in the DOTM game.
 * If, why exactly did the other Decepticon fighters shoot the Ark down? Furthermore, it was clearly seen that there were other crew members aboard the ship, who apparently were trying to defend the ship. If they were in on this scheme too (which seems logical), why did they fight back?
 * In fact,
 * According to a comic, Starscream didn't know, and attacked the ship despite Megatron ordering him not too.
 * Added to that, the ship was leaving during a battle. It'd be very suspicious if a ship carrying not only but also  was allowed to just leave the planet totally and completely unmolested.
 * Optimus claims that if he had the pillar technology in the Last Battle of Cybertron he would have won. In the beginning of the movie he claims that the Autobots are outgunned and outnumbered. How would the pillars have won them the war?
 * By getting a small but organized strike team into Decepticon headquarters and bases and carrying out assassination and destruction of key infrastructure. Same way any small outgunned force wins a fight when given the ability to effectively be anywhere within a couple A Us at any time.
 * Razorbeak, according to Dylan, single-handedly shut down the Apollo program by threatening to kill the relevant bureaucrats if they didn't toe the Decepticon line. So he's had his beak in the corridors of power for forty years, for all practical purposes. This is a ruthless, immortal (by human standards), flying, shape-shifting, extremely dangerous super-hacker who has nothing to do for four decades but manipulate American government to Decepticon advantage. He should have been ruling the world from behind the scenes before Optimus' team ever arrived.
 * Ok, rudimental facial fetures I can understand, since the Bots interact with humans and it is easier to talk to somebody who has at least a semblance of a face, but hair? Hell, that annoying scientist robot even had a balding head (and glasses). Wha't the point? Are alien robots now suceptable to following human stereotypes? Granted, it's not as bad as...those two guys, but still bizzare. And Sentinel, who'd never met with humans, has the most human face of all up to facial hair. What's up with that?
 * All of that was from a deliberate decision by the film makers to humanize the Transformers as much as possible, so they would come across as living beings rather than as machines.