Roberto Orci has answered another round of fan’s questions over at TFW2005 – answers are often vague, cryptic or one-liners, but a number of answers are interesting. The new set of answers start around page 226 of the thread (all Orci posts – need to be logged in).

Some of the highlights are listed below, as collated by TLAMB:

Will Barricade’s disappearance be explained in ROTF?
Explained is a very specific kinda word… implied may be more like it

Will you guys seriously rethink about staying on?
Time for fresh blood!

Just to be clear, what is your reason for not writing it? If the other main players comes back and they don’t see a need for fresh blood, then why would you?
Not clear who is coming back yet, but the main reason we would move on is because we risk getting stale and comfortable. If you only sing one song for too long, you miss the opportunity to sing news songs. We’ll see.

who thought of the name for the movie? you, michael bay, alex, or someone else?
Alex.

how many fans do you think saw past Michael’s “no Megatron” announcement? And second, is he aware that his comment about Megs only appearing in a flashback kind of contradicts Hugo Weaving’s hint that the Allspark shard has something to do with Megatron’s resurrection?
god love him

Did the fallen enslave the Egyptians to build the pyramids (which actually are space bridges)?
Hmm. Getting warm

Did the Egyptians seal the fallen within his own design?
Also very warm but not quite.

Did you ever intend for Blackout and Brawl to speak?
Yes.

Would you consider a giant battle in the Grand Canyon?
We actually had a giant battle in the Grand Canyon in the very first draft of the first movie.

Is there really still time to add stuff and how much stuff can be added at this point?
On the first movie, we were re-writing dialogue until about 2 weeks before release!

can you let us know how many Autobots can fly in the movie?
very few

I know very early in development Mike Bay said that there would be a geriatric robot. Was it already set there and then that Jetfre would be that bot, or did you and the writers/Bay decide later that Jetfire would suit that type of character?
We decided Jetfire would fit after the idea came up to have a geriatric robot.

Would you consider this movie the “Empire Strikes Back” of the Transformer movie line (dark, feeling of hopelessness, crazy reveal/twists/turns)?
yes

Bay mentioned in passing that about 40 bots are in the movie. Sound about right or less/more?
sounds about right

Will The Fallen have any dialogue?
Yes.

Can you name the 3 scenes that were filmed in IMAX format?
Yes.

Will Prime survive the movie?
Prime’s spirit can never die.

which of the 2 movies was more difficult to get along with the story.
Movie 1 was the hardest thing have ever worked on. Period. Nobody could imagine what it was, everyone thought it was just a silly cartoon or a toy commercial, the studio wasn’t sure if the robots should talk, we had to come up with a story that would attract someone like Bay, and we had budgetary constraints that made it necessary to generate a significant human story which was counterintuitive to some Transfans. By the second movie, the paradigm of the franchise was clear.

what are your feelings towards the idea of Leonard Nimoy doing the voice of the Fallen?
Would love it. I actually talked to him about it, given the odd coincidence that he is Michael Bay’s cousin through marriage, but fan outcry has also put Welker in the running.

Collider managed to grab Michael Bay at the Friday 13th premier and have a chat with him about TF2. What’s on the cards? – A darker, more epic, more emotional Transformers 2 with improved technical abilities and IMAX scenes with maybe a third come ~2012.

In summary:

He says they have done 3 scenes in IMAX
He talks about Transformers 2 and what he likes about it – says the robots have a lot more personality and he was able to get emote much more than the first movie
Also says it’s going to be darker and epic in scale – says the human characters go on a ride with the robots
I ask about the running time – says right now it’s 2 hours 20 minutes but he still editing
I ask if he will do a third Transformers movie or does he see himself doing another franchise – says he could see himself doing a third but he wants to take a year off no matter what

AICN’s Quint has had a chance to speak with Rainn Wilson, and in the conversation the topic of Transformers 2 appropriately popped up alongside working with Michael Bay:

Quint: So what are you working on now? You have some stuff coming up?
Rainn Wilson: Well, I just did a very small cameo in TRANSFORMERS 2.

Quint: Cool.
Rainn Wilson: That was kind of a blast. I got to work with Michael Bay and I was a big fan of TRANSFORMERS.

Quint: I spent a few days on the set of the first movie and something I noticed was that Michael Bay, I think he has an AD, but he doesn’t need one.
Rainn Wilson: He does everything himself.

Quint: He does everything and he’s not afraid to be the task master on a set.
Rainn Wilson: I saw him and he was literally giving the focus puller notes. The focus puller was like “No, you have to do it like this…” and Michael Bay is like “No no no, do it like this and hook this here and you can turn this here and you can get the focus this way…” Somehow I believed Michael Bay knew more than the focus puller. He even ran camera a couple of times. He did his own camera work.

Quint: That must have been fun. I don’t imagine that you are in any scenes with any robots, but it would still be fun.
Rainn Wilson: No, I wish I would have had scenes with explosions, but yeah the only other thing is I have a bunch of film irons in the fire out there.

Whilst Megan Fox recently spoke to IGN about TF2, I’ve extracted the interesting bits:

Q: How is Transformers 2 going?
Megan Fox: It’s going good. It’s gigantic!

Q: Compared to the first, you’d say it’s way bigger?
Fox: It’s twice the budget, so yeah.

Q: Can you say where this movie picks up for your characters?
Fox: It’s two years later, so when it comes out it will be present day. Shia [LaBeouf, who reprises his role as Sam Witwicky] and I have been dating for two years, so it’s kind of like old news. There’s no big love scenes or anything like that – you kind of get into the couple bickering now. That stage, like the old married couple. That’s all I can say!

There’s also another interview with Megan Fox by Scifi.com

Matthew Marsden plays a lead role in Revenge of the Fallen as SAS Graham, this is his first interview since that announcement. The interview is all rather generic – giving away no secrets or even little teasers, very little probing done by the interviewer.

“I’m part of a multi-national force. What’s going on right now is I’m a British Special Forces officer that’s attached to Lennox’s team. Well, there’s two of us initially. And we’re battling the bad guys.”

[...]

I just try to be real. My character is not an amusing character. He’s a soldier, so all the stuff that I did is very much rooted in reality and what I know from the experiences of my friends [who are in the military]. So, it’s just very real and nothing über-spectacular.

We went to Pennsylvania and shot at the Bethlehem Steel Plant, which was really amazing. We had this scene where it’s, like, ‘That’s where he is!’ and you have to shoot at him. ‘He’s going that way!’ It’s quite a far distance away, so we had to use a laser pointer [to stand in for the robot]. It’s all fun; I love that stuff.

There are bad guys there and we have to go and get them. That’s basically it.”

[On Shia and Megan Fox]

“They’re working with the Autobots, [so] they’re definitely going to know some of the strengths and weaknesses of different robots. So, if they’re working together with an alien life-form, which they didn’t initially, then obviously they’re going to know more. In the first one, they were actually finding out what they were because they didn’t know. … Now they’re aware of what they are, and we’re part of the task force specifically to go and deal with them. … I just know that I’ve got a big chunk to come, and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of action in it.”

MTV have been speaking with Transformers star and FHM’s sexiest woman in the world, Megan Fox.

“As big as the first movie was, this is 10 times as big, 10 times as many set pieces, explosions, and acrobatic stunts,” she told us about “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. “Shia and I make out a little bit; I don’t know if anyone wants to see that.”

“You know, we’ve been having script meetings, and we’ve been reworking the script, because they wrote it fast because of the writer’s strike,” she explained. “And, we’ve just been going through and trying to do some character stuff for Shia and myself in the middle of this crazy world that they’re in.”

[...]

“I can tell you that we’re on locations in some really exotic places,” she added. “It’s just going to be a badass movie. It’s just going to be a popcorn-visual-spectacle, summer film.”

[...]

As for Michael Bay’s main directorial input to his lead actress, Megan had this to say: “His main note to me is just to look hot; so I try my best.”

As we can see, she doesn’t find this too difficult:

In speaking with MTV, Michael Bay has stated that Transformers 2 will not follow suit with recent trilogies and sequels – it will not be a film that promises a lot before leaving you waiting for a third movie and consequent resolution:

“You know how those sequels they do the second one so you go see the third one? ["Transformers 2”] is it,” he said, indicating that “2” would be its own story free from the duel shackles of set-up or resolution. “First one was just introducing, setting up stuff, so we can go a lot farther. Let’s just say [this] is not a lame sequel.”

If “Transformers” was all about introduction, then “Transformers 2” will be all about escalation, with reports that upwards of 20 robots will do battle in the blockbuster sequel. But for Bay, it’s not the number of robots present, but how they’ll be more fully and individually realized that has him excited, he said.

In an interview with IGN, writer Roberto Orci confirmed that fan favourite Soundwave would be making an appearance in the sequel:

Q: What’s the status of Transformers 2?

ORCI: That starts shooting in three weeks.

Q: What do you want to do that builds from the first one?

ORCI: We want to follow some of our lead characters which we thought were so successful. Shia’s character; where is he two years later? His girlfriend, where is she two years later? But for fans, I guess I’ll address this more for the fans, because I think if you didn’t know Transformers at all and you came in and you liked the first movie, you’ll like the second one. However, some of the die hard fans, which we were a member of that group, felt, well, maybe it’s a little light. Maybe it wasn’t science fictiony enough. And I think the second one will deliver on a true Transformers story. You know, the first one, we had a limited budget for what it was. Every second of Transformer time is a million dollars or whatever the heck it is, so this time, because we were able to prove through the whole thing that it’s a viable live-action movie, we have a little more freedom this time to actually learn about the Transformers, see them, hear them. It’s a better balance between the humans and the Transformers.

Q: Is there one particular Transformer, good or bad, that you absolutely had to get into the sequel?

ORCI: Yes.

Q: You’re not gonna tell us.

ORCI: I’ll tell you. We had to get Soundwave in there.

Q: Nice. Where Soundwave goes, will Ravage follow?

ORCI: Perhaps! Who’s Ravage? … I’m kidding! You know, we had Ravage in an early draft of the first movie and Soundwave, and we couldn’t do it right and I think this time hopefully we’ll have the ability to do it.

Shia has been happily discussing the new Transformers movie adaptation with British publication Empire, although keeping the secrets to himself it seems:

“It’s going to be bad-ass. We’re not making another one unless it is, and Mike is definitely not resting on his laurels — he’s doing insane shit again. And the pre-vizes that I’ve seen… it’s just massive. If the first one was any indicator of how massive massive can be, this is going to blow that out of the water. It’s insane. Mike’s mind was just kind of made for this — it’s amazing. There’s going to be a lot more characterization with the robots, which I’m excited about. [...] There’s gonna be new robots on both sides. I can say that the war isn’t over… It’s hard to do interviews when you’re not allowed to talk about the movies. It’s like I give two or three things away and then I get reprimanded for it. It’s never fun to get reprimanded by these people”.