Finally watching the bonus features on the TF5 DVD/BR.
So much potential from the original story ideas, some of which we already knew about during the production of the movie.
But some things I didn't know, that didn't end up in the finished cut of the movie.
Like, Cade Yeager is meant to be a descendant of King Arthur, which would make the concept of Vivian being Merlin's descendant more significant, as it would be a "coming full circle" element of Arthur and Merlin coming together again in battle through their descendants.
The (very) short medieval battle intro scene was meant to be a lot simpler, with most soldiers originally planned to be CGI, but the project kept getting bigger and bigger as Bay came on set and got involved.... it must have added so much to the expense of the movie, resulting in other things getting cut (like the alleged Headmaster scene, with Cogman taking over Nitro's body).
Another thing that I thought was a wasted expense was the early Chicago scene, when the kids find the girl and Sqweeks... they dressed up an abandoned Detroit factory to look like a war torn Chicago, shipping in actual Chicago trains to make it look authentic. (I didn't even notice the trains... let alone know or care if they were authentic Chicago trains.)
Considering the usual lack of authenticity when recreating locations of other cities or countries, I don't know why they even bothered with the expense of doing this, as it probably added another million or two to the budget, for negligible effect.
A lot of the military roles in the movie (soldiers on the TRF and the aircraft carrier command crew) were played by actual military people.
The two movie ideas that were combined to make TF5 were already known (a WW2 mission and King Arthur's knights), but the proposed movie title for the WW2 movie (if it had been made as a standalone movie) was "Operation Skyfire".
A clip from the junkyard that I didn't remember (it may have been cut, or I fell asleep at that point) - Sqweeks knocking Wheelie off the car they were standing on. Actually, there looked to be a fair bit from the junkyard scenes that were cut, by the looks of what they showed us in the bonus feature about Cade's Junkyard.
You get to see the stand-ins for Cogman (car chase and when Burton is dying), and Jim Carter speaking the lines on-set.
They actually got permission to film the front of 10 Downing Street (when Burton tries to get in), and a lot of other areas of central London, because of who Bay is (thanks mostly to his success with the Transformers Movies).
Hotrod had over 100 face concept images done up for them to choose the one that would be his face on the movie.
Something I found funny - in the featurette about the robot characters in this movie, they talk about Drift, Crosshairs and Hound carrying over from TF4, because "Michael really stressed the character development in them".
What character development?
Drift was changed from a Bugatti to a Mercedes because Michael liked the new GTR model that came out, so it had to feature in the movie (requiring an unnecessary change of vehicle mode and colour of one of the main Autobots).
Daytrader's original name was Barterbot.
Megatron's jet mode was inspired by a sword/dagger.
Barricade was only brought back because fans on a fansite had a poll on which movie character they wanted to see come back.
His painted slogan "Punish and Enslave" was changed to "Keep Calm and Hail Megatron" - was that even seen in the movie, because I only remember the original slogan on his car. Maybe it was on an early paintjob of the car, and then changed back due to fan feedback (when we saw early concept art/images of his knuckles saying Protect and Serve).
The robot cast featurette only detailed three Decepticons - Megatron, Barricade and Mohawk. With minimal toys, the Movie Decepticons just get so ignored.
The concepts behind the character of Quintessa was based on the original Gen1 Quintessons, as the Transformers creators.
Cybertron was based on the TF3 Cybertron, not the TF1 Cybertron... and they had to add dirt, so that they could film the battle scenes on actual "land" without having to create a huge alien film set.
Michael Bay's mum is featured, and I think was in the horse polo scene.
Watching the behind the scenes videos, it looks like Michael Bay really loves doing these Transformers movies, and being his most (financially) successful movies, I can see him coming back in the future to direct another one... and Hasbro and Paramount will throw lots of money at him to get him back (like the last few times), because the more money his TFs movies make, the more money they make.
They make him rich, and he seems to really love directing them, and getting to do things and go places (have access to places), that he would otherwise wouldn't.
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Originally Posted by DaptoDog
