Roberto Orci Answers “Transformers” Questions

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen screenwriter Roberto Orci is answering questions over on the forums here. If you’re starved for more giant robot news, here are a few little tidbits:

Shia LaBeouf’s hand injury: “Luckily nothing has to be reshot. Yes, we were on set last week to write it into the movie, not because it’s absolutely necessary, but more because we want to make sure Shia’s hand is protected for the remainder of the shoot…”

“[Transformers] had 3 plot lines — A boy and his car, soldiers behind enemy lines, and defense policy people — all reacting to Transformers in a somewhat multiple point of view disaster movie paradigm and structure. Part two will be a different paradigm. More like parallel stories.”

“The first movie is all about the mystery and reveal of the Transformers as a concept and a species, which means we had to hide them a lot in the first hour. In the second movie, now that everyone believes in the universe, we can jump right into the world of the Transformers.” … “The hardest aspect is that you lose the element of surprise. We got away with a lot in the first movies because for a long time, no one thought it would work, or that it was just a silly cartoon, and simply proving that wrong is all we had to do. The first movie was meant to be somewhat of a mystery. For the sequel, we need an entirely different structure and paradigm for the movie, and we can’t rely on it being the first.”

On Michael Bay’s disinformation claims: “Michael Bay] was so upset by leak that he put out a bit of disinformation, even claiming that we, the writers, had no idea which characters we were writing, which, as I hope is painfully obvious, is absurd on its face.”

It also looks like we can expect the promotional push to start around November, with a teaser trailer before the end of the year. We’ll hope it’s better than the first teaser, where there was a blue sky on Mars for some reason.

Reminisce about the first Transformers and watch some video of it here.