Wow.  Sometimes I can’t believe how absurd my job is.  USA Today recently published a rundown of all the robots in Transformers.  And hey, why the hell not, here it is.

  • Ravage – Cat/dolphin robot, used to spy on the Autobots and then transform into a cassette which played in Soundwave, who transformed into a walkman.  In the new version, he won’t transform into anything.  “In the spirit of ‘more than meets the eye,’ Ravage isn’t just lethal because of his sharp teeth,” says screenwriter Alex Kurtzman. “There’s actually another skill set Ravage has that didn’t exist before, so there’s going to be a surprise for fans.”   And Soundwave is now a space satellite.
  • Jetfire – That’s the geezer robot with the cane.  “He’s old, craggy, forgetful … doesn’t work very well. Can’t transform very well, because he’s very geriatric. They get stuck with him a lot,” Bay says. “He knows the plan of the bad guys, but he forgets all the good parts of the plan.”   Plus he has that creepy “old robot smell.”
  • Sideswipe – Red Lamborghini becomes (surprise) a GM car, a silver Corvette Stingray Concept car, to be precise.
  • Jolt – a foot soldier and (soon-to-be-released) Chevy Volt hybrid.
  • Acree – a hot-pink motorcycle to be driven by Megan Fox.  “Kurtzman and  Orci say she was in an early draft of the first movie. “But we felt we needed to win the audience over before asking for that suspension of disbelief: a feminine alien robot,” Kurtzman says.”  Yeah, good call.

DECEPTICONS

  • The Fallen – “Sort of the Transformers’ version of Lucifer. He’s one of the original robot aliens, and his defiance and arrogance led to his banishment into another dimension.”  Dude.  Did Kirk Cameron write this?
  • The Doctor – “a spider-like droid that transforms into various implements of torture and has a not-so-nice encounter with star Shia LaBeouf.”
  • The Constructicons – “Scavenger, Scrapper, Hightower, Longhaul, Rampage, Overload and Mixmaster — transform into construction machinery, but also link up with one another to form one gigantic robot stomper named Devastator.”

“He’s made of vehicles designed to build, and he turns into is someone who loves to destroy,” Orci says. “He is an agent of absolute chaos.”

Yes, what I love most about giant robot movies isn’t the smashing and the explosions but the subtlety, the ironic paradoxes.  Devastator lives to disrupt, like a robot Heath Ledger.  I smell Oscar.  …No wait, that’s gasoline.  Oh my God, Michael Bay’s in my house!

[picture source = TotalFilm]