This rumor comes from a car site, not a movie site, so cover it with grains of salt before you baster it up your pee hole.  But… could the breakdancing, gold-toothed, illiterate, minstrel bots from Transformers 2 be back???  Michael Bay had said a few weeks ago that they wouldn’t, but Michael Bay is also tricky, a self-described MASTER OF DISINFORMATION (*tears Lone Ranger mask off of pet cheetah*).  Muhahaha!

Here’s what sparked the talk, from LeftLaneNews‘ spy account of the Transformers 3 set:

Sporting “Autobot” center caps on the wheels, these two vehicles were captured doing some pre-production work before principal filming starts in a few weeks. We think you are looking at Skidz (green) and Mudflap (orange).
Skidz is looking much sportier than in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, with new front and rear fascias, larger fenders, sportier wheels and a big wing. Mudflap was previously based on the Chevy Traxx concept, but for this installment, it appears both cars will be built off the Chevy Spark.

Hmm, I don’t know, between the spoiler and the ground effects, that car looks more Asian to me.  Not to mention the slanted headlights.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought back the minstrel bots after all.  GM has cars to sell.  Of course they don’t want the bad publicity.  What they should do is bring them back, but make it clear that they’re committed to a much more dignified portrayal of robot cars based on black people.

SKIDS enters drawing room, smoking pipe.

SKIDS
Why Mudflap, whatever is that you’re reading?

MUDFLAP
[seated at desk, looks up from book to regard SKIDS over the top of his reading glasses] Why it’s Jame Joyce, my dear brother.  Ulysses.  Please tell me you’re familiar.

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Michael Bay has confirmed on his official website that the racial caricature bots, Mudflap and Skids, those lovable, breakdancing, gold-toothed illiterates, would not be back for Transformers 3.  In light of there being a Transformers 3, that’s sort of like “a super volcano will destroy the Earth in 30 seconds, but I gave you free extra cheese on your nachos” on the good-news-to-bad-news scale.  If you’ll remember, inseparable screenwriting tickle-fight partners Kurtzman and Orci basically blamed Bay for the bots, and Bay defended them as “good clean fun.”  This week Bay said they were out of “T3″ without comment:

“The Twins are not back in T3.”

I’m a little conflicted on this topic. While there’s nothing more fun than piling on to Michael Bay for comedic purposes, were his minstrel bots actually racist? Most of the people who’ve written about it seem to agree with /Film:

I still find it difficult to believe that the studio and its automotive corporate partner Chevrolet didn’t red-flag these two characters before they got out of the animatic stage. To me, they scream racist caricature, and not in any vaguely defensible way. There’s no commentary being made through them. They weren’t funny, entertaining, or otherwise worth keeping around. I’m no fan of the second film by any stretch, but in a movie that has a great many problems, Skids and Mudflap stand out as outrageously pointless ideas.

Me, I don’t think they were “racist” necessarily.  They were about as idiotic as everything else in Transformers 2, such as Shia LaBeouf dying and going to robot heaven, or the idea that robots can sexually reproduce.  Asking Michael Bay to think about the historical implications of his characters would be like trying to teach a cheetah to throw hand grenades, which Bay has attempted unsuccessfully for more than a decade.  Michael Bay, like Jeff Dunham, is not a racist, he’s just kind of a moron. Look at the twins through Michael Bay’s eyes, ie, completely divorced from context and without any purpose or agenda that you thought about for more than five seconds: what are they?  Breakdancing, gold-toothed, illiterate robots.  If you’ve never read a book, that doesn’t remind you of a minstrel show.  I’ve seen plenty of breakdancing, gold-toothed, illiterate white people too, and they’re usually Michael Bay fans.

Poor Michael Bay.  You use a couple jive-talking, gold-tooth wearing, breakdancing illiterate robots as comic relief and suddenly everyone’s calling you racist.  Maybe it’s you who’s racist.  Racist against awesome stuff.

Director Michael Bay insists that the bumbling ‘bots are just good clean fun.  “We’re just putting more personality in,” Bay said. “I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. [Oh right, I forgot] These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”

TV actor Reno Wilson, who is black, voices Mudflap. Tom Kenny, the white actor behind SpongeBob SquarePants, voices Skids.  Bay said the twins’ parts “were kind of written but not really written, so the voice actors is when we started to really kind of come up with their characters.”

Script excerpt: “Optimus Prime walks up to [HILARIOUS RACIAL STEREOTYPE TK.]. OPTIMUS: ‘Hey you worthless [HILARIOUS ETHNIC SLUR TK.]s, why don’t you get off your asses and get a job instead of blowing all your robot welfare money on [HILARIOUS ETHNIC FOOD TK.]?’ Hold for laughter.”

“I purely did it for kids,” the director said. “Young kids love these robots, because it makes it more accessible to them.”

Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman said they followed Bay’s lead in creating the twins. Still, the characters serve no real purpose in the story, and when the action gets serious, they disappear entirely. [Yahoo]

Orci and Kurtzman added that they weren’t able to squeeze in a few of Bay’s other ideas, like Squint, a “math bot” who’s bad at driving, or Grease Spot, an Autobot who can transform into a Puerto Rican flag and spends all day on his stoop “being loud.”   And then there was Tiger, Bay’s beloved but ultimately abandoned idea for a tiger who can transform into “a bigger tiger.”

In the first Transformers, Jazz was a jive-talking, breakdancing robot and the first Autobot to die. Luckily, the sequel promises even more urban flavor.

There are two robots in the film called Mudflap and Skids, and despite being red and green, respectively, they are voiced in a way that clearly designates them to be the “black” robots. Also, Skids has a gold front tooth (no, I’m serious) and both cannot read.

Oh sure, you put a grill on a white transformer and it’s fine, but you put one on a black robot, and then imply that he’s illiterate and make him breakdance and suddenly it’s racist.  Maybe you’re the racist, ever thought of that?

Shia LaBeouf’s college dorm room is outfitted with a gigantic poster of Bay’s own Bad Boys 2. Just in case you miss it the first time it comes up, it receives its own loving close-up when Shia begins writing an equation on it later in the film.

See?  Bad Boys 2.  Michael Bay movie.  Starring black people.  Clearly he’s proud of it.  Boom.

One hot chick is revealed to be a Transformer, and naturally, we discover this when a mechanical tail comes out the back of her thin blue panties. [Movieline]

Look, you sold, me, okay?  I’ll see the movie.  If my 13-year-old dick had an id, and was racist, it’d be named Michael Bay. In related news, Mudflap and Skids would be good nicknames for your sisters.