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All this talk about DOTM- and true fans can agree or disagree on how loyal/effective it was to the legacy of Transformers...

The question below in no way ruins the movie for me...but it seems like a pretty big oversight. I am curious to read replies:

HOW does Sentinal Prime have ('earthy') auto parts (windshield, wheels, etc) in the Ark when he had never been to earth before? All the robots came from cybertron and scan earth vehicles to assume their various modes...we see it in part one and even in part 3, right? How did SP acquire his alt mode....without ever having stepped foot on earth?? (if I want to be super picky, and I don't know much about cars, but such a modern vehicle, too, in 1969 when we know he was untouched...)

So I am wondering what people think...

-tfr

Yeah, noticed that also. Wasn't too sure when I saw him, but the colors on him pretty much confirms it. Bots in Cybertronian protoform in the movieverse are always uncolored metal.

Even if he scanned an Earth mode before crash-landing, he was supposed to have arrived in the 1960's. I don't think this particular model of fire truck existed back then.

Of course, if you can deal with "fan-canonization", you can simply pretend that the Ark was still nominally functional, and when OP and gang opened the doors, it automatically scanned an Earth mode for SP or some such. But that wouldn't explain why he's already got the earth-mode kibble when the astronauts entered the Ark.

Thanks for the reply...but I guess we agree there's no reasonable explanation. (when the camera flies into the crash vault during Nixon's speech, it is presumably in the 60s...or at the very least BEFORE OP and co. open the vault, as you said, so that auto-scan explanation doesn't work by any measure.) If anyone wants to try to explain this one, I eagerly await an answer.

tfr

I have another rather simplistic explanation: they just wanted to save money during the post-production by not having to render a cybertronian-mode for Sentinel Prime. As a bonus, they also didn't have to make the scene where he scans his earthly fire truck mode.

Why care about those details ? They don't even expect that the general public will notice that in each movie the cybertronians have a completely different reason to come to Earth. So why bother with 10sec of screen time where Sentinel Prime should be depicted as a pure-metal protoform ?

Another example of cost-savings during post-production: the scene in Africa where Megatron, Starscream & Soundwave meet.
Soundwave is depicted as arobot after the scanning of the Mercedes alternate-mode. Does it make sense ? Of course not: it means soundwave drove all the way from Chicago to Africa for the meeting !

The proper way to depict Soundwave in this scene would be to show him arriving as a Cybertronian jet and have him transformed into a kind of allien humanoid shape (no wheels, no shine white painting). But no, why render another soundwave for just a few seconds of screen time ? It is better to save the money, nobody will notice

If you pay attention, Soundwave had been on earth since at least the early 70's. Him and Laserbeak told Dylan's father to come up with a way to make moon exploration too expensive to continue.

Metsman wrote:If you pay attention, Soundwave had been on earth since at least the early 70's. Him and Laserbeak told Dylan's father to come up with a way to make moon exploration too expensive to continue.

Dear God, it seems like Bay is literally trying to pretend most of ROTF didn't happen. He hasn't been on Earth, he's been in space.

Well, just because he was in space for that movie, doesn't mean he wasn't on earth before that.

It seems like this movie is following G1, just watch this part of the first episode, you'll understand.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPehNbz4FFw

But besides that, here's my theory:
Example: G1 Optimus Prime
Theory: If Optimus Prime scanned an alt. mode of a convertible he would die if he tried to transform. If a Transformer's alt. mode doesn't fit their body type, they aren't capable of becoming that without causing themselves serious harm.

The short and long answer of it is there really isn't an explanation. The producers goofed. But one thing i did notice is that he apperance did slightly change after he aquired his Rosenbauer panther fire engine mode. When he was being revied I noticed that his wheels were just round discks and didn't have any threads on them. This then changed after he aquired an alt mode. He also had the same decals and markings of the firetruck that he didn't have when on the Ark. So while he did change a little, for the most part he was the same as he was on the ark.

There is no explanation. As others have intimated, it's just the studio trying to save some money. I doubt it's a genuine goof, as in they didn't notice the illogic of it, either. I'm guessing it was one of those little details the animators had on their 'go back and change if we've got the time and money left before the whole shebang airs' list, but then they did run out of time and bucks and we wound up with what we got. Chalk it up to the unfortunate realities involved with making expensive, effects-laden movies!

There are still early pics of Sentinel kicking around where his face is silvery-grey and gold and he looks a tad unformed. Would you have been happier if he'd looked like that when first uncovered aboard the Ark?