Nothing.
Hasbro pointed out the issue before the film was released.The writers pointed out the issue before the film was released.
But since Michael actually reused the name Devastator(which by your own words is able to veto this.) ....wait for it...he concedes that intent as well. This is same continuity , it's not Megatron in G1, and Megatron 2 in beast wars...so they can't both be Devastator.
I say by them ignoring the problem left us with 2 different characters with the same name.They had the chance to retcon it and refused to do so.
When did they have chance to retcon it? They hadn't made the second movie yet, and had no idea what was going be in it.(or that there was going be sequel for sure, as it wasn't announced till a couple months after the first movie was out of theathers I believe.) In order for a retcon to happen something new has to be made. Given Brawl was dead, there was no need to rename him on screen. So they needed to rename a dead character for you to acknowledge the error....that would noly made it more confusing than just ignoring the throw away line in the first film.
This likely reason they didn't have a roll call in second film for the Cons...people can't mess up names of unnanmed minions heh. The majority of the Decepticons names were never mentioned during the film...Does that somehow mean they don't have names? I mean that's what Bay gave us. Is that how silly yuo want to get with this?
I believe what was given to us on film.
No, you just refuse to acknowledge contuity errors.
Take Xmen series, their contuity is all sorts of jacked up. The only explanion that makes a lick of sense is X3 and Wolverine can not have happened for First Class to have taken place.
If I go with this well the movie says so, and people can't change their minds or make mistakes stance you are there's two characters named Emma frost. Two different mutant experts named Hank Mccoy. Professor X regained use of his legs after he was shot, and somehow lost the ability to walk again after recruiting Cyclops and Jean. (and made amends briefly with Magneto to recruit Jean at the beginning of X3.)
So no this Movie is the highest canon, and errors can not be made is pure slag. If the powers that be, Hasbro the highest authority on Transformers say in the end it's an error, it's an error. The fact Bay himself allows the name to be reuse only reinforces this. (Though I don't think you'll ever hear him say I goofed up wasting the potential name on Brawl.This the closest you'd get to him admitting he was wrong..my father was same way.)
There's plenty of other errors with in the films Bay made, so Game Set and Match. Is really that hard to just say Brawl was mistakenly named in the first film ?