USA Today Shows Off Combined Prime

In a new article from USA Today, we get the first look at the combined Jetfire, Optimus Prime mode. The result appears to Prime on steroids. The article itself is about Transformers 2 production at Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands as they filmed the desert sequences that are the climax of the film. The long article is worth reading as I believe one parts describes the explosion put Bay in the Guiness World Record book. Snippets below, full article here. I get the feeling that being an observer on a Bay production for a few days would be a whole lot of fun. Thanks to Adrien and Chris for the link.

The filmmaker, then 43, is watching the action unfold on a bank of TV monitors. He's wearing an Autobot ball cap, pulled low to shade his eyes from the sun, and a Decepticon T-shirt, perhaps symbolic of which side of the robot battle is closest to his heart. Duhamel joins Bay to watch the replay. "This really is your sandbox," he tells the director. "And we are kinda like your toys."

Bay gives a smirk, but seems preoccupied by his screens. When the actor leaves, the filmmaker confides, in an uncharacteristically soft voice, a story from when he was a kid. "I made home movies that way," he says, still looking at the replays on the screen. "I'd do little firecrackers on the train set. … I actually set my bedroom on fire once." He smiles and rolls his eyes. "The fire department came. It was a little Super 8 movie where the aliens invaded."

After watching a scene in which Duhamel tries to rescue Fox from her hiding spot beneath a blown-out wall, Bay stops the action and runs out to coach the actor. "Take her hand this time. When you ran the last time, you ran away like a (expletive) girl and left her!" the director says. Duhamel sarcastically thanks Bay for the constructive criticism — in full view of a visiting reporter. Bay says to the journalist, in an even louder voice: "You'll be doing me a (expletive) favor if you print that!" Then laughs. Duhamel just shakes his head.

Mike Wever, the special-effects technician and bomb triggerman, surveys the explosive-planting. "Whatever Bay wants is what we try to give him," says Wever. "Sex is sex, dialogue is dialogue, but what people want is special effects. Bayhem, that's what it's called. That's what I like to call it. Whenever we do a Michael show, it's a new level of Bayhem."