Transformers (2007): why was the Allspark renamed?

Michael Bay's first Transformers movie, released in 2007 and starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel, launched two successful cinematic universes. It is also packed with nods to the 1980s cartoons, Hasbro toys and pop culture, plus behind the scenes stories that explain why the film looks the way it does. Here is my breakdown of the Easter eggs, hidden details and making of trivia, from the opening shot of the Allspark to the Linkin Park song over the end.

The Allspark was almost called the Matrix of Leadership

The film opens on the Allspark, the movie's main MacGuffin, floating in space. Its design was inspired by the Energon cubes from the Transformers animated series. It wasn't originally meant to be called the Allspark at all. The plan was to call it the Matrix of Leadership, after the powerful Cybertronian artifact from Transformers lore. Because that name sounded too close to The Matrix film franchise, it was changed. The Matrix of Leadership wouldn't enter the Bay universe until the sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Optimus Prime delivers the opening voiceover, voiced by the legend himself, Peter Cullen, who voiced the character in the cartoons for years. One of the producers wanted Liam Neeson to voice Optimus instead, but Michael Bay thought Cullen was too good to be replaced. They did model Optimus Prime's body language on Liam Neeson, which I think is cool. Cullen isn't the only cartoon veteran here either: Starscream performer Charlie Adler previously played the Autobot Silverbolt in the 1980s animation.

Blackout's attack in Qatar and the soldier who moved his wedding

After the title card, Captain Lennox and his team of Army Rangers head back to their forward operating base in Qatar. First Sergeant Donnelly reminisces about the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and a cold beer, while Lennox is looking forward to going home to meet his daughter for the first time. Her name is never revealed in the film, but the Transformers novelization names her Annabelle.

The base is then hit by the Decepticon Blackout, disguised as a Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low III. The characters 4500X on Blackout's helicopter form are numbers Michael Bay would put on his own personal jet, alongside the Autobot symbol. Inside Blackout is a hologram of a mustached soldier, played by real life Air Force Major Brian Reese, who had to reschedule his wedding and honeymoon to be in the movie.

Blackout wasn't always meant to be the attacker. Vortex of the Combaticons, Incinerator and Soundwave were all considered. Soundwave was also apparently considered as the Saleen Mustang cop car that later attacks Sam, but that Decepticon became Barricade. Barricade still carries hints of Soundwave, since out of him pops the Minicon Frenzy, a character usually stored in Soundwave's body as a mini cassette in the cartoon. During the attack you can hear the classic transforming sound effect from the cartoons, which Bay sprinkled through the movie to pay his respects to the originals.

How the US military shaped the look of Transformers

I have not seen a greater piece of American military marketing than Michael Bay's Transformers films. That is mostly because the US military let the production use over 300 airmen and a range of military vehicles, which kept the budget from ballooning out of control. Their only stipulation was a free advance screening once filming was done. The aircraft on show include the MH-53 Pave Low, the C-17 Globemaster III, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, F-117 Nighthawks, the C-130 Hercules, the AC-130 gunship, the MQ-1 Predator, the HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant and Air Force One. F-22s and the CV-22 Osprey appear too.

Another detail I like is that several Transformers have faces roughly modeled on their faction emblems. Blackout, Barricade and Megatron have faces that resemble the Decepticon logo, while Optimus Prime and Bumblebee look a lot like the Autobot logo. Before the film cuts to Sam, Blackout appears to eject an engine from his back. That General Electric T64 turboshaft engine seemingly becomes Scorponok, who buries himself in the sand.

Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky and Bernie Mac's final role

Michael Bay was hesitant to cast Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky because, at 20, he didn't look like a high school junior. LaBeouf convinced him by dressing the part convincingly at his audition. During Sam's class presentation on his great great grandfather Archibald Witwicky, he wears a shirt with a cartoon alien on it, foreshadowing his own dealings with aliens. Archibald was blinded by Megatron in 1897, leaving the coordinates of the Allspark imprinted on his glasses, which Sam is trying to sell on eBay.

Sam and his father Ron then visit Bobby Bolivia's used car lot, where Sam compares one car to the one in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Bobby is played by Bernie Mac in his final film role before he passed away on August 9, 2008. Bumblebee pulls up next to a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the car Bumblebee turns into in the 1980s show and in the 2018 Bumblebee movie starring Hailee Steinfeld. Bay made Bumblebee a Chevy Camaro because he didn't want people calling him Herbie the Love Bug, which I think is a weird worry to have.

Back in Sam's bedroom there is a skull poster for the Misfits song Fiend Club and a poster for a July 19, 2003 Sonic Youth concert. On the old eBay homepage are ads for the Xbox 360 games Perfect Dark and Madden NFL 2006, above an ad for Audrey Hepburn's Moon River from 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Meanwhile, when the surviving Rangers discuss the Decepticon invisible force field, one says that sort of thing belongs in comic books, a slight nod to the Transformers comics Marvel published in the 1980s.

Bumblebee's radio matchmaking with Sam and Mikaela

When Mikaela, played by Megan Fox, brushes Sam off at a party, Bumblebee plays Drive by The Cars from 1984 to encourage Sam to give her a ride home. Over the dash hangs a disco ball next to a Bumblebee style air freshener. It is a goofy gag, but looking at the two together makes me think Bay put them there to point to Bumblebee's love for his lost metal planet of Cybertron, with the disco ball standing in for it.

Bumblebee then fakes a breakdown while playing Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye and I Got You by James Brown, and when Mikaela starts to leave he plays Baby Come Back by Player from 1977 before starting up again. Megan Fox gained 10 pounds of muscle for the physical demands of the role, while LaBeouf gained around 25 pounds of muscle. Before she leaves, Mikaela asks if Sam thinks she's shallow, and he says there's more than meets the eye with her, a nod to the Transformers slogan.

Frenzy on Air Force One and the classified files on screen

On Air Force One, a boom box sits under a man reading USA Today, whose front page reads "US base attack disastrous," referencing Blackout's attack. The boom box becomes Frenzy, who was considered under the names Boombot, Soundwave and Soundbite before the production settled on Frenzy. The president, whose voice is obviously inspired by George W. Bush, asks for Ding Dongs, and a stewardess drops one beside Frenzy in the server room. Frenzy was a puppet built for the film, and he is the only character that mixes CGI with onset puppetry, which I think added a lot to his realism and menace.

As Frenzy hacks the mainframe, classified files flash past. One says the NSA denies the Roswell incident, referencing the 1947 conspiracy theory. Another has Kennedy ordering increased security during the Cuban Missile Crisis, dated October 31, 1955. A file dated February 20, 1963 has Nikita Khrushchev demanding a recount of the US extraterrestrial program, and another says Nixon investigated extraterrestrial technology to supplement the nuclear arsenal, which would explain the Soviet demand. There is a reference to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, proposed in 1983, and a file questioning the Hoover Dam structure, the film's first hint that the dam has housed the Allspark and Megatron since the 1930s.

Frenzy is cut off as the newspaper article about Archibald that Sam showed his class appears, tipping him off to the Witwicky family. When Defense Secretary John Keller orders the president to a bunker, the man to his left is Steven Ford, son of President Gerald Ford, known for playing Andy Richards on The Young and the Restless.

Practical tricks behind the junkyard dogs and Scorponok

Sam follows Bumblebee to a junkyard and is chased by dogs. That was the first scene LaBeouf shot, and one dog kept chasing him even after the director called cut, though nobody was hurt. In Qatar, Scorponok's tail stalking Lennox was another piece of practical puppetry before the CG model attacks. The fear on the soldiers' faces as they flee was real, because Bay detonated a primer cord a few feet away and told the actors to run for their lives.

In the village, Lennox has to provide a credit card to reach the Pentagon. Bay added that after hearing a story from the 1983 invasion of Grenada, where a soldier had to make a long distance call to the Pentagon after losing his comms device, a moment also recreated in 1986's Heartbreak Ridge.

Maggie, Glen and the brain in a jar

Analyst Maggie, played by Rachael Taylor, copies the classified Decepticon signal data and takes it to her hacker friend Glen, played by Anthony Anderson. The role was originally offered to Patton Oswalt, who had another acting job booked. Glen wears a Washington Redskins lanyard and later a Redskins jersey. In his bedroom his cousin dances to Focus by X5 on a Dance Dance Revolution pad, and there is a brain in a jar on top of his computer tower, which I find odd and slightly concerning. Nearby are a deck of cards critiquing Bush's cabinet and the Iraqi Most Wanted deck, with Saddam Hussein as the Ace of Spades.

The dog that Sam's friend Miles is washing during their phone call is Mason, Michael Bay's Mastiff, who died in 2007 and also appeared in Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor.

Barricade's slogan and why Prowl was cut

Barricade's car carries the words "to punish and enslave" along with "Incorporated June 1865" under his Decepticon logo. That is the month and year enslaved people in Texas gained their freedom, with June 19 becoming Juneteenth. To me, that date alongside his motto implies he wants to enslave people even after it was outlawed, a crooked authoritarian figure. Ironically, his symbol is circled by Latin words meaning peace through calm, which is not what Decepticons are about.

Back in 1990, Barricade was a pink and blue Decepticon Micromaster that transformed into a race car. In the original series, the police car Transformer was the Autobot Prowl, but Bay and his team made the police car a villain to subvert expectations, and Prowl was removed from Optimus Prime's team to make room. During the fight, Sam's pants fall off to reveal Transformers underwear, a nod to the 1980s toys, and when Sam kicks Frenzy, he lets out a high pitched Wilhelm Scream.

Bumblebee's new Camaro and the Autobots' arrival

Sam guesses Bumblebee is an advanced robot from Japan, which is partly true since the toys came from the Japanese company Takara Tomy. Bumblebee speaks through his radio, using XM Satellite Radio, the Star Trek line "message from Starfleet," a clip from Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast and John Wayne in El Dorado. When Mikaela mocks the old Camaro, Bumblebee scans a 2006 fifth generation Camaro concept. No such cars could be bought, so the production built one from scratch in 30 days, tearing apart Pontiac GTOs and covering them with molds of General Motors concept designs.

At Griffith Observatory, the kids watch the Autobots land. Jazz crashes in what looks like Dodger Stadium, and Ironhide lands in a family's pool, greeted by a girl holding a My Little Pony toy, another Hasbro property. A kid near Ratchet's landing compares it to 1998's Armageddon. Ironhide asks Sam if he's feeling lucky, a reference to 1971's Dirty Harry, and Bumblebee plays Second to None by Styles of Beyond.

Megatron's jet design and Agent Simmons

Megatron's design departs heavily from Generation 1. Early concept art imagined him closer to the cartoon, turning into a tank instead of a Walther P38 pistol, but the film made him a Cybertronian jet, which is way cooler than both in my opinion. In the novelization, Megatron feeds on the sparks of fallen foes like a vampire, which the film skips due to time constraints.

John Turturro's Agent Simmons is based on Michael Bay himself, according to Turturro, which I find hilarious given how over the top he is. Simmons calls the family Chihuahua a Taco Bell dog. The term Sector 7 first appeared as the first line of dialogue in the 1996 cartoon Beast Wars, referring to a section of a spaceship. When the Autobots magnetically yank the agents' guns away, the actor in the driver's seat genuinely gets hit in the head, since the rubber guns were on bungee cords, something he had warned Bay about. Simmons's undershirt carries a Superman parody crest, a reflection of his hero complex.

The Hoover Dam, Beagle 2 and the Nokia phone

Keller's briefing mentions the Beagle 2 Mars lander, lost in December 2003, months after its June launch, which in the film transmitted 13 seconds of Decepticon activity. In real life, NASA found it in January 2015 with its solar panels not fully opened. Those Mars shots were the first thing Bay shot for the film and appeared in the first teaser. At the Hoover Dam, Simmons calls the Allspark the Crown Jewel, and the Sector 7 logo is a diamond with a cube inside. Brawl is mistakenly called Devastator, a name Bay kept because he thought it sounded more imposing; the real Devastator arrived in 2009's Revenge of the Fallen.

Claw marks on the walls remind Tyrese Gibson's Sergeant Epps of Freddy Krueger, but Glen says they look more like Wolverine because the marks come in threes. An iPhone was meant to transform here, but Steve Jobs didn't like the idea, so the production used a Nokia. In my opinion that is far less realistic, because a Nokia phone is too durable for the Allspark to manipulate. Simmons calls it the Energizer Bunny from hell. The mini Allspark Sam carries out was sold for $20,100 on an online auction in 2007.

Mission City, Jazz's death and the Linkin Park ending

Optimus rolls out as a Peterbilt 379, Ironhide as a 2006 GMC TopKick C4500, Ratchet as a Hummer H2 and Jazz as a 2007 Pontiac Solstice. Bonecrusher tearing a bus in two was done with cables and explosives on a real bus. A dispatcher's line about Darkstar references one of Optimus Prime's ships in the Generation 2 continuity. Mission City was mostly shot in downtown Los Angeles, and the truck Bumblebee lifts outside the Orpheum Theatre is full of Furbies, another Hasbro toy. Jazz's death outside the Tower Theatre was deliberate: as the third most popular Autobot at the time, his death was meant to shake fans and bolster Megatron's menace.

A car Megatron flips carries an Energon license plate. The building's exterior is Michigan Central Station in Detroit, while the roof is the May Company building in Los Angeles. Optimus tells Megatron one shall stand, one shall fall, a line from the 1986 animated movie, and Megatron's death plays a slow version of the transforming sound. Linkin Park's What I've Done closes the film, and it is one of the best song endings to a science fiction movie ever. The band, huge Transformers fans, heard Megan Fox was in the film when she attended one of their concerts, offered their services, and she passed that on to Michael Bay.