I was doing an in-depth look at the Attack of the Autobot Shuttle in the movie a few years ago and thought I might have been on to something. In the movie, if you are the looking out the shuttle window, the Autobots are established to be seated Brawn, Ironhide, Prowl, and Ratchet from left to right.. As they are gunned down, they fall (more or less) close to their respective seats. A few moments later as the Decepticons fly over to take their controls, we see the dead or almost dead Autobots on the floor. They are all positioned differently from when they fell, and their respective positioning has changed, AND Ironhide would be on Megatron's left as opposed to his right when does his heroic nonsense. So, you know, that's annoying but not at all unheard of in terms of continuity errors.

Then as I was taking a deeper look at that scene, I noticed that Ironhide had Ratchet's waist. Ironhide should have his diamond shape their as opposed to Ratchet's squarish rectangle. At the time, I was looking at a low definition version and couldn't make out any further details, so I got it in my head that maybe it was supposed to be Ratchet on the left and the accidentally switched colors. Then I got it into my head that maybe not only that, but the whole scene was somehow flipped. That would put all the Autobots pretty close to the order in which they should be!

But how do you tell if a scene is horizontally flipped or not? Almost all Transformers are horizontally symmetrical so it would be impossible to tell.. Thankfully Soundwave was in this scene! And after pausing and freeze framing my low res copy a thousand times - it turns out Soundwave's cannon is correctly on his right shoulder. So that was the end of my theory.

Fast forward a few years and I've been following Artist Stan on youtube. He is doing some AWESOME work actually animating the deleted scene from the movie when Ultra Magnus and company take down Devestator. As he was doing a livestream a few days ago he casually mentioned some older versions of some storyboards that I was completely unfamiliar with and asked about. Well, he did me one better and strung together the old ones into the older version of the scene! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_URAAvdPDtg

Well, what's the first thing you notice? Everything is flipped horizontally! If you compare these storyboards to the ones over at tfraw, you can see that they were actually re-drawn and flipped. There are even some vestigial references to the flip by way of character names or sequential numbers still being backwards!

Ok, so that's interesting. The first time it gets a bit more interesting is for the "Die Autobots!" board, someone was paying attention and switched Megatron's fusion cannon. At this point, they might have realized the problem with this, so the next screen of Megatron transforming is copied directly between the storyboards. Notably, Starscream wields Megatron right-handed.

Then the final storyboards flip back again. There's a shot of Brawn jumping towards the Decepticons which was slightly reworked to just him charging (which seems more in line with the character) and then Starscream (right-handed) blows him in half while Startscream (left-handed) shoots him in the shoulder. The movie itself would make it seem like Starscream would be left handed the whole time. In the scene when Prowl fires past Starscream towards Scavenger, the first set has Megatron correctly in Starscream's right hand. The second set omits Megatron from Starscream's "left" hand (check out the uncorrected Soundwave), and the final movie cuts Megatron out of the frame entirely!

A similar thing happens a moment later, as Ironhide and Ratchet open fire, in both storyboards, it's definitely Starscream taking cover, and he's still got Megatron. In the movie, Megatron is gone - leading me to always wonder if that was a miscolored Thundercracker or Skywarp. Check this out - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ztsXZEKNes

This is kind of important, since it still *almost* works. In the movie, Starscream and the Constructicons jump from basically taking cover to the middle of the bridge practically shot after shot. The first storyboards have a moment where the Constructicons basically sneak attack and Starscream uses their cover fire to advance to the middle. I really like it! And that makes it almost doable to headcannon the other Starscream as Thundercracker or Skywarp.

Everything is still flipped as Ironhide and Ratchet *explode*. I think one of the scripts had them melt together at one point - interesting how this seemed to be re-worked a few times. In the final movie, it bugs me that Scavenger is missing from the wide shot of the Constructicons and Starscream. Turns out he was barely in the first storyboard, then got lost before the second and subsequently, the movie. Also note about this scene that although it's still flipped, Megatron is corrected while Long Haul is not in the second storyboard - but Long Haul is corrected in the final movie (Hook is correct too). And during the flip Bonecrusher became Bombcrusher!

In the movie, we then tighten in on Megatron ("This was almost...") and lose the Decepticons flying in behind him. The scene of the Decepticons taking over the controls is a bit reworked. The original storyboard shows Thundercracker, Dirge, Ramjet, Skywarp, Kickback, Bombshell, Shrapnel, and Thrust (the only spot I see him in this whole sequence!) taking controls as Megatron stands in the foreground. I'm not sure what the O.L. (multiplane) direction means. The second storyboard loses a *lot* of detail and seemingly gets rid of Megatron, Skywarp, and Shrapnel, does something weird with Kickback, and labels Bombshell as Shrapnel. Interesting how it says to "pan" towards Kickback, Thrust, and Shrapnel - like the scene was supposed to start on the right side then pan left across the bridge. Also check out the "word bubbles" around the characters names - I don't see those anywhere else. Also notice , the whole bridge "looks" different in this shot from the finished movie (seats, consoles, etc). Speaking of which, practically all the Decepticons coming in are *also* different.

In the first storyboards, besides Soundwave flying into the shuttle from outside, I can't make out him taking over the seat next to Skywarp where we find him in the "in their own shuttle" scene. Also in this storyboard we see Thundercracker sitting behind Skywarp, but that should probably be Thrust.. I only bring this up because the continuity in this first set is *perfect*.

In the movie, Kickback is seated in a chair - but I'm not sure if it's Brawn's or not. Brawn ran past an empty chair during his charge, and I think it's that one. That would mean that Brawn's chair should really have Thrust (by continuity) or Thundercracker (per the storyboard) - either way in the movie that's supposedly behind Skywarp. And the conehead behind Soundwave has disappeared.

In the first storyboards, Megatron walks past Ratchet's torso - and that might be the most gruesome visual thing in either the storyboards or final movie? Anyway, Ratchet is still placed correctly per that set. It then pans up and is done. Reworked in the next set of storyboards, it's Ironhide in the foreground and (presumably) Ratchet's hand in the background. So in *this* set of storyboards, Ironhide and Ratchet have switched positions since they fell, and this carries over to the movie itself.

In the final movie, the pan up to Megatron as he blasts Ironhide isn't drawn exactly like the second set of storyboards, but actually looks heavily inspired from the non-firing pose from the *first* storyboards. Whether this means the animators had access to both to draw inspiration from or just a coincidence, I'm not sure.

Here's something else! In the first set, the Autobots are seated Ratchet, Ironhide, Prowl, and Brawn. In the second set, the Autobots are flipped so they are seated Brawn, Prowl, Ironhide, and Ratchet. In the movie proper, it's basically the same as the second set except now Ironhide and Prowl have switched! Sequence 5, Page 7 seems like it should be the same shot as when Ironhide and Prowl first notice something is wrong and look back but obviously they've switched. Also Brawn is conveniently cut out of the shot (maybe they were getting confused!) I suspect that when this scene was flipped, someone realized that now it didn't match the scene from earlier ("Will do, Spike."), and reworked the reworked scene.

Coming full circle and back to the very first question I had about the dead Autobots positioning versus where they should have fallen. Now that we know the entire scene was flipped, and we also know that there was a conscious effort to "fix" any problems after the flip, and the final movie *might* have taken some inspiration from the first set of storyboards - can we make sense of the dead Autobots positioning?

No...not really. If you switch the colors on Ironhide and Ratchet, and then flip *just* the Autobots, then they are more or less in the right position. Problem is, besides the waist, every other details is correct on Ironhide and Ratchet (when I look at it in higher quality). Also it would still put Ironhide on the wrong side of Megatron. Also while Ironhide's actual posture actually lines up decent with him as Megatron walks by, the others aren't even close to how they should look. Any way I try to spin it to get something to line up, something else falls apart. So while my original theory might have been neat - it doesn't even seem to have any connection to the new knowledge that the entire scene was flipped - a very weird coincidence?

On Monday, August 22, 2022 at 5:15:48 AM UTC-6, brianj...@gmail.com wrote:
> Well, what's the first thing you notice? Everything is flipped horizontally! If you compare these storyboards to the ones over at tfraw, you can see that they were actually re-drawn and flipped.

I have never really paid close attention to where characters are standing or whether their positions change. I have a real blind spot for that sort of thing.

However, I wonder if somebody flipped the scene because of visual storytelling traditions. Ever since the days of stage play, long predating television and film, the heroes would progress from left to right. The same tradition carried into filmmaking. Pretty much any time the good guys are on screen and going somewhere, they are moving towards the right. Going right feels like progress; going left feels like they're backtracking or running away from something. (Look for this the next time you watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.)

It's something Nelson Shin would have known about as a film director, but perhaps the storyboard artists didn't at first. A mirror-image version of the attack on the shuttle would make it seem like the Autobots had already been forced into a retreat before the Decepticons even arrived on the scene. Flipping it was definitely a good move. It reads more correctly from a visual perspective.

Zob ("Autobots, retreeeeeeat!")