^This. Also, he has no organic pilot, so he doesn't have to worry about maintaining pressure/atmospheric conditions in the cockpit...
It seemed that only his engines really changed and that would be for the extra power needed to get away from Earth's gravity. Although even calling home for re-enforcements does bring up that the Transformers have to have some form of faster than light travel if more Autobots and Decepticons are going to arrive on Earth in the time frame set for the movie. Even at light the next closest star of Alpha Centauri is over 4 years away. Also the problem of if the call was at light speed then that's about nine years in total from call to arrival at light speed. If you had to go out to the next closest star of Barnard's Star then that's almost 6 light years out. Okay now that I got that bit of nerd out of me, yes I think perhaps making the changes to jet mode to get off Earth might be an excellent excuse for the design team to make changes on Starscream's robot mode. Then it looks like there are going to be some changes to Bumblebee's head so maybe all the production team really needs is just some desire to change things on the robot modes.
bobby C explained about the misconception of space being extremely cold in the constructicon toy thread: (Post no. 229, since the forum software may not redirect you properly).
As far as I am aware, they don't need to go find back up. Bumblebee calls reinforcements with a signal, and Optimus prime does the same at the end of the movie. Also, as far as I can remember, in the comics, Starscream gas The Nemesis parked on Mars.
Are you suggesting that the original, massive, Allspark had the approximate weight of a basketball/brick? The Allspark is magic. You can apply pseudo-science to the actual transformers if you wish, but trying to apply it to a mystical/magical object is just silly and will get you nowhere.
Hmmm, for some reason, the US government took it upon themselves to build the ENTIRE Hoover Dam around it rather than move it to a location of their choosing. If it was as light as a basketball as was witnessed when Sam carried it around, then they could at least have moved it somewhat to another room or what not. But it appeared to be lodged in the ground to where it crash landed. I think neither side has the actual mass/volume/density measurements for this object. But I do think the Allspark is magic. And I also think the audience in general has a very large imaginatino and are willing to suspend reality for such things like crash landing through earth's atmosphere and being able to survive reentry, an individual TF jumping into space and travelling basically at the speed of light over vast distances in less than a year, etc. Thus, I don't think one can argue FOR magic/suspension of reality in one instance and not in another. Who here is to say that someone is ok with the Allspark creating little destructive monsters out of cellphones capable of launching mini rockets and yet not ok with mass changing. Its COMPLETELY subjective and subjects everyone else to their point of view. I think the bigger question is: when did TFs get the power to use warp drive? I think its obvious that Starscream must have the power to use warp drive if he left earth, jumped into space, and then travelled all the way to Cybertron, corraled up more Decepticons, and then came all the way back to earth in something like 3 or 4 years - that being the amount of time passed since Sam finished HS and started college as a freshman. If they don't have warp drive, then there must be something like a "space bridge" located near Earth or peppered throughout the galaxy.
Well, technically he just LOOKS like an F-22, he can go in space as long as he's using his propulsion-engine things. I wonder if he could fly out there in bot mode, but I guess without the protection of his sealed vehicle mode and it's aerodynamics (to break the atmosphere) it wouldn't be as easy. Also, they used magic-powered super-slingshots and fantastiham-radios on Cybertron. Take THAT, lightspeed. That and a movie taking place over nine years condensed to 2 hours would be dumb.
there is a theory within quantum physics that when a large object is condensed down into a smaller, superdense form that mass can be expelled. atoms are made up of 99% blank space. until we get some kind of physics of transformers though the point does become moot. good lord we agree on something. i sometimes wonder if this kind of thing is put into fiction just to cause conflict between groups though, the creators secretly getting a kick out of watching everyone squirming and shouting NO U in the comics, this is explained away by saying that the decepticions from the first movie had crash landed a ship on mars(and imply the autobots had done something similar somewhere else). there is also some use of spacebridge technology but it's not really elaborated upon to any real extent. apparently(according to alliance issue 2) the new decepticon troops are coming from soundwave's crew to reinforce starscream. but that leaves open the possibility of some kind of warp drive
It is rather odd that realism is argued until a point where there can be no realism pops up then that point of unreality has to be okay but all the other stuff must totally be founded on realism. Which realism is an insane argument anyway since since it's a highly evolved race of alien robots that turn into cars. The way the Transformers fight out the fan war sometimes is like if a Lord of the Rings fans were saying the Ents were founded in realism but the Belrog was just over the top unbelievable. It's just crazy to say I can follow that a robot from the planet Cybertron followed a cube to Earth but the robot got frozen and inscribed instructions on how to find the cube on a guy's glass and decades later his minions show up to find the cube, but if there is something like a mass shifting robots then I'm going to walk out because the film is not believable any more.
LotR had some unbelievable stuff, but they didn't say "Oh, this stuff is impossible, so let's just have the Hobbits fly to Mordor using their magic jetpacks".
