The problem with the Movies is they don't ever give time for the characters to get any development but of course drift is gonna get loved by the 10 year olds because he is a buggati......
Has anyone else considered that characters such as Sideswipe may have been too injured to rally to Optimus's call in AOE? They could be in a similar position to Optimus at the start of the movie, where they're stuck in vehicle mode/stasis lock until they're repaired. Of course, Ratchet's dead, so it looks like they'd be spending the rest of their lives as a run-down vehicle.
I am aware of the new movie trilogy and the new upcoming show is not connected, but to explain a little bit more: it's all about selling toys. If Sideswipes character on the show turns out to be a fan favorite, Hasbro will earn alot of money on his toy representations and other kind of merchandise because of the kids, and teenagers. If this happens, then it is possible that Hasbro might consider to bring his character back in the new trilogy, due to the fact that we never saw his death, and if he didn't have an X on his card, if it was ever shown, to earn more money. Whether Ratchet returns or not, i don't remember seeing his spark being crushed, more like Lockdown "collecting" it. If he did, and his spark is in perfect shape, then yes, Ratchet could possibly return. However, don't keep your hopes up.
What if the auto bots were with optimus because it's kinda of hinted that they were all with him in Mexico City.
They said they were all that's left when nobody else responded. Then Brain's showed up alive later on. So obviously they were mistaken. It seemed like Hound, Drift Crosshair's and Bee were the only ones in contact with each other, and they assumed everyone else was dead, but held out hope that Optimus survived. Now does that mean Sideswipe or Dino or the other two Wreckers are gonna return? Not necesserily. But they could, and explain their absence in AoE by saying they were out of contact and couldn't respond.
hound, drift an crosshairs all came after Chicago. Not knowing the place made them the most likely bots to be hounted. However they are all alive an together which makes me think bee took them with him as soon as they reached the earth. None of them knew Brains was alive, nor nothing about ratchets and leadfoot recent deaths. Its quite simple, once OP sent the warning everybody shut down their radios as ratchet was doing. If they were hunted or alive as ratchet 20 minutes ago theres no way to know. I just cant believe that the bots that do not know nothing about the earth managed to stay alive and the veterans died.
Rewatching the film, I'm pretty sure that the cards you see in the initial shot are Bumblebee, Elita One, Ironhide and Wheeljack. You see those same ones in the second shot, when he spreads them along the table, along with some more that I couldn't make out. No sign of the alleged 'no cross Sideswipe card' that I could see...
And to be honest, since Attinger was lying to his superiors about only killing Decepticons, the only Autobot cards with crosses will be the ones who died at or before Chicago, since he's not going to own up to having killed any since. A clean card for, say, Sideswipe wouldn't actually tell us anything about whether he's alive or not.
Attinger was presenting the cards to people unaware that Cemetery Wind was killing Autobots as well as Decepticons, hence his lie about a "handful of Autobots [being] given amnesty". He's not going to show them cards that reveal that he's been offing good guys since Chicago.
That's why the Chief of Staff thought getting Optimus Prime for a photoshoot was feasible, and so on. All Attinger's superiors, and everyone at KSI, thought Cemetery Wind was only going after Decepticons.