How was Soundwave in space in ROTF if it was revealed in DOTM that he had been here for nearly 40 years? Also if he was here for that long why wasn't he helping the Decepticons in the first movie?

 

Bad planning?

 

he probably went to Earth in the 70s in his satellite mode, then went back up to the skies, then went to Earth in 2011 in his satellite mode and scanned the SLS for spying on Sam.

 

This^
Thats what I think As well

 

1. He went back and forth.

2. He got lazy.

 

Also why didn't he ever look for The All Spark or Megatron, they barely found them in 2007 with the help of Blackout, Barricade, and Frenzy.

 

dont think too much lol you can come up with alot of countinity issues. However the pure awesomeness of the movie completely removes the confusion of countinty

 

The IDW Comics explains perfectly what happened

but since its a long story, jsut check soundwave page on tfwiki
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Soundwave_(ROTF)#IDW_Transformers_movie_comics

 

I suspect he went back and forth between the surface and orbit.

As for why he wasn't in the first movie, I'd say it was because he was up in space scanning for Megs and the Allspark while Screamer and company looked around on the surface.

Or he could've been doing some random task Megatron assigned him before he crashed. Megs clearly left Starscream out of the loop while trusting Soundwave - maybe he was off recruiting some of the other Decepticons that show up in ROTF but aren't in TF07. Hiding more soldiers in the Moon or something.

 

Maybe he gave someone else the job like barricade?

 

Creative Retconning.

 

He's busy?

 

not to forget he was on Space travelling in a Ship very SLOW and it took him from 1970s to 1990s to arrive to the nemesis location and it took him from 1990s to 2007 to arrive to mars