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In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, at the beginning, once the Decepticons find where Megatron lies, they go diving down into the ocean about 40 minutes into the the movie:

screenshot from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The overseen ship/sonar calls out: "5 unidentified objects...":

script showing "five contacts at 5,000 feet"

4 large robots, and the jaguar-like robot appear:

screenshot from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

While down at the bottom, out of the jaguar-like robot comes small MedicBot. They disassemble the small robot, as they need spare parts to repair Megatron.

However, once they all submerge, the ship calls: "6 objects are coming..."

script showing "six contacts"

What am I missing?

Is this a plot error? Editing mistake?

  • If they took the parts with them that would still NOT show as another object. As each robot carries some parts with them, their sonar signal might only be larger.

  • If they count the tiny MedicBot, why does the radar screen have one marked as "New Hostile?"

screenshot from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

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  • 1
    I recall the scene, but I'm not sure about the numbers. How many of them dive down? Five including the small one? Although I could think of them taking the other parts with them, just in case they need some more parts? Or did they leave the "remains" down there?
    – Mario
    Nov 17, 2013 at 10:42

1 Answer 1

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This might indeed be some editing mistake or something changed later on to make the whole thing a bit more cruel and less like "they let him die, but we could help him".

Re-watched that part of the movie and there's one short screen obviously showing the submarine's radar or sonar or whatever (assuming that due to the short cut before showing the submarine's back):

5 targets visible on a screen

As you can see there are exact five targets. Two of them almost overlap, so look at the circles on the top/surface. The contact on the left might be the freighter we saw earlier, considering it's not underwater and not marked in red.

Only possibility I could think of would be the small "doc bot" counting as another signature, but that wouldn't make any sense considering the targets are obviously counted in ascending order. Megatron obviously received designation "C-6", but why are "C-1" through "C-5" still with him? Maybe they didn't kill the Construction(?) after all? But where did they get the spark from then? Or did they pull him on some kind of cable? But why does he still show up, considering Megatron obviously didn't show up before (otherwise he'd have a known signature I assume).


Edit: The whole "opening" of that sequence includes quite a few mistakes. After all, there should be five Constructions (and that's the thing that disturbed me the most when first thinking about the whole sequence):

  • First scene: There are four Decepticons visible: wheel loader, cement truck, caterpillar, and some green truck.

    4 Decepticons visible

  • There comes the cat-like/panther robot. Especially note his path, he's going to hit the front of the caterpillar. Also remember the position of the vehicles relative to each other.

    Moments before the impact

  • The next scene shows the actual impact. The mixer truck is further back and the wheel loader is now a bagger(!?).

    Actual impact

  • So initially there are five Constructions (or another goof/mistake) and the panther? But wouldn't that make six contacts to start with? And we only see four jumping into the water? It's easy to miss, but the panther jumps first:

    Panther jumping first

  • The next jumping are (some random guessing included): bagger, mixer, caterpillar, truck

Edit:

According to IMDB there is one more error in these scenes:

When Megatron is coming up, the Captain calls for hard left rudder, and the sub's rudder turns right.

But they've got an explanation for the 5/6/5 discrepancy:

When the Decepticons go under water to revive Megatron, the Navy states that 5 "objects" went under water. If one of the Decepticons was killed to bring Megatron back to life, 6 "objects" could not have come out of the water: Ravage spits out the Doctor Robot (5+1=6), one gets stripped into parts (6-1=5), Megatron gets reactivated (5+1=6), and Ravage swallows the Doctor to head back to the surface (6-1=5).

This just doesn't explain Megatron having a "new" designation, while one of the others doesn't.

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  • I'm no expert on sonar, however... the Decepticon that was stripped for parts even though he may have died (this was not confirmed on screen although implied..), the sonar would still report back an object, which would still make the count 5, when Megatron is reactivated it would appear as a blimp on the sonar radar thus making him the new designation number 6. Thats my 2 cents anyways. Also I doubt sonar could detect the doctor Decepticon, he was too small imo.
    – Jared
    Jul 31, 2014 at 0:15
  • That's up for speculation. If they left him on the ground, he most likely wouldn't appear on the sonar anymore and/or filtered out as noise caused by the ground. In a similar way, if anyone of the others carry him, his reflection would be merged with one of the other contacts.
    – Mario
    Jul 31, 2014 at 7:07

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