list of things ive observed after watching tfone 2.5 times (the 0.5 was because i was speeding through looking for image proofs etc)
- starting with something funny: B's cogless form has an energon compartment.
assuming that this is standard for all cogless models, it makes it especially hilarious to think that OP during the intro chase sequence either didn't think of storing his energon, or that he's just hungy enough and he's snacking as he runs
2. cameo guesswork (excluding jazz, since he was the only one that got formally mentioned and any screentime outside of main cast). has varying confidence/accuracy levels. here we go.
moonracer, prowl, perceptor (or sideswipe), ironhide, wheeljack, hound (if it is hound, at a later scene a mech of a similar frametype had a line in a fem-sounding voice), sunstreaker, arcee, red alert, and chromia (caught only because the announcer said so lmao. im more used to her darker blue paintjob like in idw and cyberverse). i think i also saw a helm that looked like drift (not deadlock, drift) but i can't really confirm.
3. bots that appeared on the iacon 5000 leaderboards but to my knowledge no screentime otherwise (can also be seen as a list of bots that are cogged and will later join the autobots, assuming the timeline will follow traditional bot/con division):
silverbolt, deadend, slingshot, cliffjumper, motormouth; powerglide, jetstorm, blurr (of course. this is his natural habitat after all); swindle and tailgate.
admittedly i found the inclusion of swindle so so funny because like?? dude i thought you'd be running the betting rings rn lol.
4. sentinel's characterization (outside of g1, i watched reruns as a kid but i don't remember them anymore) has always been either someone grossly incompetent or a menacing/suppressive force on cybertron. i thought it was interesting that they made him devious and actually kind of cunning this time around.
anyway. i also thought his paintjob was based off of tfa, but no his g1 counterpart laid the groundwork there.
they did away with the cheeto orange (goodbye cheeto orange) but the gold is striking. really gives him that image of glamor and opulence.
telesync kinda fucked up the colors but: elita's optics have a greenish hue to them, more aquamarine/cyan than the regular autobot blues that B and OP have. D's is, of course, yellow.
verging into speculation territory, i wonder if there's a reason why they gave D distinctly hexagonal optics? the yellow is pretty obvious, its easier to transition from yellow to red than blue to red. but the hexagons are very eye catching (pun intended), given how they spin around. it's not exactly something people would miss. tune in later for my Outlier/Point-One Percenter D theory
6. sentinel's guards (excluding airachnid) are kinda weird.
theyre very homogenous in shape, no individual characteristics, not even a little kibble to separate them from one another. and when they speak its very stiff, almost droning. its most certainly not an animating/funding/studio issue, given that almost all other cybertronians (even in the background) have been personalized one way or another.
so: possibly cold-constructed mechs, mass produced and onlined for the singular task of serving sentinel. think of the eradicons/vehicons from tfp, the shapes are certainly similar enough.
7. in the cave scene after the sentinel/quintesson reveal, D stomps on something, breaking it.
that's his worker's tag. all the miners have them. pictured: D's, OP's, and jazz's. elita and B all have their own tags too.
what i found most interesting though, that directly after the sentinel surface encounter, D crushes his (as said before), B and elita remove theirs (it left a faint indent on B, which begs the question how old he actually is and how long has he been working, exactly?), but OP keeps his tag on.
(continuing in a rb, ive hit image limit lmao)
the continuation, as promised! this one won't take half as long, i don't think?
8. starting again with not an observation but an appreciation of alpha trion.
personally, i found making alpha trion part of the OG 13 and built like a frontliner to be very Huh. but he still plays his role as a sort of mentor and he has an objectively very cool design here. reminds me of risk of rain's acrid visually.
9. ooooh, high guard.
harder to pinpoint, given the colored lighting and the fact that im not that up on seekers/flightframes in general, but: coneheads (dirge, thrust, ramjet) are definitely there, slipstream and red wing also makes appearances.
and skywarp??
going into speculation/headcanon territory: sentinel's insult towards the high guard are actually two fold. the first is that, obviously, having witnessed his betrayal, they're likely to be labelled as traitors should they return to cybertronian society, sentinel twisting the narrative in his favor. they can't go home.
second, the high guard seems to consist almost exclusively of seekers and other flightframes. my assumption is that in the time of the 13 primes, the function of the high guard was to patrol cybertronian airspace, as well as to serve as defense against quintesson aerial attacks. after iacon (and perhaps most other cities?) were moved underground and the surface of the world was razed down, the high guard was essentially left purposeless. even if they didn't witness sentinel's betrayal, they would still be rendered a defunct group: with nothing aboveground and the entrances/exits to iacon closely monitored, there's no use for them anymore. no place in society.
10. ok back to more lighthearted stuff. this one is less observation and more straight up fawning. soundwave pretty,,,
anyway, that aside, he doesn't seem to have his cassettes here. i did find his "high guards: eject" line really funny though.
11. the iconic jump!
12. the guard that broke their hand on B's new facemask
13. probably last observation for now. i loved how they played around with optic intensity, particularly in the last scenes.
his eyes are literally burning with rage.
and of course, as have been pointed out before, dimming in shock/grief/betrayal