Josh Duhamel Flew An Actual Fighter Jet To Prepare For Transformers

Directing the "Transformers" movies, Michael Bay was uncomfortably out of his element with a teenager and robots as his protagonists. There's a reason the films lop contempt on the contemptible Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and never approach the Transformers themselves as characters with humanity (for lack of a better word). 

The characters who are right in Bay's wheelhouse are the soldiers, particularly Colonel William Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sergeant Robert Epps (Tyrese Gibson). In the original 2007 "Transformers" film, they're deployed in Qatar when their base is attacked and destroyed by the Decepticon Blackout. They wind up drawn into the eons-long robot war and return for most of the sequels as the Autobots' comrades in arms (Lennox is only a no-show in the fourth film, "Transformers: Age of Extinction").

Bay has said he chose Duhamel for Lennox due to his All-American, "no BS" presence. However, despite looking the part of a soldier, Duhamel isn't an action star by trade — he got his start as a model before a gig on the soap opera "All My Children." Even now, "Transformers" remains an aberration on his mostly romcom-filled resume. It's no surprise then that to prep him for playing a career soldier, he made a tour in boot camp — just not ground-based boot camp.

In the behind-the-scenes feature, "The Making of Transformers," Duhamel reveals that one Colonel Moore offered him a chance to take a ride in a jet. Specifically, a T-38 Talon — a two-seat jet, meaning that Duhamel wouldn't be flying solo. Duhamel, who called the flight "one of the most exciting things I've ever done," described a fairly intense prep process.

"I had to go through about four or five hours of training and, you know, they basically tell you, 'Okay, this is what's going to happen if you have to eject from the seats.' I had to change shorts after I left that training... And he let me actually fly it a bit, he's like, 'Okay, turn it ten degrees and we'll go down to 1500 feet.' I didn't throw up once."

Duhamel might have had the time of his life in the air, but it turned out to be training unnecessary for the movie. Throughout "Transformers," Lennox never flies a jet — after all, he's an Army Ranger, not an Air Force or Navy pilot. However, his pilot ejection training does reflect a gag in the sequel "Revenge of the Fallen."

During that film, National Security Advisor Theodore Galloway (John Benjamin Hickey) is a thorn in Lennox's side — bureaucrats mucking things up for our boys in green is another Bay trademark. To get rid of him, Lennox fakes a crash landing and then gives the panicked Galloway a crash course in parachutes. After urging Galloway to "pull [the chord] really hard" while standing near the open exit ramp, Lennox explains, "Not now, we're on the plane, you dumbass!" Cue Galloway landing safely in the middle of Giza while the soldiers go into battle.

While Lennox doesn't fly a jet himself in "Transformers," a squadron of them does come to his aid during the final battle, distracting Blackout while the Colonel lands a killing blow with a grenade launcher. Not all the jets help the heroes though — the Decepticon Starscream transforms into an F-22 Raptor. During the third act, he uses his vehicle mode to blend into the bomber squad. Shifting back and forth between robot and jet mode, Starscream picks three of the jets off one by one, jumping on top of one, shooting down the other, then finally knocking the other one apart with a quick kick. 

This 25 seconds is the best action beat in the movie. It's a wide shot and when it does go in for a close-up, the camera follows along with the forward momentum of Starscream and the jets. Uncharacteristically for Bay, it all unfolds in an almost unbroken take: only five cuts, one establishing shot of Starscream transforming as the jets approach the city skyline, three quick shots to show a doomed pilot's reaction, and then two separate 10-second-long segments of Starscream destroying the jets. For Michael Bay, staying on a shot for 10 seconds might as well be staying on one for an hour.

This all means the subject movement in the beat is far easier to track than most of the other action in the movie. Plus, it's a rare moment when we get to see the Decepticons tearing their targets apart, not being blown to pieces themselves. Such moments got only rarer as the films went on. Bay may love All-American heroes like Lennox, but I think his "Transformers" films did a disservice to the Decepticons by making them such easy fodder for the U.S. military.