Nelson Update on Twins (Updated)

Nelson, the admin of MB.com and general inside man on all things Michael Bay has posted a new update on the forums that says the Twins are not in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. I am guessing the post is a response to an IO9 article that inexplicably brought them up when posting about the Daytona 500 TV spot. Nelson wrote:

Just a little update:

1.- Michael is NOT directing a movie starring Taylor Lautner. It's a project Platinum Dunes might produce.

2.- And for the final time the Twins are not in this movie period - end of story.

PS. I will have the DOTM 1080p Daytona ad tomorrow night.

Then later to the question "...thanks for the confirmation on the twins but why on set?" he replied "Different characters."

Not really sure what to make of this. Could be part of Bay's "misinformation campaign" except Nelson has not really participated in that. To my knowledge Nelson has not lied to fans but does not have a problem in making careful word choices in the information he conveys.

To review the history, on May 11th, 2010 Bay posted "The Twins are not back in T3." However, that same day the vehicles for Skids and Mudflap were spotted with a modified paint scheme. After that they were seen in Washington, DC, Chicago and Detroit. One thing to note is too my knowledge there has not been documented proof that the Twin vehicles where part of anything filmed out in the public in the various locations across the country even though did travel with the equipment caravan. Also Hasbro has created new toys the characters that seem to use new molds which is expensive compared with simply repainting the existing Revenge of the Fallen molds.

This leaves us with several theories. 1) The Twins are not in the film but the script did use them so the cars were brought along just in case Bay decided to keep their scenes, 2) The Twins were filmed but their scenes were left on the cutting room floor, 3) The Twins are in the film but not "as" the Twins but in some other capacity (say a disguise) making the statement above technically correct 4) The Twins do not appear in robot form and so the statement again remains technically true and 5) they die off screen. As always we will probably not learn until the film comes out in July.

As for the Taylor Lautner thing (one of the Twilight cast members), much like Steven Spielberg gets an executive producer credit for anything DreamWorks is involved with, Michael Bay gets the same credit for anything from Platinum Dunes regardless of how much or how little he is involved in the film. It is one of the benefits of being head honcho of a production company. Any site making more of it than that is simply trying to up their site hit count. Thanks to Chris for the link.

Update: Nelson has further elaborated on his Twin comments saying that theory 2 was the accurate one, with post that says, "I never said those cars weren't filmed. I just said they're not in the final film. Period." After that he wrote, "There are 2 new buddy characters in the film, how hard is that to understand? One of them is Wheelie and the other is.... You can speculate all you want on their alt modes." Yet another comment then says "Most of what is or is not in the film has been decided. There was a final cut [if I recall correctly] before the Holiday season last year." This means the film is deep into getting the CGI, sound mixing, color correction and so forth done as will need all the lead time they can get with the additional complication of 3D effects. Shortly after all that one more post on the subject as a summary of sorts:

Once upon a time the twins were in the script and they got cut.

There are now 2 new buddy characters who's alt modes I will not reveal.

Is that clear enough?

DarkWish in the comments posted to a video that shows the Twin vehicles being part of a scene in Chicago. I remember seeing that video and could have sworn I linked to it at the time but unable to find in previous posts. Any case while looking found another video that showed a near sequence with Prime, Sentinel, the Ferrari along with some NEST action. The street being shown is Van Buren, the building is the Old Post Office. Basically the various videos collaborate what Nelson posted. The Twins were going to be in the film but at some point Bay decided they were not necessary. Since Wheelie is almost a pure CGI creation, it isn't a stretch to assume his buddy is the same.