Optimus Prime’s movie truck mode

Ain’t It Cool News comes through with another spoiler picture from the set of Michael Bay’s Transformers movie.

Seeing Brawl, the Decepticon police cruiser was cool. Seeing part of Bumblebee’s robot mode was cooler still.

But we all want to see Optimus Prime. Theres a picture of the truck after the jump. Prepare yourself. Just take a deep breath before clicking, and clear your thoughts of anything you might have thought Optimus Prime would look like.

If you want to take your time, look at some footage from the always vapid E! channel’s set visit.

[Update on 7/13/06 with more info after the jump]

From Quint at AICN:

So here we are. Below I have a still taken by a long-time and trusted spy deep within Dreamworks’ infrastructure from some exterior shooting of TRANSFORMERS. It is of the vehicle form of Optimus Prime. Yes, he’s a truck. Yes, he’s red. Yes, he’s totally Michael Bay-ized. The picture will relieve some fans and probably infuriate some other fans. But I guarantee this… if that truck transforms into a badass giant robot and we hear Peter Cullen’s voice coming from the big bastard, you’ll see some orgasmically happy fanboys and girls. Hopefully Bay made the right decision with the voice casting.

While some of you might this is is a departure, take a look at this:

(from TFU.info)
Thats Laser Rod Optimus Prime from 1995. Striking similarity? Since Phy pointed this out, I’m thinking this photo is likely a fake, no matter how trusted Quint says his source is.

[UPDATED info: 07/13/06]
TFW2005’s Tony Bacala has put in his vote as this picture being if not the real deal then its at least close, based on what he knows about the movie from various sources (he also saw the script that leaked some time ago).

Nelson, the site admin for Michael Bay, has posted the following:

-Bay & crew are well aware of sites putting out BS info in order to elicit a response from Bay & Co.

-The reasons why they went with a huge long nose truck for OP (BTW, regarding the flames, there is a context for them like Orci pointed out). Bay said they did test with flat noses (FN) for scale purposes, and the FN would only be about 20 to 25 feet tall, so they went with the biggest truck they could find: the Peterbilt. We’re talking 40 to 50 foot tall robots here. The physics for these robots have to be real…aka no magically disappearing parts. Also, OP is going to have much more red than what was shown in the supposedly “leaked” photo.

I can’t fault them for wanting to find the biggest truck they could to make Prime an imposing figure. Its not different than wanting to cast a tall muscular actor as a super hero.