Overzealous fans have a tendency to freak out over the littlest thing. “Kirk and Spock didn’t meet until after Starfleet Academy! How can they make a movie about that?” “Technically Luke wasn’t a Jedi until after he defeated the Emperor, so wasn’t it evil for him to tell Jabba he was a Jedi knight?” “Swingin’ on a Star is listed as being only 2 minutes and 51 seconds on the Hudson Hawk soundtrack, which makes it shorter than they use it in the movie!” Actually… that last one is my own personal grudge.

The point being, fans get bent out of shape over what is important to them, so it’s no surprise to see Transformer fans getting upset about the silly names being given to their beloved characters. Good news however fanboys! Director Michael Bay says you’re getting worked up over nothing. On his official blog, Bay posted the following:

There's been a lot of chatter about character names and what "things" may be called in the script. I'm going to let everyone in on a little secret. Something that the writers don't know, nor my crew, or Steven Spielberg, or the presidents of Paramount and Dreamworks. Not even Don Murphy who is not involved on the day to day with this movie.

Many of the names in the script are aliases.

The only people that know the real names of many of these characters are the COO of Hasbro, their corporate lawyer and myself. I think this is two less people that knew the secret recipe for Coca-Cola.

On my directing contract I had to sign all these non-disclosure agreements just on this character name point. These names will not be revealed until the toy boxes are printed.

The writers had to construct the script where no actor needed to verbally refer to a character by name other than the main few.

So rest asured A.K.A Devastator, is not really Devastator.

This is great news for fans who have still held on to their Bumblebee dreams of the ‘80s and were concerned that Bay and company were messing with their beloved toys. Now Transformer fans will have to find something else to get worked up about. I suggest the presence of Bernie Mac and Shia LaBeouf in the human cast as a good starting place, at least until we find out who the voice cast for the robots are, which is what everyone really wants to know at this point.