Sean Connery the basis for 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' robot

Look closely at the new Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The legendary, conflicted Autobots warrior, who holds the key to crushing the Decepticons, may be voiced by Leonard Nimoy, but is actually modeled after Sean Connery. Who better, right? Notice the iconic face, the commanding presence, especially the eyebrows — it’s unmistakable.

And yet the regal Sentinel Prime was not inspired by Connery as James Bond or even as the larger-than-life Daniel Dravot in John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Instead, he was patterned after Connery’s outraged British Army prison camp inmate in Sidney Lumet’s The Hill (1965).

“For more of the intense moments, we pulled a clip from an old black-and-white military movie [The Hill] where he had a monologue screaming at the camera,” suggests Industrial Light & Magic animation supervisor Scott Benza. “We showed that to Michael [Bay] and he agreed that was the character we were looking for. And we found the best reference from older movies of him. We did the same kind of [animation] test we did for Transformers, kind of acting explorations where we pulled a clip from one of his movies and did a side-by-side comparison."

Of course, the whole reason Sentinel Prime’s face is more expressive — and, indeed, more human-looking — along with all the other bots in Dark of the Moon, is because of ILM’s vastly improved animation. The rig is expanded and there are a greater number of modeling plates. Plus better lighting illuminates the richer detail, which is crucial for the Avatar-like 3-D spectacle that Bay was after.

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