20 Things You Didn't Know About Transformers

Bay gets a lot of flack for his apparent over-reliance on CGI. Naturally, most of his filmography is filled with heavy CGI work (they're about giant robots and the world ending, come on), but many people don't know that he actually prides himself on much of the action being practical, and Transformers is no exception.

Many of the sequences in Transformers that you may think are CGI are in fact practical. There are two reasons for this: Steven Spielberg advised Bay to do so as it keeps the cost of CGI down, and it makes the film feel more realistic.

One such moment comes when Sam Witwicky is perched on top of a buildings ledge as Megatron approaches him. This was actually achieved by having Shia LaBeouf go on the building with just a safety harness. Bay later commented that they tried to get as many wide shots as possible to show this off.

Probably the most impressive of these is the scene in which Decepticon Bonecrusher smashes through a bus in pursuit of Optimus Prime. The bus in question was actually real and the filmmakers really did pull it in half. It's an impressive piece of practical effects work that just doesn't get the praise it deserves.