Friday, October 9, 2009

Target Exclusive The Fallen...

...did indeed arrive today.

He really is the perfect Halloween toy. He's orange and black. Well, not really black - more of a charcoal gray that borders on brown (at least in fluorescent light). But that orange sure is orange. It's almost neon. Very vivid stuff. The transparent parts - cockpit windows, energy absorption panels, etc, - are also orange. This is good; I couldn't really tell from online pics if they had just left those parts the same transparent red color the original release has.

Of course, like most movie Decepticons, he also looks like the damned devil (see Jetfire). Seriously - horns, claws, glowing eyes, bestial legs with talons (and a forked tail, if you want) - this dude's got it all in terms of demonic aesthetic themes.

I'm also glad I got him because, unlike the oringal mass retail summer release, this exclusive Fallen fits in better with other "Unicron's gimps" toys, such as Titanium The Fallen and Cybertron Sideways. Since they're apparently not going to make a version of this guy that actually looks like his movie appearance, I figure I can at least get the version that fits in best with my collection, you see? So, eventually, he'll join the top shelf with Unicron, Sideways, and MetalFallen.

Anyhow, this is a great toy. The mold itself is not the best of the ROTF Voyagers - and its flaws have been detailed in many other places - but this version is much more visually appealing than the original and really plays up the "fallen" angel/ agent of chaos angle. He really is "burning" with power.

edit: I figured I'd throw in my own take on this guy's story.

Unfortunately, Hasbro has, for now, seemed to accept the idea that the original 13 Transformers -of which the Fallen is one - are multiversal singularities, meaning that through all the different TF multiverses, there's only one each of this baker's dozen. So the guy in Dreamwave's The War Within: The Dark Ages comic is also supposed to the title character from Revenge of the Fallen.

However, I don't care for this idea. Until recently, the whole multiversal singularity bit was reserved for Primus and Unicron (when that was new, a lot of folks really didn't like the idea, but it makes sense to me - they're gods, you know?). Bestowing it on regular-ass transformers (I don't care if they are the TF version of Adam and Eve) didn't jive with me.

Thus, for my personal interpretation, The Fallen from ROTF is a totally different guy from the Fallen in WWi: The Dark Ages. If it's good enough for Optimus, Megatron, and Starscream, it's good enough for the Thirteen.

However, even with that out of the way to possibly simplify things, the various surrounding ROTF (mostly the IDW prequel comic, Defiance) diverges from the movie's take on things so much that things are quite hard to follow. So here's my version, a synthesis of movie, comic, and novel adaptation:

The Allspark creates the Thirteen and reformats a planet into what we know as Cybertron. The Thirteen realize that to maintain the Allspark's power (and thus keep themselves and Cybertron alive), they need to convert stars into fuel for the Cube. The Allspark then creates the 2nd generation Cybertronians - the "Transformers" - to assist in finding stars to power the Allspark. Among this group is Jetfire, Ransack, and some of the existing constructicons.

The Fallen - at this point known as Entropus Prime due to his role as lord of entropy (not very creative, I know) - realizes that he could use the Solar Harvester to power only himself. Moreover, he believes that his brothers' determination not to destroy Earth's Sun (because Earth is home to a sentient race - humans) is a ridiculous notion, as organic creatures are no more than scum. He determines to steal the Matrix of Leadership - which will give him control over the Solar Harvester on Earth (and any other ones) - from his brothers. This decision inevitably leads to war, with many of the Transformers joining the Fallen and becoming the first Decepticons. The other 12 brothers are just as determined not to let their wayward sibling destroy the humans or gain control over the Allspark's power. As such, they defend the Matrix with their lives - six of them fall in battle, and the remaining six (after using the Allspark to create a newborn Prime spark to replace The Fallen - a spark that will in time become Optimus Prime) attempt a desperate gambit that will claim their lives while at the same time imprisoning the Fallen in an interdimensional prison within his own sarcophagus.

The gambit works. The six remaining good Primes are entombed on Earth, their own bodies protecting the Matrix of Leadership. Back on Cybertron, The Fallen's sarcophagus prison is buried beneath the surface. What the good Primes did not foresee is what other forces might be waiting between dimensions, awaiting lost souls like The Fallen...

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