Something interesting about the Transformers series is it has a strange cast of characters. Especially the main villains in the sequels. They are obscure rather than well known ones.
The main in the original 2007 movie is Megatron. This is expected because he is usually the main villain and leader of the Decepticons in most versions of Transformers. However in the sequels, he was either an underling or a secondary villain whose building his army while the main villain is fighting the Autobots.
The main villain in Revenge of the Fallen is..Well the Fallen.
He was never in the 80s cartoon or the 80s comics, nor was he in any of the other Transformers series. He was from a early 2000s comic miniseries from the company Dreamwave called, The War Within: Dark Ages. Dreamwave was a company that went bankrupt within a few years since it's founding if anyone is wondering.
So yes, the main villain in the 2nd movie is a guy that was around for nearly 6 issues that was less than a decade old.
Shortly after the miniseries was published. A book called, Transformers: The Ultimate Guide was released. It gave more backstory on The Fallen. The story is Primus(Transformers version of God) created the Thirteen(Like Adam and Eve but with 11 others) and battled Unicron(Satan). The Fallen was the Judas of Transformers and betrayed his siblings to serve Unicron.
The guy on fire in the left is the Fallen
Primus, Unicron, and the 13 are Multiversal Singularities. They are dudes that existed throughout the entire multiverse. They have no alternate universe counterparts.
So yes, the very same guy from the bankrupted comics is the same exact dude that Optimus quickly killed in the movie that has hanging wrecking balls. This is not a reboot or re-imagined character.
However, I seriously doubt Micheal Bay is going to give time explaining overly complicated multiversal lore in his movie(or care). For all he knows, he's the villain the writers wanted and started shooting in Egypt and other places.
Some people I know don't like the movies and quickly declare them non-canon. However The Fallen being an actual G1 character within Micheal Bay's Movieverse is evidence that movies are canon in a way.
Or at least till 2015 where an event undid the concept of Multiversal Singularities. It was due to fact that all the later shows, movies, and comics started having their own origins stories causing contradictions. Most of the stories that talk about the Thirteen being multi-dimensional beings come from subscription magazines rather than your mainstream shows/movies/games/comics.
Fun Fact: After the 2nd movie, we learn what The Fallen's name before he betrayed his siblings. It was Megatronus Prime. I'm not joking.
The main villain in Dark of the Moon is not Shockwave.
No, the actual main villain is Sentinel Prime. What? You thought the 3rd movie was going to used an actual recognizable character from the original cartoon? 1st, I'm going to explain about Shockwave and how he looked like he was going to be the main villain.
In the 80s cartoon, he was loyal to Megatron(and a really bad shot). In the 80s comics, it was the opposite. He saw Megatron as a flawed leader and believe it is logical that he leads the Decepticons. They fought several times.
It was told from several interviews that Shockwave was going to be the main villain. High Moon Studios did a prequel video game that leads up to the 3rd movie while the IDW comics wrote a bunch of issues that lead up to the 3rd movie(and did a good job patching up plot holes, well before Micheal Bay created more movies)
The story is Shockwave crashed on Earth in 1908 in Russia, creating the Tunguska Event(a real life event). Russia found him and iced him. Basically, he was the Soviet's version of the iced up Megatron that USA had in the 1st movie. He was found by the other Cons between the events of the 2nd movie and 3rd.
Soon after, he was slaughtering any Autobots that wasn't seen in the 3rd movie(A bunch of comic-only Bots that had toys to advertise and Jolt, a guy that was barely seen in the Revenge of the Fallen.)
Shockwave was totally awesome, just like General Grievous was in the 2D Clone Wars series. Exactly like General Grievous because once he showed up in the 3rd movie, he was nothing more than a large grunt that got killed off real quickly and didn't really have any lines.
All this hype about Shockwave was to hide the twist that Sentinel Prime was going to go traitor on the Autobots. Like the Fallen, Sentinel Prime also kinda obscure.
In the 80s Marvel comics, the story tells that the Matrix been passed from leader to leader. Optimus received the Matrix from the dying Sentinel Prime.
Behold, Sentinel Prime's entire appearance in all of the Marvel comics.
Dreamwave's 1st War Within miniseries starts with Sentinel Prime being dead while the Autobots try to find a new leader.
Behold, Sentinel Prime's entire appearance in all of the Dreamwave comics.
So yes, so far, the 3rd movie chose a guy whose best known for being on one panel who dies. Weird choice to be main villain for a movie material so far.
In the IDW comics, Sentinel Prime was a corrupt head of security officer working under corrupt senators who secretly arrange assassinations and create martial laws. Thanks to these martial laws, it led to a group of people rebelling called Decepticons.(Yes, the Cons had a noble goal at 1st but slowly became more and more evil.) Sentinel Prime was defeated early on in the great war.
Most of the backstory about Sentinel working under corrupt senators was made after the 3rd movie was released. It's possible that Sentinel in the movie is a combo of IDW Sentinel and Nova Prime/Nemesis Prime
Nova Prime was a dude that people who thought he was a great guy in the history books but people who really knew him know that he was really a power hungry conqueror that got lost in the unknown reaches of space. He came back and fought Optimus.
Zeta Prime(Full name: Sentinel Zeta Prime) was a boss in the video game, War for Cybertron which is a distant prequel of the show, Transformers: Prime. According to the game and tie-in books. Sentinel Prime started a caste system on the planet. The lower caste classes hated how their life was treating them and rebelled. He later dies when Optimus found him in prison.
As you see in the later years of the franchise, Sentinel becoming an actual character rather than a dead guy you barely seen.
Now for the villain for Age of Extinction known as Lockdown.
Well like the Fallen and Sentinel Prime, he is a G1 character but only in select comics right? The answer is wrong. Lockdown came from a TV show that ran from 2007-2009 called Transformers Animated. He was a recurring villain that was in 3 episodes in total. That's right, Micheal Bay chose a guy whose only been in a few episodes in a non-G1 Transformers show that was made after Movieverse was established.
Lockdown is a bounty hunter that likes to collect trophies as he finishes his mission. He's not an Autobot nor Decepticon but usually works under the Cons when he's hired by them.
The main villain in The Last Knight is Quintessa.
Is she in the G1 cartoon or G1 comics? Nope. Is she's some later incarnation that's not G1 right? No.
The thing is that we went from obscured to now a full on original character as a lead villain, or more like loosely based.
Quintessa is loosely based on the Quintessons.
The Quintessons 1st appeared in the 1986 animated movie and had a bigger role in G1's 3rd season that came right after the movie.
In the distant past, they arrived on Cybertron and created robots for military hardware and consumer goods. The Quintessons treated their creations like slaves and trash. Soon they rebel and driven the Quintessons off the planet. They became the Transformers we know today.
However this greatly clashes with the Primus origin from the G1 comics that Cybertron itself is a god-like robot that predated the universe who gave life to all the Transformers. Later stories sort of mix the two origins saying that Primus did create the Transformers and then the Quintessons invaded the planet and enslave the population till the 5-faced aliens were driven off.
Quintessa seems like she is also loosely based on Quintus Prime.
Quintus Prime is one of the original thirteen. He's in the same group of people as the Fallen, however Quintus Prime was introduced far far later and shortly before the 2015 event that greatly undid the concept of the original 13 being multi-dimensional, so do not expect him across multiple versions of transformers.
Quintus Prime was introduced in a book that's tells the story the Aligned Universe(War For Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron, Transformer:Prime, Robot in Disguise 2015, Rescue Bots) Quintus was a scientist and treated all forms of life as the most important thing. It said he created life on other worlds, including the Quintessons.
Quintessa in the 5th movie said she was a Prime and she created all life on Cybertron. However others from Cybertron's distance past said she's the great deceiver. Stuff she say may be a lie.
From what I read up on Quintus, he's more good than what we saw in the villain in the movie.
It seems the next Transformers movie is setting up Unicron. He is the Transformers version of Satan. He's an evil god the predates the universe and he transformers into a planet that devours other planets. He basically Galactus from Marvel Comics.
However it was reveal in the movie that the Earth's core is Unicron itself. The casual viewers from G1 or Armada may be confused and screaming at Micheal Bay at this change but this story came from the show, Transformers: Prime. In ancient past, Unicron was defeated and floated in space unconscious. The gravity from his body pull tons of meteors and rocks to him, forming the center of the future planet of Earth. Transformers Prime did a change in the Unicron mythos and instead of worrying about a giant planet that wants to chomp Cybertron, it was now trying to prevent Unicron from waking up to prevent Earth's destruction.
So is the movies finally going to use recognizable characters as the main villains for once seeing they are setting up Unicron or they going to put a lesser known character? Time will tell.
