Transformers movies and their weird love for obscure characters

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.

Godzilla NES and it's love for the obscure characters

Long ago, there was a game on the NES called Godzilla: Monster of Monsters. The plot is this, Planet X wants to conquer the universe with their ships and monsters. The people of Earth sends Godzilla and Mothra to protect their world.

The game's opening

The game is a sidescroller as your characters are transported on other planets in the solar system. At the end of the planet is a boss battle. The game seems cool at first but it gets very repetitive real quick. The boss fights are at least a little more fun than the sidescroller section.

I should give you guys a quick rundown on Godzilla movies.

• Godzilla had a dozen films from 1954 to 1975. This is called the Showa era. 
• Godzilla made a comeback in 1984 and ran till 1995. This is called Heisei era. 
• America made their own movie in 1998 and nearly everyone hated it. 
• Toho wanted to quickly get Godzilla out of retirement after the American movie and made movies from 1999 to 2004. This is called the Millennium era. 
• In recent years, America did another movie and it was a million times better received than the 1998 one. Even if America is planning to make Godzilla sequels and a showdown with King Kong in a few years, Japan still plans to make their own Godzilla movies, separate from the American ones. The American ones are called Monsterverse while the Japanese ones are called The Reiwa era.

The Classic/Showa era of Godzilla has this "expanded universe". The 5th Godzilla movie called, "Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster" and it was basically the "Avengers" of the Godzilla series. The end of that movie had Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra teaming up together as they fight the bigger threat called King Ghidorah. Both Rodan and Mothra had their own solo movies beforehand. Kinda like how Iron Man was having his series while Thor and Captain America were having their own solo adventures before joining up in Avengers.

Over the years in the Showa era, Toho has made alot giant monster/kaiju movies outside of Godzilla as well as alien invasion ones. Alot of them can be seen in the same universe, however there are people who argue that they are simply standalone movies that these characters randomly cameoed in later films with no connection.

Enough talking about the film series and on to the actual game. The 1st boss you fight is the giant squid, Gezora.

Now most of you are wondering, who is Gezora? Well he came from a movie called "Space Amobia" or by another name, "Yog, Monster from Space" from 1970.

The movie is about an alien entity who possesses critters on an island in Pacific and turn them into giant monsters and attack humans. The movie had nothing to do with Godzilla or anywhere else from the universe. So the 1st boss of the game is about a giant monster/kaiju from a non-Godzilla movie. What a weird choice.

The 2nd boss is the giant alien robo-mole, Mogera

Mogera was an actual Godzilla character that appears in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla in 1994. He was built by humans to fight Godzilla but was force to fight the far more eviler Godzilla clone at the end.

However the game came out in 1988. Long before Mogera made an appearance. The thing is that the giant robot mole is actually a re-imagined character from a 1957 alien invasion movie call "The Mysterians."

Yes, the alien invaders look like Power Rangers. Mogera was their own weapon against the humans. It's funny how the human built one from the 90s looks more advanced and more sleek than the the alien built one. Just like the different MechaGodzillas in other movies.

The Mysterians has no reference to Godzilla and other monsters. You can say that the reason Earth in the Showa universe is more advance than our own timeline is due to studying the alien tech. The Markalite cannons are sort of an early prototype of the Maser cannons you see often in the Godzilla series. However like Gezora, another weird character to be in a Godzilla game.

The 3rd boss gliding lizard, Varan The Unbelievable.

He was in his own solo movie in a 1958 film called, "Varan the Unbelievable." The movie is about explorers going into sacred forbidden land which happens to be Varan's sleeping grounds and havoc happens right after.

I greatly advised you watch the Japanese version instead of the English one. I'm not against people choosing between the English and Japanese versions but the English version of Varan has a completely radically different story all together.

Well Varan actually does matter within the pre-1988 Godzilla movies (sort of). He was one of the many monsters in 1968 movie called "Destroy All Monsters." However he was only in the movie for barely half-a-minute and only seen on the sidelines. The reason he had limited screentime in Destroy All Monsters is because his prop was the same from his solo movie from 10 years earlier and it was in very bad condition.

So yes, the boss character is some guy on the sidelines you saw for a half-a-minute..

4th boss is Hedorah.

Finally we got an actual Godzilla foe from 1971's Godzilla vs. Hedorah(Or Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) He was an alien parasite that absorbs smog and pollution. Yes, the movie was going all Captain Planet on us at one point.

5th boss is tunneling dinosaur, Baragon.

Like Varan, he was on the sidelines in Destroy All Monsters because of his badly damaged prop. 

He was of the three foes in 2001's Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. (Yes, that's a long name) However again, this game was made long before the movie.

Before being a side character in Destory All Monsters, he was in Frankenstein Conquers The World. Yes, I'm not joking, the Godzilla universe has both King Kong and Frankenstein in them.

Frankenstein was a dude who was blame for death of humans when it was really Baragon.  They fought in the end.

The movie had a sequel called War of the Gargantuans where leftover pieces of Frankenstein grew into two different monsters. The English version removed all the references to the Frankenstein like the Gargantuans were somehow regulars baby monsters that scientists found. The movie is the 1st one that actually introduce the Maser cannons which were seen in later movies.

Fun Fact: War of the Gargantuans inspire Brad Pitt to be an actor and also one of Tim Burton's top fav movies.

6th boss is Gigan. One of Godzilla nemeses . He's an alien cyborg uhh..bird fish thing with buzzsaws

                                      

2nd last boss is MechaGodzilla. Another one of Godzilla nemeses. Evil robo Godzilla clone built by space monkeys. Seeing this game was in 1988, the later human built ones won't be available in this game.

The last boss is King Ghidora. Another one of Godzilla nemeses. He is a three-headed alien dragon that usually takes multiple monsters to defeat.

That's all the bosses of the games

Here is the recurring enemy on the sidescroller.  This is Manda.

He was one of the many monsters in Destroy All Monsters. Like Baragon and Varan, he stand on the sidelines during the final battle. However he did a little more as he was destroying train systems midway in the film.

He's from the 1963 movie, called Atragon. It about the lost continent of Mu (Pacific's version of Atlantis) wages war on the world and the good guys must find a forgotten super sub that Japan was going to use in WWII to stop Mu.

Now with the Mid-Bosses

This is a Matango. The movie is about people stranded on an island full of weird mushrooms. The movie isn't a kaiju flick but a regular horror movie.

This is Dogera. An alien jellyfish that wants to absorb all the planet's diamonds from a non-Godzilla film.

This is Goten from War In Space from 1977. Goten is is a sort of redesign of Atragon. War In Space is about humans uses the super ship to save Earth from aliens.

The game also has a random list of enemy ships. They are Atragons, Black Sharks(from Latitude Zero, another Toho movie with Cesar Romero), Killaak Saucers(from Destroy All Monsters), Xillian Saucers(from Invasion of Astro-Monster), Natal ships(from Battle in Outer Space, a non-Godzilla alien invasion flick), Super-X(From Godzilla 1984, the only thing from the Heisei series. Plus it the only movie at the time when this game was out.)

As you guys see, the NES game has an obsession of the expanded universe. Enemies pulled from Toho's non-Godzilla films. This be like playing an Avengers game but the half the bosses and enemies won't be Loki, Ultron, Winter Solider, Crossbones, Ronan, Abomination, or Mandarin(both of them). No you be facing lesser enemies from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or Agents of Shield. The TV shows that take place in the same universe but doesn't get major focus like the movies.

Back then, when I was watching Destroy All Monsters, I wondered if I was missed any Godzilla movies when I saw all these monsters? Well I didn't miss any, it just Toho threw in everything in the movie. This was before the age of the fast running internet, so how was I suppose to know.

Heck, I honesty thought the Godzilla timeline was changed due to the time travel events from the 1991 film, thus explaining why Godzilla had to re-fight Mothra, fight a different MechaGodzilla, and Godzilla's son being born all over again. However, TV stations never did aired the 84 movie and I was not aware the series went through a reboot at the time.

Baragon and Varan were in the video game Godzilla Unleashed. However, the game is 3rd in the series after Destroy All Monsters Melee and Save The Earth. By then, nearly every monster from the entire series were a playable character and Baragon and Varan were more like extra treats than weird choice of limited amount of characters.