After Michael Bay’s take on the Transformers, it’s always nice to get back to a feature that stays somewhat true to the spirit and focus of the classic comics and television series. Transformers Prime: Darkness Rising aired as a five-part miniseries, but the recent DVD release presents it as a single film whose quality easily beats the live-action films when it comes to plot and the characters. It’s not a perfect film though, because once again the humans weigh down the presentation with lots of melodrama and easily the worst acting in the production. If you can get past the really annoying human child trifecta, the tale of Transformer zombies offers something new for fans who’ve thoroughly devoured all of the other animated Transformers entries.
By now you’d think Optimus Prime would just expect Megatron to pop back from the dead or the far reaches of space, but once again he and the other Autobots are caught off-guard. To complicate matters, they also have to baby-sit three teenagers who’ve stumbled upon their supposedly secret existence. Megatron takes full advantage of that distraction and enacts a plan using dark energon to create an army the Autobots can’t possibly hope to defeat. If Optimus and the others are to have any chance of stopping Megatron, they’ll need the help of the humans, the punk-rock goddess Miko (Tania Gunadi), computer wiz kiddo Raf (Andy Pessoa), and the reluctant leader Jack (Josh Keaton). Together, the humans and Autobots just might have what it takes to prevent Megatron from stirring up the ghosts of the past.
The human characters are weak, mostly due to the poor voice acting, but the transformers voice cast includes the fan-favorite Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Jeffrey Combs, Steve Blum, Kevin Michael Richardson, and the humorous new addition of Dwayne Johnson. They might outperform the human characters, but they can’t overcome a weak script that sees some of the worst back-and-forth fighting banter between Megatron and Optimus. The writers might not have meant it this way, but most of Megatron’s taunts or jeers are either unintentional complements or just entirely irrelevant.
DVD Bonus Features
There’s not much to see here save for character and set designs. Fans of Beast Wars are probably already comfortable with CGI Transformers, but the design models are interesting to see no matter how many times you’ve seen them before. There’s also an arguably unnecessary full-length animatic drawing series for the first part of the feature (i.e. the first 22 minutes).
"Transformers Prime: Darkness Rising" is on sale December 6, 2011 and is not rated. Action, Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi. Directed by David Hartman. Written by Nicole Dubuc, Steven Melching. Starring Frank Welker, Jeffrey Combs, Kevin Michael Richardson, Peter Cullen, Steve Blum, Josh Keaton , Tania Gunadi, Sumalee Montano.
