DTV Madness: Transmorphers - Fall of Man

Don't adjust your screen or rub your eyes, you read it right the first time. Transmorphers: Fall of Man. Hot on the heels of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen comes this direct-to-video summer mockbuster. Much like the first movie, this movie was strategically released on the same day as it's bigger budget counterpart in an attempt to either profit from the robot movie popularity or from the dyslexic.

The story is basically about a bunch of alien robots who secretly arrive on earth and who lay dormant until woken by an electrical jolt, where they then try to destroy mankind in hopes of dominating the world. Of course, a ragtag band of humans come together in hopes of curbing the robot's big plans.

Apparently T:FoM is a prequel to the first movie, but I was completely unaware as I (un)fortunately didn't see the first one. The plot obviously borrows much from the Transformers movies. But the ripoffs don't stop there. In the final scene, the main lead makes this speech that is almost word for word, the speech given by John Connor from Terminator. I was rolling with laughter during this scene because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I'm sure there's also a hundred other movies that this movie stole stuff from.

The movie stars some of your favourite actors too. Talented thespians such as Bruce Boxleitner, Jennifer Rubin, and the incomparable, Shane Van Dyke. This movie did not cheap out in casting the best brand name actors. I'm not going to rag on their acting skills because frankly... they were Oscar worthy performances.

So was I entertained? I guess that depends. I didn't fall asleep while watching it, and that's always a good sign. I think this movie made me laugh more than it should of, which is how I stayed awake. It was just so ridiculously bad that I found it entertaining, but certainly this was not a good movie by any stretch of the word. Some of the shortcuts they used were so noticeable too, but I can't fault their low-budget operation. My favourite has to be the CG robots. First of all, they looked shitty. Second of all, they filmed it in such a way that we see the robots from an angled view upwards, so that we'd see the robots from the torso up, with only the sky being a backdrop. The shortcut here is that since we don't have any frame of reference on the ground, they can simply just reuse these shots in any of the scenes that required a robot fighting outside. Comedy!

In the end, I can't condemn or praise this movie anymore than I can with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Both movies basically accomplish the same things: action, cheap dialogue, no story. But in this case, at least the budget was probably 100 times smaller... but then again, the profits were probably also 100 times smaller.

If you really want to watch this movie, it's out on DVD now. On second thought, just don't watch it. But DO watch the trailer that I attached via Youtube below. Before I leave you, I'd like to quote one Youtube commenter on this video:

"the quality of this looks like a porno"
-jimbobmoomoo; Youtube user

Glorious. Spoken like a prophet. Later geeks!