I thought the core of ROTF – the Dynasty of Primes, whose past struggle impacted upon the current warring generation of Autobots/Decepticons – was a great concept to utilize. They weren’t really Transformer gods, but rather the first ever Transformers sporting a devolved but more powerful form, as well as possessing long-forgotten tech to revitalize the AllSpark and keep their race going. But back then, I didn’t know too much about the Dynasty’s source material, the Thirteen. Having checked up on those guys, I can understand what TFans were upset about: they were not written appropriately enough: - They were way too underpowered. Not only did they require a machine to acquire energy from the sun when they could have done it by themselves, but all of them couldn’t defeat than one of them? And they weren’t too smart either: instead of doing something to their brother they hid away the Matrix, by forming a tomb with their own bodies no less. I faced a similar disappointment with THOR, where the Asgardians could not be portrayed as proper Norse gods because it was too fantastic, as well as religiously offensive. I wouldn’t know what the real story with that is, but I wish the original Primes were actually treated as gods, raising up all sorts of apocalyptic stuff on Earth. We wouldn’t need all of them, just a couple or survivors: the Fallen and one other original Prime to go head to head in an epic Transformer Ragnarok fight. - Where the hell were they when Optimus was stabbed in the spark? Why revive Sam when they could have just revived him and saved a lot of trouble? This is actually interesting, because you know gods have this “forbidden to interfere” policy which they might have been following, only intervening when they had no other choice – they had to allow the Fallen to ally himself with the Decepticons, they had to let Optimus die so that the Matrix could be discovered, butn when Sam and the Matrix perished they stepped in to revive the two... - The Fallen was only one of them notable enough, the other six Primes were... the other six Primes. Where was Vector Prime, Beast Prime, Alpha Trion (etc)? All these characters would have been awesome to feature in a live-action film (especially Beast Prime and Vector Prime). At least the Primes had some great looking designs: joshnizzi.com My favourite is #2, the one with the pope hat. I still enjoy ROTF more than DOTM, but its Decepticon masterplan is a serious fragwad, because the Dynasty of Primes was simultaneously not godly enough (too underpowered, the need of a machine) and too godly (Transformer gods too fantastic?) for a TF film.
I do agree with you to an extent, the concepts in RotF - such as the Dynasty of the Primes, Tomb of the Primes, Language of the Primes, Last Prime, etc.. - are some of my favourite Transformers material. It's just that the execution of said ideas was awful in the film itself. But... This^.
I don't feel the "Dynasty of Primes" is even the same as "The Thirteen." It reminds me more of past leaders locked within The Matrix. While they try to evoke the sense of mystical awe and importance, to me the whole concept in the movie was more the wisdom of the past leaders and the remaining essence of their powers being funneled into Sam, who acted as the vessel of their power in the act of reviving Optimus, but it didn't feel like they were a divine force to me.
Yeah, I was trying to discuss what exactly was executed wrongly with the Dynasty. Which I think I explained. I’m not saying they weren’t badly-written, but I think it might have been due to their nature. Almighty all-powerful deities are a difficult concept to portray. If they’re too powerful then it makes the fight hopeless, so they have to be scaled back. But if they are scaled back too much, then they aren’t really the demigod threat they are said to be. That’s what I think happened with the Fallen: from being the Judas of the original Transformers, he was written into this psychic ancestral Prime who went down as if he was a normal Transformer. That’s why we may never have Unicron in the movies, because he’d be too big an antagonist or would be scaled down like what happened with the Fallen. Also, behind the scenes MBay was uncomfortable with having a god as an antagonist; TFWiki says he described the Fallen as a bleep character, as opposed to calling the “mortal” Sentinel Prime a great character. I think Bay understood that fighting a god would be a difficult thing to handle, as opposed to fighting a traitor Autobot scientist. Had the Dynasty been another faction, I guess it could be okay. But it was the original Transformers, and the villain was the Fallen, so I would say much of my disappointment in ROTF comes from him not being enough of a godly badass as was required. I hope that makes sense.
Honestly felt it would have been better to see more of them - in fact if they ever do a film with Primus or Unicron i would love to see a flashback including the Prime Dynasty. They were really under-used in ROTF.
The Dynasty of Primes =/= the Thirteen. The Dynasty of Primes is a totally different concept set in the movieverse's world. It's unrelated to the whole 13 mythology. In fact, I recall, it's only recently with Prime that the 13 are being shown to have all been Primes. However, whle the Dynasty is an okay settup for the movies, the 13 is a terrible origin tale and the less stuff that references it the better.
I really liked the Dynasty of the Primes in the films and really wished it would have been better utilized. It was a really awesome idea that had bad execution. But that goes for most things in ROTF.
