Movie Dreadwing

My Review:

Robot Mode: I was hoping to never again encounter a robot that would strongly remind me of Armada Thrust, but it was not to be. Dreadwing is wildly disproportioned with a huge upper body, humongous forearms, and tiny little legs. Worse, the arms don''t end in hands, but rather the jet engines, from which he can fire missiles. I hate it when the robots don''t have hands. Anyway, the upper body as such looks good and the detailing isn''t bad, either, but the whole look of Dreadwing is just a bit off. So bottom line, one of the worse robot modes from the Movie line.

Alternate Mode: Dreadwing somewhat redeems himself with this excellent alternate mode. An excellent and well-sculpted fighter jet, Dreadwing''s only real problem in this mode is the big undercarriage (the legs from the robot mode), which is a bit too large for a realistic jet. Apart from that, though, no complaints. Very detailed, realistic, and with the gimmick that you can use the missiles in the jet engines as exhaust flames. Nicely done.

Remarks: Dreadwing combines a robot mode that is just short of aweful with an excellent alternate mode. Thanks to the latter he is raised up to average. Dreadwing didn''t appear in the movie, but did score a cameo in the prequel comic and apparently played a role in the computer game (didn''t play it, sorry). Still, as far as the toy goes, I can recommend it only to die-hard fans of jet Transformers or Movie completists.

Rating: C-

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And for a second opinion, a review by Tobias H.:

Prelude: The Transformers live action movie fortunately brought us a large number of new figures. The very complicated transformations of some of them might be capable of driving some fans mad, but the results of these Origami-like challenges are usually worth the effort.

Apart from those characters appearing in the actual movie, there are also a number of additional figures to fill up the ranks a bit. Some of these additional figures made an appearance in the computer game accompanying the movie, others played a part in the comics brought out alongside it, and still others are completely made-up. Dreadwing is one of these additional figures.

This Decepticon flyer did not make an appearance in the movie, but did play a role in the computer game in the form of one of the numerous drones that were used for air attacks. So here is my review of this strange bad guy.

Robot Mode: When I removed Dreadwing from his packaging he was, as is the standard for Deluxe-class figures, in his alternate mode. Transforming him into his robot mode was actually a lot of fun. It was unusual enough, difficult enough, and ... suddenly I was done.

I was a little surprised that this... something I held in my hands after the transformation was supposed to be the finished robot. Dreadwing is certainly one of the weakest Transformers of the Movie line, at least of those I've seen so far. It starts with the legs. Dreadwing's legs are looking more or less decent, but his knees bend sideways. This is something you can't fix with a simple twist of the legs, because the legs don't twist. Which is unfortunate, a simple additional joint, as most TFs nowadays possess, would have easily fixed this flaw.

Looking at the rest of the body I can't help but feel that Dreadwing is misproportioned in a big way. He would look a lot better if his lower body was about 50 percent larger than it is. As things stand it looks as if you have two halves that weren't meant to go together.

Another interesting this is his wing-arm-construction. Dreadwing's wings are turned 180 degrees during transformation. His arms, which are formed from the aft section of the jet, are directly in front of it. The problem is that the wings are now in the way of the oversized arms. You just can't find anything resembling a natural pose for them, you're stuck with posing them forward. This causes another problem, though, as Dreadwing lacks a sufficient counterweight to his arms, ruining his balance. It's quite a feat to make a figure with feet this big and balance issues at the same time.

If he had hands I could maybe forgive some of his flaws, but instead of those he has the jet engines, from which he can fire his exhaust-flame missiles. Not bad in itself, but would it have been so difficult to somehow configure the engines into a kind of claw, so he could at least grab some stuff? Well, obviously it was.

Last thing, the head. Dreadwing has the typical head for a Movie line drone figure. Meaning he hasn't got anything resembling a face, only a kind of camera lense. Added to that are a kind of foldable 'ears', which look kinda neat. They can't save Dreadwing's robot mode, though. To sum it up I can only say that Dreadwing's robot mode leaves room for improvement in just about every way.

Alternate Mode: Dreadwing's alternate mode is a jet fighter. I think it's supposed to be a Mig-29. At least this jet closely resembles the Russian fighter plane. And interestingly enough Dreadwing's jetmode is the exact opposite of his robot mode.

The jet is highly detailed and very well sculpted. Dreadwing's camouflage colours come out very nicely here. I can't really say much more other than that Dreadwing looks very spiffy in his jet mode. The only thing that drags it down slightly is the big 'cylinder' under his belly. That is composed of the robot mode legs. You can easily imagine that construction to be some kind of auxilliary fuel tank or something. Whatever the case, it doesn't take anything away from this very high-quality alternate mode.

Remarks: Rating this toy is far from easy. On the one hand Dreadwing has a truly miserable robot mode, of which I can hardly say anything positive. On the other hand he has a very well-done alternate mode, which makes for a very realistic-looking jet.

I guess the question is where your priorities lie. Persnoally I like a good alt mode, but only if it doesn't come at the cost of the robot mode. But that's exactly what happened here. Dreadwing's robot mode could have been a lot better and it wouldn't have taken that much away from the jet mode, I think. Unfortunately that didn't happen here.

So in final analysis I can recommend Dreadwing only to completists or those whose priority is a good alternate mode.

Rating: Can't be more than a D-.