Synopsis:
In this present day prequel, the robot invaders attack the Earth, forcing a small band of humans to seek refuge below the surface of the planet.
Special Features:
The Making of Transmorphers: Fall Of Man, Bloopers, Deleted Scenes
Review:
I wish I could say that a new movie by Asylum is always a pleasant surprise, but they're really not. Pretty much you know a new movie from Asylum is coming out any time a blockbuster science fiction film hits the theaters. How do I know this? Well, just look at the track record. Transformers hits the theater and shortly thereafter comes Transmorphers. Terminator Salvation comes out and the very next Tuesday we get the direct to DVD gem The Terminators. Now, once again, the very next Tuesday after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen blasts into theaters, we are blessed with Transmorphers: The Fall of Man.
As is par for the course, a couple of bigger name actors are tossed in among no name or lesser know ones. Of course, they are well-known in their genres. First, we have Bruce Boxleitner, who everybody knows from Babylon 5, TRON, etc. and Jennifer Rubin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Wasp Woman, Screamers). Then thrown in Shane Van Dyke, who is the grandson of Dick Van Dyke and son of Barry Van Dyke (Galactica 80, Airwolf, The Canterville Ghost). Let him write the script, since he's already written other Asylum movies like The Day the Earth Stopped and Street Racer, and be the hero and you've got a winning straight-to-DVD combination. Believe it or not, they all take their roles pretty seriously and come off as actually caring about their acting. Of course, as is usual with these movies, the big star gets killed half-way through the film (or after a couple of days work) so the production company can have the actor's name attached to the film but still cut costs of having them in the entire project.
As far as story goes, what can be said? It's about humans fighting giant robots that are trying to take over the world. The robots morph from everything that you would expect them to - cars, trucks, satellite dishes, cell phones, etc. It's kind of a mix of Transformers and The Terminator, so Asylum has one movie with two bankable and proven franchises to feed off of. As a matter of fact, I'm almost possible the end of this film had to have been shot after Terminator Salvation hit theaters, as this has a carbon copy of the ending of that movie. I mean, to the tee.
I was actually pretty impressed with the special effects. They looked pretty decent. The morphing scenes were pretty convincing. They even had more than one robot in a scene, which is pretty unusual for this kind of straight-to-DVD movie. Usually, they use the same robot or cyborg for every scene and only show one at a time from what I've seen. They didn't even seem to reuse footage over and over by just switching it out backwards.
Overall, this was a pretty cool little time-waster. You wouldn't feel like you had been cheated out of a portion of your life or slowly had the life drained out of you while watching this. It of course had the funny bad acting, some rather goofy continuity, and the token sex scene that really didn't need to be there. I would say that if all the copies of Transformers are rented out at Blockbuster and you absolutely HAVE to have a giant robot fix, this would be a fun time and at least act as a diet supplement until you can get the real thing. (Review by Eric Shirey)
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