Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Leader Scourge (Rise of the Beasts)

Well, now that Rise of the Beasts has come and gone, and turned out to be a Certified Banger (™) of a Transformers production, it’s time for me to do what the movie was trying to make me do all along: Start buying the figures. Now, I have nothing against the simplified, mainline, gimmick-driven Beast Alliance stuff that’s out there, it looks really fun, but I’m a “media accurate, poseable, collector-oriented figure” guy at heart, so I’m opting to head to the Studio Series to fill this film’s cast out. Plus, I already got the little Core-class Arcee they did, because it looked cool outside of the film’s context, so I’m already in that ecosystem. Now that I’m snapping up the cast in earnest, I figured I’d start at the top with the biggest, priciest guy (that’s currently out), and work my way down, and that’s the Leader-class edition of the film’s Big Bad, the Terrorcon Herald of Unicron, Scourge, as voiced by Peter “please talk about literally anything other than the last season of that show” Dinklage.

So, Scourge. To tell you the truth, as far as villains go, I felt like he was a bit of a flat character in the movie itself, a kind of generically arrogant, cocky powerhouse, with all my interest coming from the stuff around him, like Optimus’s unusually personal feud with him, or his implied-but-not-detailed backstory as some kind of traitor to whatever planet he was from. He seemed like he was receiving quasi-immortality in exchange for a lifetime of MacGuffin-hunting servitude to Unicron, with a side-order of psychic torture whenever he failed, leading to the implication that his confident attitude is a bit of a front (apparently, test screening versions of the movie included lines hinting at a bit of quiet regret at what he’d become). But most importantly, his design was really cool, and when you’re selling replicas of these guys, that’s what matters. All of the theory-crafting about him being some kind of Corrupted Future Optimus was always bunk, but thematically, and design-wise, he’s 100 percent Optimus’s Evil Opposite.

So, let’s see how his Studio Series figure turned out, especially considering how pricey he can get as a Leader-class.

Robot Mode

Out of the box, my first impression of this guy was that he seemed small for a modern Leader-class. But then I actually picked some other Leader-classes off my shelves and compared him, and at least height-wise, that’s not actually the case. He’s a head taller than Kingdom Galvatron, and he’s eye-to-eye with Kingdom Beast Megatron. Granted, he’s not as wide or bulky as either of them, he’s more of a lanky guy, so that’s probably why he seems smaller.

There’s a big elephant in the room with his design, too, and it’s that he’s not actually screen-accurate. When Rise of the Beasts was delayed for a year, there were rumblings from the designers that this would be a good thing for the Studio Series figures of its cast. I took it as an implication that they’d be basing them off of their finished character models (like most Studio Series releases), rather than having to go with non-final concept art (like the Bumblebee movie’s initial Studio Series figures). That doesn’t seem to have panned out, and Scourge here is definitely based on a non-final design. Funny thing, he’s technically accurate to the rough CGI model that appears in the movie’s deleted scenes.

What this means, though, all of the details and features of his final design are more or less present here, and what’s different is his lanky proportions. In the film, he’s basically human-shaped, with the slightly barrel-torsoed proportions of your stereotypical male superhero. This figure, on the other hand, stretches him out, and makes him thin, lanky, and long-limbed, including in the neck, with other details, like his shoulderpads, being similarly present, but shaped a bit differently. Oh, and he’s got a backpack of truck parts, but that stuff had to go somewhere. If you check underneath his backpack, though, they sculpted in the visible spinal column that’s present on his movie model, even though it’s covered up on this version.

Here’s the thing, though: I don’t mind this, because I think he looks cooler this way. When they scrunched him down to a more standard shape for his final design, I think he lost a bit of novelty, and became a lot more generic-looking as a result. These proportions give him more character, more visual interest, and highlight the details of his look a lot better. Even the truck backpack goes with his look!

Which is important, because this is a really cool design. The bolts, chains, and rust across his body, his weird giant four-fingered claw on one hand, the whole look and feel of him, it’s very evocative, and very different for a Transformer. He looks like a menacing, demonic specter, looming over most other figures.

One interesting thing about the head sculpt, with its Terrorcon logo mask, is that while he’s got a full mouth, beard, and eyes behind it, they kind of vanish and become indistinct behind the mask in a way that the film design doesn’t, making me think of the Witch King from The Return of the King, appropriate for a character who’s an undead servant of an eldritch evil. It’s hard to put into words, but in person, he’s just got a whole interesting vibe.

The only movie detail I really miss on him is the array of stolen faction symbols across his arms as trophies. This guy’s got a singular Maximal one on his right shoulder, an Autobot one on his left, and that’s it, hardly the impressive collection of his film version.

I think his colors are screen-accurate? It feels like movie Scourge was more brown, or even orange, instead of black, with prominently glowing innards, but I think that was more how he was lit, the daytime scenes with him are more “black with rust.” Regardless of accuracy, what’s here looks really good.

He’s primarily black, but they worked hard to make it interesting. The black they picked isn’t one that washes his details out, and it’s supplemented with dark gray pieces for variety, as well as painted highlights of silver, including his mask, and brown for the rust and grime on his shoulders, as well as more brown on every chain across his body. Finally, he’s got translucent red pinprick eyes in his head, as well as more translucent red beneath his truck-grill-chest. Again, in person, it works really well, and is the perfect accompaniment to his sculpting.

In terms of his construction, he does end up feeling a bit lighter than those leaders I compared him with, Galvatron and Beast Megatron. He doesn’t feel *too* flimsy, though. It feels like a materials downgrade, but not a severe one. Initially, too, his backpack felt like it didn’t want to stay plugged in, but I just needed to really make sure the connection on his back was tabbed in securely.

Here’s an odd issue that wound up kind of turning into a benefit: That backpack makes him kind of backheavy. The solution is to bend his ankles and knees, so his legs are slightly bent backwards, like some sort of bird. He doesn’t look like this in the film, but it really goes with the figure’s lanky otherworldliness.

Oh, and his smokestacks don’t lock in, they just float on articulated joints. But they’re tight enough to stay on, and you can always fan them out like a threat display.

You know what also goes well with it? His articulation, which seems tailor-made to put him in strange, looming poses.

You wouldn’t think his ankles could tilt, based on how thin they are, but they can! Outside of that, he’s got the expected joints, plus a few extras. His normal-sized left hand can open and close on a single four-finger mitten joint. On his other hand, meanwhile, all four of his creepy long claw-fingers can open and close on separate joints, and I checked, his joints and stability are strong enough that he can grab and lift smaller figures. This is very important to me.

The only downside here is that I’m really missing wrist swivels, at least on his claw hand, if only because it feels like it should be able to spin (and it does, in the film). Meanwhile, he’s got two separate ball joints on his really long neck, and, while I’ve talked a lot about his non-accuracy being a good thing, I’ve found myself using them to hunch his head forwards enough to make his neck shorter. It adds to his looming presence, anyway.

There’s two major action features in this mode: His gun, and his blade. Let’s talk about the gun, first. In the film, the fingers on his giant claw could unite into an arm cannon. On the figure, you can pop his arm off, and replace it with a gun-form version.

It comes right off the arm on a peg with a divot on the side, so you can’t use it like a wrist swivel, sadly.

The gun that replaces it, meanwhile, is this stumpy, oval thing with a round barrel. I’ll be honest, though, its short stumpiness makes it feel a lot less menacing than it should, and I think I like him better with the claw.

Whichever one of these you’re not using, though, you can clip onto his backpack on a rectangular peg.

I kind of want to headcanon this version of the character into just actually having a detachable arm that he hangs off his back, instead of a morphing hand. Now, onto the blade.

It’s a double-sided, alien-looking weapon, kind of like a Klingon sword. It’s got lots of details, including ridged cracks on it, which makes up for the completely black coloration. It’s not a separate piece, but rather hangs off of his arm on a kind of multi-jointed ligature, pointing down his arm. You can swing the ligature around, though, and snap the blade into his open hand, turning it into a double-edged sword. It’s really cool, but I have my misgivings. In the movie, he doesn’t handhold it (I think?), it just appears from inside his arm, and the “storage” position is actually how he fights with it in the film.

Luckily, you’ve got options. You can move it even further back on the ligature (though it kind of hangs off his arm awkwardly). Or, while this wasn’t intended, you can just pop it out, because t’s just in there on a fairly loose friction joint.

Or, hear me out, put it on upside down. The blade folds in half for transformation, and when it’s upside down, you can fold it into a stashed-away elbow spike, and have him deploy and hold it as more of an underslung weapon, which, again, I think looks creepier, somehow.

Another unique feature: His head has lightpiping, something you never see in Studio Series! His eyes are tiny pinpricks in the darkness, which is a whole vibe.

I do wish his chest glowed like in the movie, though. It’s got translucent plastic in there, but no window to make it glow.

Transformation

To begin with, to make the transformation work, Scourge needs to have his claw-arm on, and his wrist blade needs to be the right way in. The idea of the transformation is a simple one, where you lay him down on his front, compress his body (including folding his arms back), and then cover him up with his backpack.

In practice, though, there’s a lot going on, including a lot of little panels to tab in, and some rather unintuitive bits, including how to get the arms pegged in. And that wristblade will come out during this transformation, thanks to that fairly loose joint it’s on. The Transformers Wiki does warn about potentially cracking the clear plastic on his backpack as you maneuver it into place along its hinge, but I think someone was just fearmongering, because it doesn’t feel fragile to me, though I am handling it carefully. While it’s not a bad transformation, it’s one that makes me feel just a tiny bit overwhelmed each time, and I’m still checking the instructions.

On the upside of things, I appreciate that all of his accessories are incorporated into the transformation, including his alternate gun-arm, which splits apart in a surprisingly involved way, before clipping onto the truck’s back end.

Truck Mode

As an obvious thematic Optimus Counterpart, Scourge changes into a long-nosed post-apocalyptic truck.

Scourge barely transformed in the film, but from what I can tell, this looks mostly accurate from the front, outside of the grill being shaped a bit differently. More importantly, he’s a big, angry, kitted out, rusty, Mad Max-looking thing, with four giant smokestacks,and chains all over him. The faction symbols finally show up on his grill, too! Autobot, Decepticon, Maximal, and Wrecker victims all made donations to it. But no Predacons or Decepticons, oddly, unlike the film.

He’s also nice and long in this mode, something I was worried about.

But, beyond the cool front of the truck, it’s abundantly clear that this mode was definitely not the priority. Mainly because the whole back end, which is the majority of the truck, is just a mess of robot parts.

Feet, arms, it’s all clearly just out there and visible, and doesn’t look great.

I understand that the Studio Series version of Dark of the Moon Megatron had a similar issue, but threw his tarp over the back to conceal all of this stuff. All Scourge has is his clip-on arm gun, which does sort of hide some of it, but mostly just adds another layer of stuff to what’s there.

This even extends to that good-looking cab, you can see it’s hollow from the back, there’s holes on either side of the hood thanks to the transformation…it’s just…barely hiding that it’s a folded-up guy.

Still, his truck parts are nicely sculpted and painted. And there’s a lot of new rust patterning painted on, little painted head lights, clear red windows, and even a little silver horn on the top of the cab. A shame his wheels aren’t painted, though.

You could make the argument that this altmode was barely onscreen, so it’s fine that it’s not as polished. You could also argue that as an alien who maybe didn’t even scan an Earth mode in the film? (It’s unclear), this is literally just his transport mode, it’s not supposed to look like anything realistic. But still, I wish this wasn’t as janky as it is. Oh, and he rolls! That’s about it for features, though.

Overall

I’m pretty picky about Leader-class guys these days, because of the prices involved. So, I only pick out the figures that I think will turn out to be peak, and that’s mostly worked out pretty well. Transmetal 2 Megatron, T-Rex Megatron, Galvatron, they’re all real nice ones. The only time in recent memory where I felt burned on the class’s value was Laser Optimus Prime. Scourge is…good. He’s okay. He’s decent. But he’s definitely not quite on the level of those great ones I mentioned just now.

His robot mode is amazingly immaculate, that’s for sure. It poses well, it looks really cool, and its inaccuracies only give it more flavor. It’s also got cool features.

His altmode’s not totally a waste, but it’s kind of flimsily done, and overly-complicated to get to. And in terms of materials and construction, he feels a bit lesser than the best of the modern Leaders. If I was giving him a numerical ranking, he’d be about a 7 out of 10 compared to the 9’s and above of those earlier examples. Maybe an 8 if it wasn’t for his altmode.

To be clear, I’d still call him worth getting if you’ve got Leader-class money to shell out, he’s really fun to pose looming over my other guys, as this odd, alien, stalking creature. But he’s not at the same “get this immediately” level as some other recent Leaders I’ve reviewed. He’s alright, and as a Leader, for Leader prices, being “alright” brings him down a bit.

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