TF Views

Read the first issue the other day - features Bumblebee vs. Barricade, with Sam involved. Largely a rehash of the first fight on a larger scale, a small and self-contained story, but it singlehandedly beat the pants off of ROTF itself by having more heart and being more satisfyinf an experience, heh. Regular character interaction is largely obliterated by the movie TFs obliterating each other every time they fight. This, honestly, sucks ass, and this single comic issue was enjoyable for the contrast. Thoughts?

I thought it was okay. I was psyched to see more Barricade, and they snuck Miles in there too, nice touch. My main issue was that, as a series whose main purpose is to smooth over continuity issues from Alliance to ROTF, they missed the biggest one and left Barricade alive at the end of the issue. Now, I know it's perfectly plausible that he's FINALLY meet his end somewhere else in the series, but they had a huge chance here, and went with a TF Animated "Or is it?!" ending instead. The thing is, as much as I love Barricade, he's been the biggest loose end in the Movie continuity for nearly two years now, and they *need* to do something about it. I started reading this issue thinking that was going to be the point, and the story wound up being pretty much disposable instead. I felt...cheated...somehow.

But hey, the cover art's really nice. And shame on me, I kind of want that Megan Fox pin-up cover.

I looked through it while at the store last week, but I put it back. It just wasn't anything I'd hoped they'd do with this series. As BWprowl commented on, I'd hoped they might wrap up the loose end with Barricade but instead his fate gets left open ended again. And I really wanted to see more of a definitive connection the previous stories. I dunno, maybe I'll find some of the other issues (Sideswipe I'm more looking forward to given the lack of screen time he got in the movie) more interesting, but I skipped this one.

BWprowl wrote:I thought it was okay. I was psyched to see more Barricade, and they snuck Miles in there too, nice touch. My main issue was that, as a series whose main purpose is to smooth over continuity issues from Alliance to ROTF, they missed the biggest one and left Barricade alive at the end of the issue. Now, I know it's perfectly plausible that he's FINALLY meet his end somewhere else in the series, but they had a huge chance here, and went with a TF Animated "Or is it?!" ending instead. The thing is, as much as I love Barricade, he's been the biggest loose end in the Movie continuity for nearly two years now, and they *need* to do something about it. I started reading this issue thinking that was going to be the point, and the story wound up being pretty much disposable instead. I felt...cheated...somehow.

But hey, the cover art's really nice. And shame on me, I kind of want that Megan Fox pin-up cover.

..Really? You'd rather they killed Barricade? Me, I'll take any decent scraps of characterisation I can cling to, and recurring Decepticon characters are few and far between here. If this means we get 'more' Barricade later on, I'll gladly, gladly take that over a half-assed kill-him-off-to-tie-up-loose-ends ending.

The movie universe now has as many, if not more, loose ends than any other TF universe, after all. Why tie up the ones that could go interesting places so quickly?

The main problem with Barricade is that Bay's sloppy editing left his (scripted) death out fo the final movie. When the tie-ins tried to accomodate that, Barricade suddenly became a very important player.....and then he was left out of the movie.

Unless you go with the original script, (in which case there is not need to account for Barricade at all), there is no need to assume Barricade was dead in RotF. It is just as plausible to assume he was off on an errand. All of the comics show him trying, with only iimited success, to do *something* useful for the Decepticons.

Dom
-notes this could have been avoided had Bay been smarter about editing, or maybe even shooting, scenes.

I agree--if nothing else, they could have fully edited out every shot with Barricade 'later' in the movie, since he does absolutely nothing of consequence later in the film. We could have just assumed Barricade died after Bumblebee hit him.

Dominic wrote:Dom
-notes thic could have been avoided had Bay been smarter

Fixed that for you

Dominic wrote:The main problem with Barricade is that Bay's sloppy editing left his (scripted) death out fo the final movie.

The story I heard was Bay ended up liking the character so much that he decided to cut his death from the first movie in order to save the character for future movies, not that it was a case of simply sloppy editing. That being the case though, I do not know why we didn't see Barricade in RotF. But then there is still the possibility of future movies.

The edit was really sloppy, almost as if Bay was hoping people would just forget about Barricade, rather than notice how he simply vanished.

Dominic wrote:The edit was really sloppy, almost as if Bay was hoping people would just forget about Barricade, rather than notice how he simply vanished.

No, a sloppy edit is Bonecrusher and Prime tackling each other off a highway bridge when they were on a ground level highway with no indication of such bridges. Barricade just vanishing is no indication of sloppy editing given he could have just as easily left off screen.