"Oh, So Unwise..." A Pictorial Review of Movie Masterpiece MPM-08 Megatron

"Is it Fear or Courage that compels you fleshling?"

The time has come, and MPM-08 Movie Masterpiece Megatron is arriving in-hand for all the movie fans (and hopefully more fans elsewhere) to enjoy. As a huge movie fan myself, I could not wait for this figure. I was more excited for this figure than I was for any other figure this year, including MP-43 Beast Wars Megatron, Ectotron, and even MPM-09 Jazz. This specific Megatron has a very special place in my heart, and I really wanted it to be good.

So is it?

In the famous words of another Megatron: Yessssss

Let's start just by looking at this robot mode head on. The figure is faultless. The design is dead on to the original Movie Megatron design. It's also both cool and important because this is the first mainline figure to utilize that Movie 1 design since the first movie itself.

Let's take a look.



The robot mode is tall, hefty, and imposing. He looks like he walked right off the 2007 theatre.

Now take a look at that headsculpt! That is a mean Megatron face right there, captured in gorgeous detail and with some well placed paint to help it stand out. The mouth is posable, and it looks great open or closed. They nailed it.

And take a look at how tall he is! This Masterpiece figure is as tall as a Prime Wars Combiner, which is really impressive.





Looking around the figure some more, there is a backpack on him, but honestly considering the design, I think this is as close as they could get to minimizing it. The good thing is that backpack is only really noticeable once you start moving around to view him from behind, and it blends in fairly well from a back view.





Also, while we are around back, take a look at the weapon storage. The gun tabs in down behind his waist, and the flail piece pegs into the gun and the back stabilizer wing.



And here we have my favorite of his accessories: the Allspark. I have wanted one of these since the movie came out, and it is awesome to see it here. The cube is very intricately detailed, and is painted a beautiful silver.

The cube itself can fit into Megatron's chest, so you can recreate his famous 2007 Death Scene, or maybe just pretend he is powered up on it. either way, that translucent red plastic in his chest is fantastic looking.







Since we are now on accessories, take a look at that flail. Now, this is one of the few down points about this figure that I have. The flail is made of soft plastic, so while he can swing it around and pose it, it is subject to the laws of gravity, so you can't get all the poses you want out of it, such as a mid-air flying flail. But it is still a nice piece, and I appreciate that they recreated the movie where he literally pulls his hand out of his arm into a flail.





His final accessory is his cannon. Now the cannon has 2 forms. The first is a blaster mode, where it replaces one of his hands and forms a pretty wicked looking gun hand. It makes a nice companion piece to his other hand has a flail.

The other form is that of his dual-handed fusion cannon, as seen in the first movie when he blasts Optimus. I really like the way they have it wielded and how it perfectly recreates his pose from the movie. I appreciate the effort they put into making it a single hand gun as well as a dual-handed cannon.







Posing Megatron is also really fun. His fingers are all articulated, the head has multiple hinges to move around wherever you need it to go, and the arms and legs are very posable. The ankle tilts are a bit of an issue. He has some good ankle tilts with a lot of movement, but they have a soft tab area where they are either right upright or they are free to move and tilt, which limit his shallower ankle tiltage.

Before we get to comparisons, one last thing: he has spectacular light piping.



So for some comparisons, here we have him beside his original voyager toy from 2007, his recent Revenge of the Fallen Studio Series toy, and the other Movie Masterpiece figures that have been released since the 2nd Bumblebee figure of the line.







Breaking the mold of the larger Movie Masterpiece figures, Megatron's transformation is really fun! It takes less time to transform him than any of the other Movie Masterpiece figures, and he is far less finicky than any of the others too. It is fun to transform him, and it's not much of a chore.

The jet mode is a really nice looking alien jet mode too. Unlike a large portion of the fandom, I really like his 2007 jet mode, visible head and all. This is a lean and mean Megatron ready to batter you into submission. And the visible head makes his jet mode pretty darn scary when you see it flying at you.

It's also a very heavy robot, and the jet mode is not only huge in size, but you can feel the weight when you pick it up. The die cast is included in his midsection and his feet, so the weight is faily nicely distributed throughout, and the die cast in the middle of the jet mode fits in great with the plastic surrounding it, really giving Megatron a metal jet heart.









He also does a fairly good job of blending his robot parts in with the jet parts. While the robot parts are not fully hidden away, they add to his mean jet aesthetic, with the fingers giving the nose a pointy feel, and his feet looking like massive jet boosters.



He also has some good weapon storage in this mode. The blaster tucks away between his robot mode feet, and blends in flawlessly with the back of the jet. The flail is a little less subtle, pegging in beside the jet. But at least it has somewhere to go.





And here we have his jet mode beside his 2007 self and some recent Studio Series Constructicons. His jet mode is absolutely massive.





So the final verdict on Megatron: He is spectacular. He was such an anticipated figure, and he lived up to expectations. He is massive, accurate, posable, and fun to play with. Robot mode can move and is beautiful, the transformation is fun, and the jet mode is absolutely gigantic. He's heavy, and he's tight.

He has a few weak spots. The ankle tilts could use a little bit better and smoother movement, the fingers could be made of a little bit more sturdy plastic, and the flail could have been made stiffer and segmented for posing. But those are minor points considering how much is excellent about this figure.

As the 2007 Megatron voyager was my first ever Transformer, I have been waiting a long time for this update. And I could not be happier with it. They nailed this Megatron, finally giving proper justice for the first Megatron many of us got to see and love.

Well done.