With Dirge's release, all six of the G1 "original" seekers have made it to the Movie-verse, though the other coneheads have gotten different molds. Dirge is an homage to his G1 version in terms of being a Decepticon jet with a similar color scheme to his G1 self, but it's definitely a different sort of jet than he's traditionally had. It's a rather unique shape, what with the large intake engines and the four-pointed wind near the back thruster. It's a nice change from "just another Decepticon jet", that's for sure. Although he looks pretty nice from a roughly top-down view, Dirge has some rather obvious robot mode extras here if you look at him from a level angle. halves of his waist and the top half of his legs stick out from under the wings rather blatantly, but this is somewhat covered up by the spring-loaded detachable missile launchers on the underside of each wing. On a lesser note, a small part of his chest also sticks out below the bottom of the plane, though this is pretty small potatoes compared to the other extras. The general color scheme works pretty well, as Dirge's always has-- the dark navy blue and black go together fairly nicely, with the nice shade of bronzish orange and silver serving as nice color contrasts. The couple of black paint details on the dark blue plastic are had to see, however, due to how dark the blue plastic already is. Dirge has three retractable landing gear in the appropriate places in this mode, though none of them have actual turnable wheels.
    In robot mode, Dirge has some definite throwbacks to his G1 self, and I'm not just talking about the color scheme this time. His chest is shaped very much like the cockpit-chest of his G1 self (though it's not, it's "fake"), and his head is in his G1 self's "conehead" shape, though it isn't formed from the nosecone of the jet. In addition, he also has the "intake valve"-like designs on his shoulders, but those two are fake. Finally, both of his missile launchers can attach to his arms, just like on his G1 toy. However, all these "fake jet parts" come at a price, and that's that his REAL jet parts hang off everywhere on this mode unceremoniously. His main wings just hang off his lower legs, his feet are formed from his intake engines in a rather odd manner, his rear jet hangs off his butt, a large panel of the back part of his jet mode hangs off his left arm (albeit in a manner that collapses it inwards so it's not quite as protruding), and his cockpit and nosecone forms the lower part of his right arm, though at least that's incorporated into his robot design to a reasonable extent. His shoulders, chest, and head are detailed excellently, and the "light piping" translucent plastic used for his optics works quite well. Regardless, that's the best part of his robot mode, as even his missile launchers are perched on his arms in a pretty awkward manner. As for articulation, he can move at the neck, shoulders (at three points), elbows, hips (at two places), knees (at two points), and the ankles (at two points). However, this makes it seem like he has a lot more movement than he actually does, given all the vehicle mode kibble hanging off of him everywhere. His shoulders and large, stable feet are really the only parts of him that have an impressive range of movement. His Mech Alive gimmick is kinda cool, but also a bit disconcerting-- rotating his shoulders rotates the, er... nipple... on that side of his chest in the same gear-like fashion. I wish I could give it a better name than "nipple", but that's really the area that rotates and that's pretty much what it looks like. Kinda odd, there.
    RotF Dirge is a perfect example of the WRONG way to go about making an homage out of a design while still trying to be innovative. His overly-complicated (though not difficult) transformation may be unorthodox, but forcing so many G1 homages in his robot mode on top of it means his real vehicle parts haphazardly make up the rest of his robot mode, and give him some obvious vehicle mode extras, as well. Given that neither of his modes are particularly good (but particularly his robot mode) and he doesn't have an particularly unusual vehicle mode or other charm that makes him stick out, I can't recommend him to anybody but a Seeker completist. There's just many, many better RotF Transformers out there than Dirge.

Review by Beastbot

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