Yes, yes it is.

 

I went back and watched it for the first time a few years back. Super enjoyable, once you get over some of the dated animation!

 

BeastWars (or originally "Beasties") was a highly creative show, that ultimately walked all over G1 with muddy shoes.
The producers were felt repressed by the restrictions ABC had placed on their 1st show, Reboot. So when they found out they'd have few restrictions with Beasties, they went a little crazy.  

Imagine a show full of Michael Bay humour, and outlandish unserious characters that do no justice to the history of Transformers.
...BUT, give them a lot of characterization, growth, and actual thought-out storylines.

Is that pure gold?
Or disrespectful, regardless?

 

Wow, I agree so much with this.
While BeastMachines wasn't my favorite TF show (2nd maybe?), it was easily the most serious, and the writers got bonus points for so many things they did right while facing an uphill battle.

 

Strange. I felt they treated G1 with respect whenever elements from that show came up. Certainly, BW Megatron talks up G1 Megatron as being the greatest Decepticon leader ever, there's reverence for both the Ark & Nemesis, all other G1 cameos are met with an air of gravitas whenever they interact with the main cast.
Color me puzzled.

 

This

 

At the same time it is indicative of how good the series can be as a whole. Here we have a character who undergoes recognizable development, gains new dimensions beyond what his first impression would have you see, but doesn't completely stray from his core conceit. He gets a payoff that is very satisfying, well thought out, and honestly can get a viewer.

 

But cleverly done.

 

It starts out slow, but when it all comes together it is brilliant.

 

Ah hell no! How dare you compare Beast Wars to something Micheal Bay crapped out of his aft. Blasphemy! I'm half joking here but in all seriousness when you reduce it to that you make it sound like one of the worst Transformers series ever rather the best Transformers series ever.

 

Well, we do have people on here who act as though some occasional toilet humor in the Bay movies is a total affront to the brand. If that's really what makes the movies so bad, then the same should apply also to Beast Wars, right?  

 

BW was good, probably the best TF show ever. It was a step up in terms of maturity from G1 (as most 90’s cartoons were over 80’s cartoons), and had an impressive blending of fun, seriousness, reality and absurdity. It took the time to let the stakes and relationships develop organically, and they never seemed forced (unlike the ‘this is the most important thing/end of existence’ crap force fed us out of the gate without explanation or context in most TF cartoons or the ‘I love and will die defending these humans I just met yesterday and will f’n murder anyone who doesn’t f’n help me do it’ that Bay crammed down our throats in a piss-poor attempt to show Prime to be a great altruistic but hard-ass savior of mankind. They took the time to build up the payoff so that the payoff actually paid off. And to date it has better dialogue than any other TF show or movie.


Plus, a lot of the praise was enhanced due to the crap that followed. BM was we written and thought provoking, but it was a huge joyless downer, and 90% of the episodes consisted of ‘Primal gives lame new-age crap speech championing mystical meditation, Cheetor balks demanding that they act against their aggressors, he takes off with other Maximals to bust into some facility, shit blows up, Vehicons show up, 15 minute chase scene with techno music pumping ensues, Primal intervenes to allow for a narrow escape, Primal spouts more mystical new-age crap – the end, cue credits’. That may seem like an exaggeration…and it might be one, but even huge BM fans will concede it’s a pretty accurate depiction of the vast majority of episodes. Then came RiD (the 2000 one), which was a dub of Car Robots meant to act as a filler for the big project Hasbro and Takara were jointly working on and taking two years to prepare for. Anyway, RiD was what it was meant to be, a filler series to buy an extra year for Haskara to polish their masterpiece, and it had entertaining moments, it brought real vehicles in the modern world back to TF storylines and toys, but it was very, very simple and meant for young children (younger than 8 – anyone who claims otherwise needs to rewatch the final episode) and had the most awful final episode conflict resolution of any show (though I guess the first Harry Potter movie resolution was along the same lines and that got a pass…it shouldn’t have, the bad guy can’t touch you because your mother loved you…shut the f’ up!) and kind of set the tone maturity and dialogue-wise for the next several years. And then, after two years of planning and effort we got…Armada. What an awful piece of shit that show was. Some people like it, but trust me, it was awful. That spun off into Energon, where they tried to correct some of the mistakes of Armada but was still a crap show, and from there they went to Cybertron, which by that point, who cared? So anyway, the shows following BW were a huge drop off in every way from a story telling and dialogue perspective, making BW even more revered and missed.


AND seeing the Predicons and Maximals find the Ark, interact with the dormant Autobots and Decepticons…it was huge. I’m probably one of the few old enough to remember how HUGE the Transformers show was from ’84-’86, but trust me, it was HUGE. It had no competition, like none. GI Joe was the next biggest show, and that was nowhere near as popular. I’m really not exaggerating when I say that damn near every boy over 5 and under 11 with access to a TV in markets where it was available was a fan of TF. Seriously, not an exaggeration. So to see a show that is genuinely good suddenly show these guys, that’s huge. Seeing BW Megs slowly flying past the unconscious Ark occupants and hovering in front of an unconscious Prime…everyone who had seen MTMTE as a kid suddenly DNA’d their shorts. Actually, many people here cite ‘Code of Hero’ as the best episode, and I agree, but as mentioned it requires watching the character development over the first season and half to really appreciate it – but for an immediate pay off for someone familiar with G1 or TF’s in general but new to BW, watch ‘The Agenda’. Bam, no real backstory required to enjoy the hell out of those episodes, and you get to see some G1 goodness (and of course you're going to feel obligated to continue on with 'Optimal Situation').


So, as usual I’ve digressed, but yes, compared to all other TF shows, and action cartoons in general, BW really was that good. Was it perfect? Nope, you need to suspend disbelief for a lot of aspects (particularly the distances they travel via the methods they travel them in), but it is still the best TF series to date.

 

originally beasties???

 

I have only seen a few episodes, but I liked the smaller cast, which allowed for more characterization.

 

The difference is that Beast Wars has plenty of quality content that the toilet humor doesn't make up the majority of what people actually remember about the series.

 

It was a joke, mostly. But I do think it's a double-standard. Toilet humor isn't going to be the main thing anyone remembers about the Bay movies unless they already disliked them for totally different reasons. The lowbrow gags occupy a few brief seconds out of each 2Hr+ movie. That's not enough to be a significant damaging factor. If it's not worth mentioning when you like the rest of the content, it's not worth mentioning when you don't.

 

I think that's a touch disingenuous. It didn't take me the entirety of watching 12 Ouns Mous to figure out that I'd rather castrate myself with a broken plastic spoon than watch it every again. If someone legitimately doesn't have a taste for something, the correct answer isn't "keep watching it". I liked the Ultraforce cartoon, but I wouldn't insist that someone who didn't needs to watch the entire thing to figure out if they don't like it. It's even worse if the response to someone disliking it is "Well, maybe you need to rewatch it."

So watch it, but form your own opinion. Like it or not, form your own opinion and keep to it.

 

There’s no double standard. I love lowbrow humor…when it’s done well. Bay’s lowbrow humor isn’t done well. Idiocracy’s dildozer was funny because it fit well with the movie and situation. Devastator’s balls were…well, there’s a pair of balls dangling between the giant robot’s legs…balls that didn’t exist in the alt modes of the component robots…and any shred of subtlety is removed by Turturro pointing it out as a scrotum. Seriously, Bay’s lowbrow humor actually comes with f’n explanations. He feels the need to point out and even explain dick and fart jokes!

I’m not claiming that there aren’t a few people out there offended by Bay’s lowbrow humor because they have sticks up their asses, but for the vast majority of those that hate Bay’s lowbrow humor, we hate it because it’s just dumbed down, badly executed, and serves no purpose. Like, really dumbed down and really bad and really pointless. Did anyone really laugh when Ken Jeong jumped Shia in the toilet stall (aside from Bay…he must love toilet stall confrontations for some reason)? Dog humping dog? Robot humping leg? Football to head? It’s all just so bad, so forced, and contributes nothing.

Rhinox saving the day as well as his life with a fart that’s been building throughout an entire episode with the title ‘The Low Road’ is funny. Not saying it’s the most clever thing in the world, but it is funny. Bay’s antics just aren’t…at all. I love lowbrow humor, Bay’s just really, really bad at it.

 

It tried being something different, not in the fact that there are animals now, and it ain't that it's not the autobot and decepticon's war, it's that Primal and Megs, weren't the overall commanders of their factions, they were just ordinary guys, that became legends through their stories, Primal saving the day both in beast wars stopping Megatron from rewriting history, and Primal again stopping Megatron from enslaving Cybertron in beast machines.

 

Huh? When did I ever say that he needed to force himself to watch something he doesn't like? My advice was to give the show a chance past the cursory first few episodes. Yeah, by the time he's gotten 3/4 of the way through BW and he still thinks it sucks, then no he shouldn't feel the need to watch the rest. I judged that he'd like it enough to finish it, but that was just a judgment, not some kind of order.