Me watching the whole "Cyberverse and Netflix are better than Animated" cringe go down.

 

Though I enjoyed Animated overall and think it did a great job on the Transformers characters themselves, apart from Soundwave and the Constructicons, I've never been able to rewatch Animated because I'd have to endure the ridiculous human villains which for me outweigh all the good aspects of the show.

I was pleasantly surprised by Cyberverse which I really liked once I got past Bumblebee's radio speak, Teletran X and Grimlock.

I'm also one of the few fans who liked the Prime Trilogy, especially the portrayal of Hot Rod and Megatron. That said, Menasor and Starscream's voices were poor. I never thought I'd hear a Transformer voice more annoying than Rattrap and Energon Ironhide but that Menasor voice could be used for an exorcism.

As for the Netflix show, I personally can't wait. I am sceptical about the voices of Shockwave, Starscream and Soundwave as the latter two are usually poor imitations of the G1 voices and I'm not fond of the Allspark/zombies idea.

I miss the G1 days when the Decepticons wanted to strip Earth of it's resources rather than chasing a mystical relic.

The fact is every series has it's merits and hopefully Netflix will pleasantly surprise us. They've given us some great animated series like Castlevania and She Ra in the recent past.

 

Mind telling me why? Genuine question, I'm personally ambivalent to the guy.

 

._. Why must this happen.

 

Fully agreed about Menasor's voice. I have no idea who was behind the vocal direction for the show, but either the casting or the direction for Menasor was very, very bad.
THEY'RE GONNA BUILD....AN ARMY OF COMBINERS!!!

Me, too.

You're not wrong. I much prefer Starscreams and Soundwaves who do their own thing over bad imitations of Chris Latta and Frank Welker + 1980s vocal processing by Scott Brownlee. (Seriously...what did they use for the vocal processing in G1, and how did they use it? No one's ever managed to create a perfect replication of Soundwave's G1 voice, and most of them sound very different from the original.) For Starscream in particular, bad imitations are kind of painful, given how raspy and high-pitched Chris Latta's performance was.
That does bring up a question, though. G.I. Joe probably doesn't have as many incarnations as Transformers, but do modern voice actors for Cobra Commander try to do an imitation of Chris Latta's voice for him? His Cobra Commander voice was very similar to his Starscream voice.

 

Well, you may side with the other people, but I personally never liked grumpy Ratchet. I always felt another character should have been the grump, but with Ratchet, it just didn't feel natural, because in the original Sunbow cartoon, whenever he argued with others, it mainly felt like he was ribbing more than whining and complaining to no end (seriously, that was enough for me to constantly saying "shut up" whenever TFA or TFP Ratchet complained), plus, in the Marvel Comics, I always felt that he was one of the best characters in there, starting as his usual jovial self and then becoming more and more traumatized as the losses pile up.

In fact, if you read the tech specs of Ironhide, Gears or Siren, they would have been much better and natural choices to be the grump of the team rather than poor Ratchet. My preference would have been Siren, since he is a character that has rarely been used (and most of his appearances are in comic books) and the tech specs describe him as someone loud who constantly barks orders at others.

 

I'm not too familiar with modern Gi Joe series.

Modern Starscream actors would be better off not trying to imitate the high aspect of his G1 voice as it usually comes across as corny.

I did hear a fan dub years ago that perfectly nailed G1 Starscream's voice and I kind of liked his voice in that one episode of Beast Wars.

Only one modern version of Soundwave captured his G1 voice perfectly, the Bumblebee movie.

 

There was one voice that was different from the norm, which was Robert Baker (who provided the voice of CC in G.I. Joe Retaliation). It was a very good performance, but other than Robert, most CC actors tend to take elements from Chris' take (especially since some of them like Michael Dobson and Charlie Adler also played Starscream).

Personally, I don't think modern Starscream VAs do a bad job at it. Yes, they try to keep Chris' essence alive, but they do have stuff that make them their own. Chris will never be able to be surpassed in the role, but I personally think that Scott Whyte, Charlie Adler and Steve Blum are the best current Starscreams. They do keep that screechy sound, but they also have an element that makes it their own. Doug Parker and Billy Bob Thompson were also pretty good, but I always felt Scott, Charlie and Steve were better at it.

Honestly, one of those that I would call corny is Tom Kenny. I always felt he was the most forced out of them, and really sounded like he was trying too hard to sound like Chris and the performance kinda suffers because of it (again, voice acting isn't just focusing on the voice, but again, actors will tell you that acting is more important than anything else, the voice is just a bonus).

Michael Dobson also was a bit forced in the role, but I could at least forgive him because he focused more on the performance than the voice.

 

Oh, yeah...the Bumblebee movie had a great Soundwave voice.
What fan dub had the good Starscream impression?

Thanks for the information. How good are they at imitating Cobra Commander's voice?

 

Ngl I really don’t like Chris latta’s voice as starscream personally I prefer steve Blum’s as starscream it wasn’t too high pitched and it wasn’t too deep it was perfect for him his gives a threatening and a cowardly tone

 

Well, Charlie did play him in a much more threatening manner than Chris, but the rasp was still there.

Michael played him in a more bungling manner, so they both basically played him opposite to how they played Starscream (Charlie was a lot more nervous and jittery, while Michael was a lot more competent and not as comical).

Personally, I like Steve Blum, but let's face it, the character's name is Starscream, so Chris' high pitch fits him perfectly. Plus, if it weren't for him, would Starscream have become as memorable as he is now? No way. Plus, the reason why Chris was basically one of a kind is because he could actually keep doing that screechy voice up to eight hours without tiring, so all that energy was brought in to the performance. Every actor that has played Starscream simply looks up to Chris' performance, which holds up quite nicely to this day.

 

Tom Kenny really nailed getting that Latta-esque screechy voice while still making it his own.