The decision was made. The guy who is voicing Optimus is Hasbro's choice for the character, seemingly here forward due to him voicing Prime both in WfC and Cyberverse.

Also, this thread will probably be moved to the Animation forum...probably merged into another WfC thread...

 

"Do not recite the dark magic to me, I was there when it was written."

The fact that he has done Optimus twice now means nothing. There have been plenty of other people who have voiced Optimus prime over the years but petter cullen will ALWAYS be THE voice of Optimus prime, and the only way hasbro can change that is once peter cullens time comes to join the well of allsparks.

 

I don't even know what the hell Gijo is. This is the first I'm even hearing about it. My Little Pony on the hand is hardly a property that "Nobody cares about" you and I don't care about it but there is clearly a fan base for it. My Little Pony... regardless of our personal feelings about it, is actually one of their most successful properties. I really don't get it... I've checked out a few episodes that had Scott McNeil and John de Lancie because if I'm going to check out a show to see what all the hype is about why not start with episodes with actors I already like... and it's really just OK... like I don't hate it, it's something I wouldn't mind having on in the background if I got kids around who want to watch it but I don't see much else beyond it just being an average kids show for LITTLE LITTLE kids. I'm not going to watch it but there's for some reason adult men who love this show for little kids. The target audience is actually meant for little girls but I don't see a problem if little boys want to watch it too. I'm just confused what the appeal is for adults. But I can't say that no one cares about it just based on my own personal feelings. Clearly there is a fan base for this.

And Animated did not have budget voice acting. That was actually a pretty expensive voice cast compared to the current run of non-Union Actors. Animated actually had known names that had been in Transformers before. Shockwave, Blurr, Rodimus Prime, and a couple others I can't remember off the top of my head were voiced by their original voice actors. Judd Nelson who voiced Rodimus Prime in the 86 movie and Animated is one of the most expensive voice actors in the series, I mean that's literally the reason G1 Season 3 had to replace him after the movie because they couldn't afford to pay him full time. And it's the same with Animated, they only were able to get him for one episode but that was an expensive 5 minutes just because they got Judd Nelson to do the voice. If they were hiring non-union actors no one had ever heard of that is cheap voice acting, that's what they're doing now with Cyberverse, Rescue Bots Academy, and the WFC Netflix series. It's also the reason the reason they didn't bring Peter Cullen and Frank Welker back, cause they're both union actors and not only is Hasbro cutting costs by going non-union but the actors themselves aren't even allowed to work a non-union job at a lower pay rate even if they wanted to. They'd have to be credited under a different name if they were going to do that because the union has strict rules against that sort of thing.

And yes actors do often do that, working a non-union job under a different name because they're in a union. For obvious reasons I can't tell you who they are. On paper joining a union is suppose to help you get more work at a higher pay rate but often times actors actually end up getting less work because they're not allowed to take non-union jobs anymore. They get paid more per gig sure but there's also union dues they have to pay and the strict rules about where they can and can't work. Some actors end up making about the same or less than they did without a union depending on what union they join. There's a few different ones Actors Equity for Theater, Screen Actors Guild for TV and Movies, I'm pretty sure voice actors have their own separate union as well. It's really more trouble than it's worth.

And now... I'm going to go look up what the hell Gijo is...

- = edit = -

Wait... did you mean G.I. Joe? Cause when I looked it up Google autocorrected me and brought up G.I. Joe. If that's what you meant then again... there is a huge fan base for that property. In fact there's a massive overlap between G.I. Joe fans and Transformers fans due to the crossovers since the original 80's versions both existed in the same universe. I personally don't give a crap about G.I. Joe beyond the limited crossovers with Transformers but just because I personally don't care about something doesn't mean no one care about it.

You might as well be saying they should cut their funding for the recently acquired Power Rangers property since Hasbro took that over from Bandai... I don't give a shit about Power Rangers but other people do and they're not going to cut funding to other properties just because we like Transformers more. If it was really something no one cared about they'd stop making toys for it rather than just cutting costs.

And Power Rangers is already pretty cheap to produce anyway since they're mostly reusing stock footage from Japan. The only way they could cut costs more is they stop editing Japanese stock footage together with new footage with American actors and just dub the voices of the Japanese actors That's the only way they can make an already cheaply produced series even cheaper.

 

I know change is hard but I'm sure Hasbro has been wanting to move on from Cullen and Welker for awhile due to age. I seriously doubt you'd want a 95 year old Cullen doing the voice, either.

Jake Foushee does an admirable job - until he starts yelling. Some additional training and a better voice director would solve some of those problems.

Marc Thompson is good as Megatron in Cyberverse - I like him a little better than Manocha in WfC, I think, but that could be because of the methodical, plodding voice work as opposed to Manocha's actual voice.

Whatever happens, though...Frank Todaro needs to stay on as Starscream in all future projects. Good grief, that's the closest to Latta I've heard in a long, long time.

 

Animated had some of the best voice acting out of any Transformers series and had some of the best in the business attached to it. On topic, the whole non-union actors discussion has been addressed multiple times before and I don't think Hasbro's going to change their stance anytime soon.

 

I assume it's G.I. Joe misspelled.

 

I got this comment on a clip of earthrise that I uploaded could someone translate it?

 

I don't think this was written in any language...

 

Transformers. Wfc earthrise elita.one takes out.
Prison Tristen he last harrison he cog orderd coalition of governments
Elita one kiss [REDACTED] face

Best I could do. Clearly an advanced level of cryptography.

 

See the edit in my last post.

 

Saw some trivia that episode 6 shows quick clips of the crew on earth, including Spike? Unless I'm crazy... I didn't see that? Where was that?

 

I don’t think it that it was shown

 

Unfortunately, no. I would have liked to see Spike, though. The end of episode 6 is where we get a glimpse of Dinobot.

 

That whole thing is nonsense anyway. There are plenty of shows that use non-union actors with great voice work. The problem here is they don't seem to cast very good actors in these recent Transformers shows.

 

Just finished watching Earthrise. It was an improvement over season 1. The scope of things seemed bigger, and the universe more expansive than before.

Two things:

1. The voice acting is still very slow. By now I’ve just come to expect it. But it’s still a mark against it.

Spoiler

2. I don’t know how Prime keeps the support of the Autobots, when he’s thrown victory away multiple times now by refusing to kill Megatron, going so far as to order Wheeljack to save Megatron’s life & then later begging Megatron for forgiveness. If I were an Autobot, I’d want someone else leading the troops.

Anyway, it held my interest & was a definite step in the right direction. I’ll be back for Kingdom.

 

Watch using the Netflix app, set speed to 1.25 or even 1.5x. the dialogue is painfully slow.

As I said with Siege, I think there are good ideas here... But the execution leaves much to be desired. Earthrise did not alter that sentiment.

 

I still think the biggest problem is that the voice direction is poor. Couple that with the abysmal writing, it makes me feel bad for the VA's.

 

Something about the trilogy that baffles me a little (not necessarily hate) is that the show and the toyline seem to be telling two different stories. There's the Paradron medics pack with Ratchet and Lifeline, the Botropolis rescue mission pack, the Ultra Magnus spoiler pack with Rung, all concepts that the show didn't use. Makes me wonder if the Fossilizers will see any screentime in Kingdom when it comes out.

 

It was decent, a step up from the first series, but I can´t get over how for a planetary civil war, it seems their entire civilization is reduced to a few skirmishes of a dozen bots. I mean, a large scale war should look like something like WWII. You could at least throw some references to generals from each side off-screen commanding armies and reporting back to Megatron or Prime.

 

So far the main thing that puts me off wfc isn't the animation but the voice acting. They just all sound he same. I'm not expecting but miracles but if your gonna voice someone like ironhide or Skylynx maybe watch a few classic G1 episodes or at least a few clips and get an idea of the voice the audience will be expecting from you instead of just angry yelling or trying to sound broody and sinister all the time and failing.