Thats what I feel is missing is the fun/adventure. I feel like they tried to crib note IDW..there isn’t any need for something so complex or verbose. They could have used more creative action to…they are transformers …not stoic mechs.

 

I enjoyed it for what it was. Sat through the entire thing last night.

 

How do you feel about the original Beast Wars cartoon? Several characters are suggested to feel something like sexual attraction, especially when it comes to Blackarachnia. She has a romantic relationship with Silverbolt, Cheetor becomes infatuated with her, and they jokingly allude to him going through puberty. Rattrap even describes ... well, a Cybertronian strip club.

I'm not saying you have to like it, but its not exactly a new idea in the franchise.

 

I enjoyed this one overall, definitely the best of the trilogy. It definitely is very self-serious though, and they try to do way too much in terms of characters and subplots in 6 episode series. Each plot and character point ends up feeling rushed and inconsequential. Like Dinobots 'arc' was good, but it happened so fast that it doesn't really even bear any weight.

Like I completely missed:

Spoiler

how/when he became a ghost. granted i wasn't watching with 100% attention, but he was dead, and then suddenly he showed up as a ghost and Megatron(?) was talking to him like he'd been that way for a while

The ideas don't have time to breathe, so sometimes if you look away for 30 seconds, you completely miss something.

 

Also, boobs.

 

Exactly, even Prime with the generally more "serious" tone had plenty of opportunity for humor and lighthearted moments.

Also, what WFC goes for is faux-dark to the shallowest possible degree. There is no depth here whatsoever. The characters just moan over and over again about the "cost of war" with absolutely no meaning behind it. They're sad and miserable because they keep telling us that they are. With a few exceptions, the voice acting is not professional enough to convey any sort of history or depth behind these words. Meanwhile, you look at Peter Cullen in Age of Extinction, and he totally sells just how broken and distraught Optimus is from the moment he appears on screen.

It's just a hollow, meaningless trilogy that thinks it's "adult" but really isn't for anyone at all.

Literally the only remotely interesting idea the series had was Ratchet running an unaligned, underground treatment center for both sides, and then he just joins up again with the Autobots anyway.

 

I’ve never seen a full episode since I dropped out after the 86’ movie. Just different times I guess. In the early 80’s when I watched cartoons everything was Reganized which meant defeating the commies, saying no to drugs and promoting abstinence. I only watched Beavis & Butthead and Ren & Stimpy in the 90’s since those were my high school and college years. If metal robot spiders with mammary glands and a kinky sexual preferences are what 90’s kids like, then more power to them. We are still mostly allowed to like what we like. Mostly.

 

Kinky sexual preferences? I didn't realize kissing was so raunchy!

 

Biggest gripe is an understatement. Even the previous "dark" and "edgy" series had comic relief. It's literally a staple of the show, because, well it's a kids show and it's supposed to have good light hearted and funny moments. Hell, even that aside, any competent writer knows they need some kind of comic relief to relieve tension, build character, and set up a story. I dead ass dont know if the show ever made me laugh once, and they only time I do laugh is when people make jokes about it like I am fum yer future.

 

To be fair, that was prob the only time the show made me laugh.

 

Binged it yesterday before work… found myself extremely bored. Voice acting managed to be even worse than before. Upset that they didn’t shoehorn Rodimus into it somehow. Leaves it open to a CGI movie, but I sincerely hope Netflix/Hasbro don’t waste more money on this. I want to see more transformers cartoons, but I want PERSONALITY in the bots. Other than Starscream, everyone sounded like they slept through script reading.

Anyway, hopefully this performs well enough for Hasbro to take more chances on cartoons, but they take to heart the complaints. Transformers deserves more!

 

I kind of wonder what stars need to align for Hasbro to invest in talent (animation studios, writers/producers, voice talent) to the degree they did on Transformers: Prime again.

Like, I know there's a lot of controversy with this new Masters of the Universe show, but at least it's very competent from an animation and voice acting perspective. Like, they actually invested money in that show to make it happen. I have not seen that happen in a TF series in a long time, and TF animated series are far more frequent than MOTU series. Then again, they got names like Hamill and Perlman in the POTP show and that was still garbage, so who knows.

 

Polygon Pictures (the people that animated the WFC trilogy) worked on Prime as well, so money was invested in the animation to an extent. It's also not entirely on Hasbro, Rooster Teeth as the production company behind the trilogy definitely had a hand in how the budget got spent.

 

It’s over saturated with drama.… dramatic title, dramatic sounds, dramatic setup/theme setting, dramatic look, dramatic (forced) voices, dramatic words, and when they point out someone gets shot, it’s nothing.

Not sure why everyone is grouchy.

I couldn’t stomach watching past a few episodes to be frank. And the parts where they could have had some big deals, they skipped it over.

I mean… everyone seems dopey like a lost puppy (esp Jetfire).

 

I thought this had the best voice acting out of the three chapters. All the beast wars characters had more personalities than the others and they talked faster. I feel like wheeljack, bumblebee, and a little bit of prime talked faster too. Almost like they took into consideration the fans complaints. Overall though the kingdom chapter was just as shallow, rushed, and insignificant than the others. BW megs was pathetic, they really did him dirty with his character and his the voice choice. Dinobot had the best voice IMO. I did like that we got to see more transformations, but it was very obvious the budget was dog shit for this show. Multiple times bots would transform just outside of frame or in dust. Part of the reason we watch transformers IS TO WATCH THEM TRANSFORM. Why even bother if your not going to do it justice?

 

I may be wrong, but I think it comes down to them contracting a lower service level from Polygon. Like it's the equivalent of them buying the Xbox Series S instead of the Xbox Series X.

Prime is a decade old and looks far better than WFC. RID looks better, too, and I think that was the same case of lowering the "service level" coming off Prime.

 

And I suspect that has more to do with Rooster Teeth directly than it does Hasbro. Hasbro gave Rooster Teeth a budget to make a show and said get it done, Rooster Teeth then determines how to spend said budget. Without knowing how much Hasbro gave them it's hard to tell how much of the quality is the fault of Hasbro (if they lowballed the budget in the first place) or Rooster Teeth (going cheap on what is more or less sub contractors so that they could pocket a larger portion of the budget).

 

All the. Voice. Actors. Still talk. Like. This.

 

So BW Megatron absolutely sucks in this. On top of that, this show (like so much of media these days) leans heavily on the old celebrated material without putting effort in themselves. This isn't really a new interpretation of him, because he's still saying yesss and idly petting his T. rex head, it's just an incredibly shitty portrayal. Which unfortunately is widespread in the brand right now. We don't get "another Beast Wars" in the sense of a radical new vision that's also well-crafted, we get "another Beast Wars" that's literally the same Beast Wars again but without the charm. And we got TWO of those happening right now, and they're threatening us with a third one next year.
*sigh*




Other scattered thoughts:
- Soundwave totally died, but then he just comes back I guess.
- I can't tell if BA kissing "her hero" Airrazor is supposed to be a lesbian thing or a Looney Toons gag (IIRC Rattrap did a few of those in the original show). Could always be both, of course.
- So many Scorponoks.... after G1 Scorpy told us he was the last one.
- Tigatron being just a white Cheetor even in beast mode is a hell of a thing.
- The Allspark's master plan of allowing G1 Megatron to claim the Matrix, just to ... I dunno, immediately throw him down a hole and return the Matrix to Optimus. What.
- I'm guessing by the Cybertronian letters the Golden Disk isn't the actual Voyager Golden Record. Which is really weird since it's got all the incredibly specific details on it.

 

As a story, it was OK but confusing and rushed.

As an advertisement for toys, an absolute failure of a series.