Of course their can be moral grayness.
The value of having so many toy= characters is the opportunity to create snapshots of different perspectives and values.

 

I never liked the "Heroic Autobots vs Evil Decepticons" idea.

Reading the original G1 bios on the boxes and especially the Marvel:Universe series included in the Marvel comics, many Autobots had elements to their character that were not heroic, and likewise not all Decepticons were evil.

I also loved the comment by HiQ/Optimus to Grimlock, noting that some transformers walk the line that divides Autobot from Decepticon. This indicated that it's not a black & white difference, but that some chose an allegiance based on other things. Some Decepticons were just in for the fun, were bullies or felt that they were a superior lifeform. None of this makes them evil. Likewise there are Autobots like the Dinobots who with their strength based idealogy could be part of the Decepticon army. Or Mirage with his upper class mentality.

Some Autobots and some Decepticons are absolute: absolute evil or pure good. But the majority all take their place in between.

 

Yes.

 

I always thought it was a missed opportunity...during the old rubsign days I thought it would have been really cool to have some characters with morally grey tech specs, then have their rubsigns be random. Some kids get Autobot Mirage, some get Decepticon Mirage...

 

I like the ideas of the Autobots having flaws. Though I still think that early IDW's (Infiltration and such) "Autobots are entirely uncaring towards Earth and humanity" to just be kind of... unpleasant. I really like how Transformers Prime did it with Ratchet bringing up the amount of times that Optimus had the oppourtunity to kill Megatron but hesitated. Showing that your rolemodels/leaders are flawed and can make mistakes is good, in my opinion.

 

I don't dislike the idea in and of itself however by this point it's been run into the ground so much that in my opinion it needs a break. Once Earthspark ends I'm hoping the next show finally gives us another Megatron that's evil. For emphasis there hasn't been an actually cool Megatron in cartoons since 2020 in the last episode of Cyberverse that show's megatron and his alternate timeline counterpart were the last time Megatron wasn't a sad sack. Even worse before that there was a time from 2014-2017 where the only representation of Megatron in major fiction was IDW where he had become an Autobot can you imagine that: Megatron the leader of the Decepticons' only representation in fiction was as a sad sack Autobot. I'm personally ready for another evil Megatron.

 

Make Megatron Villainous Again

 

Decepticons and Autobots are mostly bad and good respectively, but of course this is no hard and fast rule.

 

Cyberverse will forever be the undervalued cartoon thanks to the format (10 minute snippets), animation and voice direction. Yet, it course corrected so much of what I felt IDW got wrong and managed to make Hot Rod awesome again.

 

While I'm actually getting a little fatigued by the over-abundance of "moral gray areas" in basically everything these days, I think there's definitely some room for it in Transformers. In fact, I'd argue that it was always there a little bit.

I mean, reading the old bios, the Decepticons were consistently pretty bad dudes, but you also got the sense that not all the Autobots were sunshine-and-rainbows either... some of them were only "good guys" in relative terms.

What we're seeing now is not new. Generation 2, IDW, Animated, and some other fictions have explored these themes in the past -- especially the idea that life on Cybertron was not great for everyone, and that the rise of the Decepticons was born out of some idealistic notions that got increasingly radicalized and perverse over the eons.

Of course, fascism also has lots of "idealistic notions" in its ideology, but that doesn't excuse some of the utterly reprehensible things at its core. Not all movements start with the best of intentions - some are rotten from the beginning.

So it depends... are Decepticons just elitist space-fascists and conquistadors? Or are they freedom-fighter revolutionaries gone horriby wrong? Because that also resonates with the way things happen in the real world. A lot of "popular revolutions" become oppressive, murderous regimes pretty much instantly. There's something in there about how one must become a monster to fight a monster... and it's hard to un-become that thing once you've won.

Also, whatever high-minded ideals a movement starts from, usually with philosophers and intellectuals - once it gets down to the uneducated masses fighting in the trenches, a lot of the subtleties gets stripped away in the name of necessity. It's like the culture war... smart people can understand the political nuances and contradictions that exist on both sides, but 99% of the people fighting the culture war on the internet are just indoctrinated soldiers who exist solely to street-fight with the other side, and never question. That sort of describes every war, really...

And all of that said, I'm a bit tired of every MCU supervillain having a tragic backstory or sympathetic side. Sometimes it's nice to just have an unambiguous baddie.

zmog