A little pain never hurt anybody. If I can sit through Siege and Earthrise, they can take out the toy wheels and THOSE. FOREARM. GAPS.

 

Yeah but that would cost money, and if you haven’t noticed already the new wave for transformers media seems to be the cheapest, least professional route. Even it sucks, still making a profit because of how cheap it is to produce. Minimum effort+ minimum investment but still nets a profit.

 

Ok you guys I think calling the VAs amateurish, untalented is harsh.
With the level of story writing, voice direction not to mention running time we're given, there's only so much any VA can do ¯\_(ツ)_/
(come to think of it, Frank Todaro, Jason Manorcha and Wheeljack's VA in particular
deserve more TF projects. Bee's VA isn't bad either.)

See I don't think that POV is solely DeSanto's. After Bay movies and TFP, Hasbro seems to have gotten it in their heads that all the 13+ fans care about is grim dark and boobies. With lots of nostalgia. And I don't mind nostalgia. In fact, I enjoy it especially when it's not some cheap throwaway reference just to tickle the fans watching. Hasbro execs probably looked at the success of the Bumblebee movie with fans and still didn't see the bigger picture. They only saw the giddiness of GEEWUN fans (and I'm a g1 fan)

So if that's what DeSanto claimed after watching Bumblebee then he's either lying about having watched it
or he's too stupid (to quote Megs) know what endeared the fans to that movie. Like the rest of them.
He can't claim that he saw the heart in Bumblebee, write/produce at this level and to add cherry on the poop cake come out say there'll be no Humans whatsoever in the WFC trilogy. 'cause you know it was absolutely just the grim dark violence that fans found heartwarming. Not you know, Bumblebee and his human friends bonding over adventures.

Heck, you don't need to watch Bumblebee. Go back to the premise of G1. At least the G1 Transformers knew what they were going to fight for and what stakes were raised.
And I'm obviously not saying you can't write a good TF show without humans. Beast Wars did it. Cyberverse managed to somewhat (although that made the war on earth seem really small scale and confusing because of all the time skips but they at least got the excuse of having a running time of only 10 minutes).

Again, this all boils down to DeSanto and Hasbro execs, writers who planned out and budgeted the series with him. If they were going to do a Pre-Earth Transformers without humans, that's fine. But don't just put a bunch of TF lore and grim dark depressing things in a blender and call it a plot.
Also don't name a season Earthrise if Earth isn't going to 'rise' in some way or you're not gonna do Humans. Just silly.

 

I defiantly don't think the VA's are bad, it's the voice direction. Even good seasoned voice actors can give bad performances if directed a bad way.
The fact that it's the half of the voice direction that came from the Prime Wars Trilogy, not the half that worked on other projects and let them talk at a normal rate, probably didn't help.

 

He probably thought the heart of Bumblebee was entirely about G1 fanservice, both good and bad. Which seems to be a constant trend with the ever-coming hack writers into this franchise. Primus forbid if Hasbro gets their shit together with the cartoon department the first step would be to fire any writer on the spot who says: "So, going back to the 1980's TF movie I'd like to rehash..."

 

To think we'd ever be reminiscing about the quality of the UT CG. Of course it helps that the UT designs were phenomenal to start, and were easy to "clean up" and make more dynamic and proportional.

I mean, it says a lot when Energon Prime and his Megazord mode looks more impressive than something rendered in 2020.

Ah yes, Roosterteeth and their novice catalogue of 3D animated shows.  

Siege Megatron is a hovertank, though.

 

Probably helps that UT Optimus (even Energon) had far more of a presence then WFC Prime does. With a combination of stuff like his voice, actions, and he just seems bigger, even when not in combined mode. Like to me if I were to grab Optimus and Megatron from any of the 3 UT shows and place them next to WFC Optimus and Megatron, my mind places WFC at half of UT's height, despite how the Optimus's would probably be roughly the same height or the UT Prime even a little shorter in un-combined form.

 

Really? I think I remember him driving with his treads on the ground in one episode. Give me a minute to go look.
EDIT: Found it - 9:24 into the first episode when he's driving up to Shamble and the other Reflector recolors. He kicks up dust and skids when he turns and everything.

 

They may have given him the sound effect of tank treads but he has none on the toy, instead each black tread section has three little squares on the side to imply lift. The Earthrise toy retools them to be real treads. They could've easily just left the wheels out and covered the holes, but they didn't even try.

See, that's what disappoints me most about this cartoon's animation, it's so obviously cheap and lazy. They have access to all the toy models from Hasbro but Ratchet was still just an Ironhide headswap and Exhaust didn't even have his own head. Doubledealer's face is fucked up because they couldn't take the time to rig his more unique toy face with animation like everyone else who has a plain, "normal" face, so they use a simpler design that looks like trash.

I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of animators who lack budget and time to produce the best work, but both of the two chapters so far have released late, well after the toylines were completed, and it still looks like a shitty amateur rush job. If you're tasked with making a painting and they only give you a pen and paper, don't just make a doodle on it, make a good drawing. It's still not a painting but at least you could say you did your best.

I feel the same way. Like you said, logically they'd be about the same size, but my mind envisions those designs as colossal just because they have so much impact and presence. Cybertron Prime looks like a Goddamn Brave super robot, and Megatron from that show is like a robot demon. (despite having entirely pedestrian alt modes of a car and jet, he looks incredibly badass)

 

Agree with this.

Which is why I don't think we need to be sad that Cullen, Welker et al. were not a part of this series. If anything, if this was the writing and the voice direction they had to work with, we should be relieved they were never subjected to this.

Even Peter Cullen couldn't make TFP Optimus Prime interesting because of how the character was written.

 

the whole mix is a muddy, tinny, din... pacing and character are equally trashed by every choice made sonically and visually...

I kind of wonder if part of the problem was there isn't a proper director and vision for the whole thing ... just a piss load of producers and department directors... and it just became a box checking exercise.

 

If the Beast Wars characters are in Chapter 3, I am interested to know the voices of the characters.

 

This isn't even me being mean, but it's going to be a bunch of random nobodies and scabs I mean non-union actors who don't have much clout to their names.

If they couldn't spring for Cullen as Optimus, they ain't springing for anyone special elsewhere. Certainly not any of the BW cast unless someone has rock-bottom rates I'm not aware of.

God I remember when TFs actually sought out voice talent. Jesus even Prime Wars got Ron Perlman and Mark Hamill.

 

Fred Willard as Swindle FTW.

 

I grew up on VHS of the 1986 movie, reruns of Rodimus era G1, Beast Wars and everything down the line.

That's just Prime!

 

Sorry for the late comments, I've only just now been able to log into TFW - it's been a long couple months.

The quality of the show, animation, writing and acting is all subjective I guess however I feel it's pretty poor. That said my mates kids think its awesome so what do I know.

MAIN gripe. Frieken Chromia cold bloodedly shooting Skytread in the face after he helped them escape in the past AND had his hands up in surrender. WTF? The way this show works it's difficult to know if he's still alive and just shot or is now dead cause he got shot... roll the dice I guess but I hope he's still around season 3. As for Chromia - Screw her.

I'll watch season three however I'd love to see Hasbro move away from roosters teeth and do a proper G1 reimplementation.

 

I saw today on Netflix a really nice retro thumbnail for earthrise , almost looked sunbow ish . Wish I could see a bigger pic of it but haven’t seen anything online about it

 

I really really hope that they kill off Optimus prime in this series. He is godawful and annoying. His voice acting sucks ( nothing against jake foushee), he’s annoying and he’s a complete moron, he never learns from his mistakes. It’s surprising how the show runners made an amazing version of megatron but a terrible version of Optimus. I also really hope that they kill rattrap off extremely brutally as well.

 

I'm sure that a bunch of people have already been over this, but dear god what was the decision-making behind Optimus' casting in Earthrise?

 

"Hey, this guy does a pretty decent Cullen impression!"