It's been a few weeks now and nobody has commented on this show so I thought I'd give it a go.
First off, it's a kids show. I know that, but it doesn't stop me from watching. The day you stop watching saturday morning cartoons is the day when that slow transformation into your parents is finally complete and I for one fight that daily. So don't expect heavy plots from the thing, but then again, the original transformers series wasn't exactly thought provoking either.
The shows art direction is horrible, let me get that out of the way as well. The people who did teen titans are doing this show and while overly-expressive cutsey animated stuff is appropriate for that show it is NOT appropriate for a show about complicated machines.
Ok as for the content..... the show seems to be a mesh of the original cartoon (I mean 1985 original) and the michael bay plot additions (UGH!). The plot (carried over from the movie pilot episode) is that optimus prime and the autobots are a bunch of flunkies repairing a space bridge (remember those from the old show?) when they stumble upon the all-spark. Ratchet, a veteran of the now ended war between the autobots and decpticons immedately recognizes it and instructs their rookie leader (optimus a rookie?) that they need to hide it fast. Sure enough, the deceptions, who hadn't been a threat in ages, show up. Now just any ship though, but THE ship... the ship piloted by megatro himself. Of course he wants the all spark and aims to board the autobot ship to get it, but starscream, in true old-school form, plants a small explosive on his back which helps the autobots barely defeat megatron, but not before the all-spark blows a hole in the enemy ship and shoots the good guys ship through the space gate. Star-scream is thrilled that he's the new leader of the cons, until he realizes that all of the crew has ran off (which is fine as they really don't serve any purpose in the plot anyway.)
Well the autobots ship (which is essentially the arc from the old show) crashes in a lake near detroit and megatron's remains land on a farm also nearby. The bots are in statasis for 50 or so years (until the 22nd century) until a random plot device wakes them. The bots stupidly think that cars and trucks are the native lifeform on earth and have teletran give them alternate forms to match all of which just happen to be law enforcement vehicles (I'll get to that later). Well the unimportant plot point is destroyed and in the process bumblebee meets a little girl named sari who is daughter to this robot making genius (we'll get to him later) anyway, long story short the all-spark zaps her key giving it magical powers and she cna use it to bring bots back from the dead. Meanwhile starscream has been looking for the spark by himself all these years and finally comes to earth. I don't want to ruin it, but needless to say starscream is all bad-ass and saves an otherwise horrible pilot and the the good guys win in the end. But wait... remember that famous inventor? Well he found megatron's head in that field all those years ago and has been using it to reverse engineer robot tech! Oh and megatron is about to wake up.
How did the bots fare?
It's kind of funny because while in the movie the character designs of the decepticons were ruined, the opposite happened this go around. Prime is younger and doesn't have that famous voice, bumblebee has just been ruined, prowl has been reduced to a ninja stereotype played by frikkin David Pierce (Niles Crane on fraiser, who also did the voice of drix the cold pill on ozzy and drix), and newcomer bulkhead, voiced by the untalented man of a single voice Bill Fagerbakke (played dauber on coach, patrick on spoingebob and brooklyn on gargoyles using the exact same voice and character for each!). Strangely enough, Ratchet is on the show as well and for the most part is exactly as you remember him from the original show they even used the same voice actor apparently! So you have one decent autobot on the show (except for guest stars but we'll get to that later.). Their vehicle modes, oddly enough are pretty old-school. As I said before they are all "law enforcement vehicles" but that's a bit of a stretch. Optimus is supposed to be a fire truck, but he looks pretty much exactly like he did on the original show, except he now has a siren and hauls some sort of fire-fighting rig instead of a normal trailer. Actually you rarely see him with the rig, so basically it's just old school prime. Bumblebee also looks the same, save a removable siren (he's supposed to be the police chief's car) and a nice racing stripe. Ratchet, aside from some minor decal changes is spot-on. Prowl, as I've mentioned before is a mess and I've personally always had problems with motorcycle autobots because a driverless bike isn't much of a dsguise and bikes won't balance without a driver! Bulkhead, who I assume is based on the bulkhead from the energon anime show (think rodimus prime only even more lame and clumsy) is very out of place, and turns into some sort of paddy wagon now instead of his previous helicoptor form. Their robot modes aren't much better. While the bodies (with the exception of prowl and bulkhead) look pretty much like they used to, the heads look terrible. Optimus doesn't have a face guard! Again ratchet is the exception.
The decepticons are a mixed bag.... they look very good, but the selection is questionable. Megatron in the pilot looks very much like the movie megatron (UGH) with a bit of transmetals beat wars 2 megatron thrown in just for confusion. His voice is decidedly like the movie megatron (UGH again). Thankfully that explosion gave him a makeover. The remaining head with all the fancy do-dads blown off looks EXACTLY like the original megatron and they lighten up the voice a tad. Although his isn't rebuilt yet, early preview sketches show the rebuilt megatron looking pretty much like he did back in the 80's Starscream, is spot on, much like ratchet is. The voice, the look, the personality, everything is as it should be. Although the voice actor that did him in the 80's passed away this guy sounds amazingly similar. There are two more bots shown in the pilot, but as of yet they haven't been seen since. I'm actually glad of this fact due to how out of place they are. Blitzwing is one of them and while you might think "wow he was cool" get those thoughts out of your head because they have ruined him. While his design looks a lot like it used to, his robot mode leaves a lot to be desired due to a lame gimmick on the writer's part. You see blitzwing was a triple-changer (had a robot mode and two vehicle modes) on the old show and in this series they seem to have heard of this, not understood what it meant and confused him with mani-faces from he-man. Yes blitzwing now sports a german-style helmet which houses three spinning heads with three horrible personalities. His base face has a lame german accent (get it, blitzwing?) he has a "Logical" face that talks like a robot, and a "static" face that acts like a child. They really rippped off old mani, with the three faces even looking like mani's faces only robotified, with german, robot, static looking like human, robot, monster respectively. The third one is actually a pretty well-designed character that made the transition well... too bad she is TOTALLY out of place on a standard transformers show! The last cast member is black arachnia! She's a frikkin beast machine! She looks sounds and acts exactly like she did on the beast wars show with her trans-metal body. The others even go so far as to insult her "gross organic alternate mode". See that just doesn't make any sense. The only reason I could see for putting her in is the fact that she's the only compelling female character in the history of the transformers, but this is a series about cars and trucks and jet-planes and she transforms into a frikkin spider!
As for the show itself, it's a love hate relationship. As of now the pilot was 10 times better than the actual show, mainly because starscream hasn't returned yet and he carried the pilot single-handedly. As of now most plot points revolve around megatron mucking up the good invertor's creations behind the scenes as he has some control over the lab he is in. This is sort of good as megatron is always more evil when he's in a behind the scenes sort of role. The stories so far are rather simplistic,even for a saturday morning show with the action revolving around sauri's key just a tad too much. But I watch it anyway. Why? Because of the amazing fan-service! While this might not be our transformers, they pay tribute to the old show in nearly every episode.
Here's just a quick list of what I've caught so far:
The openeing of the pilot is the exact same opening as the beginning of season three of the transformers, I mean it's literally a clip taken from that show, creepy voice-over and all. It pans out to show that ratchet was watching an old recording.
The autobot ship is the arc and includes teletran 1, while the decepticon ship is the original ship as well.
Sauri's robot dog is named spark plug.
In the "Future Detroit Explained" sequence in the pilot, you can clearly see Spike, Carlie and Daniel out buying a hotdog (their season 3 "future" designs) in the background.
The all-spark cube looks strangely like the matrix of leadership.
A beefed up version of the original theme song is used.
So far there have been old-school perfect camero's of Ultra magnus and ArCee, with arcees original voice actress used.
There is a episode featuring the creation of the dinobots, again with the original designs and voice actors used, with grimlock even having that old "me grimlock!" speech issue.
So here's the thing.... on it's own the show is barely passable, but hardcore fans of the transformers should check it out because you never know who they are going to bring on next and thus-far the guest stars are given far more respect past-wise than the main characters. (Presumably because kids don't know them and thus hasbro doesn't pressure the artists into using the new movie designs as there aren't any.) Because this is the first truely american transformers since beast wars and even rarer still the first american transformers to deal with the original bots since the first series you end up seeing characters you haven't seen in 20+ years! I mean when's the last time you saw ArCee? How about the dinobots? While it's not a show that I'm going to eagerly wake up for, I intend to scan every episode at my leisure looking for fanboy gold. I suggest if you are a fan you do the same.
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Topic: Transformers Animated (Read 742 times)
